Well-written and nuanced, this work illuminates the Lewinsky scandal and provides valuable insights into the Clintons’...
In a fictional diary, President Bill Clinton recounts and ruminates about his notorious affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
Petrovsky (If Only for Love, 2013, etc.) plumbs President Clinton’s innermost thoughts during the Lewinsky affair and the scandal, impeachment, and Senate trial that followed. After spotting Lewinsky in 1995, Clinton attends a staffer’s birthday party as a pretext to see the young intern again. “Besides, there’d certainly be some cake,” Clinton adds. Lewinsky hikes up her dress and flashes her thong at him. Pursuing her, he’s bothered by his “historical levels of hypocrisy” and thinks of himself as “nothing but a dirty old man trying to get his dick wet while the world burned.” Nevertheless, with the aid of his secretary, Clinton takes Lewinsky into the Oval Office, where they engage in oral sex—although Clinton rationalizes that it isn’t really sex. Smoothing things over with his suspicious, cold, and calculating wife, Hillary, whom he partly blames for his numerous trysts with other women, the president fantasizes about Lewinsky during government meetings and masturbates while on the phone with her. When the Washington Post exposes the affair, Clinton lies to Hillary and convinces her that the report is false. Things fall apart during the Kenneth W. Starr investigation, however, and Clinton undergoes a humiliating blood test that proves he had sex with Lewinsky, thanks to her famous blue dress with his semen stains. After undergoing marriage counseling and surviving impeachment, Clinton concludes that the episode will eventually be forgotten, and Hillary decides to run for public office. Petrovsky delivers an evenhanded account of the sensational and controversial affair that mesmerized the nation for months but is now practically ignored. The book contains dashes of humor mixed with pathos, gives a very human portrait of Clinton, and explores the all-too-human insecurities and demons that may have driven him to his aberrant behavior in office. Further, it suggests how Clinton (along with the rest of the populace) may delude himself as well as others through lies that rationalize even the most outrageous behavior. It’s a timely revisiting of a tacky and tawdry moment in U.S. presidential history that would be tragic if it weren’t so banal and farcical.
Well-written and nuanced, this work illuminates the Lewinsky scandal and provides valuable insights into the Clintons’ personalities as they attempt to retake the White House.Pub Date: July 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4382-1564-8
Page Count: 206
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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