Something Lost, Something Gained

October 7, 2024
Former secretary of state Clinton (What Happened) mashes together impassioned arguments about what’s at stake in the 2024 election with heartfelt stories about her life in this confusing memoir. Addressing the reader as if sitting beside her “at a dinner party,” Clinton serves both “the broccoli and the ice cream”—the “political and personal.” Rather than the intended “rewarding meal,” this approach generates whiplash-inducing transitions, such as a leap from a poignant reflection on her late mother to an apocalyptic fantasy of a “Rip Van Reader” waking to Donald Trump’s second term, replete with “soldiers patrolling the streets” and “smog blanketing the sky.” Throughout, Clinton maintains a pointed focus on her 2016 rival, and the book sometimes reads as if written by a current presidential candidate, with tedious chapter-long dives into hot-button issues (abortion rights; children’s social media use). Pockets of inspiration emerge when Clinton recalls her career-long advocacy for women, and her personal anecdotes offer much needed levity (she named her “postmenopausal belly... ‘Beulah’”). Yet these moments are overshadowed by abundant needling at conservatives and progressives alike, from asserting that Trump’s inner circle “may well be on the Kremlin’s payroll” to admonishing anti–Gaza war protestors to educate themselves beyond “propaganda... served up by... the Chinese Communist Party on TikTok.” The overall effect is that of reading a compendium of rage-baiting, attention-grabbing headlines.