America’s Theresa May

For Hillary Rodham Clinton’s admirers, Something Lost, Something Gained cements her place in America’s political pantheon. For her detractors, well, it probably confirms their view. When autobiography morphs into autohagiography, the result is always the same – self-promotion and self-justification become coterminous. Anodyne description masquerades as deep insight, and triviality promotes the Panglossian self-satisfaction that denies the reader any insight into how the author overcame more than her fair share of embarrassment and setbacks.

At the same time, Clinton is a stolidly engaging writer – or more accurately one suspects, narrator – who is capable of some profundity. She is guarded in dealing with the emotional and personal dimensions of her privileged life, especially in evaluating the compromises she evidently made and assessing whether they were worth it. Moreover, she harbours a decidedly utopian view of the America in which she grew up, its exceptionalism and myths.