Published: August 14, 2008 03:56 pm            

BOOK REVIEW: Novel plays Clinton what-if

As one of the darker moments in recent presidential history notes its 10th anniversary this week, a new novel fills in the blanks of what might have happened in the Clinton White House.

Ten years ago this past Sunday, former President Bill Clinton admitted to a grand jury — and then the nation — that he had an inappropriate relationship with Monica Lewinsky. The affair led to years of scorn, as well as Clinton’s impeachment for perjury.

Much documentation of this period exists, including books by Bill and Hillary Clinton and the exhaustive report compiled by independent counsel Kenneth Starr. While these factual bases are all used, Fred Petrovsky speculates on the conversations and other minutiae that could have happened in “The Clinton Diaries,” a faux first-person account of the president’s version of events that is solid even if it is overly smutty and drones on at points.

Clinton’s “diaries” begin in November 1995 with an early, platonic encounter with Lewinsky, then an intern in the White House. From there, the book details several of his meetings with the woman, often — and unnecessarily — using language that would make Larry Flynt blush; the subject material requires some off-color terms, but Petrovsky goes overboard.

Many of the other manufactured conversations go on way too long, especially when read in the context of this being the president’s personal diary. You don’t need 20 pages-plus of small talk between the two to get the point, as it seems Petrovsky relies too much on fake discussion to fill the book up.

Where that’s a miss, though, his insight into the president’s possible mental state is a hit. Petrovsky portrays Clinton as secretly insecure about being a minority president, subordinate to his politically motivated wife and truly guilty about his actions even as he continues the affair (”I am worse than Nixon,” he laments at one point).

The interaction between Bill and Hillary provides the novel’s most interesting moments, with Bill usually dismissing his wife’s domineering personality as ”Hillary being, well, Hillary” and her assessing her odds at running for a Senate seat in New York at the book’s end (including discussion about her chances of success in places such as Buffalo).

Also thrown in, more to get readers to react than to truly add any insight, is a reference to the half-hearted pursuit of Osama bin Laden, who in the late-1990s was not a serious threat (“No one will second-guess how I handled it unless bin Laden one day succeeds at attacking America in a significant way,” he wrote).

“Diaries” should be regarded as the fiction it is, but the book still has something for everyone to take from it. What that is depends on which side of the political aisle you stand.



IF YOU READ

• WHAT: “The Clinton Diaries”

• BY: Fred Petrovsky

• DETAILS: Published by CreateSpace, 205 pages

• GRADE: B

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.