What can we expect from Melania Trump’s memoir , published today in the US? So far, it seems a fitting extension of the woman herself, which is to say, both an enigma and a contradiction. A woman known for her cryptic silence is publishing this most personal form of literature. As ever, Melania has taken our expectations and subverted them.
Melania has been widely described as a coffee table book, and of course the point about coffee table books is that no one really reads them. They exist less for substance than for ornament. Only look at the cover.
It comes in black or white, as though the two are interchangeable, like truth and lies. Her first name is emblazoned upon it in capitals. It looks like a company logo, or the final frame for a TV advert, and what’s most striking about it is what it doesn’t show: Melania herself.
Even in the teaser videos posted on her Instagram, she stands with her face half-cast in shadow. Compare this apparent recalcitrance with the cover of Becoming by her White House predecessor Michelle Obama . Obama is pictured on a pale blue background, a bit Democrat, a bit Virgin Mary.
She’s dressed in white: purity, but it’s rumpled and off-the-shoulder, adding informality and a hint of sensuality. She’s looking neither up nor down at the viewer, but directly at them, cupping her chin, leaning in, as though about to tell you a secret. It’s one big entreaty to the reader.
“Like me,” it says. It’s difficult to know what Melania wants t.