American canto

Journalist Nuzzi's rambling and often surreal debut reflects on a decade of America under Donald Trump as the country and its citizens warp in his image, including Nuzzi herself through her 2024 digital affair with then presidential candidate, now MAGA insider Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "That I have made of myself what others have determined to be Good Copy is a horror," she writes, then proceeds to reveal uncomfortably intimate details about "The Politician," as well as trace the public fallout of their professionally unethical relationship. However, her fall from grace is but one component of this nonsensical sequence of vignettes, which includes musings about Genesis ("Adam was a rat"), a court statement about the 2022 assault of Nancy Pelosi's husband, and references to Trump's frequent invocation of "the late, great" Hannibal Lector. Buried within these shards lies a withering examination of Trump as a singularly bizarre individual and of "Trumpworld," with its fanaticism and intra-staff power struggles, as a mirror reflecting America back at itself. Yet, like the "endless scroll" Nuzzi recalls undertaking after watching Charlie Kirk's assassination, each new vignette brings a chaotic surprise (the author's memory of the sky on 9/11; a description of a viral video of a raccoon). This incoherent jumble of paranoia, self-pity, and power jockeying does, in its way, well represent the country's "state of disunion and delirium." For those willing to buckle up, it's a wild ride. (Dec.)

A book about "life in America"--and love (questionable poetry included). Nuzzi's clumsy memoir mistakes wordiness for insight and favors coyness over clarity. The 32-year-old reporter covered the president for "many years," during which she fell in love with a married man she calls "the Politician." He's widely reported to be Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which Nuzzi essentially confirms via many biographical details. The Politician "told me that he wanted me to have his baby" and wrote her "explicit poems," which she shares: "I am a river. You are my canyon. I mean to flow through you." Her opacity is unintentionally funny. "I love you, [the Politician]," she writes. Frustratingly, others are cryptically identified, too. One ungainly scene features "the man for whom I worked" and "the man I did not marry." When the Politician is absent, Nuzzi looks for meaning "in our age of insincerity." Aiming for a this-is-the-way-we-live-now report from inside a media maelstrom, she includes Q & As with Trump employees, anecdotes about dull-witted men, government files, and observations about technology and consumerism. Hounded by tabloid reporters, she crudely likens her plight to wildfires and gun violence. Upending timeless writing advice, she doesn't use one word when many will do. When a would-be assassin fires at Trump, he was "clipped on the ear by that which could not kill him." American politics, Nuzzi, time itself--each is pulled "apart and apart and apart and apart." Citing a provocative Alfred Hitchcock quote--"Blondes make the best victims"--Nuzzi floats a theory: Trump might be "the first blonde president. Is it any wonder then that he can so easily fetishize his own victimization?" This might be a joke, but like much else in this book, it doesn't work. A political reporter's disjointed account of her starring role in a lurid scandal. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.