Searching for Sarah Palin

Jack Shafer reviews The Rogue by Joe McGinniss:

“To call a book a hatchet job is not necessarily to disparage it. Some subjects can’t be accurately rendered in a fair and balanced sketch, demanding instead the defacement that Lucian Freud brought to portraiture. That said, a smartly swung sharp blade makes for better literary blood sport than the butt-end bludgeonry McGinniss visits upon Palin and her husband, Todd…”

“By book’s end, I felt a little like the Pa­lins — eager for McGinniss to
move out of my neighborhood. He establishes that Sarah Palin’s
ambitions dwarf her talents, that she’s the world’s oldest mean girl and
that she has a tendency to become a liability to even her closest
allies. But no hatchet job was needed to convince an average reader of
that. The only fresh meat McGinniss cuts in The Rogue is connected to
his knuckles.”