Behind the curtain

Jacinda Ardern's memoir lets us into the mind of a PM under crisis, but says less on whether she made right calls elsewhere.

- HENRY COOKE

This book isn't for us. It's hard to escape that sense for much of Jacinda Ardern's memoir, whether it is her translating the word “waka” or saying she was in her “junior year” of high school.

No, you will think as you plough through the 337 breezy pages in search of juicy political gossip, this is a book for her overseas fans, for people who know her for the big moments that wowed the international media - not for the domestic reader interested in getting a fuller view of those historic years.

Indeed, Ardern becomes prime minister only on page 200. The 2020 election comes about when you have a frustratingly small amount of the book to go. Large policy fights are explained to the overseas audience, Ardern's position spelt out in its simplest form, and then they are never heard of again.

But perhaps it is asking too much for a prime ministerial memoir to either dish mountains of dirt or delve deeply into the policy fights of yesteryear. At least Ardern has done us the service of writing a book setting out her version of some of the events, something no other prime minister since Jim Bolger has managed. And she has written one that is compulsively readable, easily consumed in two or three sittings, and often very funny.

Ardern writes with a fluency familiar to anyone used to her speeches, many of which she wrote herself. Long sentences are followed by very short ones. Moments of acute personal embarrassment or doubt are relayed on the page with a startling rapidity, as if she is not just your best friend but your best friend a few wines in.