Customer Reviews

Monica's Story

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

This is the infamous book on Monica Lewinsky, the President's mistress.

While the reason that I picked up this book was because I didn't have anything else handy to read, I surprisingly found the book a fascinating read. The book does not cover the scandal as much as the people behind the scandal. The book portrays Ms. Lewinsky as a lost young woman who happened to fall in love with a married man, who happened to be the president. Ms. Lewinsky portrays President Clinton not as the womanizer Judge Starr and the media portrayed him as, but as a man, who had a poor marriage and was lonely. Judge Starr was portrayed not as the man looking for truth and justice as I though he was, but as a cold, thoughtless person only looking after his own personal, political agenda.

The only downfall to the book is that everyone knows how the story ends. However, I became so engrossed in the book because it focused on the people of the scandal, not the scandal itself. It changed how I thought about the major players in the whole affair.

While I found the book fascinating, the book is not for everyone. The story is yesterday's news, and many people would rather the whole thing just went away. However, if you want to see the scandal from a point of view other than the mass media's, I would highly recommend this book.

Not well-written, but a very interesting account of the whole Monica/Bill/Ken Starr story. I needed to hear her version and learn more about what went into the making of a young woman who could dare such a dangerous and foolish liaison. She also provides interesting insights into Bill Clinton, though we see him through her filters of course. I tend to believe much of what she says about their relationship, that it was more than sexual and that they felt like soul-mates, irresistably drawn to each other (as opposed to mere dalliance). What she didn't understand was that she would always be on the losing end. It is sad to hear her recount the many nights and weekends she sat by the phone, putting her own life on hold, in the hope that he would call. It's the classic scenario for the unmarried woman in love with a married and very busy man. She lived for the crumbs because they were so delicious, but they weren't enough to nourish and sustain her; you can't make a life out of crumbs.

The whole business with Ken Starr's staff is truly frightening and I wanted to hear the details in her own voice. Until I read this account, I hadn't fully understood the depth of the fear that she and her entire family lived in as a result of the investigation and intimidation by the FBI and the Office of Special Prosecutor (OSP). She was a pawn in the Right Wing/Ken Starr's vendetta against the President.

In a moral sense, nothing that Monica did justified the treatment she received by the OSP, the FBI, and the destruction of her life and her family's by the media. She had been unthinking, and possibly uncaring, about the hurt she was potentially causing Clinton's wife and daughter, foolish in talking about the relationship with others, and certainly out of touch with reality, and petulant at times, in her demands upon the President. Monica made mistakes, big ones, but she is not alone. What really bothers me is the way so many people have used the media to judge, dissect and ridicule this young woman and her family. At times like these, we come across as a mean-spirited and hypocritical society. I am grateful that the general public opinion realized that what happened between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky was basically a private matter and, while it was wrong, was not the major offense against the nation Congress tried to make it.

Reading this book almost made me feel as if I was looking through a tabloid. To be honest I really only scanned the parts where she was with Clinton and the treatment she received by the FBI and her "friend" Linda. We all know the sorted details; the one part I do not think we all have a good view of is the treatment the FBI dished out. Do I want them to act this way with a terrorist or a Mafia Don - ok, but come on, with this young lady and her mother? I felt it was a bit over the top and an abuse of power. Also the trustworthiness of Linda should be called in question based on the stunts she pulled her. She was looking for the fast track to fame.

Overall this is an interesting, gossipy book that gives a different view of the situation then you may have received just watching the nightly news. The book is light and fast making it a very easy to read book.

Any woman in her early twenties, who has ever fallen in love with a man who is married and forbidden by conventional ethical and professional standards, will find empathy in this book.

Whatever side of truth or political scenario this book attempts to portray, I primarily read it as a romance and enjoyed it more than ever. The book's appeal lies in the dynamics of the affair between the young intern and the president, rather than any political truth-finding. Maybe, there are too many 'truths' out there, and who are we to judge which one is true. This is Monica's version, so why quibble about absolute realities?

The book certainly does a good job of revealing her a human figure rather than a man-hunting slut responsible for the impreachment of Clinton.

Why marvel Marie Antoinette and Josephine, and not Monica? I admire Monica Lewinsky as a person who enjoys poetry, loves life, watches her weight, experiments with men, and most of all braves what the world thinks of her. I really think people ought to stop thinking of her as a sex symbol.

Tragic as the love story's end is, Monica RULZ!!!

If walls could write stories, this would have been a more interestingly written tome. MONICA'S STORYs' dispassionate tone suggest that the author was trying to protect Monica by cleverly presenting the tale as if nothing sexually exciting took place between her and the president; or the author is merely a gallant gentleman who came forward to give hope and support to a suffering young woman who had made several silly mistakes that had caught up with her and was giving her a public chastisement she and the world will long remember.

Regardless what the author's intent, he managed to produce a profoundly BORING BOOK. I highly recommend it to insomniacs who have counted every sheep in the galaxy. It works better than Nembutal, guaranteed! Hopefully, this experience has taught this young lady that she can't have everything she wants and that she better stop wanting other women's husbands.

I plunged into Monica's story with much anticipation, anxious to hear her take on all events that had transpired over the last year. The beginning staged Monica's life growing up, much more detail than most people probably care to know - I wanted to know about her relationship with the President (or at least her perspective) and not her entire life story. She isn't that valuable to society to have us all know this information. The book is not very well-written, with many typos and backwards English. If someone was writing this book about me, I'd make sure I came out looking a little less like a mental case. I found myself skipping pages toward the end and eventually just skipped to the last chapter. It's basically the same thing over and over again - and never once does Monica take ownership, she's always blaming others (maybe that was illustrated in the parts I skipped).

The book is amazing for its inconsistentcies. We've got a (supposedly) incredibly bright girl who can't pass high school English and doesn't realize that filing a false affidavit with a federal court is a serious offense? This lack of morals is not only shown by the ease in which she describes getting an abortion (although sorry about it later) or "messing around" with married men, but also the fact that she actually believes that lying under oath is no big deal. While I did have some sympathy for Monica given the vindictive nature of Linda Tripp & the independent counsel's office, she lost this sympathy when she failed to acknowledge her responsibility. The fact that Monica still believes there was an actual loving relationship with her "handsome" can only summon pity, not sympathy.

Don't waste your time or money on this book--there is nothing new.

This is book intended to garner sympathy for a thoughtlessly self-centered young woman who did not know enough to keep her mouth shut when it counted the most: whenever a man has his pants unzipped and whenever a secret is best kept to yourself. This person still does not seem to understand the gravity of the situation she helped to cause, namely, the impeachment of the President of the U.S. and the betrayal of his friends, family, constituants and collegues. All she does is whine about the treatment that she was subjected to as a result of her tawdry fling. She still misses her "Handsome", the man who used and manipulated her and then discarded her like yesterday's newspaper. One has to wonder what it would take for this girl to get the picture that all the men she's known so far have used her for one thing only and yet, she inexplicably longs for them and remembers them fondly. Monica needs to find some way for men to relate to her other than her "comfortable sexuality." Monica is a very beautiful girl who is not fat and undesirable. Her opinion of herself is seriously flawed. She needs to impose a vow of chastity upon herself before she destroys any more lives of wives, children and unborn babies. I write this review as a pro-choice advocate and a person who can no longer stand to look upon the face of Bill Clinton. I think Monica should learn a lesson from Joe Di Maggio and just keep it to herself. I, for one, would not like to travel the length and beadth of the earth being known only as "the queen of the BJ". This book did not change my perception of her one bit.

This book is highly entertaining, for its goal is twofold and self-contradictory. It attempts to portray Monica Lewinsky, Clinton's White House girlfriend, as a moral, intelligent, functional youth of high potential and integrity... while at the same time making her utter naivete and gullibility a natural, acceptable, and logical component of her character.

For a thinking person, this is but a stretch.

Monica does have a moral backbone of sorts... she refused, for example, to blow whistles on her enemies to the media when such behavior might have been understandable, and she does endeavor repeatedly to spare her family from media pain... but at the same time her dumb choices like having illicit relationships with married men, her abortion, and her efforts to convine her first married boyfriend's other girlfriend not to reveal their affair to his wife both astonish and appall me. They undo successfully my ability to respect her as Morton seems to want the readers of this book to do.

Morton explains the faults in her character as "smart woman, stupid choices." Forrest Gump had a point with "stupid is as stupid does," and Monica's decisions and expectations were regularly stupid in the extreme. The author never acknowledges that without reminding us of her (cough) innocence, her (cough cough) inherent character, or her (hacking) idealistic hopes by way of justifying or excepting her as a bad person.

Also, I don't like Morton's writing style, although this book is much better than his book on the late former Princess of Wales -- practically a poster-book for circuitous writing. This one follows a fairly logical chronological order, but his phraseology is repetitive and excessive (there's a lot of "weeping, crying," a lot of "utter terror and desperation," a lot of "hysterical sobbing"). I imagine that would try the patience of more sophisticated readers who care less about Monica's affectations and more about how she can rationalize away what thinking and less emotional people would see with crystal clarity, that her situation as the President's girlfriend was tenuous at best and she couldn't believe a single word he told her.

If you enjoy faintly salacious reads with unbelievable naivete, true stories, or Clinton bashing literature, this may be a great read for you... but read it for entertainment purposes only. That's really all it's worth.

I was surprised by this book. I was expecting a rehash of the details of this most bizarre of relationships. Instead, Andrew Morton managed to get to the woman behind the public persona and reveal a touching, complex,and honest profile of Monica. By the end of the book, I had readjusted my opinion of the whole affair - and realised that, President or pauper, human emotions are the greatest leveller. This book is not just juicy scandal - it's a love story. I highly recommend it.