QUILLBLOG

Bush and Gore daughters’ books both political

Jenna Bush, daughter of U.S. President George W. Bush, and Kristin Gore, daughter of former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, have both published books this season. Ana’s Story, from Bush, is a non-fiction story of a 17–year-old HIV-positive unwed mother who Bush met while working as a UNICEF volunteer in Latin America last year. Gore, who has written for television shows such as Futurama and Saturday Night Live, has produced her second comic chick-lit novel, Sammy’s House (a sequel to her first, Sammy’s Hill).

The celebrity site Jezebel has a bit of fun looking at the subliminal political messages in both books:

Jenna’s Ana’s Story, the novelized account of an AIDS-infected orphaned single mom, boasts an extensive sex education appendix that sort of craps all over such tenets of her father’s political platform as “abstinence education.”

And quoting from a Washingtonpost.com article, the site also includes this analysis of the political back-story in Gore’s novel, which appears to have plenty of parallels with the Clinton administration:

Perhaps two-thirds of Gore’s story is high-grade chick-lit… The rest can only be read as an angry, down-and-dirty roman a clef…For Al Gore’s daughter to remind us of the former president’s failings (and of her father’s virtues) in this very public manner, at a time when Al Gore may still seek his party’s presidential nomination, and Clinton’s wife might be his rival, leaves us wondering if her excursion into recent history can be entirely innocent of political intent.

Quillblog was really counting on the Bush daughter to provide some humour, but the idea that she has moved from troubling her father with her partying habits to undermining some of his policies is kind of heartening.