Deb and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Perhaps, dear reader, it had not come to your attention that I have never written a memoir. May I be struck with lightning for saying so, but political memoirs—in Canada at least—are almost always disappointing, at least to me, and it is very difficult to produce a successful one. That, it strikes me, is a good excuse to stay out of the memoir business.

There are several reasons why compelling political memoirs are so rare.

First, just because politicians can talk, and most can—oh, how they can talk—doesn’t mean they can write (most can’t). The litmus test for any book on virtually any topic, a possible exception being a geometry text, is that it is a good read. Otherwise, it would be just as satisfying to curl up with an exciting issue of the Financial Analysts Journal to read the section on beta theory. In any story, good editing makes a big difference to the quality of the outcome, but, ultimately, good writing is a basic requirement. Thus, in...