The cover shows a stylishly poised young lady photographed against an office background. The title of the book suggests that she has a story to tell as the daughter of one of America’s leading businessman, as famous for his sharp business style as his unfortunate hairstyle. But the way Ms Ivanka Trump has chosen to focus a thinly-disguised autobiography as a “How to succeed” offering could leave the reader wondering if she’s been a bit premature in declaring her life a “trump card”.
Writing at the ripe young age of 28, Ms Trump herself seems to have harboured few doubts on this score. In the introduction, she counts her background as Donald (“You’re Fired!”) Trump’s daughter, her privileged upbringing and attendance of exclusive schools and colleges as negatives. What she has to “get over” is the weight of expectation from her parents, who “set the bar high” and insisted she prove herself, and from colleagues who eagerly expected her to fail or know it all because of her family connections.
This is certainly a unique reason for writing a prescriptive book after less than a decade of business experience. But Ms Trump has a gender-specific agenda. Her book, she explains, is meant to be a “resource for young women starting their careers or perhaps looking to rejuvenate them in an incredibly challenging environment”.
The average young American woman may, however, find it tough to relate to Ms Trump’s experiences. Certainly, few young women who take up modelling in their early teens — luckily, she has inherited her Czech mother Ivana’s looks — join their father’s real estate empire at age 24, launch a jewellery line and then appear as a judge on a reality show anchored by their father (The Apprentice), would think of writing a book about their “achievements”, much less offering business lessons.
But this book is not meant to be just a professional primer — it is a young women’s guide for their “personal path” too. After all, Ms Trump informs us, “[t]here are so many choices out there for us, so many opportunities, so many twists and turns that we can hardly anticipate. It’s all too easy to take one tiny misstep in the wrong direction and end up on a completely wrong road.”
Since the book doesn’t specify what major missteps or wrong roads Ms Trump faced — an aborted decision to pierce her belly button in her teens and to wear jeans to the Trump office in later years seem to be the few close shaves — it is difficult to understand what she means. Is she congratulating herself, perhaps, for not ending up a junkie, alcoholic or social misfit despite her guilded background?
The book may have worked better had Ms Trump been less ambitious and stuck to straight autobiography. Her accounts of family life are the most readable and least trite parts of the book. Despite Donald and Ivana Trump’s rather public and controversial personal life and Mr Trump’s hardball business style, they appear to have been caring parents, giving Ivanka and her two brothers an unexpectedly grounded upbringing. As Ms Trump aptly says, “My parents have both led non-traditional lifestyles — but they have extremely traditional relationships with their children.”
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Ms Trump writes about her parents and their influence on her life with genuine affection. “They were always there. Even when they weren’t in the room with me, or in the same time, they were present. They called. They kept in constant touch. And when you’re in constant touch, you don’t have to worry about impeccable timing.”
She rather spoils this tribute by providing as an example the fact that her father called her just as she was mulling the belly-button piercing (the incident obviously proved a life-changing experience because she refers to it again towards the end of the book). Much of the advice she dispenses through the book hinges on banal incidents like this.
Most young professionals may also find her worldview oblique. For instance, she demonstrates her so-called independent spirit by renting an apartment — surprise, it’s in a Trump property, though she emphasises that she pays her father a market rent. And she shows how the Trump siblings are made to appreciate what they’ve got by negotiating with her dad to gift a credit card to her stepsister Tiffany (Donald Trump and Marla Maples’ daughter).
To give Ms Trump her due, she does not lack confidence — she rightly counts it as an indispensable quality to succeed. And she is touchingly enthusiastic about passing on her accumulated wisdom to young people out there. The problem is that much of this is hardly unique. One tedious chapter titled “Recipes for Success” contains a detailed section on “Interviewing Basics”. This contains such gems as “Don’t be late”, “Do your homework”, “Have your answers ready” and so on.
In the “Dress the part” section, she takes the trouble to advise women to avoid “sloppy ponytails”, short hemlines and exposed cleavage. The men she abjures to be “clean-shaven and well groomed”. And, in case it hadn’t occurred to them, they shouldn’t have holes in their socks and buttons missing from their shirts.
Although the publishers have chosen to catalogue the book under the weighty Business and Economics section, The Trump Card reads like a lightweight, commonplace offering from a slightly serious 90210 frat girl.
THE TRUMP CARD
Ivanka Trump
Touchstone, 2009
