Anyone expecting to be enthralled by Kim Campbell’s memoirs will be disappointed. The events related are too recent and familiar for immediate excitement. Moreover, Kim Campbell lacks an eye for the telling detail, a gift for the flashing phrase. When she does manage a good line (“charisma without substance is a dangerous thing”) she seems to surprise herself. And her lively vignettes of figures like Mulroney and Clinton are the stuff of many journalistic articles.

What Campbell does offer is a clear, well-organized account of her journey to the office of Prime Minister and her defeat in the polls shortly afterwards. Her project is in part personal vindication and she mounts a good defense of her every word and deed. She explains, among other things, the famous photograph of her shielding her bare shoulders with her QC robes, her handling of the David Milgaard case, and her “one hell of a tortoise” remark to Charest after the leadership race. There is the temptation to vengeance in such a project, but she controls it fairly well.

Because restraint is its salient characteristic, her narrative will yield most to those who believe that the impact of autobiographical writing depends on the reader as well as the writer, and are prepared to analyze her words carefully, particularly for what is omitted. The unprecedented rise to power of a woman who is pro-choice, twice divorced, and a self-declared feminist warrants serious attention by students of woman’s history as well as of Canadian history and politics.

A formative incident in her childhood was the unexpected departure of her mother, a pattern that was repeated in the abrupt departure of her second husband and, perhaps, in the voters’ rejection of her in 1993. Her reaction to her mother’s desertion, she says, became part of her emotional armament.

The accuracy of that assessment is borne out by the book, which contains much evidence of emotions held in check. Such control, while admirable, results in a legalistic mind-set that serves her better in weighing evidence and making judicial decisions than in running political campaigns. It also undermines these memoirs, which she designates in the subtitle as “political.” As a feminist she should understand the close link between the personal and the political. Her tendency to downplay the personal lessens the effectiveness of her story.