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Who can love you? Mary Trump

Family burns book plates on Donald

Once again, Mary Trump attacks her family with her third book in four years. Who Could Ever Love You presents Trump as both a cocoon and a nightmare. Imbalance prevails. Think of it like a burnt book. Everyone sings.

Sometimes, Trump wishes her surname wasn’t Trump. But she will not give up the legacy. She has released two best-selling books – Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man and Reckoning: American Trauma and Finding a Way to Heal. Her third book also follows All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way, a memoir written by Fred C. Trump III, Mary’s now estranged older brother.

Their home life seems rough — their mother, Linda Clapp, is straight out of Mommy Dearest. Mary portrays her as cruelly oblivious. She repeatedly refused to bring young Mary to the hospital during her late-night asthma attacks. Instead, she put Mary to bed.

Mary’s father, Fred Trump Jr., neglected his children. When he was around, he wasn’t present. He hit the bottle, released the dogs, and died young. Mary loved him anyway. But his father, Fred Trump Sr., repeatedly trampled on his son, despising him for who he was and was not. Trump Sr. came to disinherit Fred Jr. and his “cause,” at the behest of his surviving children, including his next eldest son, Donald Trump. Think “The Apprentice” or “Family Feud” crossed with “Lord of the Flies.”

As expected, Mary dishes on Uncle Donald. Her animosity runs long and deep, dating back to her elementary school days. He bullied her, equating cruelty with caring. Little has changed.

“It didn’t take long for me to realize that Donald was unable to do much more than throw a baseball, which he did, as hard as he could at his nieces and nephews, who were all under 10,” Mary wrote.

She wrote that Trump attacked aggressively and brutally, rarely reaching the strike zone. On the rare occasions when he made contact with her glove, the eight-year-old’s hand trembled.

The conclusion is more optimistic. Mary describes a winter evening in New York. “The lights of the city – my city – shone behind me. There was no longer any way to know if there was a chance for redemption or even forgiveness, but in that moment, I felt the world opening up again.”

Lloyd Green

£15.29 (RRP £16.99) – Buy from the Guardian bookshop