REVIEWED BY PATRICK ROGERS
MEMOIR
There's a lot not to like about McGreevey, the governor of New Jersey who cheated on his wife with a man and ran an administration dogged by allegations of corruption until his famous "I am a gay American" speech of August 2004 ended his career. Timidity, though, isn't one of the man's faults: In The Confession he serves up the details of his fall with the verve of a ward boss in a smoke-filled room. Smitten with a handsome aide he meets on a trip to Israel three weeks after his wedding, McGreevey describes plunging into "boastful, passionate, whispering, masculine" love that veers into a case of Fatal Attraction set at the statehouse. With a wife and baby asleep upstairs—and the press sniffing at the door—the gov parries extortionate demands (he claims) from his ambitious lover (who insists he was sexually harassed), while clinging to the myth of his heterosexuality. One can only hope for a compelling companion title: My Side of the Story, by his former wife, Dina.
