Sometimes I’m in the mood for a voyeuristic memoir, looking over someone else’s shoulder into their life. Not My Type: One Woman vs. a President (2025) by E. Jean Carroll met that mood completely! E. Jean narrates the audiobook herself, which is a treat.
She begins with being deposed in the first civil suit she brought against Trump, where Trump’s attorney Alina Habba, Esquire asks her how many people she has slept with, ever, and in the memoir she goes through her list with the backstories.
I hadn’t really heard of E. Jean before the lawsuit, as I was never a reader of fashion magazines, but she wrote an advice column for Elle for twenty-seven years, wrote for Saturday Night Live and had her own TV advice show. I was excited to learn that she’s from Indiana though she has lived in New York for a long time.
As a lawyer, I was also interested to hear about the trial from the client’s perspective–what she saw, how the lawyers and the judge behaved, and especially how the defendant had no self-control while at the second trial even though he was warned multiple times by the judge that he needed to keep his commentary to himself.
Her description of being cross-examined in the first trial was harrowing, as was the thought that went into her appearance so that the jury could imagine her 30 years younger when the assault occurred in the mid 1990s. The one aspect of the book that I could have done without was her description of what she and the others around her wore, as she really name-dropped fashion designers that I had little awareness of. She did also describe some people as “trim,” in a positive way, perpetuating the idea that thinness is better, as one would expect from someone who spent their career in fashion. It’s not right, but it’s the world we live in.
But I believe her, no question. I can’t wait to hear about all of the good causes she uses the money she is owed for if she ever sees any of it. And despite its anti-fatness, I highly recommend this book.
Reading While Fat 