The cover of Jacinda Ardern's memoir, with yellow writing and a black and white portrait

BooksJune 4, 2025

A Jacinda Ardern biographer reviews Jacinda Ardern’s memoir

Editor

Having written a whole book on her life, Madeleine Chapman reviews Jacinda Ardern’s version of events.

This book was always going to have one unsolvable tension: Jacinda Ardern as politician vs Jacinda Ardern as global celebrity. I figured A Different Kind of Power would either veer political and therefore be cloaked in Ardern’s usual restraint as a prime minister or it would veer celebrity and reveal the full emotion and drama behind the politician while conveniently brushing over policy and legacy.

Somehow it did neither.

An early and necessary disclaimer: I have written and had published a book about Jacinda Ardern’s life and career. The names are similar (A New Kind of Leader vs A Different Kind of Power), the covers share the same design template and the blurbs offer the same promise: an insight into the “real” Jacinda Ardern and what it means to be an empathetic leader. Both books were written and published with an international audience in mind, one in 2020 and the other just yesterday.

The difference in our books is that Ardern had no involvement in mine – I couldn’t even convince her to confirm whether or not she drank Fanta as a child, such was her refusal to participate (though interestingly it is raised in her memoir and still not confirmed). Instead I did what all assigned biographers do: I collected all publicly-available material, spoke to the few acquaintances willing to share stories, and cobbled them together for an international audience.

All this to say that I was particularly excited to read A Different Kind of Power to find out all the moments I horribly misrepresented as someone who had no access to Ardern’s mind while writing her life story. I wanted to learn the internal monologue behind the speeches I was only able to transcribe; the political arguments behind decisions I could only explain after the fact; and the emotions behind the dramatic moments I did my best to describe as if I was there.

Much to my disappointment, there was a surprising amount of overlap.

two book covers showing Jacinda Ardern on the front, one a biography and the other her recent memoir — You vs the memoir she told you not to worry about

Ardern’s memoir spends a long time (at least a third of the book) on her life before she’s even become a politician, and it works to, at times clunkily, foreshadow her later career decisions. There are detailed accounts of growing up very young in Murupara, with some cloying observations of poverty and hardship that allegedly turned her political at the age of six. But just as quickly the tone is saved by a genuinely compelling and evocative chapter on her mum Laurell and her nervous breakdown.

Throughout the book but particularly during her early chapters, Ardern lays out the key people in her life with a refreshing care and attention. As should be expected in one’s own memoir, each character ultimately serves to help explain why Ardern is the way she is now. Her mother’s struggles as a young parent reveal the complexities of motherhood and the importance of a village. Her aunt Marie is a window to a caring world not dictated by religion. And her best friend’s brother Theo’s tragic death by suicide as a teenager serves as a catalyst for both Ardern as a future politician and questioner of her own religion.

Writing supporting roles in memoirs is an inherently selfish act, but one that Ardern executes better than most. She gives her loved ones pep and emotion, anger and depression, conservatism and humanity, all at once. I would have gladly read another five pages dedicated to Laurell’s life as a young mother in a tiny town, deeply depressed and doing whatever it takes (in her case, trout fishing unsuccessfully in silence for hours at a time) to get by. I would pay money to see a movie on the life of Ardern’s aunt Marie, who was severely burned as a child and strutted influentially through Ardern’s childhood and young adulthood like a swearing Mary Poppins. I had tears in my eyes reading about Theo and his death, having only been introduced to him half a chapter earlier.

These early portraits set the scene for an equally nuanced, flawed and messy perspective on her own life as an adult, but as she so often did as a prime minister, Ardern doesn’t give nearly enough away.

It takes a certain rare skill to be able to zoom out from one’s life just enough to see what’s most interesting. To play the part of your own first witness. Very few public figures have it, and it’s why the best “memoirs” are those entrusted almost entirely to ghostwriters (think Agassi’s Open, written by JR Moehringer). A public figure unleashing every thought and memory out of their head and into someone else’s, whose job is to find the best parts.

Ardern has never been someone willing to let every thought out, and I can’t imagine she would have entrusted the telling of her story to anyone else. With a career defined almost entirely by restraint, poise and effective communications, it was perhaps too much to hope for an unfiltered memoir.

There are of course lovely insights into her life as a prime minister and new mother. The moments that are simply presented, rather than analysed, are the most compelling. Perhaps the most fascinating for me (though apparently not for any other reviewers) was the farcical charade required to keep her early pregnancy a secret, even from her security detail. A fake visit to see a “friend”, complete with handbag and bottle of wine, that was in fact an obstetrician ready to do her first ultrasound, was a fun and sadly rare break from the expected fare. Similarly, her straightforward recounting of struggling with breastfeeding and, eventually, her breast cancer scare that led to the classic burnout trope of wondering if falling ill would mean she had an excuse to leave her job. These moments are simply walked through, rather than wrung out for meaning and mottos, and I could have done with a lot more of that approach.

There are hints scattered throughout showing where A Different Kind of Power could have gone if Ardern had taken a more, well, transparent approach. Frequent mentions of feeling “boiling rage” at a situation as a child or “fuming” at Australian PM Scott Morrison as a leader are immediately diluted by the calm, reasonable actions that follow. And that would be illustrating her thesis nicely except there is no outlet. After the fifth mention of anger/rage/fuming, I expected it to culminate in a private moment of release. Who knows, a thrown mug or a screaming match or something. But no. She feels the rage, she suppresses it, she moves on. And when she finds it slipping through, even a little bit, she knows it’s time to leave politics. Even in this book years later, she does not permit herself any form of emotion beyond acknowledging that at some point in the past she felt anger.

Actually, the closest thing to a release reads accidental. When remembering the parliament protests, Ardern writes with a disdain otherwise reserved for David Cunliffe, David Seymour and Scott Morrison. She writes of refusing to speak to them or entertain their protests. And ends with a tone bordering on patronising as she explains that in some way, she saved those people’s lives and that’s what keeps her from responding with anger.

It leaves you wondering whether she has a lot of anger and resentment she needs to work through now or whether she grew up in such a tame, Mormon household (no swearing, no caffeine) that she equates general annoyance and pity with steaming rage. Whichever the reality, I would have loved to read about it.

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Madeleine Chapman
— Editor

If you were hoping for any reflection on political decisions (or lack thereof), you won’t find them here. In fact, despite my own personal interest in such a thing, I found myself quite bored by the Covid chapters plonked at the end. It may have been because I was living in Auckland in 2021 and would rather not read about it, but mostly it was because after accepting that this was in fact a celebrity memoir, the halfhearted attempts to very simply explain massive political moments felt out of place.

Whether or not Ardern wrote this book herself (there is an “editor” profusely thanked in the acknowledgements) is by the by. It is the story that she wanted to tell, or at least the parts of it she wanted to tell. Ardern ends her book by referring to herself as a “speechwriter”. And her speeches are what have defined her career, whether impromptu or nervously rehearsed. But they’re also deliberately limiting in what they offer. As a memoirist, Ardern has taken the same approach – offering just enough while still holding her cards close to her chest. It’s an impressive move from someone who will now continue to be able to live a very private life while being extremely famous and a successful memoirist.

But if we as an audience ever want to learn the intimate details of Ardern’s political legacy or, separately, the true picture of her as a globally admired woman filled with anger and resolve, someone else will have to write it.

Keep going!

David Hill (Photo: Robert Cross)

BooksMay 31, 2025

‘If I were starting out again…’: Life and writing advice from David Hill

David Hill

Contributing writer

David Hill (Photo: Robert Cross)

After nearly half a century as a full-time writer, David Hill considers what he might have done differently.

This year is my 44th as a full time writer. I’ve been earning a sort of living with words for a sliver over half my time on the planet. Feel free to do the maths.

If I were starting out again, would I do it differently? Hell, yes.

I’d start trying to write novels sooner. For nearly a decade, I was so obsessed with making a living that I took on only small-scale projects, many of them ephemeral: short stories, reviews, brief plays, columns, etc. I also lacked the confidence, the guts to try anything requiring novel-sized skills and stamina. I’ll explain that part later.

It wasn’t till our teenage daughter’s friend died, and the short story I began writing to acknowledge her courage was still going at page 73, that I realised I’d lurched into a longer form almost by default. With that form came the rewards of watching your narrative choose its own direction, making friends with your characters, trying different voices, etc – the rewards that novels may bring.

Plus, novels can be a financial investment. You might earn virtually nothing during the months/years you’re working on one, but if you’re lucky, royalties and the Public Lending Right may keep bringing a return long after the toil involved has faded from memory.

‘’

—

Along with this, if I were re-beginning as a full-timer, I’d try to have a more comprehensive vision. As I say, 44 years ago, that vision was mostly financial survival. I had few plans beyond the next fortnight. I’d been able to take 1981 off from high school teaching to write, thanks to an ICI Writer’s Bursary – $3,000 kept you going for several months in those days. I wrote an awful adult novel which met multiple rejections and doesn’t exist in any form now.

Anyway, I taught for another year, and started off in 1983 feeling that anything longform was beyond me. Janet Frame compared novel writing to “going on a shopping expedition across the border to an unreal land”, and my first dismal shopping trip put me off for years. With hindsight, I’d try to have more faith in myself, to aim higher and sooner. How easily said; how easily postponed.

I’d also drink less coffee during those early days. I suspect my wife Beth and our kids found it a touch disconcerting to come home from work or school to a figure with red rotating eyeballs.

I’d learn proper keyboard skills. It seems so trivial, but I’ve always been a two-finger, head-bent-over-the-keys user. After 44 years of stupidly bad posture, my neck is now permanently stuffed, and I have to work in 15-minute spells. Serves me right.

I’d keep a copy of everything. Everything. It’s relatively easy now, thanks to computers, files, that thing called The Cloud, which I still envisage as white and fluffy. But for… 20?… 25? years of hand-written drafts and manual-typewriter copies, I chucked away so much, especially when it was rejected. I still half-remember lost work, know I could now see what to do with it, shape it better. But it’s gone forever. Since going electronic – and if that makes me sound like a cyborg, who am I to argue? – I throw away absolutely nothing.

I’d learn to say “No” early on. Writers are constantly being asked to talk to Rotary, to give advice on how to get 10-year-old Zeb reading, to look over the history of the local golf club that Jack whom you’ve never heard of is writing. Early on, I cravenly surrendered a lot of hours to such unpaid requests (demands, occasionally). I still agree to do so in some cases, but it took me a long time to learn how to mention the issue of time and expenses. Carl, the excellent gardener down the road, charges $60 an hour. I use the comparison sometimes.

From the start, I’d try to see my readers as potential friends, not critics.

I’d find an accountant immediately. Yes, they cost, but you can claim them on tax. Plus they add a certain legitimacy to your return, and they think of expenses that would challenge any fantasy writer’s imagination. Mine (thanks heaps, Robyn; never retire) even got me a few dollars back on “Deterioration of Office Fittings”, as in shampooing the rugs in my office after the cat puked on them.

If I were starting out again, I’d try to stay reasonably technologically savvy, to accept that your writing life needs to change when resources and tools change. Specifically, I’d hope to respond more quickly to the arrival of something like online publishing, e-books, e-zines, etc. I ignored them for years, kept telling myself they were a fad, something ephemeral and distracting. Yes, just like a 14th century literary hack sticking to vellum manuscripts, and knowing this printed book nonsense wouldn’t last. My denial – my continued denial; I still struggle to accept that anything other than hard copy is “real” publishing – has cost me so many contacts and contracts.

I’d try also to prepare myself for shifts in my abilities. Over the past half-dozen years, I’ve shrunk as a short story writer. I no longer have the imaginative spark or the energy to find the dramatic switch, the revelation, the power within a small space that makes a good short story. Conversely, my ability to assemble, to build, seems to have edged up a degree. Essays and novels attract me more and more. If I were restarting, I’d resolve to feel pleased with what I can still do, not despondent at what I can’t. It would no doubt go the way of my other resolutions.

David Hill and his first writing prize (Photo: Robert Cross / Design: Tina Tiller)

Let’s finish with four questions:

1. Would I have an agent?

I never have, partly from laziness and meanness, partly because they weren’t common in the early 1980s when I went full-time, and partly (I can’t phrase this without sounding vainglorious) because I’ve been around long enough in our little country for my name to ring the odd bell. A distant, cracked bell. But if I were starting now, I certainly would. Many publishers these days won’t consider submissions unless they come via an agent. And, of course, a skilled agent knows the where/when/who to save you so much hassle. They can also soften the jolt of rejection … a bit.

2. Would I enrol in a writing course?

Like agents, they weren’t around much in the Jurassic. There were writers’ groups all over the country. There were journalism schools. But organised instruction, direction, encouragement for fiction, poetry, drama, creative non-fiction? Pretty much zilch. If I were starting now, I’d certainly look hard at the collegiality, informed critiques, professional presentation, funding sources and multiple other facets that such courses can provide, along with their environment that makes you write.

3. Would I self-publish?

It’s an option that has flourished, become a legitimate alternative, lost the stigma attached to it when I started off. “Vanity publishing”, we arrogantly called it then. But I probably wouldn’t do it. I’m too ignorant of what’s involved; I treasure the skills of the editors and publishers who work on and always improve my stuff. And … well, I took up this job to be an author, not an entrepreneur.

4. Would I do it all over again?

See final words of paragraph two above. How many other jobs are there where you have to shave only twice a week, where a 10-year-old consumer writes to you saying “After I read your book, I felt all kind and good”, where you get up from the keyboard after an hour and know you’ve made something that never existed in the world before?

I hope to be feeling exactly the same when I’ve been in the said job for 55 years. All I need is for medical science to keep taking giant strides.