by Clare Mulroy
How did Kamala Harris pull off a marathon 107-day campaign for president? The story is now yours.
The former vice president gives a day-by-day recap of her quick-turn 2024 election campaign amid juggling vice presidential duties in her new memoir “107 Days.” She writes unsparingly about tension with former President Joe Biden, the Democrats who doubted she could win and her reaction to running mate Tim Walz’ debate performance.
Announcing the book in July, Simon & Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp told The New York Times “107 Days” “reads like a suspense novel.” Harris worked with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks to capture the essence of a novel in her memoir.
“It’s closer in spirit to ‘The West Wing’ or ‘Rocky,’” Karp told the Times.
Does ‘107 Days’ read ‘like a suspense novel’?
In a word: No.
“107 Days” is more chronological diary than thriller. With chapters for each day, some involve several pages of campaign travel and others are short descriptions of decisions on Harris’ vice presidential agenda. There’s a benefit to this structure, as Harris delivers on her promise to bring readers alongside her on the campaign trail. But the name-dropping and policy summary makes it impossible for “107 Days” to feel like true narrative nonfiction.
Book cover jacket image for ‘107 Days’ by Kamala Harris
Still, “107 Days” does make for a very readable memoir. Some moments are indeed reminiscent of thriller tropes, or maybe your favorite political drama series – loyalty tests from the Biden administration, the chaotic “call to action” after Harris became the nominee, debate prep montages, pieces of a campaign coming together like unfinished side plots in a mystery. And there is plenty of unfiltered cursing, including Harris’ favorite, which she says she wished she called JD Vance when she had the chance.
Kamala Harris recaps Election Day disappointment in ‘107 Days’
Where Harris’ storytelling does get particularly suspenseful is her recount of Election Day 2024. Starting with some last-ditch campaigning in Michigan, hopes begin high, but then reality quickly sets in as the day sunsets. Harris’ team works and reworks an interim message for crowds at Howard University, then pulls her out of the speaking engagement altogether as the numbers sour. They pull off the “Madame President” icing from cupcakes to convert them to generic “comfort food.”
“All I could do was repeat, over and over, ‘My God, my God, what will happen to our country?” Harris writes.
Harris doesn’t end her memoir with a tidy message of hope. She’s candid about where she and the party went wrong. Her afterword is a rather bleak reflection on the Trump administration and a lament of the policies she wishes the American people were living under now. She quotes journalist Françoise Giroud: “This is how fascism begins.”
“I wanted a seat at the table. I wanted to make change from inside the system,” Harris writes, of her beginnings in politics. “Today I’m no longer sure about that. Because the system is failing us. At every level − executive, judicial, legislative, corporate, institutional, media − every single guardrail that is supposed to protect our democracy is buckling. I thought those guardrails would be stronger. I was wrong.”
That a nonfiction book “reads like fiction” is a high compliment in the literary world. It’s an unusual choice that Harris would collaborate with “Horse” author Brooks for a political tell-all, but fitting if what she was trying to accomplish was a novelistic feel. Brooks has written both nonfiction and fiction.
Harris’ “107 Days” may be a page-turner for political junkies, but if you’re looking for nonfiction that reads like a suspense novel, you might want to try something by Patrick Radden Keefe or “Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson instead.
Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter
