C

From the Corner of the Oval

This book was at turns thrilling and heart-wrenching in an exciting way (Oh, wow!) and exhausting and heart-wrenching in a cringe-filled way (Oh, honey…). Beck Dorey-Stein’s memoir focuses on the time she spent as a stenographer in the Obama administration. Her job required her to record and then transcribe every word that the president said, which means long hours in a job that can take over one’s entire waking life, monster loads of travel all over the world often at a moment’s notice, and a very close position from which to witness a unique presidential administration.

The best parts were the behind-the-scenes accounts of what it’s like to be part of the inner workings of the White House (she calls it being inside “the bubble”) and witnessing high points and terribly painful moments of the Obama presidency. I said in the July Hide Your Wallet that I was concerned this would give me acute Obamastalgia, and it did, but that feeling was tempered by the respect and the perspective Dorey-Stein shares in each chapter.

Running parallel to the story of her time as White House stenographer is her personal life, which is a trainwreck of lather-rinse-repeat bad decisions and susceptibility. So many chapters would end with lyrical, resolute determination to stop hooking up with the incredibly toxic person whom she acknowledges in terrible detail is a utterly manipulative tool. Next chapter: new event or travel, they hook up again with professions of no emotional entanglement, she’s deeply hurt by the fact that he does what he always does, then it’s time for florid descriptions of inner resolve, repeat. It was exhausting. It’s very much the experience of a 20-something in a very intense professional fishbowl, and while the events as chronicled make sense, reading about them in redundant cringe-cycle was difficult.

I was so charmed and engaged by Dorey-Stein’s recounting of her professional world, especially the ways in which she built her confidence as a writer, navigated a predatory social and political environment, and crafted personally and professionally supportive friendships with women in a very cutthroat setting. The memoir aspects of her story are very difficult to put down once you start reading them. However, her recounting of her personal life became a repetitive coming-of-age story that was emotionally and mentally exhausting to read and difficult to enjoy.

– SB Sarah

The compulsively readable, behind-the-scenes memoir that takes readers inside the Obama White House, through the eyes of a young staffer learning the ropes, falling in love, and finding her place in the world.
In 2012, Beck Dorey-Stein was just scraping by in DC when a posting on Craigslist landed her, improbably, in the Oval Office as one of Barack Obama’s stenographers. The ultimate DC outsider, she joined the elite team who accompanied the president wherever he went, recorder and mic in hand. On whirlwind trips across time zones, Beck forged friendships with a tight group of fellow travelers–young men and women who, like her, left their real lives behind to hop aboard Air Force One in service of the president. But as she learned the ropes of protocol, Beck became romantically entangled with a consummate DC insider, and suddenly, the political became all too personal. Set against the backdrop of a White House full of glamour, drama, and intrigue, this is the story of a young woman making unlikely friendships, getting her heart broken, learning what truly matters, and discovering her voice in the process.