SOURCE: Neumann, Anne Waldron. “The Romance of Politics.” Quadrant 40, no. 327 (June 1996): 85–86.

In the following mixed review, Neumann contends that Primary Colors follows the conventions of classic eighteenth- and nineteenth-century romance novels.

Reviewers must sometimes make their biases clear. I am, like my father before me, what my fellow Americans call a “yellow-dog Democrat,” meaning I would vote for a yellow dog if they ran it on the Democratic ticket. Primary Colors by Anonymous, the best-selling American roman à clef about Bill Clinton's 1992 primary campaign for the presidency, is a novel of yellow-dog Democrats, for yellow-dog Democrats, and, I feel sure, by a yellow-dog Democrat.

Put this another way: Primary Colors is about the romance of politics, written by someone who loves politics, about characters who are themselves in love with politics. Appropriately enough, Primary Colors follows the classic eighteenth- and nineteenth-century romance-novel plot. The heroine—or in this case...