"Forget about the sanctity of the human family", said Peter Conran in The Observer. "If you're a Trump, the institution is a convenient mechanism for ensuring inheritance, whether of gilded financial assets or brazen moral defects."
In his new memoir, "All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way", New York real estate executive Fred III attempts to separate himself from his troubled lineage. The son of the late Fred Trump Jr and nephew of the former president aspires to be "a different kind of Trump", while "coyly" trading on his "tainted surname".
Among the "most lethal" moments, said Conran in The Observer , is when Donald Trump "helpfully suggests" that, instead of continuing to spend money on his disabled son's care, Fred III should "just let him die and move down to Florida".
The "352-page portrait of Trumpian dysfunction" is a "well-paced and engrossing read", said Lloyd Green in The Guardian . It becomes clear early on that the author "thinks his uncle is a jerk" who is unable to accept responsibility for anything. "The buck always stops elsewhere."
Fred III's father was the "black sheep of the family" who "drank too much and died too soon". At 42, Fred Trump Jr. had a heart attack following a lengthy struggle with alcoholism, and, after his death, Fred III and his sister Mary were cut out of the family will at the "urging" of Donald and his siblings.
This "scheme" to "pressurise their disoriented father into revising his will" is surely the most "shameful" incident detailed in the book, said Laura Miller in Slate . And while this isn't news, it's "appalling" to read about in this first-hand account.
Another "damning" encounter that Fred III recalls about his uncle is Donald using the N-word when "ranting about his vandalised Cadillac Eldorado" in the early 1970s.
Just "raising the question" surrounding Trump and race in the midst of a presidential election feeds into the narrative that has been repeated about the former president for years, said Manuel Roig-Franzia in The Washington Post .
At times, "All in the Family" can get "bogged down" when the author writes about his own life and real estate career. But when Fred III turns his hand to his family, it's "pretty juicily entertaining" and "reads like a cathartic exercise".
Much effort is made to understand the roots of the dysfunction – something he traces back to the destructive environment created generations earlier by his "domineering" grandfather, the real estate mogul Fred Sr. Trump.
And, while his book as a whole isn't as "scathing" as his sister Mary's best-selling memoir, "Too Much and Never Enough" , it still paints a "dishy" portrait of the polarising family as "chronically toxic, narcissistic, conniving and cruel".
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