In Advice World, Ivana Trump Is No Joyce Brothers Many Readers May Be Interested, But Few Will Truly Relate To New Divorce Self-Help Book, ‘The Best Is Yet To Come’

“The Best is Yet to Come” by Ivana Trump (Pocketbook, $23)

When we last left Ivana Trump … but have we ever really left her? Have we ever been out of her presence for any significant length of time?

You can’t get away from the woman. She’s everywhere. Plugging her line of clothing. Plugging her skin-care products. Plugging her jewelry designs. Plugging her novels. Plugging a TV miniseries based on one of her novels. Even plugging Pizza Hut in a new TV ad with her ex-husband, the two of them, together again, talking about crust, of all things. Although who is more qualified to talk about crust than Donald and Ivana? When it comes to selling themselves, they have, between them, more crust than the entire Pizza Hut corporation. Which brings us, at last, to Ivana’s book, just out, “The Best Is Yet To Come: Coping With Divorce and Enjoying Life Again.”

If you were in the middle of an acrimonious divorce, who would you turn to for help? Ivana? No? Well, thousands and thousands of women have turned to Ivana - according to Ivana at least - and have been writing to her, offering their advice and asking for hers. Hence this book, dedicated to all those ordinary women.

Ivana knows her readers may not have the resources she had when her marriage fell apart. They may not be able to get away to a spa, hire a personal trainer, have a cosmetic surgeon re-do them from head to foot or have friends arrange for them to adorn the cover of Vogue. But - except for the fact that she might as well be living on another planet for all the resemblance her life bears to reality - she’s just like any woman who’s been through a horrible, humiliating divorce. Sort of.

Her book is 269 pages long, but the essence of it is distilled in one sentence, on page 36, “If you are married to a man of means, and he is unfaithful or otherwise loathsome to you, I say, leave him, get yourself a great settlement - and before you do, take his wallet to the cleaners.”

Ivana adds, “Honestly, I’d have done it myself if I’d thought of it.”

If only she’d thought of it. But she didn’t, in spite of everybody reminding her to do it. She remembers all those supporters shouting advice at her in the street, “Get the money!” and “Twenty-five million isn’t enough!”

“I was incredibly touched by their humor, their love and their support,” she writes. Still, she forgot to clean out The Donald. It slipped her mind.

But money isn’t that important to Ivana. “I don’t particularly care if he has money,” she writes, describing what she looks for in a man. “Whether he has five million dollars or ten or twenty, who cares? Past a certain point, if he has twenty or a hundred million it doesn’t make a difference.”

My feelings exactly. But what if you are married to a man of no means at all and he is unfaithful to you and otherwise loathsome? Well, this may not be your book. Actually, this may not be anybody’s book except Ivana’s. It’s billed as self-help, but it’s more like autobiography and - I know this is unforgivably cynical of me - I suspect it’s meant to be read as such. Because Ivana is no threat to Dr. Joyce Brothers and, let’s face it, it doesn’t take a lot to threaten Dr. Joyce.

“The Best Is Yet To Come” is far more revealing than her roman a clef novels, with their variations on the classic Ivana plot. Girl gets tycoon. Girl loses tycoon. Girl gets bigger tycoon. Ivana lost her tycoon and got a life. She seems to have few regrets. “You know what’s gone from your life?” Ivana asks, reflecting on the advantages of the single-again state. “The whining, the griping, the criticizing, the put-downs. And I’m sure you’ll miss them as little as I did.”

You don’t have to be adept at reading between lines to conclude it wasn’t easy being married to Donald Trump. Ivana claims she didn’t write this book to trash her ex-husband, but that’s just what she’s done, and rather deftly.