Contrary to the headlines, The Next Day is neither a divorce memoir nor a riposte. Melinda French Gates — who’s gone by a double-barrel since leaving her ex-husband, Bill Gates, in 2021 — has decided to write something of a memoir/self-help hybrid. The Next Day — following 2019’s clunkily titled The Moment Of Lift — is about “periods of transition” which she calls “formative”: leaving home for college, becoming a parent, losing a best friend and (yes) ending a marriage. It follows Gates’s memoir, Source Code — the first of three — exploring his origin story and published in February.
