One of the best and one of the worst bits of news last week were the same: Hillary Clinton is deep into the writing of another book.

It’s due to appear much sooner than I’d realized — in September, to be precise — and it’s billed as a reflection on her 2016 campaign and her stunning, grueling defeat by Donald Trump. In an interview that Clinton gave to Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday, she mentioned the memoir repeatedly and excitedly, casting it as “my confession and my request for absolution.”

If it follows the example of her last literary outing, it’ll put the priest to sleep. “Hard Choices,” technically about her time as secretary of state, was actually a change-of-address form. She wasn’t asking to be understood. She was asking to have her mail forwarded to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Could this time be different? There are reasons to hope so and to root for that. With the White House finally off the table (isn’t it?) and nothing left to lose, Clinton can do something that she failed to in “Hard Choices,” in its predecessor, “Living History,” and in decades of public life defined as much by guardedness as by ambition. She can lose her caution, ditch her calculation and go out in a blaze of candor. Imagine the catharsis, not just for her but for all of us.