American Wife: A Novel | Curtis Sittenfeld | A book that makes you think

American Wife: A Novel | Curtis Sittenfeld | Better than publicity might have you believe

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American Wife: A N...

	American Wife: A Novel Curtis Sittenfeld Random House, 2008 - 576 pages average customer review:based on 82 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

On what might become one of the most significant days in her husband?s presidency, Alice Blackwell considers the strange and unlikely path that has led her to the White House?and the repercussions of a life lived, as she puts it, ?almost in opposition to itself.?

A kind, bookish only child born in the 1940s, Alice learned the virtues of politeness early on from her stolid parents and small Wisconsin hometown. But a tragic accident when she was seventeen shattered her identity and made her understand the fragility of life and the tenuousness of luck. So more than a decade later, when she met boisterous, charismatic Charlie Blackwell, she hardly gave him a second look: She was serious and thoughtful, and he would rather crack a joke than offer a real insight; he was the wealthy son of a bastion family of the Republican party, and she was a school librarian and registered Democrat. Comfortable in her quiet and unassuming life, she felt inured to his charms. And then, much to her surprise, Alice fell for Charlie.

As Alice learns to make her way amid the clannish energy and smug confidence of the Blackwell family, navigating the strange rituals of their country club and summer estate, she remains uneasy with her newfound good fortune. And when Charlie eventually becomes President, Alice is thrust into a position she did not seek?one of power and influence, privilege and responsibility. As Charlie?s tumultuous and controversial second term in the White House wears on, Alice must face contradictions years in the making: How can she both love and fundamentally disagree with her husband? How complicit has she been in the trajectory of her own life? What should she do when her private beliefs run against her public persona?

In Alice Blackwell, New York Times bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld has created her most dynamic and complex heroine yet. American Wife is a gorgeously written novel that weaves class, wealth, race, and the exigencies of fate into a brilliant tapestry?a novel in which the unexpected becomes inevitable, and the pleasures and pain of intimacy and love are laid bare.

Praise for American Wife

?Curtis Sittenfeld is an amazing writer, and American Wife is a brave and moving novel about the intersection of private and public life in America. Ambitious and humble at the same time, Sittenfeld refuses to trivialize or simplify people, whether real or imagined.?
?Richard Russo

?What a remarkable (and brave) thing: a compassionate, illuminating, and beautifully rendered portrait of a fictional Republican first lady with a life and husband very much like our actual Republican first lady?s. Curtis Sittenfeld has written a novel as impressive as it is improbable.?
?Kurt Andersen

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A book that makes you think

I throughly enjoyed this book on many levels.

First it is a well written entertainment, the kind that you pick up for just 15 minutes and end up not putting down for an hour. The writing is crisp and colorful and the plot is just surprising enough to keep you wanting more. Almost. There is that middle 60 pages that made me cringe and the last 60 pages could have been condenced to six.

Second the themes are universal (the tragedy of a young person's death, the support of an older, and somewhat eccentric family member, teenaged pregnancy) while still being compelling. The threads of plot that wind and curl and come back again and the offbeat injection of sexuality when least expected kept me enthralled--and brought me back to thinking about the book even when I wasn't reading it.

And, oh yes, there is that issue of the "real" Bush family. Perhaps it is because I am in the camp that believes that W is merely a dingbat and not a monster, but what a great backstory for the extraordinary mess that we are in. Yes, it is true, it is in some sense the most vaulted position in the world, yet at the same time anyone--ANYONE--could find themselves there someday.

Open this book with an open mind and you will love it.

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Better than publicity might have you believe

Very few, if any reviews of American Wife have failed to mention the parallels between the character Alice Blackwell and First Lady Laura Bush. It is easy to draw those conclusions....the tragic car accident, the domineering mother-in-law, the love of books, the boorish, heavy drinking husband. What makes this book rise above these all too easy comparisons is the depth written into Alice. From childhood, Alice is a cautious, watchful child who evaluates everything around her and then acts. Her high school brush with tragedy is so sudden and the effects are so devastating, that is takes the reader a bit to catch up. After the accident she is even more cautious and the introduction of Charlie Blackwell into her life sets her on a path unexpected. The evolution of their relationship and Alice's eventual path to understanding herself unfolds page after page. The book is peopled with wonderful characters that remain intact through the story. This is a wonderful book and more universal than previously read reviews would have me believe. This is not a thinly veiled novelization of Laura Bush's life. The author acknowledges she researched the life of a First Lady through reading about Mrs. Bush and talking to many who have had reason to deal with the currant First Lady. American Wife is more a story of a woman coming to age in the sixties and seventies who happens to marry a man who becomes president. A wonderful, engrossing book that I will reread.

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Good and Bad!

The good...Curtis Sittenfeld is an extremely talented writer, and the story (if you can forget it's "based on" the life of Laura Bush) is excellent. The bad...knowing that it's based on the life of the current first lady was so distracting and definitely detracted from the enjoyment of reading a great story. After reading the whole book, it seems like the author must have something against the first lady, to take something so tragic in Mrs. Bush's past (causing the accidental death of a friend) and fictionalize it. And even worse than that, there is one other event in the main character's life (I won't specifiy what it is) that I'm appalled by, not because of what the event is but only because the book is "based on" Mrs. Bush and it leaves the reader to wonder if that event is fact or fiction which I think is grossly unfair to Mrs. Bush. If it were 100% fiction, it would be a brilliant plot point, but as it is, it makes the author seem extremely mean-spirited. So 5 stars for the book as a stand alone, but minus 2 stars for stating that it's based on the life of the current first lady.

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