American Wife: A Novel

Very recently I read Ann Gerhart's "The Perfect Wife: The Life and Times of Laura Bush." Then I saw Oliver Stone's movie "W." And finally I read
"American Wife: A Novel." Who knew I would read so much about the Bushes, of whom I am no fan. However, since Laura Bush seems like such a nice person and also such a blank page, she does lend herself to people making up their own sense of her. I read the biography to try to understand her. It seemed to be a fair and honest look at Laura Bush. I really enjoyed it. I learned many things about her that I did not know. Facts. But I came away understanding her very little. Although I wanted to believe she had this interesting, liberal (or somewhat liberal) inner life, and couldn't possibly be in political accord with her husband, I came away from the biography believing "what you see is what's really there."

It took Sittenfield's fictional Laura/Alice to reveal her. Of course, Sittenfield only imagines what Laura's inner life is like, but because she tracks enough of many liberals' wishes about Laura and known facts about Laura and the Bush family, she makes her/them plausible and convincing. The relationships in the Bush family are very entertaining. I found the book hard to put down. Of course I knew the plot line, but it was interesting to see how Sittenfield filled in the details. She has developed Alice/Laura into a believable, understandable character (although I do agree with other reviewers that the last section was not as well developed and maybe that's because we know those events didn't happen and only wish they would have) and has not quite convinced us that Alice's husband could have been elected President. And who of us can actually believe that Laura's husband could be elected?

The biography, the movie, and the novel are getting mushed together in my head, although I do try to separate fact and fiction. I give the biography and the novel four stars out of five. The movie about three.



It took

In her third and perhaps best work to date, Curtis Sittenfeld has created a quietly engaging book about a woman so calm and so simple, yet so complicated and so familiar, that it was an all-consuming read. For a book that had just one point of view, and that covered nearly 60 years of a rather calm woman's life, American Wife was surprisingly gripping.

The story of Alice Lindgren Blackwell begins as a child in Wisconsin, living a sheltered rural life with her parents and paternal grandmother. Even as she deals with a tragedy as a teen-ager, and the fallout, Alice is thoughtful and self-aware. The book follows Alice as she grows up and becomes a teacher and librarian, as she has a failed romance and eventually meets Charlie, whom she marries. When he runs for state office, becomes the owner of a baseball team, fights a drinking problem and becomes president of the United States, Alice remains her own person: quiet, thoughtful, perceptive.

Of course the story sounds awfully like that of Laura Bush, and it's very entertaining to make the connections from the fictional world to the real one. It's fantastic to imagine some of the tidbits as true. Alice admired her predecessor. Does Laura Bush admire Hillary? Alice didn't always agree with her husband or support him. Did Laura Bush?

If politics bore you, this still might be a great book, however. Following what makes a courtship work, what goes into a marriage, the ways that couples bend to one another to show support and love -- those are themes that go beyond politics. In fact, much of American Wife has to do with Alice's childhood, her relationship with her grandmother (who has such a strong personality, and such secrets!), her reaction to Charlie's strangely wealthy family life, her feelings about wealth and poverty and circumstances that shape people's lives. It's also very topical with questions about war, and abortion, and what fame does to people.

This book is certainly one of my favorites for 2008. I highly recommend it. No matter what your politics, it's a book about a mostly lovely woman, a deeply sympathetic and wise woman, written by one of our country's most talented writers.

Reading the "American Wife:A Novel", one feels captured by the startling similarities to our present First Lady. You cannot help but want to embrace the picture presented of a truly great lady. From an unfortunate teen tragedy to her strong, loving support of a flawed husband, she shows greatness in her gentile manners and intelligence. You want to speak to her, and hug her, and tell her she's "ok"!

Thought this book was about 100 pages to long, which made it a boring read. If you're interested in Laura Bush I would suggest reading one of the many biographies written about her.

This book was good enough to keep me reading to the end, but failed to be a truly satisfying read. The fact that I stuck with it to the end is telling because, in a book that long and that slow, I would normally have given up by the halfway point. There are moments in the story where the writing was truly beautiful and yet many others when it was tawdry or cliched.

I found the first third of the book better than the rest--the first lady's beginning as a good girl who skidded off the tracks for a while after a tragic event in her life. Once you get to the White House, the parallels between the real current first lady and the fictional Alice Blackwell become blatantly apparent.

The book portrays Charlie and Alice as a couple who love one another very much but don't share the same class level or political/religious beliefs. This makes for a very interesting marriage once Charlie is in the White House, and creates some good conflict in how Alice can be true to herself and her beliefs and still be the President's wife.

Though it was Charlie's family who had the money and the power, even Charlie's mother agreed that it was Charlie who "married up," not Alice. This also makes for some interesting conflict in the story--you can love someone deeply and not always like their behavior or choices.

Whether the book truly represents the thoughts and choices of our current first lady, I don't know but, if so, it definitely gave me a new--and more sympathetic--view of her and the fact that there may be a lot going on behind that passive smile when she's on camera.