Curtis Sittenfeld

a novel

American wife

Tracey O’Rourke

I waver between a three and a four. It was much better than I expected, and very readable - I kept wanting to read more - but in the end there was not enough story there. A detailing of someone's life does not make a story, and I was missing the complexity, theme and meaning behind the tale.

Sahi K

** spoiler alert **
           I picked up this book because I loved Eligible by the same author and this one seemed interesting. I had no idea this was a fiction based on the life of Laura Bush. Being quite unknown about the history of the Bush family, I treated this book just like any fiction novel. The book is divided into four sections each reflecting on a time in the life of our protagonist. The first couple of sections are interesting where we see the evolution of a young woman into a very passionate librarian. Alice’s relationship with her family, especially her grandmother is well explored. There is an incident that happens in her adolescence which changes her a lot and it looks like the guilt determines all her actions in the future.

When we meet her as a librarian in her thirties, she seems confident in herself and I expected she would do something important with her life because she had so much potential. Then she meets her future husband and that is where the story goes off the rails. Charles is exactly opposite to her in every way and his fun and easy nature is probably why she falls for him. However, he is an aspiring politician and she disagrees completely with his ideology. He doesn’t respect her positions or even seems interested in listening to her but thinks that she should be okay with his opinions because they are married. Even though she is an educated and qualified woman, she gives up her job and everything about herself for her marriage.

It would be okay if she did all this for the sake of love but you can’t shake the feeling that she marries him and all her subsequent decisions in her life are based on her determination that she doesn’t deserve anything better because of what happened in her teens. This would still be okay if her decisions only affect her but her total support of her husband in his political career surely does affect many more people, probably many adversely. All the justifications that she seems to be giving herself to believe that she is doing the right thing just feel like excuses and I can’t sympathize with her anymore. Even her little rebellion of not voting for Charles and not telling him about it might be enough of a justification to her for her decades of supporting an unworthy politician but it just antagonizes me more. I just can’t believe she being a liberal would support her husband who doesn’t believe in a woman’s right to choose and most other women’s rights. Once I got to know about him, it gets difficult to like the book anymore. I don’t know if I can call this book good writing because at the end, all I remember is I was disappointed with the protagonist.

Jennifer Dieter

I think the wounds from the last eight years are still too fresh to read a book about a fictional George W. type family. I do find the insight of the first lady interesting though and do have a new appreciation for her.

Allyson Marrs

About 300 pages in and just can’t finish it. Love Curtis, but this book is much too slow moving.

Lindsay Cronk

So this is that book about Laura Bush. It would be great for poolside reading. There is nothing particularly innovative about American Wife, but it is quite readable and has the same guilty pleasure sensibility as the most entertaining chick lit.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A gorgeously written novel that weaves class, wealth, race, and fate into a brilliant portrait of a first lady—from the author of Rodham and Eligible “Terrific . . . an intelligent, bighearted novel about a controversial political dynasty.”—Entertainment Weekly NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time • People • Entertainment Weekly A kind, bookish only child born in the 1940s, Alice Lindgren has no idea that she will one day end up in the White House, married to the president. In her small Wisconsin hometown she learns the virtues of politeness, but a tragic accident when she is seventeen shatters her identity and changes the trajectory of her life. More than a decade later, when the charismatic son of a powerful Republican family sweeps her off her feet, she is surprised to find herself admitted into a world of privilege. And when her husband unexpectedly becomes governor and then president, she discovers that she is married to a man she both loves and fundamentally disagrees with—and that her private beliefs increasingly run against her public persona. As her husband’s presidency enters its second term, Alice must confront contradictions years in the making and face questions nearly impossible to answer. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review • Chicago Tribune • NPR • Rocky Mountain News • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Washington Post Book World

American wife a novel

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