American Wife: A Novel

List Price: $26.00
Friendsko Price: $15.60
Your Savings: $ 10.40 ( 40% )
Subject To Change Without Notice
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Random House

Average Customer Rating:

Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9781400064755
ISBN: 1400064759
Label: Random House
Manufacturer: Random House
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 576
Publication Date: 2008-09-02
Publisher: Random House
Release Date: 2008-09-02
Studio: Random House

Related Items
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society The Story of Edgar Sawtelle: A Novel (Oprah Book Club #62) One Fifth Avenue The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo The Hour I First Believed: A Novel

Editorial Reviews:

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

Spotlight customer reviews:

Customer Rating:

Summary: Well crafted, great characters and an interesting concept
Comment: American Wife is a novel "inspired" by the life of Laura Bush. The idea that you could be reading her thoughts is enticing. Throughout her time in the White House, Ms Bush has given very little away about her personal beliefs or background, and Sittenfeld uses that blank canvas as the inspiration for Alice's character and story. The book succeeds because the narrative is so honest and compelling. Alice's character feels incredibly real - as do all of the characters.

However the plot follows the known facts about Bush's life and her husband's presidency so closely that it becomes distracting. I didn't need so many elements to be identical to actual events: the terrorist attacks in September 2001, the details of the election, the description of the Clintons. It felt like Sittenfeld couldn't quite decide if she was writing a novel or a fictionalized version of actual events. It's a fine line, because ultimately the book succeeds because you like to imagine it's true - or could be true.

The book is narrated by Alice Blackwell. She is the wife of Charlie Blackwell, who was narrowly elected President in 2000. It's written in four sections: the first when she is at school, the second in her early 30s, the third several years later and finally in the White House with her husband now President. One of the most unsatisfactory aspects of the novel for me was the fact that the third section ends when Charlie has just avowed to give up drinking and still has no intentions to enter politics. (This is well after the 400 page mark). Charlie's conversion from alcoholic to born-again Christian and politician are never really explained, which is to the book's detriment.

So it's not really a book about Alice as First Lady and if that's what you are after you'll probably be disappointed. Where it succeeds better is as a portrait of a marriage and the compromises that you make to stay together and build a marriage that works. Charlie and Alice are very different. Throughout the marriage, Alice find her own way to quietly stake her own territory - quietly giving donations to charities that her husband might not support or arranging to pay for the granddaughter of the family housekeeper to attend private school. In an article about Laura Bush, Sittenfeld has previously described this as Laura's "stealth activism".

When Charlie becomes President, Alice starts to question whether it's enough to hold her own beliefs or whether she has the moral obligation to try to influence events (and whether she can, even if she wants to). Should she speak out about her husband's choice of Supreme Court nominee? How much is she responsible for the war in the Middle East and should she campaign for the withdrawal of troops? Must she always support her husband?

It's a long novel and I didn't think it needed to be as long as it was. I was completely hooked at the beginning but the third section in particular was just too long for me. It's well crafted - threads are planted and then you realize their significance much later - but there are needless screeds of detail. There are also a lot of graphic sex scenes, which feel out of place given the novel is being narrated by such a private character. I tossed up between rating this 3 or 4 stars, but the fact that it has stayed on my mind has swayed me.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Brilliant!
Comment: Curtis Sittenfeld has such a gift for prose--I can imagine her doing her research, poring over articles and books written about Laura Bush, thinking, "but what does she feel on the inside?" This book is your answer. I know it's fiction, but one can't help but marvel at the parallels between Alice Blackwell and Laura Bush. I love the way Sittenfeld uses detail in her work as well-it never feels overdone or distracting, but serves its purpose (IE-LOVE that she includes what type of mattress they had in their White House bedroom! Not sure why, but I do).
This is a fantastic story not to be missed.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Fascinating, but can't resolve Laura's moral failings. . .
Comment: I found this book fascinating. Sittenfeld imagines a complex yet plausible scenario whereby Laura Bush might actually have fallen for, and married, George W. In his youth, Charlie Blackwell was funny, charming, sexy. Alice married him despite his despicable family (racist, elitist, boorish) and stays with him even after he becomes "born again" (she is agnostic).

Those of us who have wondered what Laura (clearly the more ethical and intelligent member of the couple) could have seen in George W. may be enlightened by this book--the courtship of Charlie and Alice is superbly imagined. But those of us who have also wondered how she could have stayed with and supported such a man will not be satisfied. Alice, like Laura (?) made moral sacrifices in order to stand by her man. Alice is not racist, Charlie is. She is pro-choice, he is not. He blindly supports the war, she opposes it. But like Laura, Alice always keeps her beliefs private. The true heroine in the book is a doctor who nearly exposes Alice's terrible hypocrisy--but the exposure never happens. Alice thinks that being a quiet "good" girl is enough but she is wrong. When the stakes are as high as they have been during the Bush administration, silence about evil is complicity with it. This book does not quell the suspicion that an intelligent and thoughtful woman like Laura Bush could have done more to stop the death and destruction caused by her husband.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Trash
Comment: I don't know if I will finish this book. It's just so poor. I was really excited to think I had come across a vast, absorbing saga of American life, American womanhood. I plunged into the book, and after a short time I had to say: "What a piece of crap!" I have continued reading (a few minutes every nite before I turn off the light), feeling like a peeping Tom most of the time, accompanying Alice even into the toilet, incredulous at how such a trashy book can be plugged seriously as something worthwhile. Yes, as someone here asked: "Where HAVE all the authors gone?" How does such stuff get pubished? The book is thinly-disguised, boulevard fare. I resent it.

Customer Rating:

Summary: fascinating character study
Comment: In Sittenfeld's third book, she ambitiously creates a fictionalized portrait of Laura Bush. It is a tricky proposition, but Sittenfeld takes the bare facts of the First Lady's life and imbues it with her characteristic introspection and detail. In Sittenfeld's book, Alice Blackwell is much more liberal and complicated than the Stepford wife the White House press presents her to be. If in trying to show this 'life of contradictions' Sittenfeld's plotting occasionally veers towards the melodramatic her writing is never maudlin and always compelling. I agree with the other reviewers, the first 2 or 3 sections are much more stronger. In some ways, Alice is not much different from Sittenfeld's previous characters. All are bookish, quiet 'good' girls from the small Midwest towns who find themselves in unexpected circumstances. As in all of Sittenfeld's books, her writing is strongest when she's describing Alice's adolescence when her tragic relationship with Andrew Imhof irrevocably changes the course of her life. Sittenfeld captures the tenuousness, anticipation, and hopefulness of adolescence in a way few writers can. But she does it so well, that sometimes it's disappointing when her characters grows up (a problem in her second novel). Sittenfeld avoids this in American Wife, the characterization of Charlie Blackwell, doesn't shy away from the flaws of its source but it is sympathetic and very humanizing. The sections describing adult Alice and the relationship between Alice and Charlie are compelling. The last section is rather tepid, despite dealing with the Blackwell presidency and the Iraq War. Though, that may depend on the reader's political biases. Sittenfeld tries hard not to be political but is unable to provide a reasonable explanation of how the character of Alice could have supported her husband's presidential decisions. This was the only point though when the character seemed to manipulated to fit the 'real' Laura Bush. For the most part, while I was curious of which facts or people were taken from real life, I read it as a very compelling account of a small-town girl who moves beyond the life supposedly proscribed to her by birth.

More Reviews