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Ever since I've heard about Curtis Sittenfield's American Wife I've been wary. It's really not due to the fact that it's based on the life of Laura Bush but that it's fiction that is based on a public person while they are still, you know, alive. The long-time dead don't bother me so much, Jane Austen as an amateur detective? I can handle that. But basing a book on Laura Bush, while her husband is still in office no less? While I'm sure it's meant to be flattering seems a bit...tacky. Sittenfield has a reputation for writing a darned good novel though so I thought that I'd check out what bloggers had to say about this one.
If you are unfamiliar with the novel American Wife this is what you need to know - the novel follows the life of Alice Lindgren from growing up in Wisconsin to becoming America's First Lady. Her husband is priviledged and has a history of problems with drugs and booze. He is also not the most apt public speaker when he deviates from his script. Alice lives with the guilt of having been involved in a car accident that kills her high school boyfriend. Sittenfield has openly admited that Laura Bush was her inspiration, which is just as well because no one would believe her if she tried to say otherwise.
Boston Bibliophile liked American Wife but thinks that the material will age quickly once the Bush family leaves the White HOuse.
I don't know Sittenfeld's politics, but it seems pretty clear to me that the purpose behind writing American Wife is to meditate on the personality of Laura Bush through her fictional counterpart, and to try to figure out what would lead such a woman to marry such a man and support him through some very painful times in our country. Alternatively, Sittenfeld could also be trying to rationalize her and make excuses for her, and it is a credit to Sittenfeld's writing that I can't really tell which explanation fits, or if both are correct.
Rebecca at The Book Lady's Bag liked it but did not love it, for the very reason that many people are reading it.
I also think I would have enjoyed the novel more if I hadn’t known what it was based on, or if Sittenfeld had come up with a completely original story about a woman who happens to grow up and marry a man who will become president. The way that Sittenfeld pulled events from a real person’s life and linked them together with her imagined stories felt cheap to me…it seems like cheating, or like an exercise from a writing class that she decided to extend into a novel.
Devourer of Books said American Wife was one of the best books she read this year.
I cannot remember the last time I so identified with a character, the last time someone in a book (even in a biography or memoir) felt so authentic. No matter how you feel about the Bush family, do not let politics get in the way of reading this remarkable novel.
ZoesMom was in the "did not like it" camp.
I can't find many reasons to warm up to Alice. She's so reserved and so rigid and so downright prissy that I just couldn't care about her. I can't help thinking that Ms. Sittenfeld was so afraid of having her novel referred to as "chick lit" that she stripped out all the humor, all the passion and all the foibles of Alice -- in other words all the things that make us root for the women who star in all those "chick lit" novels.
Arch Thinking liked it but thought that it had flaws.
It’s not some trashy story about one woman’s tragedy or a smear campaign against the president. Instead, it’s a thoughtful, interesting look at a woman in a powerful position -- how she got there and how she became the woman she is today.
So what do you think? Will you be reading it? And what do you think about basing a fiction novel on the current First Lady?
Contributing Editor Sassymonkey blogs at Sassymonkey and Sassymonkey Reads.
