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3.76 AVERAGE
3.76 AVERAGE
I wasn't sure what to expect from a book based on the life of Laura Bush. I didn't know much about her before starting this book, although I did know that she had been in an accident which killed a boy in her class when she was in high school. And of course, I'm familiar with the Bush presidency.
I've read some scathing reviews of this book which claim that the author set out to do a hatchet job and reviled the Bush family. I think that these people must be easily offended. It is true that Laura killed a classmate, and I think the author dealt with her grief and shame (which she surely must have felt, whatever the relationship between her and the boy) in a realistic manner. The Bush DUI did happen, as well, as did of course the war in Iraq. I felt that Sittenfield tried to make both the Laura Bush and George W. Bush characters sympathetic, but she did so by portraying them as flawed human beings, not as paragons of virtue. Much more believable, if you ask me. I actually could feel more for Charlie, the main character's husband, as he was shown to be alternately tender and callous, humorous and harsh. I could see why she fell in love with him. With the actual ex-president, there was such a need to portray him as the fearless leader who never doubted himself. I never got a sense of his humanity. Leadership is all well and good, but how about a little introspection?
As for the Laura Bush character, I could understand and empathize with her feeling that her job was to be her husband's support instead of putting her own views forward. But she was sometimes so passive and martyr-like that I wanted to smack her to snap her out of it and get her to stand up for herself. On the other hand, I thought that the author did a great job with portraying the complexities, regrets, and compromises of any marriage. That is the great strength of this book, and why it should be a popular book club selection.
I've read some scathing reviews of this book which claim that the author set out to do a hatchet job and reviled the Bush family. I think that these people must be easily offended. It is true that Laura killed a classmate, and I think the author dealt with her grief and shame (which she surely must have felt, whatever the relationship between her and the boy) in a realistic manner. The Bush DUI did happen, as well, as did of course the war in Iraq. I felt that Sittenfield tried to make both the Laura Bush and George W. Bush characters sympathetic, but she did so by portraying them as flawed human beings, not as paragons of virtue. Much more believable, if you ask me. I actually could feel more for Charlie, the main character's husband, as he was shown to be alternately tender and callous, humorous and harsh. I could see why she fell in love with him. With the actual ex-president, there was such a need to portray him as the fearless leader who never doubted himself. I never got a sense of his humanity. Leadership is all well and good, but how about a little introspection?
As for the Laura Bush character, I could understand and empathize with her feeling that her job was to be her husband's support instead of putting her own views forward. But she was sometimes so passive and martyr-like that I wanted to smack her to snap her out of it and get her to stand up for herself. On the other hand, I thought that the author did a great job with portraying the complexities, regrets, and compromises of any marriage. That is the great strength of this book, and why it should be a popular book club selection.
A woman marries a man who becomes a politician and eventually president of the US. Very loosely based on Laura Bush.
Found it a very interesting read, even though the author took many liberties in imagining what the life and inner-thoughts of a first lady much like Laura Bush would be like. Like other reviewers, I found it to be just a bit too long. The white house chapter was a bit of a snooze-fest and at that point I felt that I was just 'slogging along.' Her writing style is wonderful and the story she created is also really interesting, and at times I had to remind myself this is a fictionalized account of the first lady - not a memoir - which is a testament to her convincing writing style and storytelling capabilities. Overall it was good, but it would have been much better if it were about 100 pages shorter.
I know I'm in the minority with this one, but this book grated on me for multiple reasons.
The writing wasn't terrible, and the sections on fame and life in the public eye felt insightful and realistic, but the author's choices dragged down my rating a lot. From interviews with the author, it seems Sittenfeld admires Laura Bush but hates her husband's presidency, and this was a literary attempt to reconcile the author's personal conflict. How could someone she admires possibly choose to marry, and remain married, to someone she despises? Sittenfeld plucks the barest of facts from the Bush's lives and invents a story that overlaps a minuscule amount of truth with an overwhelming amount of fiction. This is lazy. When 95% of a story is fiction but the reader knows it's "based on" a living person, that is unfair and cheap writing. This story could easily have been told without leaning on real people. With a very small amount of extra effort, Sittenfeld could invent entirely, 100% fictional characters. Instead, by using the shadow of them, she relies entirely on what the reader already knows of American history from the Bush presidency. She barely explains events that are pivotal - the close election, 9/11, the war in Afghanistan - because we are supposed to assume Blackwell *is* Bush. Indolent writing.
I found it hard to forget that I knew the author wrote this in great admiration of the former first lady, given the events of the book and Alice's character. Maybe this is less a criticism of the book and more a source of confusion to me as a reader. I found the character of Alice to be detestable. If I had the feeling that I was *supposed* to find her detestable, I'd think the author did a brilliant job. I may be mistaken, but I think I was supposed to come to understand her (lack of) actions and respect her. I did not. She was pathetic. The moment she accidentally walked straight through a bathroom but didn't turn around to go through the correct door, preferring to be invisibly uncomfortable instead of publicly (ever so slightly) embarrassed, sums her up perfectly.
"By 4 pm, the idea of ending my marriage seemed less a definite plan than a fragment of a dream...Charlie was solicitous in a way he rarely was anymore, asking whenever he went to get a refill of beer if I'd like one, too." Fantastic. She is ready to end her marriage over, mostly, his drinking, but if he offers her a drink, too, then problem solved.
Her relationship with Charlie never felt remotely healthy or genuine. At one point she admitted to herself she'd never love another man, "Not so much out of loyalty to Charlie as due to a sort of weariness, a lack of interest in starting anew." And in the middle of a serious argument, she focuses not the question at hand, but how attractive he is: " 'So I left you with no choice but to slam my foreign policy?' ...by now he has unbuttoned the top button of the shirt and loosened the tie. Perhaps I'm a pushover, but I've always found this to be an endearing style in any man." Alice is not only a pushover, but shallow.
"If I believe he ran for president because it was a way of allaying his fear of the dark, then I am able, on my most generous days, to see this motive as endearing." What the hell?! This is a profoundly messed up way of thinking.
Maybe I've got it all wrong, and I'm supposed to hate Alice. In that case, bravo.
A final, admittedly trivial source of annoyance for me was the author's use of fictional Wisconsin places. The book has characters that live in or visit Madison, Milwaukee, and Door County. These places are real and exist. The author gives many true-to-life details on places within these cities: State Street and the Terrace in Madison, Mayfair Mall, Marquette, and the Marcus Center in Milwaukee. This authenticity was fun to encounter, but inconsistent; the fictitious cities of Riley and Maronee, and the nonexistent Sproule Street, where Alice lived in Madison, were jarring to encounter by comparison.
The writing wasn't terrible, and the sections on fame and life in the public eye felt insightful and realistic, but the author's choices dragged down my rating a lot. From interviews with the author, it seems Sittenfeld admires Laura Bush but hates her husband's presidency, and this was a literary attempt to reconcile the author's personal conflict. How could someone she admires possibly choose to marry, and remain married, to someone she despises? Sittenfeld plucks the barest of facts from the Bush's lives and invents a story that overlaps a minuscule amount of truth with an overwhelming amount of fiction. This is lazy. When 95% of a story is fiction but the reader knows it's "based on" a living person, that is unfair and cheap writing. This story could easily have been told without leaning on real people. With a very small amount of extra effort, Sittenfeld could invent entirely, 100% fictional characters. Instead, by using the shadow of them, she relies entirely on what the reader already knows of American history from the Bush presidency. She barely explains events that are pivotal - the close election, 9/11, the war in Afghanistan - because we are supposed to assume Blackwell *is* Bush. Indolent writing.
I found it hard to forget that I knew the author wrote this in great admiration of the former first lady, given the events of the book and Alice's character. Maybe this is less a criticism of the book and more a source of confusion to me as a reader. I found the character of Alice to be detestable. If I had the feeling that I was *supposed* to find her detestable, I'd think the author did a brilliant job. I may be mistaken, but I think I was supposed to come to understand her (lack of) actions and respect her. I did not. She was pathetic. The moment she accidentally walked straight through a bathroom but didn't turn around to go through the correct door, preferring to be invisibly uncomfortable instead of publicly (ever so slightly) embarrassed, sums her up perfectly.
"By 4 pm, the idea of ending my marriage seemed less a definite plan than a fragment of a dream...Charlie was solicitous in a way he rarely was anymore, asking whenever he went to get a refill of beer if I'd like one, too." Fantastic. She is ready to end her marriage over, mostly, his drinking, but if he offers her a drink, too, then problem solved.
Her relationship with Charlie never felt remotely healthy or genuine. At one point she admitted to herself she'd never love another man, "Not so much out of loyalty to Charlie as due to a sort of weariness, a lack of interest in starting anew." And in the middle of a serious argument, she focuses not the question at hand, but how attractive he is: " 'So I left you with no choice but to slam my foreign policy?' ...by now he has unbuttoned the top button of the shirt and loosened the tie. Perhaps I'm a pushover, but I've always found this to be an endearing style in any man." Alice is not only a pushover, but shallow.
"If I believe he ran for president because it was a way of allaying his fear of the dark, then I am able, on my most generous days, to see this motive as endearing." What the hell?! This is a profoundly messed up way of thinking.
Maybe I've got it all wrong, and I'm supposed to hate Alice. In that case, bravo.
A final, admittedly trivial source of annoyance for me was the author's use of fictional Wisconsin places. The book has characters that live in or visit Madison, Milwaukee, and Door County. These places are real and exist. The author gives many true-to-life details on places within these cities: State Street and the Terrace in Madison, Mayfair Mall, Marquette, and the Marcus Center in Milwaukee. This authenticity was fun to encounter, but inconsistent; the fictitious cities of Riley and Maronee, and the nonexistent Sproule Street, where Alice lived in Madison, were jarring to encounter by comparison.
slow-paced
Maybe it was part guilty pleasure, maybe part uncontrollable curiosity, but I couldn't put the American Wife down. By providing a sympathetic (and fictional) view of the former first lady, Sittenfeld attempts to answer how someone so private and bookish ended up married to a man who seemed so opposite than herself. The story follows Alice from her childhood home all the way to the White House, where six years into her husband's presidency she admits, "All I did is marry him. You are the ones who gave him power."
I understand the author was trying to reach for epic like proportions with this sweeping, lengthy book, but it really did drag out. Don't get menacing, I enjoyed reading it. I was surprised, however, to discover the majority of the novel focuses on their relationship before Charlie became president. When it finally got to that part, the narrative felt rushed and even changed tone. Because that was the part of her life I was most interested to read, I felt a bit short-changed. Overall, it far more interesting than I expected, and for a bonus, read Charlies voice in your head as John Stewarts imitation of GWB.
Sittenfeld does her usual first-person geeky smart girl, and she's good at that, but it was just too strange to read this fiction that is so clearly based on Laura Bush. I've enjoyed some historical fiction that's clearly based on real people (Alison Weir's fiction, The Other Boleyn Girl, etc.) but there's something strange about writing that way about a person who's still alive. It's like identity theft. I felt guilty reading it.
First 3/4s deserves 5 stars, but the last 1/4 was 3 at best.. I loved the concept and the historical element but the end was a slog. Now off to Google things about Laura Bush
This book was hard to separate what was supposed to be fiction and what was supposed to be based on Laura Bush's life. It was well-written and interesting, so if you take it as just a fictional novel, you will probably like it a lot. But if you're looking to learn more about Laura Bush's life, you'll probably end up frustrated.