|
American Wife: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Curtis Sittenfeld
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book
List Price: $26.00
Buy Used: $9.99
You Save: $16.01 (62%)
New (54) Used (29) Collectible (3) from $9.99
Rating:  99 reviews
Sales Rank: 567
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 576
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6 x 1.7
ISBN: 1400064759
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9781400064755
ASIN: 1400064759
Publication Date: September 2, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Tell A Friend
Add to Wishlist
Add to Wedding Registry
Add to Baby Registry
| |
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
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
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 94 more reviews...
 Loved it September 3, 2008
B. Lee (Houston, Texas, USA)
26 out of 30 found this review helpful
Great summaries in the other reviews - I won't repeat those.
I loved the beginning and middle of this book. Loved Alice, her childhood, her growing up experiences, her family, her life as a single woman, her courtships, her experiences with the Blackwell family (these were my favorite sections), and her relationship with her husband, the future president. All of these things are plot lines that Sittenfeld wrote BRILLIANTLY.
When I finished reading this book, however, I was lukewarm about the ending. 2 weeks later, when I was still thinking about the book, I realized how fervently it had stuck with me, and have since decided that it was one of my favorites of 2008 so far.
Great work, Curtis. I praise your boldness and your talent for writing about women in a sometimes awkward and uncomfortable but always honest fashion. Definitely worth the read.
True art. A nuanced portrait of how it feels to be the wife of a major political figure, or any celebrity September 11, 2008
Bookreporter.com (New York, New York)
15 out of 20 found this review helpful
Let's get this out of the way up front: If AMERICAN WIFE were nothing more than a barely disguised attempt to imagine and illuminate the inner life of Laura Bush, it might be entertaining in a titillating sort of way, but hardly worth more attention than a quickly forgotten magazine profile. In truth, Curtis Sittenfeld's third novel is a rich and arresting portrait of an enduring marriage, of the inevitable compromises necessary to reach that longevity, and of the unremitting demands of public life and the price of fame.
Sittenfeld's protagonist, Alice Lindgren, is born in a small Wisconsin town in 1946, the only child of a bank manager and a housewife. Her early years are unremarkable until a September night in 1963 when the car she's driving on the way to a party collides with one driven by Andrew Imhof, a classmate with whom she's moving toward a relationship. Andrew is killed, and the specter of his loss shadows Alice's waking (and dreaming) life.
Alice falls into a relationship with Andrew's older brother, Pete, and when she becomes pregnant, her grandmother takes her to Chicago for an abortion --- a decision that plays a central role in the novel's denouement.
Sittenfeld fast forwards to Madison, Wisconsin in 1977, where Alice contentedly works as an elementary school librarian and dreams about buying a house. During a summer when she's spending most of her time creating papier-machecharacters to decorate the library, she meets Charlie Blackwell, "someone who found his own flaws endearing and thus concealed nothing," at a backyard barbecue. Charlie is the youngest of four sons of Harold and Priscilla (nicknamed "Maj," short for "Majesty") Blackwell. Harold is a former governor of Wisconsin and unsuccessful candidate for president in 1968, and the family owns a prosperous meatpacking business. Two of Charlie's brothers work alongside him in the business, while one serves in Congress. But, as Charlie puts it, "Being a Blackwell is my full-time job."
At first, Alice --- a registered Democrat with liberal political sympathies --- is put off ("money and Republicans and sausage did not strike me as a particularly tempting combination."). But within six weeks, she and Charlie are engaged, and six weeks later they're married. On the surface it's an unlikely match: Alice is bright, self-aware and witty, an inveterate reader of serious novelists like Bellow and Nabokov, while Charlie prefers to spend his evenings with a beer and pretzels, stretched out on the couch watching a baseball game. The mystery of romantic love is on display here in all its oddity.
Charlie's first foray into electoral politics as a candidate for Congress in 1978 results in a crushing defeat, and he retreats philosophically into the family business and life of a prosperous Milwaukee suburbanite. Ten years later, he's a disgruntled 42-year-old, obsessed (to Alice's annoyance) by his "legacy." An offer to become a part owner of the Milwaukee Brewers and the public face of the team as its managing partner appears it may be enough to relieve his lethargy. But before long, he's spending more of his time in increasingly frequent drinking bouts and behavioral lapses that move Alice to threaten divorce, especially after they attend a disastrous 20th reunion of Charlie's Princeton class. Alice's ultimatum abruptly ends Charlie's drinking, and he undergoes a religious conversion at the hands of an evangelical preacher, Reverend Randy. Soon, he is elected governor of Wisconsin and is on the fast track to the White House. Still, Alice is ambivalent: "I wanted Charlie to win the election," she comments wryly, "but I didn't want him to be president."
The final quarter of the book is set in June 2007. Blackwell, nearing the end of his second term, presides over an unpopular Middle East war, while trying to gain Supreme Court confirmation of a staunchly anti-abortion female judge. Alice, pro-choice and skeptical about the war, must face the contradictions in her public and interior lives --- and she does so in a moving and completely authentic fashion.
The well-known elements of the Bush story all are here, subtly altered to present them in a fresh and original way. But no writer, even one as adept as Curtis Sittenfeld, will ever unearth anything approaching the objective truth of George and Laura Bush's relationship. What she has done, and what elevates this book to the realm of true art, is to create a nuanced portrait of how it feels to be the wife of a major political figure, or indeed any celebrity. Fulfilling Hemingway's definition of a good story, AMERICAN WIFE feels "more true than what really happened." That's the highest compliment one can pay to this thoroughly absorbing novel.
--- Reviewed by Harvey Freedenberg
Well-written and thought-provoking... October 20, 2008
Bethany A. (Los Angeles, CA via WI)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
After being pleasantly surprised by Sittenfeld's "Prep", I went out and purchased "American Wife" in hard-cover, which I almost never do. It was well worth the money. First of all, I appreciated the portrayal of the state of Wisconsin in the novel. Having grown up in Wisconsin and having lived in both the Madison and Milwaukee areas, I was pleased with Sittenfeld's accuracy and loving commentary on the area. I don't know how much time she's actually spent in Wisconsin, but it seems as though she did extensive research which I appreciated. I have read other books that have taken place in the same areas that just felt name-checked so Sittenfeld's respect for the area is much appreciated.
The character of Alice is a very interesting one. On the one hand, she seems to want to make as few ripples in the world as possible. From her early life where she takes a backseat to the wants of her friends so as not to cause conflict, to her almost solitary life in her 30s and 40s where she makes charitable contributions without telling anyone, Alice seems to want to do good things, but doesn't feel she deserves the good things she has. I found it profound that she couldn't accept her good fortune because she had caused someone's death early on in her life and didn't know how to deal properly with her feelings. I didn't have difficulty believing the relationship between Alice and Charlie. Charlie's character is very charming and charismatic and is a good foil for Alice's more reserved and tentative self. I thought that Alice's true character remained constant throughout the novel, which I liked. She didn't allow the Blackwell family to change her at any point in her life. She didn't buy into her own fame, even in the last section of the book. I found it refreshing and honest and even though it is a work of fiction, it made me respect Laura Bush who I previously saw as a shell with a vacant gaze and a phony-looking smile.
Ms. Sittenfeld's strengths lie in her descriptions of everything from what it's like to be in the midwest in the summer, to the feeling of being so famous that you are sheltered from everything. In a culture as obsessed with celebrity and therefore critical of the lives of our prominent figures, I thought that Alice brought great humanity to a person whose very essence is under constant scrutiny. The final section of the book did lose a bit of steam and seemed almost tacked on. But as a whole, this book was one of the better books I've read in the past several years.
A thought provoking read. September 6, 2008
Jill Meyer (Santa Fe, NM)
18 out of 25 found this review helpful
"American Wife" is a huge, juicy, wonderful novel. Obviously based on the life of Laura Welch Bush, Sittenfeld extrapolates from Bush's biography a "back story". It's probably wishful thinking that makes Sittenfeld have her Laura Bush/Alice Blackwell character do in the last chapter the one thing that the real Laura Bush has never done in "real life".
But if Sittenfeld makes free with the ending, she does bring life to Charlie Blackwell and his wife Alice. We see what may have been the attraction between the real George Bush and his wife.
I enjoyed this book and, while long, never bored me in the least.
Fascinating Character Study September 2, 2008
Mint910 (USA)
8 out of 11 found this review helpful
American Wife is Alice Blackwell's life story. From her heartbreaking tragedy as a teenage girl to her role as first lady we become intimately connected with her. It's an expanded look at what it's like to grown up and find yourself as the first lady of the United States of America. Her story is loosely based on that of real first lady, Laura Bush. The story is split up into 4 sections, her childhood, early adulthood as a librarian, married life and motherhood, and life as the first lady.
I really really really enjoyed this book. I was a little uncertain how I would like the time jumps between the sections but I think they worked out beautifully allowing enough time to pass that a whole new set of elements could be introduced into the story without making the reader feel like they have missed a whole chapter.
I found this book really fascinating to read. Knowing that I would get to read a fictional character's life story, ending with her being the first lady definitely sounded interesting and it was. I knew it would be fulfilling to experience someone's life alongside them and she turned out to be a great character I could relate to. I felt like I was Alice's friend that she told all her secrets to throughout her life. It's very rare to get such a great character study such as this.
I will admit the first half of the book was my favorite, probably because I can identify with her at that age. Though I've grown up in a different generation it was interesting to think about maybe this is what it was like for my mom to grow up.
I definitely became more sympathetic towards the idea that the first lady is separate then the president himself. I also liked the idea of their political differences.
|
|
|
|
| |
