book review: American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

-
Sentence(s) worth writing down:
"It provided him with a way to structure his behavior, and a way to explain that behavior, both past and present, to himself. Perhaps fiction has, for me, served a similar purpose--what is a narrative arc if not the imposition of order on disparate events?--and perhaps it is my avid reading that has been my faith along." -Alice, on her husband's fundamentalist Christianity

My thoughts:
I've been wanting to read Curtis Sittenfeld for quite some time, and I'm so glad I finally did. As most are aware, American Wife is a fictionalization of Laura Bush's life. It's set in Wisconsin instead of Texas, which the Midwesterner in me loves even more. Several details are imagined and more are rearranged, but the crux of many characters is immensely recognizable. I admit, I don't know much about Laura Bush. I know she's a librarian, and I knew she was a Democrat until her wedding day, but I never even gave her much thought. Now I can't seem to stop thinking about the intricacies of her life.

I won't mince words; American Wife is brilliant. Sittenfeld deserves every literary accolade thrown at her, but if she doesn't win next year's National Book Award, I will be shocked and upset. Granted, I sadly don't read each book published in a year, but this book manages to make the reader think more deeply about life, love and politics. It takes away the ease of oversimplifying anything. It's filled with the perfectly cohesive, yet unexpected, joys and tragedy of life and good fiction.

It's hard to build suspense in a book the reader knows is somewhat based on a real event or person, yet because Sittenfeld manages to give depth to even the most simple-minded individuals, the why becomes more important than the what or how. She creates a depth of emotion and character even when there may not be intellectual depth.

American Wife is a book I'll buy more than one copy of because I want to reread it yearly, and I want to always have a spare copy to loan to friends. I'm begging all of you to read this book. As an interesting side note, I started this book before our recent presidential election, but I finished it in the days after. Surprisingly, I appreciated it even more after Obama's victory.

Rating: 6 stars out of 5 (it's so good, my chart doesn't even go up this high)/ridiculously recommended

Comments

  1. Meg89January 10, 2009 at 9:52 PM

    I enjoyed this book, but not as much as you did, and only first three sections, the final section felt more like a soapbox than a novel to me. You can see my review here if you’re interested.

    ReplyDelete
  2. GayleOctober 27, 2010 at 1:47 PM

    I am 30 pages from the end, and loving it. She's a brilliant writer. There were one or two things toward the end that felt a little forced, but overall this has been a wonderful read. I will post a review tonight or tomorrow.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AudraJuly 2, 2013 at 11:26 AM

    So, I can't decide if I hated or loved this one -- I can't separate politics/emotions, so I found the Bush-y implications very hard to ignore. But as a coming-of-age story, and the very complicated reasons we marry and stay married, this blew me away. It made me very uncomfortable, needless to say!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thank you for taking the time to comment. Happy reading!

Popular posts from this blog

book review: A Dangerous Place by Jacqueline Winspear

-
Image
The backstory: A Dangerous Place  is the eleventh historical mystery featuring Maisie Dobbs. My reviews of the other eleven (plus Winspear's stand alone historical novel) are in my Book Review Database . The basics: Set four years after the last Maisie Dobbs novel, Leaving Everything Most Loved , in A Dangerous Place , we meet up with Maisie in Gibraltar in 1927 during the Spanish Civil War. She gets off her England-bound ship in Gibraltar because she's not quite ready to return. Note: this review contains spoilers about what happened in those four years of Maisie's life between books, all of which are revealed in this novel's first thirty pages.  My thoughts: Sunday I wrote about the Maisie Mail I received. These postcards appear in the book itself, along with many others. After setting the stage in Gibraltar in the opening pages (Maisie stumbles upon a dead body), Winspear recounts the last four years of Maisie's life in the form of postcards, letters, an...
Read more

book review: Run by Ann Patchett

-
Image
The backstory: After loving State of Wonder  ( my review ), I set out to read all of Ann Patchett's books. The basics: Run  is the story of the Doyle family: Bernard, an Irish Catholic ex-mayor of Boston, his deceased wife Bernadette, their adult son Sullivan, and their two adopted college ages sons, Tip and Teddy, who are biological brothers. My thoughts: I'm beginning to think Ann Patchett is my soul sister. Her writing reaches me deeply, and I've adored everything she's written. It was a special treat to read Run , the novel of hers I knew the least about going in. Although I had the framework of two of her novels and one memoir, I didn't know what to expect. Run  isn't as universally loved as some of her other works, so I was particularly curious to see how it measured up. Admittedly, Run  started off slowly for me. It took two chapters to really get into the heart of the story, but once it happened, I was hooked. One of the things I love most about ...
Read more

book review: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

-
Image
The backstory: Gilead  won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005, the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2004, and was longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2006. The basics: As Rev. Ames nears the end of his life in the 1950's, he begins a letter to his young son because Ames realizes his son is too young to really know him. Gilead  is that letter. My thoughts: Gilead  is a novel I'm been meaning to read for years. It's a character-driven, Midwestern narrative by one of our best contemporary writers. It should be a novel I love, yet I struggled to finish it and admit I was wowed by neither the story nor the writing. Gilead  seemed almost stream-of-consciousness at first. I appreciated that Robinson jumped right in: this novel is a letter from father to son; the reader's ignorance of these two characters is not the focus. As the novel progressed, more details began to be filled in, and the reader begins to understand the characters, setting and purpose. I enjoyed the ...
Read more