American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

Meredith recommended this book to me - great pick! Sittenfeld's (author Prep and Man of My Dreams) novel is loosely based on Laura Bush's life. The story follows a young woman (Alice Lindgren) from her childhood through middle age, culminating in her husband's (Charlie Blackwell) becoming president of the United States.

The first three-quarters of the book was a careful examination of relationships and marriage. Alice is a likable narrator. One of the reasons I didn't read this book immediately when Mer recommended it is that I was taking a break from everything Bush, along with the rest of the country. But Alice is a protagonist for whom I was rooting - through tragedies in her young life to a crazy weekend meeting her inlaws-to-be for the first time to her relationship with her on-again off-again best friend, she is a sympathetic character. She grows up and marries Charlie, discovering how imperfect he is but also how to keep her marriage together. Having just celebrated my 9th anniversary with Webster (only one of those married, for those of you keeping score) it made me think about how much our relationship had changed and how unrecognizable it may be thirty years from now.

Towards the end of the book, Charlie is elected president and Alice reflects first on her life in the White House and then on the 'war on terror.' Because Alice is still in love with Charlie, it was hard to tell initially if Sittenfeld was excusing or crucifying Bush. In fact, Alice is likable enough throughout the story that it was hard to dislike her with the virulence I had disliked everything Bush. But ultimately Alice's describing Charlie's time in the White House does read as an indictment of Bush - even more so than the semi-climactic ending Sittenfeld plans for the story.

My gripes with this book were structural. Most notably, Sittenfeld skips huge sections of time between the sections of her book. The first gap is understandable: we leave Alice as a high school student and find her again right after college. But later in the book, Charlie's rise from governor to national candidate is omitted completely, the last section of the book opening with the Blackwells already comfortably installed in the White House with a war going on. While election night is depicted as a flashback shortly thereafter (complete with a familiar supreme court case involving Florida), there were many parts of the timeline that were missing. She explains in the afterword that there are plenty of other books that depicted campaigns and that wasn't the point of this book; I didn't buy it - it made for a choppy transition that unraveled a lot of the great character development she had done earlier in the book. Without seeing the couple go through a campaign and adjust to life in the White House, the final section of the book reads more like a summary - almost like a busy family's annual Christmas card - than it does an active narrative.

That aside, I enjoyed reading the book. Like Prep, American Wife is a page-turner, and reflects on relationships, ethics, and our political system. Recommended.