American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008- Title: American Wife
- Author: Curtis Sittenfeld
- Publisher: Random House
- Year of Publication: 2008
- Pages: 558
American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
I first heard about American Wife through an article in the Books section of the New York Times a few weeks ago. Michiko Kakutani’s article, “First Lady, Second Version,” piqued my curiosity. I have always been interested in the First Lady’s duality of self, especially after I became a librarian. I found it fascinating, and sometimes infuriating, that a librarian could allow herself to stay married to a man like George W. Bush, to whom privacy is exchanged for “security” and the lives of American soldiers are exchanged for oil. This book has helped me reconcile these things, if only hypothetically, and it has helped me view the current First Lady in a more humanized perspective.
Despite the frequent claims that the book is out to smear the Bush Administration, it seems to have done the opposite for me. (They consider it a smear because it contains adequately detailed sex scenes between two consensual adults in three relationships, one of which winds up resulting in marriage. Are we Victorian, all of a sudden?) Maureen Dowd wrote in her Op-Ed piece for the New York Times, “Dreams of Laura,”
Ms. Sittenfeld was not out to sensationalize but sympathize. The portraits of Laura and W. — known as Alice and Charlie Blackwell here — are trenchant and make you like them more.
They become people, not just distant American symbols. They’re closer to the reader than they’ve ever been, and that’s not a bad thing.