American Wife Issue #37

By Curtis Sittenfeld

By Sarah M Seltzer
Published: September 1st, 2008 | 10:06am

The third novel from Prep author Curtis Sittenfeld is “based on certain well-known” events in First Lady Laura Bush’s life. As Sittenfield once declared in a Salon.com essay, “I believe that George Bush’s policies are at best misguided and at worst evil. And yet I love Laura Bush. In fact, there is no public figure I admire more.”

The novel’s narrator is Alice Blackwell. Like Bush, she’s a bookish girl from a small middle-American town who is quickly wooed by the charismatic scion of a political dynasty. Alice faithfully chronicles her husband Charlie’s alcoholism, his born-again faith, and then his stunningly surging political career capped by a disastrous foreign war.

Unfortunately, Sittenfeld may have been weighed down by her admiration for Bush. Despite Sittenfield’s trademark eye for details, Alice’s true self still eludes. If the book had been a meditation on a Laura Bush–like character and stuck less to the biographical facts, American Wife might have allowed Sittenfield more room to show her skills as a fiction writer.

Instead, Alice’s passive life choices remain perplexing, even a bit annoying. Oh, and also: It’s kinda hard to shake the image of the real 43rd president from the character of Charlie, which undermines whatever roguish charm he might have.

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