Friday, May 06, 2022

FFB: American Wife, Curtis Sittenfeld

AMERICAN WIFE by Curtis Sittenfeld is fictional account of a wife much like Laura Bush. Sittenfeld had always been interested in Mrs. Bush and she does a bang-up job of capturing her. Laura/Alice grows up in a Wisconsin town, a typical midwestern girl. You have trouble understanding what she sees in George/Charlie beyond money and charm. But love is strange and Sittenfeld is good at giving him just enough charm to persuade you a nice girl might marry him. The Bush family is even less likable. It's all here: the car accident when she was a teen, the drinking, the combination of ambition as an entitlement more than something you work for with little feeling for the people he will serve. In light of our current president, he doesn't seem that bad but like Will Ferrel reminded us on SNL, he was. And there are some striking similarities.

I am an admirer of Sittenfeld's writing and this is some of her best although the last third is far too ruminative. And no, he never comes off well.

Four years later, and there is a SHOWTIME series on three first ladies. Laura Bush would have been an interesting inclusion. I am pretty sure neither she nor her daughters are Trumpers. 

 

4 comments:

Margot Kinberg said...

This sounds like an interesting perspective, Patti.

George said...

I think Diane's Book Club read AMERICAN WIFE and liked it. The Bushes despise Trump after what he said about Jeb in the Debates.

pattinase (abbott) said...

She has written a book on Hillary too but the reviews were so-so.

Todd Mason said...

And the Bushes were never fond of Trump as he is the worst caricature of nouveau riche, only via inheritance. He combines the worst of both stereotypes, as do most of his close associates. I tend to think of W as vastly more stupid than intentionally evil, and Trump as both in roughly congruent quantities. It's more than a little amusing, if it wasn't so unfortunate for what it says about the country, that one of Trump's primary adversaries in his current party is a chip off the old Cheney.