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The 'American Wife' is Laura Bush.
By Jessica Schneider Sep 3, 2008, 14:15 GMT
On what might become one of the most significant days in her husband’s presidency, Alice Blackwell considers the strange and unlikely path that has led her to the White House–and the repercussions of a life lived, as she puts it, “almost in opposition to itself.”A kind, bookish only child born in the 1940s, Alice learned the virtues of politeness early on from her stolid parents and small Wisconsin hometown. But ...more
Reviewers are noting that the latest novel by Curtis Sittenfeld is fictionally based on Laura Bush.
USA Today notes: American Wife is a vicarious experience, an up-close portrait of the interior life of a very complicated woman, but most is fiction. Alice's life mirrors that of Laura's in many ways: a car accident in which a youthful Alice kills a teenage boy, her career as a librarian, her husband's rise from co-owner of a baseball team to governor and then president.
Part of the product description states: In Alice Blackwell, New York Times bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld has created her most dynamic and complex heroine yet. American Wife is a gorgeously written novel that weaves class, wealth, race, and the exigencies of fate into a brilliant tapestrya novel in which the unexpected becomes inevitable, and the pleasures and pain of intimacy and love are laid bare.
Yet the USA Today reviewer also mentions: If the book has one weakness, it's that Sittenfeld spends too much time letting Alice wring her hands with guilt over her privileged life.
Published by Random House, read the USA Today review here.
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