It always amazes me when Sittenfeld's novels are referred to as "beach books". I wonder if the people who say that have actually read her work, or if they automatically assume that any book about the lives of women must automatically be low-brow chick lit. American Wife, like its predecessor Prep, is anything but low-brow. It is a complex, moving portrait of a young woman--a polite children's librarian with quietly left-leaning politics who marries a charismatic, if buffoonish man from a wealthy family who becomes an unpopular president stuck in a quagmire of an unpopular war.

Sound familiar? Of course, Sittenfeld's heroine is named Alice Lindgren, not Laura Welch. And the man she marries is Charlie Blackwell, not George Bush, but all too true details of the real Laura Bush's life are woven into the narrative remind the reader what the thesis of this fictional novel is REALLY about. What must it be like to have married a man whose politics you disagree with--especially if that man's livelihood is politics. Do you speak out? Do you stay quiet and just be a supportive wife? Do you--gasp--vote against him in both elections?

American Wife isn't all about Alice Lindgren's life as the president's wife--that section only comprises maybe a fourth of the novel. The entire first third describes Alice's youth and teen years, during which the most defining moment of her life occurs: during the summer before her senior year in high school, Alice runs a stop sign on the way to a party and kills a classmate, Andrew, a boy she has a crush on. This is something that actually happened to the real Laura Bush, and it becomes the crux of the entire novel. Although Sittenfeld describes, and later brings up the accident in only a handful of pages, it is the singular event on which the entire book pivots. The unanswered question is, if Alice had not killed Andrew; if they had gone on to date and even marry, would her life have been completely different? The fact that Alice ends up Alice Blackwell seems at times to be a mistake. Alice feels, deep inside, she should have never become the first lady. Her rightful place was to be a children's librarian in Wisconsin and married to her high school sweetheart--not as the incredibly beloved wife of an incredibly incompetent president.

Sittenfeld's novel is filled with restrained emotion and longing, embodied by the quiet, polite, intelligent, and secretly conflicted main character. Like Sittenfeld's other books, the main character is likable enough, but not charismatic. Sittenfeld disarms the reader by creating heroines that come off as a bit boring--heroines that observe more than act--but ultimately seem more real than grandiose, larger than life characters seen in other works of fiction. In this way, Sittenfeld is able to dissect life and relationships in ways that other authors cannot. She doesn't force the reader to like her characters.

In American Wife, Sittenfeld attempts to shed light of what Laura Bush's inner life must have been like before and during George W. Bush's reign. Does she succeed? Who knows. But the novel, though at times melodramatic and its first lady a little too apologetic, never seems untrue. In any case, fiction often rings more true than the reality we think we see in biographies and the news everyday. Maybe Sittenfeld has created a portrait of Laura Bush truer than Laura Bush herself would like to admit. ( )

A fictionalized biography of Laura Bush. The novel had me turning pages as fast as I could until Charley's "conversion". The final section seemed hurried and contrived, esp. w/Dena and Pete. Oh, and what about the doctor mysteriously and suddenly dying. The soul-searching that Laura did regarding the war and also if she could have been a more dynamic first lady seemed genuine. ( )

My mum gave the book to me because the main character is a librarian. As it turns out she is based on/inspired by Laura Bush. I thought I wouldn't like it, because I disagree with just about anything her husband ever said or did. But the book is extremely well written and almost made me cry by page 150.

The main character, Alice Blackwell, couldn't be more different from me. She is considerate, polite, private, docile, and shy to the point of being dull. Even though I probably would not want to spend an evening talking to her, I really enjoyed the story she was telling and thought it interesting how her affectionate storytelling even made her husband, who is based on G. W. Bush, seem less obnoxious.

I liked how the story is told in little anecdotes about Alice Blackwell's life that lead to the point she wants to make or the similarity she wants to point out. The only time this didn't work for me at all is when she compares her using the wrong door and accidentally walking out of the room and not wanting to admit her mistake and go back to her husband's refusal to withdraw troops from a Irak. Eating dinner with a full bladder does not compare to a lost war.
My other problem with the book are the quite explicit sex scenes that always reminded me that this is something I never wanted to consider about George W. and Laura Bush. No, thanks. ( )

For me, Curtis Sittenfeld is developing into one of the best contemporary American writers; American Wife cements this opinion. The life of fictional Alice Lingren drapes nicely on the real-life framework of Laura Bush's life, playing on the silences, controversies and contradictions of the latter to create an interesting and compelling portrait of what it might be like to be the wife of such a prominent politician (as a non-American, I view the awe surrounding the presidency with a similar bemusement to that expressed by Alice). Particularly interesting is the way Sittenfeld explores the (somewhat dubious) possibility of the president's wife being able to separate her personal self from her self as a political entity and citizen. ( )

Read this for my personal Orange Prize reading challenge. Was prepared not to like it due to my dislike for the "boy-who-would-be-king", but it was a well-written book. Alice/Laura is presented as a woman of integrity and tolerance. It would be interesting to read one of the biographies that the author used as inspiration. ( )