American Wife

Interesting – I learned some things about former First Lady Laura Bush I hadn't known, and liked her better. After becoming interested in her from reading this book I read a biography on her and was amazed at how this novel followed real life so closely.

I went into reading this book having no clue it drew heavily on the real life of Laura Bush. Without knowing that and not knowing enough about Laura to figure it out myself, I really enjoyed this book. What a surprise when I went to mark this as read in Goodreads and saw numerous angry reviews from people. Honestly reading those made me chuckle. Overall, I found this book poignant and captivating. Curtis Sittenfeld deftly captured the journey of this woman grow from a naïve, lost child to an adult women trying to find her own way while supporting her partner. This book made me laugh, cry, and ponder my own adulthood existence. I have already recommended this to two other people.

I picked up this book because I loved Eligible by the same author and this one seemed interesting. I had no idea this was a fiction based on the life of Laura Bush. Being quite unknown about the history of the Bush family, I treated this book just like any fiction novel. The book is divided into four sections each reflecting on a time in the life of our protagonist. The first couple of sections are interesting where we see the evolution of a young woman into a very passionate librarian. Alice's relationship with her family, especially her grandmother is well explored. There is an incident that happens in her adolescence which changes her a lot and it looks like the guilt determines all her actions in the future.

When we meet her as a librarian in her thirties, she seems confident in herself and I expected she would do something important with her life because she had so much potential. Then she meets her future husband and that is where the story goes off the rails. Charles is exactly opposite to her in every way and his fun and easy nature is probably why she falls for him. However, he is an aspiring politician and she disagrees completely with his ideology. He doesn't respect her positions or even seems interested in listening to her but thinks that she should be okay with his opinions because they are married. Even though she is an educated and qualified woman, she gives up her job and everything about herself for her marriage.

It would be okay if she did all this for the sake of love but you can't shake the feeling that she marries him and all her subsequent decisions in her life are based on her determination that she doesn't deserve anything better because of what happened in her teens. This would still be okay if her decisions only affect her but her total support of her husband in his political career surely does affect many more people, probably many adversely. All the justifications that she seems to be giving herself to believe that she is doing the right thing just feel like excuses and I can't sympathize with her anymore. Even her little rebellion of not voting for Charles and not telling him about it might be enough of a justification to her for her decades of supporting an unworthy politician but it just antagonizes me more. I just can't believe she being a liberal would support her husband who doesn't believe in a woman's right to choose and most other women's rights. Once I got to know about him, it gets difficult to like the book anymore. I don't know if I can call this book good writing because at the end, all I remember is I was disappointed with the protagonist.

I liked this, though I don't know if it'll be a reread like [b:Prep 9844 Prep A Novel Curtis Sittenfeld http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166071934s/9844.jpg 2317177] is for me. I like Alice as a character, and was able to separate her from Laura Bush, but Charlie was always George W. Bush no matter what, and I think my feelings about him got in the way of my being able to appreciate the actual character. Alice is essentially passive, which gets frustrating, but the book acknowledges that.