Rodham

All stories begin with the basic premise, What If, and this book is no different, albeit the protagonist is a famous politician: Hillary Rodham Clinton. The author, Curtis Sittenfeld, is known for these semi-fictional portrayals of well-known personalities, having written American Wife, a lightly-fictionalised account of Laura Bush.
Written in the first person as a memoir, the book traces the personal and professional trajectory of Hillary Rodham's life.
The Hillary Rodham in this book is serious, intelligent, hardworking, and committed to making her country a better nation. She is also lonely, confident, insecure, competent, ambitious, and full of self-doubt. In other words, and it is credit to the author's skill and craft, the Hillary Rodham in this novel is completely believable as a career woman with big goals in a field long (and still) dominated by men: politics.
Back to the central question of What If. What if Hillary had not married Bill in 1975? Well, she becomes a law professor, then decides she wants to run for Senate when she watches Clarence Thomas, despite allegations of sexual harassment, get approved by the (mostly male) Senate to the Supreme Court. Her decision to run is tested when another woman, an African-American, also makes a bid for the Senate, and here Hillary faces a decision that male candidates most likely do not. Given that very few women will get voted into the Senate, should she run against another woman, and a woman of colour at that, or should she withdraw and throw in her support for the other woman? I won't spoil the surprise here except to say that the other female candidate is Carol Moseley Braun who did run for Senate in real life (and win, becoming the US's first African-American female Senator).
There are many other “real” people who feature in this novel, among the most interesting are Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Obama is given mostly respectful reference and some distance from Hillary. He defeats her in her bid for President in 2008 (just like in real life) while Trump is more colourfully portrayed, providing some entertaining relief in the final third of the book (I confess, some of the lines were so Trump-like I burst out laughing; it seemed that the author did lift some of them from his real-life speeches). Trump also has his own alternate history in the novel, and some readers may wish that had really happened instead of what actually occurred.
Of course, the most prominent other real person in the book is Bill Clinton. In the novel (and perhaps as in real life), Bill is handsome, driven, smart, and charming, and he completely enfolds Hillary into his life from the time that they meet in university.
> “But I always hoped a man would fall in love with me for my brain.”
Their relationship is intellectual and physical, and the book does not shy away from describing their passionate encounters. But Bill has a problem, one that he recognises will not go away (it involves women, in case you don't know) and in a moment of remarkable emotional clarity, he realises Hillary is too good for him. She leaves him instead of marrying him in 1975.
They meet later on in the story, and these encounters eventually prove to be the eye-openers Hillary needs when it comes to Bill, as well as much of the fuel for the book's third act.
There are many, many instances of sexism and prejudice that Hillary Rodham encounters as a law student, professor, Senator, and Presidential candidate, encounters that I am very sure the real Hillary faced too, albeit in different forms.
A contention of the book is that women political candidates often have to be “likeable”, one that is underscored by the most recent debate between Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence, where Ms Harris had to keep smiling almost throughout the entire debate to avoid coming across as unlikeable.
> “And really, wasn't this endless ruminating over my own likability in itself a thing only a woman would do? Did Bill—or Ted Cruz or Rand Paul—ever ponder their likability, or did they simply go after what they wanted? Did Bill ever stop to think about which of us was more qualified, did he question his own motives for entry into the race? The idea was laughable.”
Another is that every aspect of their physical appearance are minutely examined as much as, or sometimes even more than, their competence or policy decisions. The “pink tax” is the extra hour that women have to spend on wardrobe, hair, and make-up, to avoid negative scrutiny by the press. Then there is the double standard when it comes to women candidates, that they have to be squeaky clean whereas men with skeletons banging around in their closet can still run for office and - shock, horror - may even win. As Hillary puts it, “You know when true equality will be achieved? When a woman with these kinds of skeletons in her closet has the nerve to run for the office.”
This book drives home many of these points through its story of Hillary Rodham. I did not expect to enjoy this novel, but I did. The narrative, as it's written from Hillary's perspective, is clear, direct, and provides some insight into the possible thought process of a woman aiming to become President of the United States of America. The book does not go into the controversial decisions that the real Hillary made, perhaps because the positions occupied by Hillary Rodham are less powerful than the one occupied by the real Hillary, and some of the bigger events that happened are either left out or mentioned only in passing (9-11 being one of them), but the book does present the hard considerations and cold calculations that a woman aspiring to power may need to make. The ending is satisfying in its conclusion of fictional Hillary's career, and a hopeful nod for the future.
If you want a fictional lens through which to read about American politics or politics in general, or if you want to delve into the challenges that women political candidates face beyond the headlines and statistics, this book provides a smart combination of reality, personalities, alternate history, and entertainment.
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Note: This book was kindly sponsored by Times Read.