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American Wife: A Novel
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American Wife: A Novel
Unavailable
American Wife: A Novel
Audiobook (abridged)9 hours

American Wife: A Novel

Written by Curtis Sittenfeld

Narrated by Kimberly Farr

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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Currently unavailable

Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

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 a tragic accident when she was seventeen shattered her identity and made her understand the fragility of life and the tenuousness of luck. So more than a decade later, when she met boisterous, charismatic Charlie Blackwell, she hardly gave him a second look: She was serious and thoughtful, and he would rather crack a joke than offer a real insight; he was the wealthy son of a bastion family of the Republican party, and she was a school librarian and registered Democrat. Comfortable in her quiet and unassuming life, she felt inured to his charms. And then, much to her surprise, Alice fell for Charlie.

As Alice learns to make her way amid the clannish energy and smug confidence of the Blackwell family, navigating the strange rituals of their country club and summer estate, she remains uneasy with her newfound good fortune. And when Charlie eventually becomes President, Alice is thrust into a position she did not seek-one of power and influence, privilege and responsibility. As Charlie's tumultuous and controversial second term in the White House wears on, Alice must face contradictions years in the making: How can she both love and fundamentally disagree with her husband? How complicit has she been in the trajectory of her own life? What should she do when her private beliefs run against her public persona?

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 tapestry-a novel in which the unexpected becomes inevitable, and the pleasures and pain of intimacy and love are laid bare.


Praise for American Wife

"Curtis Sittenfeld is an amazing writer, and American Wife is a brave and moving novel about the intersection of private and public life in America. Ambitious and humble at the same time, Sittenfeld refuses to trivialize or simplify people, whether real or imagined."
-Richard Russo

"What a remarkable (and brave) thing: a compassionate, illuminating, and beautifully rendered portrait of a fictional Republican first lady with a life and husband very much like our actual Republican first lady's. Curtis Sittenfeld has written a novel as impressive as it is improbable."
-Kurt Andersen


From the Hardcover edition.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 2, 2008
ISBN9780739323878
Unavailable
American Wife: A Novel
Author

Curtis Sittenfeld

CURTIS SITTENFELD is the New York Times best-selling author of the novels Prep, The Man of My Dreams, American Wife, Sisterland, Eligible, and the forthcoming Rodham, which have been translated into thirty languages. She is also the author of the short story collection You Think It, I'll Say It and her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, the Washington Post Magazine, Esquire, and The Best American Short Stories. Her nonfiction has been published inthe New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, and Glamour, and broadcast on public radio’s This American Life. A native of Cincinnati, she currently lives with her family in Minneapolis.

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Reviews for American Wife

Rating: 3.6541386368243245 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

1,184 ratings126 reviews

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  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Well-written grammar and prose-wise, but not a very interesting story. I could not get into it and the not-so-thinly veiled faux-biography of Laura Bush aspect did not sit well with me. I enjoyed it until the teenage Laura started acting a bit out of character, when I dropped it and decided it wasn't worth continuing.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    The entire time, I kept thinking: this book is as dull as dry toast. When will it ever end? And I plodded along because it was a Book Club read. Why Sittenfeld wanted to extensively bore her readership is beyond me. Alice came across as prim, spineless and uninteresting. Her only real quality was her incredible diplomacy, which would have been lovely to see at work during her time as First Lady. Alas! The one really fascinating time of her life was glossed over in a 100 pages (out of 600).The writing is academic - focused on action and not character with occasional ridiculous flourishes that clashed with instead of enhanced the story. It seemed I was reading: and then this happened, and this happened... on and on.Overall a huge disappointment. I will not be seeking any of Sittenfeld's other novels.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Perfection.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Excellent novel.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    great read
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great read. A little less interesting once he becomes president. But I devoured it until then, in one weekend. Laundry remained unfolded, but that's nothing new, is it? Can't wait to read more Sittenfeld. I forgot the wonder of reading.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A loosely based story on Laura Bush's life. I did not know much of anything about her and I would be curious to read other biographical books about her to see the differences. The White House years were a very small part of the overall book and it seemed that something was missing because of this.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    This is the story of Alice a quiet girl from rural America. It started well but I stopped reading when the author decided that explicit sexual details added to the story when it did the opposite. If I want to read something which is almost pornographic then there are plenty of alternatives which don't pretend to be novels.

    I will not be reading this author again if this is what they think passes for literature.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book started out stronger than it ended. The main character seems very contained even during the interior monologues. Not sure that I buy the conclusion.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I'm not even sure why drove me to this book. The title and blurb don't sound like something I would enjoy reading. I must have picked up a recommend somewhere. From the first word, I was hooked. An ordinary girl from the midwest who lives very nearly the same years I do... I could understand every bit of this story personally. It was an amazing read.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    It turns out I am not the audience for even a fictional account of the Bushes that does not end at The Hague.
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    This is a “did not finish” If you can write a good story, and it seems Curtis Sittenfeld can, I think you can sell books without all of the gratuitous sex scenes. I admit I’m an older reader so that may make a difference. There is a good story in this book but I choose not to spend my time with it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    While I certainly didn’t love American Wife, I didn’t hate it, either. Sittenfeld’s writing is actually pretty good, and the story is interesting but not in a can’t-wait-see-what-happens-next kind of way. I’ve read several positive reviews, and I think many people are going to love this book—it just isn’t the kind of book I regularly read or enjoy, but I had to see what the hype was about. Sittenfled develops Alice’s character rather skillfully, enabling readers to understand her personality and her motives and to know why she makes the decisions she does, even if we may not agree with them.The way that Sittenfeld pulled events from a real person’s life and linked them together with her imagined stories felt cheap to me…it seems like cheating, or like an exercise from a writing class that she decided to extend into a novel.Full review at The Book Lady's Blog .
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Curtis Sittenfeld takes some major events from the lives of Laura and George Bush and uses them as a jumping-off point for this novel about a woman, Alice Lindgren, who reluctantly finds herself in the public eye when her husband takes a liking to politics and eventually ends up as president. I didn't know a thing about Laura Bush going into this, and I think that's possibly for the best. It was easy for me to take this as a fictional story, aside from the times when events in the book reminded me who it was about (the election resting on Florida, 9/11, the war in the middle east).The writing was mostly breezy and kept me turning pages. Probably the least compelling part was after she became First Lady, but it is also thankfully the shortest section. I feel that Sittenfeld did a great job of showing how the serious librarian could have ended up married to the directionless trust-funder. She communicated how charming Charlie (GWB) could be, in spite of the fact that he clearly knew he was charming - it's a type we all recognize. On the negative side, I thought there was just too much gratuitous sex in the book. I get that it's a novel about a relationship, and people in relationships have sex, but I didn't find it to serve any sort of illuminating purpose. If you have found yourself picturing Alice and Charlie as Laura and George Bush, you'll regret it for these scenes alone. Recommended for: women who wonder if they have what it takes to be a political wife (you probably don't), people interested in relationship dynamics.Quote: "People to whom a terrible thing has never happened trust fate, the notion that what's meant to be will be; the rest of us know better."
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed it a lot and would recommend. Easy read and not too chicklit-y.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    American Wife fictionalizes Laura Bush's life, from childhood through the lame-duck years of her husband's presidency. Laura and George Bush are called Alice and Charlie Blackwell here, though they are quite recognizably the former president and first lady, both through mannerisms and circumstance, especially so in the last quarter of the book, which deals with Alice's experiences as First Lady. The novel is by far best in the first half, as we follow Alice through a mid-west upbringing and adolescence in the fifties and sixties; her years as a single, independent young woman with a job she enjoys; and her initial romance with Charlie. Alice is extremely compelling in this half of the book--she's intelligent and confident, but with a tendency to keep herself to herself, a fear of exposing herself, of being wholly who she is in front of others. There's nothing doormattish about her, and she doesn't let these insecurities get in her way, but, still, there's that reining in, that holding back. I imagine a lot of smart, capable women who would rather sit at home and read than go to a party would see a lot of themselves in Alice, and Sittenfeld portrays these seemingly contradictory aspects of Alice's personality with a deft and subtle touch.But then Alice marries boisterous, wealthy, laddish, ambitious-but-aimless Charlie and the life just drops out of the book. Alice becomes a house-wife, though an upper-class one who will never fade away under the drudgery of housework. She still seems pretty content, it's clear that she loves her husband, and she becomes a good mother it their only child--but gone is the strong sense of her as an intellectual, gone is the job she enjoys. We see some marital problems involving Charlie and drink, and Alice has enough backbone to quietly force Charlie to choose between his substance abuse and his family, but even then Alice seems curiously passive, curiously toothless. Charlie gets religion, the aimlessness falls away, and, in a somewhat odd jump forward in the narrative of some twenty years, he becomes president.The "First Lady Years" section of the book is the least compelling--and the least well-written. Alice tells us much about the difficulties of being in the public eye, of how strange it is to be part of the public face of an administration with which she rarely agrees, of how exasperating it is to hear over and over of the puzzlement of those who don't understand how smart, bookish, liberal Alice Blackwell could possibly love conservative, war-mongering, rights-trampling President Charlie Blackwell. This section ought to be the thematic center of the novel--this ought to be the part where the book becomes whole, where the reason for writing a novel about a still-living real person becomes clear. By the end, we ought to understand more fully Laura Bush or the office of the first lady or even just wifehood (the book's title, lacking an article as it does, seems to be reaching for some claim to a universal statement about American wives). And the thing is, we don't. Alice stands up for herself again in the end, separating herself briefly from her husband and from her role as First Lady to be just Alice Blackwell, but the moment is just as passive and toothless as her stand against Charlie's drinking is earlier on. Alice--smart, capable, happy Alice--is still subsumed under boisterous, laddish, ambitious Charlie. What have we learned? That people love who they love, and that intellectual or political compatibility doesn't necessarily come into it? No kidding. That smart, independent women often lose part of themselves through their genuine love of louder, more ambitious men? You don't say. Illustrating these facts beautifully and startlingly or giving Alice a convincing, true moment of reclamation of some of her younger independence of self--either of these would have made American Wife into something really satisfying. But instead the novel just wilts when Alice marries Charlie and becomes more and more lifeless and rambling as it goes on.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I liked this book. I didn't expect to, but I did. The story was good. There wasn't a lot of extravagant drama, but there was life drama. A little drama happens in all of our lives and the author wove it into the story well.

    It is hard for me to think of this as a book about the Bushes as it is supposed to be. I don't know anything about Laura Bush except that she was a librarian, so this book could be plausible. I looked at is as a story, perhaps an example of what a political life would be like. The thing I really noticed is how much is taken away. I don't always want to go grocery shopping, but not to be able to grocery because you know you will cause a riot is a completely different thing. It is almost as if politicians are in some kind of prison.

    I thought it was an excellent tale of real people. Obviously, I don't know if these are real people, but they seemed real to me. Things happened to them that weren't perfect. They wished for things from their spouse that they couldn't say, but wanted their spouse to know. They compromised because they loved each other. Most of all their relationship evolved.

    I also thought that the book was, mostly, well written. I wanted to read it carefully and pay attention to the words that were used and the way the sentences were constructed. I did have trouble with some of the dangling participles. I got lost because of them in some places and had to go back and read passages again.

    It is kind of hard to think of this book as about the Bushes as I did like Charlie Blackwell. He seemed like one of the boys I knew in college.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Sittenfeld is a good writer. I enjoyed the story. The last section felt rushed to me, like she was in a hurry to tie up all the loose ends.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    none of the characters in this book were likeable
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Well, I think this qualifies as the longest book I have read this year, under false circumstances! The title and semi-biographical narrative intrigued me for all the wrong reasons, because I was hoping that the fictitious first lady would be based on Jacqueline Kennedy, but thanks to Curtis Sittenfeld's observant and well-paced writing, I warmed to Laura Bush's alter-ego in the end. (However, reading about George Bush was one stretch of the imagination too far, so I chose to pretend that Alice's husband Charlie was based on JFK instead. The character sort of fits, apart from being a Republican and finding religion, and remaining in power for far too long. The Blackwell clan ('a competitive sport in themselves') definitely brought to mind all the Kennedy biographies I have read!)I had no such misconceptions about Curtis Sittenfeld, but I shall definitely seek out her other novels in future. This is a long novel about not much in particular - the presidency only takes up the last hundred pages or so - but Alice's life is brought to the page with such intricacy of detail and emotion that I was hooked throughout. In fact, the White House chapters were the slowest for me, containing a lot of pro-Bush defence and general introspection that felt tacked on somehow, after the great drama of Alice/Laura's own story.I have new respect for Laura Bush (though no more for her husband), and can heartily recommend this novel to any readers who love immersing themselves in in the minutiae of (semi)fictional lives.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Definitely one of my favorite books read in 2012. Easily. I don't know how I missed this one when it came out but I'm glad I found my way to it now. Alice Blackwell tells us of the path of her life that leads her to becoming The First Lady and it's a wonderful time. I can't dislike a librarian. She's introspective and has genuine concern and awareness for what is happening around her as she moves through life. I very much liked her Granny, Emilie. She was so influential in Alice's life & I have to admit that I figured out her secret pretty early on. Alice's parents weren't as clearly drawn but I didn't think it was to the detriment of the story. They certainly weren't as tuned in to Alice as Emilie was. I also figured Dena wouldn't be around as BFF forever, either. She was difficult to like for a sustained period of time because she was selfish & manipulative. I was a little sad that Alice never had another BFF in the same way but given her personality, it didn't seem she suffered a loss in that way. I liked that Alice was always able to have the company of her books & was never lonely. She was content being solitary.

    Charlie was fun & infuriating. I did find his quirk about the dark as silly & endearing as Alice. I could see how they made a good match & I was very happy with how Alice was able to tell him her secret & he didn't judge harshly. The Blackwell family was chaotic & ambitious & I enjoyed them. It was strange to read some of their attitudes regarding race because it felt like they were always ten or twenty years behind the times in thought. I kept thinking "This is 1986?! Come on, people!" That's not at all a criticism of the story, it's just that I was alive in 1986 & though I was a child, I wouldn't have thought people so well travelled & read would still be holding onto so much of those old racial tropes then. It was definitely an interesting perspective given the casualness of most of the Blackwells & the outright tones of entitlement & deference of Priscilla.

    I did wish that the final section, when we finally reach Alice residing at the White House, was longer. I had expected that it would be but I don't really know why. It was a very good end to what felt like a sit down at tea. Maybe I just didn't want to leave because I came to really like Alice. I read & loved Prep so I was familiar with Curtis Sittenfeld & she exceeded my enjoyment of her writing with this book. This is definitely going on my to re-read list.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    American Wife, loosely based on Laura Bush, was an enjoyable read, though too long in places where the dialog was scarce and the descriptions lengthy. The book, separated into 4 sections (Laura's youth, young adult life prior to meeting GW, dating and early married years, and presidency). I thought the first and last sections of the book were the weakest. I found the book much more interesting when Charlie (loosely based on George Bush) was introduced. The book gave some insight into what the Bush family may be like in real life, but I thought the character of Alice was too embellished to give an accurate picture of Laura Bush. Sittenfeld's writing style was great, and I enjoyed the dialog, especially between Alice and Charlie.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I was disappointed. I went into reading this book with high expectations. It is supposedly based loosely on the life of Laura Bush. It starts off well and the characters are very human. But I expected more delving into the political aspect of the characters lives and while political topics are discussed, they never talked about "Charlie's" time as Governor, nor his race for the White House. I was expecting more... and the ending was a let down to the great storytelling the author does in the beginning.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Very clever book. Great stoytelling and characterizations. The backdrop of the real-life story line was not overdone; and you really came to care bout the 'first-lady' wife and her personal insights and struggles. Even though it was 'chick-lit' (LOL), I would highly recommend it.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    There were some things I liked about this book but I was completely distracted by the idea that the lead character is loosely based on Laura Bush.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This is an entertaining, easy book to read. Perfect for the summer on the beach. However, had it taken me longer to finish, I would not have been as pleased. It was just a little too predictable, formulaic, and thinly veiled as a story of GWBush and Laura. Like I said, it was entertaining, but I wouldn't move it up on your list, unless you just need a fun break between meatier texts.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I really enjoyed the first two sections but the last chapter was so disappointing, it dragged down this book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    AMERICAN WIFE is fiction. Be sure to remember that, although the American wife in AMERICAN WIFE is based on Laura Bush. Just remember that she really is a character of Curtis Sittenfeld’s imagination. Then you may enjoy the book properly because you understand what it really is.This book is mostly a soap opera. That should not put you off. After all, I call Tolstoy’s ANNA KARENINA a soap opera.Just like a soap opera, AMERICAN WIFE takes time to get into, to grab you and make you care. So the chapters describing Alice’s (Laura’s) childhood and adolescence can be boring, as it was for me. But later, particularly when she becomes first lady, her first-person accounts are absorbing.Because Alice tells her own story, she is also able to ruminate and does so frequently. The story does not progress during these times when she tells you what she really thinks and feels. This is when you need to be most conscious that Alice is a figment of Sittenfeld’s imagination.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Book on CD performed by Kimberly Farr

    From the book jacket On what might have been 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.”

    My reactions
    I was expecting a somewhat light look at a fictional first lady. What I got was every so much more – a nuanced, complex portrait of a woman who did not seek but nevertheless found herself in a very public position.

    I liked that Sittenfeld takes the reader back to Alice’s childhood and introduces us to this young, quiet but inquisitive girl – an only child who lives in a small town with a loving family, including her grandmother who introduces her to the wonders of literature. We watch her grow to adolescence, make mistakes, grieve over losses and heartbreaks, struggle to achieve some independence, and find joy and fulfillment in her career as a librarian. While her life takes some unexpected turns, Alice remains true to herself, confident in her opinions, compassionate and thoughtful, but also willing to fight for the happiness she wants. She is no less strong because she is quiet. And when push comes to shove, she will stand up for what she believes is right and insist on her due.

    The author’s note at the beginning tells the reader that while this is a work of fiction, the lead characters will be somewhat recognizable. And they are, but the reader should remember that this is a work of fiction – NOT historical fiction. One thing I found interesting is that I had looked at the cover of this book and assumed that this would be a story that paralleled the lives of Jack and Jackie Kennedy. I was wrong, but not at all disappointed.

    Kimberly Farr does a fine job performing the audio version. She has good pacing and really brought Alice to life for me.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A real potboiler of a novel. Loosely based on the life of Laura Bush, wife of President George W. But it is compulsive reading. Towards the end, the character reveals that she did not vote for her husband for President!