American Wife
Aug. 16th, 2020 09:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearAmerican Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld is a fictionalised life of an American First Lady, inspired by the life of Laura Bush.
It's very well written and absorbing - at 635 pages, it's quite a tome, but I wanted more. The first 500 pages cover the first 40 or so years of Alice Blackwell's life, and then the narrative abruptly jumps nearly 20 years to examine a potential scandal in 2007. I felt cheated, and would gladly have read another 300 pages detailing what happened in the gap!
Parts of the book made me uncomfortable, but I think they were supposed to, and it all added up to an incredibly detailed exploration of a complicated relationship, from the point of view of a nuanced and intelligent woman, who ultimately doesn't have the confidence of her convictions.
Alice is very self-aware about her choices, but her confusion is also clear - her life is marred by an early tragedy that affects her view of relationships a great deal, and her conflicting views of the man who becomes her husband are very effectively portrayed.
Mostly, the book is very sad, but in a very compelling way.
It's very well written and absorbing - at 635 pages, it's quite a tome, but I wanted more. The first 500 pages cover the first 40 or so years of Alice Blackwell's life, and then the narrative abruptly jumps nearly 20 years to examine a potential scandal in 2007. I felt cheated, and would gladly have read another 300 pages detailing what happened in the gap!
Parts of the book made me uncomfortable, but I think they were supposed to, and it all added up to an incredibly detailed exploration of a complicated relationship, from the point of view of a nuanced and intelligent woman, who ultimately doesn't have the confidence of her convictions.
Alice is very self-aware about her choices, but her confusion is also clear - her life is marred by an early tragedy that affects her view of relationships a great deal, and her conflicting views of the man who becomes her husband are very effectively portrayed.
Mostly, the book is very sad, but in a very compelling way.
