Book Review #37 - American Wife

Rarely am I so repulsed by a book while still able to honestly say that it wasn't completely awful. I can't ignore the fact that Curtis Sittenfeld (a woman by the way. I didn't look at the picture in the book jacket and had a male author writing this in my head for well over half the book) creates one of the most interesting and well-developed characters, Alice Blackwell, for a novel that I have read in a while. The creepy part of that is she modeled Alice after Laura Bush, flagrantly so, and I'm left feeling it's all unfair somehow.

I've always enjoyed historical fiction. I've given high praise to authors who seem able to "resurrect" actual historical figures and infuse life into them by placing them in dynamic relationships and creating a voice with conversations. Perhaps the historical figures need to be dead before writing about them, because when Sittenfeld takes the same liberties with Laura Bush, fictionalizing her actual history, I'm left with is disgust at Sittenfeld's disregard for her privacy, respect for her public position and for the actual truth and have a very strong urge to dismiss this book as gossipy garbage.

Sittenfeld must have expected reactions such as mine. From it's charged release during last year's Republican National Convention, the book has been criticized by many, mostly Republicans, as being salacious and untrue - two charges Sittenfeld herself agrees with. Well...maybe not the salacious part, but she certainly included enough sex to keep even the fluffiest of beach readers happy. Doing so didn't give the book an honest quality but it did manage to make it feel trashy. She tried hard enough to portray Charlie Blackwell as close to the general media's version of George W. Bush that the otherwise normal trash becomes downright disturbing. I wish I could scrub my brain.

But not all of it is tawdry and in poor taste. Alice is so...real, in both her motivations and actions that if she were completely fictional my fingers would be tripping over themselves typing, "just so lifelike. So full of depth." As a result, I feel like a hypocrite for being so turned off. After all, are any characters truly "made up?" It seems to me that most authors use real life subjects as inspiration for their characters, so if the author acknowledges this, and even leaves that inspiration exposed and traceable, should they get less or more credit for being authentic?

When I finished reading, all I wanted to know was, "How much of this is true?" Enough of the events in Alice's fictional life are documented facts in Laura Bush's own that it seems more true than it is. In an interview Sittenfeld gave, she claims 85 % of it is fiction. That only the major events in each of the book's four sections (accidentally killing a classmate of hers in a car accident during high school, being a librarian and meeting her husband at a BBQ, having a husband who bought a major league baseball team, and being married to the President of the United States) are true and everything else is speculation and "what if"s.

I guess that's fair but it still doesn't seem like it. For a book to be written about an actual First Lady, a human being entitled to the same dignity we all deserve and a woman who most of America holds in high regard (even the author herself admits that she's fascinated by her), and to speculate about private things like her sexuality, her commitment to her husband, an abortion and drug use, and dress it up as fiction to avoid being charged with slander and libel seems cowardly.

The author claims her intention was not to expose Laura Bush but to write what life might be like if you happened to marry a guy who went on to become President of the United States. If she had managed to write that, and leave out her obvious bias for Laura Bush and against President Bush - she might have succeeded in writing something thought provoking and brave. While it may be thought-provoking, it certainly isn't brave...it's cheap and dangerous. Sittenfeld may have opened my eyes to the price and path of fame, but she did so at the cost of my own respect for her.