But American Wife really is a good read, albeit a long one. Sittenfeld writes in the first person from the perspective of a woman who grows up to become the First Lady of the United States. The vast majority of the book focuses on the relatively normal childhood and early adulthood of Alice Blackwell (nee Lindgren), but it is a titillating set-up: regular small-town girl ends up married to the President. It's like a great make-over story, and I'm a sucker for those.
But I had one major problem for most of this book: I did not like the protagonist. The narrative is easy to read, it washes over you like a summer rom-com, which is probably what kept me pushing through even when I became intensely annoyed with Alice. She is such a cloying goody-two-shoes, it irritated me to no end. For much of the book she seems to have no back-bone, no spunk. I know she is supposed to be a product of her time, and of her small-town upbringing, but I found her to be so wet at times that I almost threw the book across the room, willing her to stand up for herself. She is not my kind of woman at all, and it frustrates me that (if there is any truth to this story at all) a woman like this could become First Lady. Indeed, that a man with the potential to hold such an esteemed position would be attracted to a woman like this. And that his family would deem her suitable for him. But I kept reading in spite of these irritations because the story was good and I really wanted to know what happened next, even though I kind of already knew. I wanted to see how it would all develop, layabout Charlie becoming the President of the United States. It seems so unlikely, when his character ss first introduced. And in spite of myself, even though I was picturing Charlie as George W (I couldn't help it!), I became quite intrigued by him. I could even kind of see that he might have some personal charm about him, although obviously his political prowess leaves much to be desired, even in fiction. For example, Alice describes him as being lukewarm on the actual politics of being president: "Being president is for [Charlie] like taking a ninth-gradfer English test on The Odysser, and he's the kid who did most of the reading, he studied for an hour the night before, but he's not one of the people who loved the book." Instead Charlie is described as being in it for the power, and because he is concerned about his personal legacy.
In the end - minor spoiler alert - the whole story really is a lead-up to the moment when Alice finally does grow a back-bone, and this is what saved the book for me. There is a hint to this in the prologue, but I must admit it was lost on me until I returned to the prologue having turned the last page. When I did finally put the book down after coming to the end, I finally understood what Sittenfeld was trying to do with American Wife. For most of the novel I had been lost as to why she had felt compelled to write this. Was it just because the premise was fun? Like a high school reunion novel, where the protagonist makes it HUGE on the world stage before returning triumphantly to the place where she grew up? But if that was the case, why choose a real-life first lady to base this on, why restrict oneself so? Or was the motivator a peculiar fascination Sittenfeld has with Laura Bush herself? But if this was so, why choose to re-create in fiction a life that has already been thoroughly examined in biography?
In the last part of the book, when Charlie has finally made it big - you know, as the most powerful man in the world - it finally started to become clear. Sittenfeld is as critical of George W Bush as I am. This is not clear through the majority of the novel, which portrays him as a magnanimous, fun guy who is misunderstood and (perhaps) underestimated by his own family. But what Sittenfeld seems really interested in - and it is innately interesting, I'll give her that - is the question of how complicit a wife is, how much she can be held accountable, for her husband's actions. I think we are meant to dislike Alice, as I did, when she turns the other cheek every time someone does her wrong: when her best friend drops her for a negligible friendship misdemeanour; when a boyfriend treats her badly and speaks ill of her. What is most frustrating is that while Alice is a push-over, she is not stupid. She acts deliberately, intentionally letting things go. And Sittenfeld wants to know: when someone like that does not speak out against things she knows are wrong, can she be held accountable for the consequences of that decision to remain silent? Specifically, can a wife be held accountable for what her husband is doing, if she has known all along that it is wrong? When she does not object and instead sits idly by, supporting her husband, while he conducts himself in a way to which she is deeply, morally opposed - are the consequences of his actions not then her fault as much as his?
Charlie, like George W Bush, starts a war when he is President which is wildly unpopular with large factions of the population. He must deal with protestors and detractors, and Alice tells the readers (we are treated like a dear diary) that, in her view, he only persists with the war because he is too humiliated to back out of it - even though thousands of American boys continue to be killed. She tells us this in the same affectionate tone she reserves for Charlie throughout, and even though we know she does not agree with his stance on the war, it is difficult here to forgive her for her silence, and for her continued support of Charlie.
In introspective moments Alice contemplates her own position on the page, asking at what stage and how should she have acted.
"All I did is marry him," she asserts. "You are the ones who gave him power."
Should she have refused to marry him, way back when, because even then their political views were not aligned? Should she have prevented him from running for office? Should she have left him when he did, even though they had a child together and were in love? It's a tricky question, and Sittenfeld's exploration of the issues involved is interesting. Nevertheless, I can't believe that the answer is the one Alice proposes - that every marriage contains some degree of betrayal, of treachery, and that in keeping silent, and in secretly taking active steps against her husband she is just acting like any other American wife.
But the Alice we ultimately get to know is far more treacherous than we are led to believe for most of the book, and that at least made her more interesting to me.
Overall assessment: 3 out of 5. A good read, light but with some thought-provoking passages.
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