The American Wife

Welcome to the summer solstice! I was able to complete two books on this gorgeous day, though I’ll only write one entry for today and one for tomorrow. In some ways the two books had a lot in common, drama!  Let’ start with the book I actually finished first, The American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld. Enter Alice Lindgren, the somewhat likeable young liberal from Wisconsin who works as a librarian in the local elementary school.  Who would have thought this book was drawn from the real life experiences of former First Lady Laura Bush!  While there are many “similarities,” I’m sure there are also some embellishments along the way.  Now back to Alice’s life… Alice grows up in 1950s in suburban America the only child of a stay at home mom and banker Dad (and a grandmother who has moved in).  The story follows Alice’s journey from awkward young teenage girl, to her arrival to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as the wife of the President.  Sounds like a lovely fairy-tale, right?  Not quite.  Alice‘s critical life detour comes when she has her first “high school crush” on Andrew Imhof, whom she “steals” from her best friend, Dena, after Dena breaks up with him.  Because Dena is so jealous of the fact that Alice is falling for her ex, she makes Alice feel guilty, which leads to Alice not driving with the group of girls to the big picnic, which Andrew is to attend.  As fate would have it, Alice gets in a car accident (she misses the stop sign which is somewhat obstructed from her view) and the other driver is killed.  Of course who would the other driver be?  Andrew!  It goes downhill from there…  After months of guilt, Alice goes to the Imhof family to deliver an apology.  What turns out to be a note under the door, turns into Alice being used as an “object of physical aggression” by Peter, Andrew’s brother.  When Alice learns she is pregnant, her grandmother who notices the signs, brings her granddaughter to Chicago to have an abortion performed by the grandmother’s female lover, which will come back in the story!  Years later after working in the library, her friend Dena convinces her to come to a party where she meets the son of former Governor Charlie Blackwell.  The rest is history, well, sort of.  Alice get married after a quick dating period (well really a pretty intense sexual encounters), has a daughter, gets involved in the community, deals with her husband’s alcoholic ways, almost gets divorced,  deals with her grandmother’s death, her mother’s failing health, and becoming the First Lady.  Remember that abortion that Alice had… well when it comes time for her husband to appoint the next Supreme Court judge, guess who plans on letting the world know about Alice’s history, grandma’s lover, who does not agree with the candidate’s Pro-Life stance.  The book is well written and the pace moves quickly.  I can see why it received lots of awards, but for me, read more like another book I finished later in the day… The Pact!  (see tomorrow’s entry).  I have to say, I guess I didn’t pay much attention to the public life of our President as I had no idea some of the real revelations that were shared in the Alice Blackwell story.  Not that I needed to know.  Not a top read for me, but for someone looking for a book while hanging on the beach over a tequila… hey, why not?