<p>^^^ good question, Mary
From the book regarding that moment when Alice returned home after her excursions to Peter and Dena-
“So what’s the thing you wanted to tell me?” (Ella asks)
"Oh–Should I do it? I no longer need to, now that I’ve been spared by Gladys Wycomb’s death, but I still could. What is the difference between giving voice to an overdue truth and being a parent who indulgently unburdens herself? Telling ella wouldn’t be fair to her, I realize, it would be unsettling- not just because of her religious convictions but also because (I know Ella, and I , too , was an only child) it will make her think she could have had a brother ro sister…</p>
<p>I don’t think she needed to tell Ella, and made the right decision.
What do you think, Mary? (and, others, of course )</p>
<p>Perhaps I’m in the minority on this thread … I thought the book was OK – not great, but pretty OK in the “beach read” category. IMO, it’s a serious detraction knowing the storyline is supposed to be based on the life of Laura Bush. Aside from the car accident, how many other events in American Wife are true of Laura Bush? I found myself wondering about almost everything. It would have been far better if I had just read it without knowing it was supposed to be based on any real people. The sex scenes are completely gratuitous and appear to be there only to increase book sales. It’s incomprehensible that so much of the first 3 parts of the book is described in mind-numbing detail, and then “poof!” all of a sudden Charlie is President of the United States. It’s like the author just got tired of writing. And when she (Sittenfeld) gets all philosophical for pages on end, it’s just plain boring. Obviously she didn’t get any of this from Laura Bush, so it’s just a chance for her go on and on. Also, I don’t really have a sense of Barbara Bush being like Charlie’s Mom. Again, just my opinion.</p>
<p>^ Well, I hope Barbara Bush isn’t really like Priscilla. Ugh. Alice’s passivity in her interactions with Priscilla (or maybe it’s more like passive-aggressiveness?) bothered me. When Priscilla phoned Alice after she left Charlie (I almost wrote “George” :)), I was disappointed in Alice’s bland, “You’ve given me a lot to think about” answer. On the other hand, maybe that’s realistic. I know I tend to come up with great, pithy responses later, after the moment has passed. </p>
<p>After reading all our comments about the confusion between fact and fiction, I see it less as a flaw and more as a stroke of genius! If an author can effectively mess with her readers’ heads and force us to re-think some pre-conceived notions and ponder the accuracy of what we read, perhaps that’s a measure of success.</p>
<p>CBBBlinker, Curtis Sittenfeld had some things to say on two of the issues you raised. Re the sex scenes:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Re the leaping over Charlie’s path to the presidency:</p>
<p>SJChessMom, as to whether or not to tell Ella about the abortion…that’s a tough call. I certainly understand why Alice would not want to have that conversation; I imagine it would be very painful for both of them. But if I were Alice, I would then worry endlessly about Ella learning the truth from another source. I could even see Charlie inadvertently spilling the beans to his daughter–with no intent to hurt, just through carelessness.</p>
<p>I apologize for three posts in a row! Count your blessings that this isn’t a real life book club. You’d have to ply me with petit fours and sleep-inducing glasses of wine to shut me up.</p>
<p>^^^ you are doing a great job.Good Link to Maureen Dowd.
CBBblinker, I do agree this is more of a “beach book”, and I agree the first three parts very different from that last section.
And, this reviewer certainly agrees with you:</p>
<p>“So, too, it turns out, is writing about being married to the president—at least in the case of “American Wife.” The last section of the novel is far and away the weakest—perhaps because writing about an actual president (here the link to the Bushes is both constant and unmistakable) hamstrings Sittenfeld. Whatever the reason, the plot, which revolves around a blackmail attempt and whether Alice will speak out against Charlie’s Supreme Court nominee (the book’s running premise is that Alice was—and remains—a secret Democrat), veers perilously close to melodrama. And the narrative gets interrupted by numerous lengthy internal monologues about politics. These monologues, like everything Sittenfeld writes, are well-observed and acute, but they feel too much as if the author is ventriloquizing, using her characters as mouthpieces.”</p>
<p>But, this reviewer goes on to say:
"Yet, until the last section of the novel, it almost doesn’t matter. “American Wife” is about the long history of a marriage, and it’s about the way courtship and early love evolve (and sometimes devolve) into something else, the way we make decisions when we’re young that have consequences we couldn’t have anticipated and, most strikingly, the way men and especially women hitch themselves to their spouse’s lives and careers and end up ferried somewhere they didn’t wish to go.
"</p>
<p>Mary13 – thanks for the quotes from the author about the sex scenes and Charlie’s quick path to the White House. I guess I’m not convinced by her rationale, but to each her own.</p>
<p>^ I agree with you on the first point…if Sittenfeld can give her parents a sex-free copy of the book for Christmas, those scenes aren’t exactly integral to the story. I’m of the “less is more” school of thought anyway; I want to know that Rhett swept Scarlett into his arms and carried her upstairs, but please don’t tell me what he did once he reached the bedroom.</p>
<p>On the second point, Sittenfeld’s comments make sense to me. As SJChessMom quoted in the review above, the book is really about marriage, not politics, and in fact, there are very few political machinations in the novel—mostly just the spectre of the evil Hank in the background. However, once Charlie began his quest for the presidency in earnest, he and Alice would have lived, breathed and eaten politics whether they liked it or not. That all-consuming focus might have eclipsed the “relationship” story Sittenfeld was trying to tell.</p>
<p>CBB, regarding the excessive detail in the book, I remembered actually rereading this sentence which seemed filled with ridiculous detail at the time.
Page- 548- Alice has returned and is now confronted by Charlie about her renegade actions speaking to the soldier’s father. </p>
<p>Curtis writes:
“I sit on the brocade-covered bench at the end of our bed ( the bed frame is Franch walnut, acquired by Theordore and Edith Roosevelt; the mattress is a custom fitted Simmons Beautyrest World Class with memory foam and pillow top). Charlie is still standing behind one of the wingback chairs, eight of nine feet away from me.”
" I love you," I say." </p>
<p>LOL, I recently helped my daughter buy a mattress (a dizzying task).So I reread this ridiculous sentence several times , thinking that Sittenfeld, must have been mattress shopping at the time to have written such details. Why else?
There were other times absurd details were included, but this one really struck me as hilarious, especially at such pivotal point in the story. </p>
<p>Can her other books be like this? Has anyone read Prep or the other books? How do they compare?</p>
<p>My English prof at college used to tell our class that every detail in a novel meant something. If he had lived long enough to read American Wife, he would have had his work cut out for him!</p>
<p>SJCM – yes, that’s the sort of excess I’m talking about. There were many instances; I got to where I just sort of read through them without really reading them, if that makes sense.</p>
<p>Mary13 – every detail? Hm-m-m, perhaps in those novels considered great literature, but …</p>
<p>^ O.K., I concede that Sittenfeld is not Dostoevsky, although their works are of similar length :)…</p>
<p>Here’s another review of American Wife from last year, this one written by Joyce Carol Oates (coincidentally, an author who—if I recall correctly—also has a fondness for excessive detail in her work; I remember reading Joyce Carol Oates years ago and marveling at the number of words she could fit in one sentence.)</p>
<p>I have read both Prep and American wife, and I don’t think that either book had absurd details. Sittenfeld paints vivid scenes with her writing, and she has a gift for snappy dialog and interesting characters. I enjoy every word she writes.</p>
<p>^^^ which book did you prefer ?
I just finished Augusten Bourroughs “Magical Thinking”- and, that had some snappy dialog.
Sittenfeld, made the Bush characters much more interesting than I imagined.
I thought mentioning the Simmons Beauty Rest Pillow Top mattress, at that pivotal scene mentioned above a strange thing to do.</p>
<p>UCLA Band Mom, I think that you posted earlier that you preferred Prep to American Wife. Was that just because of the disconcerting mix of fact and fiction in AW or were there other reasons you found Prep to be a better work?</p>
<p>SJChessMom, it’s funny what we bring to the book as individual readers. The passage you cited made you recall your recent mattress shopping trip, and when I read it I thought, “I wonder if Sittenfeld researched that to see if it’s really what the president sleeps on.” In both cases, the minute detail carried us out of the story for a moment, which is a drawback. And yet, I have to say, that intensely detailed description—right down to the exact position of Charlie—allowed me to picture the scene perfectly, as if I were watching a play.</p>
<p>Could it be (as I think more on it) that Alice narrates that way because she feels detached? That even though it is a pivotal moment, she feels as though she is watching her own life–like a play–rather than really engaging in it?</p>
<p>^^^lol, when I read the mattress passage, I kept thinking…“now this is an antique bed that would have been shorter than modern frames. Did they alter the original bed to get one of these mattresses to fit?”</p>
<p>Mary, I just started “Time Travelers Wife” this evening. I too will be skimming the sex scenes (which is what I did in AW).</p>
<p>Mary very astute observation.
“Could it be (as I think more on it) that Alice narrates that way because she feels detached? That even though it is a pivotal moment, she feels as though she is watching her own life–like a play–rather than really engaging in it?”</p>
<p>Yes, you expressed “exactly” what that kind of detail did for me at that moment in the book, and others which I can’t recall now. I assumed Sittenfeld had researched that mintue fact, (and, didn’t really think she was mattress shopping), but your explanation makes perfect sense. </p>
<p>Alice was always detached, always able to see many facets of different positions, be it political or personal. You are so right that some of her observations, made her more of a viewer and less a participant in her own life
.
And, that is what stumped me at that moment in the book, because Alice finally took a political stand, being who she was, she found her voice, there she was noticing whether the mattress was pillowtop or firm. </p>
<p>I wonder if Alice might have been more content living with Andrew, nestled and secure in her home town, and really more like her “Mother” ?Ok, a reader, but in a cocoon.</p>
<p>My sense is that Alice believes that she and Andrew were potential “soulmates,” and that had he lived, they would have fallen in love, married, raised a family and lived a blissfully happy life. Could be, but it’s impossible to know for sure. Since the story is told solely from Alice’s perspective, there may be a skewed memory there, brought on and fed by the guilt she feels about his death.</p>
<p>I’m sure we all second-guess our choices in life, but Alice seems to be more haunted by the “what-ifs” than most people. In some ways, Alice is as unfit for the role of First Lady as Charlie is for the role of president. Her shortcomings, however, are obscured by her image as The Perfect Wife, while Charlie’s are visible to all the world. To be fair, though, who really IS fit for the roles of First Lady and President? To fulfill everyone’s expectations, they’d have to be super-humans.</p>
<p>[mkm56, I really liked TTW. Maybe I’m too easily manipulated, but I found the story very moving. Yes—skim where appropriate. Or should I say, inappropriate. ;)]</p>
<p>Shifting focus a bit…what did you think of Dena? The questions on the Reader’s Guide are: To what do you attribute Dena’s anger at what she calls Alice’s betrayal? Do you think her anger is justified? Are there other issues influencing Dena’s decision regarding their relationship?</p>
<p>In the early part of the novel, I just could not see the appeal of Dena. She seemed motivated by jealously and not a very generous friend. In the end, however, it seems that Dena has some integrity and Alice may have been too quick to judge her. I would like to have read a chapter or two written by Dena instead of Alice. I bet her perspective on their relationship would have been quite colorful!</p>