<p>Mary13,
I think Priscilla is very much the reincarnation of Barbara Bush. I used to be a huge Barbara fan and devoured her first book. The second one came out and I was a happy reader until she became critical of James Baker and his wife in it. I thought that was very bad form and lost respect for her. She is very much a woman of her generation who let others take over the child rearing when opportunities more interesting came along. For example, she farmed out Doro when George H.W. got his China post. I kind of loved Laura Bush best after she made her speech at the Gridiron dinner in 2005. Here’s one of her quotes about BB:
“People often wonder what my mother-in-law is really like. People think she’s a sweet, grandmotherly Aunt Bee type. She’s actually more like Don Corleone.”<br>
I also thought the author nailed GHWB through Harold, particularly when he shows up at Emilie’s funeral sitting in the back to provide support for Alice. Very touching.</p>
<p>^ Very interesting. I see from a quick read on Wikipedia that Barbara Bush has uttered a few choice quotes in the past that make her sound very Priscilla-esque:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Re the people displaced by Hurricane Katrina:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Did you see the movie “W”? I wonder how well those portrayals captured the real Bush family.</p>
<p>I watched “W” right before I started read AW. There were s more than a few similarities between the book and the movie. GHW came off pretty well in the movie too I thought.</p>
<p>I liked the book. When I took my, then, 13 year old to see “W” she cried the whole way home. She felt so bad for him. I was suprised by her reaction since she’s such a liberal. She said she just thought he would never be able to live up to his parent’s expectations and that was all he wanted. Interesting what kids see. I thought the Pricilla character was really sympathetic and loved in the end when the ‘friend’ turned out to be a real friend afterall…</p>
<p>^ Sounds like you’ve raised a wonderfully sensitive daughter! When I saw “W,” it was the first time I was able to think of George Bush as a human being rather than a…well, I’ll go no further out of respect for conservatives on this forum. 
Seriously, though, it made me see him as a more complex person, struggling to come to terms with complicated family relationships. He struck me as a man who would not willingly hurt anyone, yet who could not resist assuming a role of power for which he was completely unequipped. Remember that exchange from “The Wizard of Oz”?:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>(poetgrl, did you mean you found the character of Dena sympathetic? If so, I agree—at least the later version of Dena, not the young Dena, whom I didn’t like very much.)</p>
<p>Yes, I meant Dena, who I thought was very well-drawn and believable, even the young Dena, who was just the kind of unsupportive type of companion Pricilla seemed to be drawn to. I liked how that was kind of set up as her relationship with her grandmother, too. Loving but irresponsible people, also, interestingly, all of them were very loyal, even if they put themselves first…including the Prez.</p>
<p>I didn’t like Dena, and thought she displayed her true character when she turned her back on her devoted friend. I had some difficulty understanding exactly what drew Alice to her, unless it was that she was fun, frisky and brought joy to Alice’s low key life. (Not unlike Alice’s attraction to Charlie).</p>
<p>Mary, interesting concept to wonder what Dena’s view would have been on their friendship, had Sittenfeld developed her character a bit more. Somehow I doubt I could have been more empathetic to Dena, though.</p>
<p>Another non fan of Deena here. I get that she thought Alice “took” Charlie from her, but to carry that grudge for so long??? I got the impression that Deena actually knew Charlie wasn’t interested in her. I guess the whole thing about opposites attracting applies here.</p>
<p>To poetgrl’s point about Alice surrounding herself with loving yet irresponsible people—one exception to that would be Jessica. She seemed the most “in tune” with Alice. But the thirty year age difference plus the employer-employee relationship precludes a genuine friendship.</p>
<p>By the way (dramatically changing topics here), I wondered when I read American Wife if George Bush were really as crude as Charlie. Please tell me there’s not a photograph of him at his brother’s wedding with his fly unzipped and his…oh never mind. I did find this article (you don’t want to know the combination of keywords I googled):</p>
<p>[Bush’s</a> fart-joke legacy. - By Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine](<a href=“http://www.slate.com/id/2150806/]Bush’s”>Bush's fart-joke legacy.)</p>
<p>Also, Mary, the Jessica relationship is important because it shows that Alice has changed, at least somewhat, and it is important that the character change. It is also a reward for her “good deeds” in the past, so to speak, so that she was “right.” But Jessica also represents, to a certain degree, as does the daughter, a different generation of woman, and the fact that Alice is comfortable with this new generation, as well.</p>
<p>This IS a book about women: the grandmother, dena, the sister in law; Jessica, Alice’s daughter; Pricilla; Alice’s mother…And Alice’s relationship with herself, too, how women have negotiated power, gotten power, given power away, even to the point of the grandmother not having a relationship with the Doctor because, basically, of her son…or the Doctor, at the end, attempting to gain power over Alice, or even the way Dena attempted to gain power over Alice…How Alice always had the power, kind of like Dorothy was always able to go home, and how she finds this out, over time, through Pricilla, through Dena, through time.</p>
<p>Mary 13 …very amusing link! Good find- George W = Charlie</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, I did prefer Prep. I read American Wife first, and was so impressed by the author’s writing that the next book I read was Prep. Prep has original characters and plot; American Wife does not. In Prep, the author Curtis Sittenfeld built their complex personalities up from scratch, through zippy dialog and fascinating descriptions of their hobbies, clothes, friends, and dorm rooms. By the end of the book I cared deeply about each one of them. But in American Wife, the only really original character was the lesbian grandmother. Every other character was basically somebody from real life with their name changed. Namely, the Bush family members, political cronies, etc. And the plot in American Wife was a given as well. Just a fictionalization of Laura Bush’s story.</p>
<p>^ I am going to put Prep on my reading list.</p>
<p>poetgrl, your observation re the women of the novel reminded me of a comment sabaray posted earlier: “At times I felt the men were only there for background. I felt they could have been a bit more developed. The women seemed larger than life to me." I would add that the men were also very unappealing—Hank, Simon Tornkvist, Pete Imhof, and let’s face it, Charlie too at times. Come to think of it…the only male character I liked was Andrew—and he was initially mistaken for a girl!</p>
<p>Yes, I thought it was a novel about American Wives…her grandmother was a wife ( a widow), and her mother, obviously, Pricilla, all the women in her friendship group before she met Charlie were wives, Alice, all the sister in laws, and, in the end, Dena. The male characters were props. In Prep there was the same thing with the boys, to some extent, and also, Sittnefeld doesn’t really write sympathetic characters so much as wealthy characters surrounding on not-so-wealthy protagonist, and what that does to all of them. Her work seems, to some extent, to be about class…but, tis true she is no Tolstoy or Austen. ;)</p>
<p>There’s another strong woman in the novel that no one has mentioned yet: Miss Ruby. What did you think of her relationship with the Blackwell family? In some ways, it had an uncomfortable antebellum southern plantation feel to it. Miss Ruby was a 24 hour on-call servant and Priscilla kept her firmly in her place (or tried to—Alice did what she could to quietly sabotage that). Yet Miss Ruby had a lot more dignity and class than her employer. Still, she wasn’t strong enough to say “no” to Charlie when he needed live-in protection from his fear of the dark. It took her daughter Yvonne to finally call a halt to that set-up.</p>
<p>Somewhere down the line, I think we’ll be reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. It will be interesting to look back and see if the Miss Ruby-Priscilla relationship shares similarities with characters in Stockett’s novel.</p>
<p>Recently finished The Help for another Book Club. Loved, loved, loved it!! Very well done.</p>
<p>Getting ready to start The Help after I get through pre-registration for advisees in a few weeks. Can’t wait!</p>
<p>I just picked up The Help from the library. I think I was on the waiting list for over 4 months.</p>
<p>Mary, I was drawn to Miss Ruby, an outsider, like Alice.
I was conflicted about Alice’s motives for taking Miss Ruby to the play.
Was Alice just feeling lonely and angry, and did you feel she was acting a bit selfish, when she extended the play invitation to Miss Ruby?</p>