American Wife (2009)

I wanted to read this because I loved Rodham, and this book received so much acclaim when it came out. I didn’t think I’d want to read about a reinvention of Laura Bush, but in the past years my opinion about George Bush (and by extension Laura) has softened.

Anyway, this was much less juicy than Rodham, way more introspective. Maybe because there was no Bill Clinton or Donald Trump characters spicing things up! But both novels helped me see a very different perspective of a person I didn’t think I liked, and understand why a wife could love or respect that person.

Alice loves Charlie because he is fun. Funny and loving and brash. She feels lucky that he loves her, that she didn’t settle for a husband at 31. But she is aware of his faults - intellectual laziness, nasty temper. It seems like much of the time she just chooses not to think about his competence or lack of.

Usually I prefer more plot in my books, and this was very thoughtful at times. The contrast between the perceived life she could have had with Andrew Imhof, a sweet boy from high school (who died when she collided with his car). Would she have been happy living on a Wisconsin dairy farm? Or is she better/happier with Charlie and her discomfort as governors wife and First Lady? If she had remained a schoolteacher, she could have made an impact in people’s lives - a direct impact, that could have grown in size over time. As First Lady, she may have the ability to do more, and she wonders if she has done enough with the opportunities she has? How would she do more, given her dislike of the limelight, and the many areas where her beliefs differ from Charlie’s? ( )

American Wife is the autobiographical tale of a fictional First Lady. From modest beginnings in Wisconsin and a job she loves as an elementary school librarian, Alice surprises herself for falling for the charming but wastrel son of Wisconsin’s former governor. His alcoholism and general unreliability threaten to put an end to their marriage until he buys a baseball team, finds God and stops drinking. It will perhaps not surprise you to learn that he then becomes governor of Wisconsin and finally President of the USA, with his election following a knife-edge result in Florida. If this all sounds very familiar indeed, the author makes clear she was inspired by the life of Laura Bush but this is a much more personal and explicit account than any First Lady is likely to produce. It is also a novel rich in observations about family life, friendship, marriage, politics, money (and the relationship between them) and the changing mores of America from the 1950s. It is a literary page-turner, all the more gripping in the knowledge of the real-life backdrop.

I'm not even sure why drove me to this book. The title and blurb don't sound like something I would enjoy reading. I must have picked up a recommend somewhere. From the first word, I was hooked. An ordinary girl from the midwest who lives very nearly the same years I do... I could understand every bit of this story personally. It was an amazing read. ( )

This is a thought-provoking, well-written book. ( )

This book was so much more interesting to read than I thought it was going to be. I found myself staying up at night to read it and wondering what was going to happen next. The first three sections really give you a lot of detail about the life of the narrator and then the last section the author just sort of jumps right into "ok and then we were in the Gov's house then the White House" but it ends up playing out ok because of the story she tells about what happens to them there. I would definitely recommend this book. ( )