American Wife

AMERICAN Wife is about the life of a First Lady.

The expansive novel encompasses the contradictions and compromises that led to a privileged life in the West Wing. Sittenfeld gives us Alice Blackwell, acknowledging the influence of The Perfect Wife: The Life and Choices of Laura Bush, by Ann Gerhart. Even mildly interested observers of the Bush years will recognise the simulacrum Charlie Blackwell: the recklessness, the alcoholism; the lazy, spoilt brat and the thirst for power he eventually satisfied, surprising his detractors and his sceptical family.

The novel is set in 2007, with Alice reflecting on her and her husband’s long journey to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Alice looks at how ridiculous her life is, celebrity and its entourage, the friends lost along the way and the protocol of their positions. She senses blame directed at her as the wife, “his election is my fault, his presidency is my fault, his war is my fault. Why couldn’t I have just let him be an alcoholic? Plenty of wives put up with it every day.” But Alice privately answers the American people – “All I did was marry him, you elected him.”

Sittenfeld’s novel is less political and more an exploration of Alice Blackwell. It deconstructs how a middle class, quiet, studious girl from Wisconsin marries into a rich, clannish dynasty and finds her footing, how she sacrifices her ideals. Weighing her contribution within the parameters of the life she leads and an alternative life, Alice thinks, I probably would have done less, but I wouldn’t have had to face the reality that I could have done more.” Sittenfeld’s portraiture of her heroine never deviates from sympathetic respect. In Charlie Blackwell she sketches a big, irresponsible ego with a few redeeming brush strokes. The narrative is assured with clever insights, but it leaves the reader wondering just how close or how far Alice is from Laura.