American Wife

Author:   Curtis Sittenfeld
Publisher:   Thorndike Press
Edition:   large type edition
ISBN:  

9781410413321


Pages:   939
Publication Date:   01 February 2009
Format:   Undefined
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
Limited stock is available. It will be ordered for you and shipped pending supplier's limited stock.

Our Price $86.99 Quantity:  
Add to Cart

Share |

American Wife


Add your own review!

Overview

In the year 2000, in the closest election in American history, Alice Blackwell's husband becomes president of the United States. Their time in the White House proves to be heady, tumultuous, and controversial. But it is Alice's own story - that of a kind, bookish, only child born in the 1940s Midwest who comes to inhabit a life of dizzying wealth and power - that is itself remarkable. Alice candidly describes her small-town upbringing, and the tragedy that shaped her identity; she recalls her early adulthood as a librarian, and her surprising courtship with the man who swept her off her feet; she tells of the crisis that almost ended their marriage; and she confides the privileges and difficulties of being first lady, a role that is uniquely cloistered and public, secretive and exposed. Alice Blackwell, Curtis Sittenfeld has created her most dynamic and complex heroine yet. American Wife is not a novel about politics. It is a gorgeously written novel that weaves race, class, fate and wealth into a brilliant tapestry. It is a novel in which the unexpected becomes inevitable, and the pleasures and pain of intimacy and love are laid bare.

Full Product Details

Author:   Curtis Sittenfeld
Publisher:   Thorndike Press
Imprint:   Thorndike Press
Edition:   large type edition
Dimensions:   Width: 14.60cm , Height: 4.60cm , Length: 21.80cm
Weight:   1.075kg
ISBN:  

9781410413321


ISBN 10:   1410413322
Pages:   939
Publication Date:   01 February 2009
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Undefined
Publisher's Status:   Unknown
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
Limited stock is available. It will be ordered for you and shipped pending supplier's limited stock.

Table of Contents

Reviews

A well-researched book that imagines what lies behind that placid facade of the first lady...Ms. Sittenfeld was not out to sensationalize but to sympathize. <br> - Maureen Dowd, The New York Times <br> Brilliant...[A] triumph...Curtis Sittenfeld has provided a plausible secret history of an American embarrassment - and a grand entertainment. <br> - Joe Klein, Time Magazine<br> <br> A smart and sophisticated portrait of a high-profile political wife...Sittenfeld has an astonishing gift for creating characters that take up residence in readers' heads. <br> - Connie Schultz, Washington Post Book World<br> <br> Sittenfeld boldly imagines the inner life of a first lady...an intimate and daring story...American Wife is a vicarious experience, an up-close portrait of the interior life of a very complicated woman...cinematic. <br> -USA Today<br> <br> The novel, Sittenfeld's most fully realized yet, artfully evokes the painful reverberations of the past. <br> -New Yorker<br> <br> Compelling...enormously sympathetic...Sittenfeld's remarkable gifts as a storyteller draw you back into the fictional world of Alice Blackwell. She writes in the sharp, realistic tradition of Philip Roth and Richard Ford-clear, unpretentious prose; metaphors so spot-on you barely notice them. Sittenfeld may have lifted the set pieces from a real woman's life, but in the process she has created a wise and insightful character who is entirely her own. <br> -Time Out New York<br> <br> Ambitious...Sittenfeld installs herself deep within the psyche of the tight-lipped wife of the president and emerges with an evenhanded, compassionate look at her mind and heart...powerfully intimate. Grade: A <br> -WashingtonPost<br> <br> A masterful highbrow-lowbrow mash-up that satisfies as ass-kicking literary fiction <br>and juicy gossip simultaneously. <br> -Radar<br> <br> With American Wife, Curtis Sittenfeld has deftly crossed an extraordinarily high wire...I read American Wife in just two or three delicious sittings, struck by the granular clarity of the author's descriptions and the down-to-earth believability of the story, bewitched by the charming, frustrating woman at the center of it: Laura Bush. <br>-- Ana Marie Cox, The New York Observer <br> Curtis Sittenfeld is one of our best contemporary chroniclers of class and caste... Sittenfeld imagines this couple so deliciously and so plausibly... Curtis Sittenfeld invents a deep, messy, sympathetic life for a public person whose surface is all we'll ever know. <br> -- St Petersburg Times <br> Immensely readable. It's a nuanced portrait of a woman in a singularly fascinating position. <br> -- Cleveland Plain Dealer <br> A broad, deep and utterly convincing account...a portrait of a woman and a marriage that also brings the reader as close to the probable essence of the outgoing president as any other novelist, or any biographer, is likely to get. <br> -- Portland Oregonian <br> We love Sittenfeld. We love her wry, razor-sharp observations. We love her funny, straightforward honesty...[ American Wife ] is an empathetic, fascinating, and gorgeously written story about a 30-year marriage. We devoured it in one night. <br> -- Boston Magazine <br> Endearing and poignant, humorous and enlightening, American Wife is a must-read for Sittenfeld fans--and a good first read for would-be converts. <br> -- Fredericksburg Freelance Star <br> Anentertaining, racy tale that's inspired more than a bit by the life of our current president's wife, Laura Bush...A well-told tale that will leave many readers wondering: How much of Sittenfeld's story might be closer to fact than fiction? <br> -- St Louis Post Dispatch <br> <br> The scope and detail of American Wife are reminiscent of Richard Russo. Like Russo, she creates characters from the ground up, ancestry, neighborhood, culture and all. <br> -LA Times<br> <br> American Wife promises to be another sensation. <br> - Dayton Daily News<br> <br> American Wife is a sparkling, sprawling novel...A ridiculously gifted writer...Sittenfeld has harnessed her talents perfectly in American Wife, producing an exhilirating epic infused with humor, pain, and hope. <br> -BookPage <br> <br> Widely anticipated and vastly entertaining... An intelligent, well-crafted, psychologically astute novel <br> -New York Sun <br> Highly engaging...fascinating depth. <br> -- Seattle Times <br> A well-researched, juicy roman a clef about the current first lady. <br> -- Boston Globe<br> <br> Ambitious...entertaining...a parable of America in the years of the second Bush presidency. <br> - Joyce Carol Oates, cover of The New York Times Book Review <br> With her first line - Have I made terrible mistakes? - Alice Blackwell (a fictional First Lady modeled after Laura Bush) reels us into a gripping epic of public and private lives. A gem. <br> -Good Housekeeping<br> <br> This searing page-turner will make you wonder what unspoken promises lie behind the victory smiles of any power couple. <br> - Redbook<br> <br> What is Laura Bush thinking? That's the question Sittenfeld ponders in her novel, <br>loosely based on the life of our First Lady...Just as she did in Prep, Sittenfeld masterfully deflates <br>the middle-class fairy tale -- rose gardens and all. <br> -Marie Claire<br> <br> Bold...conveys in convincing, thoroughly riveting detail a life far more complicated than it appears on the surface...What she does here, in prose as winning as it is confident, is to craft out of the first-person narration a compelling, very human voice, one full of kindness and decency. And, as if making the Bush-like couple entirely sympathetic is not enough of a feat in itself, she also provides many rich insights into the emotional ebb and flow of a long-term marriage. <br> -Booklist, Upfront and Starred review<br> <p> From the Hardcover edition.


Author Information

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions
Latest Reading Guide

ls

Shopping Cart
Your cart is empty
Shopping cart
Mailing List