American Wife

I’m conflicted about American Wife. On the one hand: I was completely sucked into it. I stayed up too late reading it more than once, I loved the exploration of the difference between the perception and the reality of a relationship, and I loved the way the author portrayed the rural Midwest as a place to love and be proud of, instead of treating it as something to run away from.

On the other hand, there is the presumptuousness of the premise. It’s a take on Laura Bush’s personal history and a fictionalized version of who she is and what she thinks. And I find that very… presumptuous. The author doesn’t know who she is, doesn’t know that she’s secretly a Democrat, doesn’t know so many things, and to think that someone who researched but never interviewed the subject could get anywhere near who Laura Bush is, is baffling to me. Aren’t there better ways to explore the same themes that are going to be less wrong?

And maybe I could let that go, but every time something happened in American Wife that didn’t quite ring true — the husband’s conversion to Christianity (it really took just two weeks with only a nominal struggle?), the whole section where her husband is President — it was because it sticking too close to the Bush story and the author couldn’t let the characters develop naturally.

It’s really the combination of those last two that makes me unable to recommend this otherwise very good book; strip off the Laura Bush premise and you could fix both problems. But they probably wouldn’t have sold nearly as many copies without it.

American Wife: I just don’t know.