Curtis Sittenfield got the inspiration for the novel after writing an article about First Lady Laura Bush and commenting that it seemed like the First Lady’s life was like reading a novel. So a few years after writing the article, she decided that she should be the one to write that novel.
The story isn’t the life and times of Laura Bush but rather the fictional story of Alice Linden using major life points of LB to guide the narrative – life as a librarian, marrying a man with family money, husband’s purchase of a baseball team, life as First Lady to the Governor and then life as First Lady of the United States.
I rather enjoyed the book. I thought it was interesting that we don’t really think of the real lives that go on in the White House and the real backgrounds that happened before they got there. But even that’s not the point of the story – which is relationships. Relationships can be, and very often are, exactly the same as anyone else’s even though there might be more money, more notoriety, more power given to one couple over another.
What was most interesting was the idea that the First Lady might love her husband so much as to ignore his politics. To be in complete disagreement but never say anything to anyone purely out of love for her man. And this point was made again when, shortly after finishing the book, I read that Laura Bush had published her memoir (Spoken from the Heart) and, in the blurb I saw, seems to have admitted that she didn’t always support her husband’s views and decisions. Now I kind of want to read that too.
Curtis Sittenfield also wrote Prep: A Novel about a middle class girl from Indiana who wins a scholarship to an East Coast boarding school which I read several years ago and rather enjoyed.
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