Snazzified

Book #3 - Curtis Sittenfeld’s American Wife

In case you weren’t already aware, this novel is loosely based on Laura Bush. The main character, Alice Lindgren, starts out as a sweet little girl living with her parents and grandmother in a small Wisconsin town and ends the novel as the wife of Charlie Blackwell, the president.

What’s so exciting about novels of this type is that it makes you really think about the character and the person upon which that character was based and wonder which parts hit the nail on the head and which were just creative additions of the author. Did Laura Bush read this, and if so, what did she think? Did Sittenfeld capture some deeper emotion of the former First Lady, or was she way off base? I guess we’ll never know.

Besides the story being so curiosity-raising, it was also quite well written. The characters came alive on the pages with far more range and depth of emotion than their real life counterparts would ever allow.