I bought this book up almost a year ago at Borders, after a handful of times of picking it up, reading the back and contemplating, then putting it back in favor of something else. I bought it a few weeks before a semester started, got 100 pages in, then had to put it aside for school books. I finally got the chance to restart and actually finish it. And I loved it.
I had no idea this was based on Laura Bush when I picked it up. I might not have if I had known, I'm not a big political person. I don't like to talk politics, share my beliefs, or read/hear too deeply about others' beliefs. But this book was fiction so I didn't think anything of it. Based on the book, I think I'd love Laura Bush. I know nothing of her true self, besides being a First Lady. But in the book she's an avid reader, a shy and rather introspective person, born and raised in the Midwest, marries into a boisterous family, works as a librarian because she loves reading to kids, and so on. Basically, I saw a lot of myself in this Alice Lindgren.
The first two sections of the book follow a basic fiction plotline-showing how she grew up and became Mrs. Bush (er, Blackwell). I was drawn in from the beginning (I love her grandma, who does nothing but read and smoke). The third section was the most intriguing, because in it she, Alice, questions her husband's choices in "the war", their decisions and choices leading up to and through the presidency, what it means to become famous and how she deals with it, what a marriage really is and what it asks of the two people in it, and a lot of other big picture topics. As Alice, she doesn't give a lot of answers, just poses the questions, which I find more intriguing. She does answer some things, like why she decided to stay married and how she keeps herself sane despite all the news and tabloids.
I have no idea how much this Alice Lundgren/Blackwell character lines up with Laura Bush, but she's a really powerful character. Maybe I think so because I find myself relating so much to her, but I think anyone can see her as such.
The one thing that distracted me is the author herself. Although the book is written through Alice's eyes and she is a self-proclaimed Democrat, I felt like it was more so the author's self-proclaimed liberal views showing through in a lot of the political content. There wasn't a lot of positive representation of Republican people or beliefs, despite the book being full of them. And each time she did discuss Bush's (Blackwell's) decisions in his presidency, the people he chose to work with, his stance on the war, etc., she displayed him in a negative light, at least in my opinion. The criticism was often through Alice's eyes, but for me, it read as the author's criticisms being pushed into the novel. Charlie Blackwell, aka George Bush, doesn't get much of a chance to show the different sides of his personality, especially during the presidential section of the book. Sittenfeld repeatedly tried to show how endearing Charlie's character was through Alice's eyes, but it felt condescending rather than honest some of the time. Maybe it's impossible to write a book about politics without inserting your own beliefs, but I found it distracting.
Otherwise, I really did love this book. And I love the character Alice Lundgren. And I'm tempted to get some Laura Bush biographies now, just to see how much of her is in this character.
And because I related to the book so much, I marked passages all over the place, so I figured I'd share a few to give you a taste of the writing and characters.
At such moments, I felt that we were like the people in California who live in enormous houses on the sides of cliffs, that our lives are beautiful but precarious, their foundations vulnerable...Life was so hard for so many people, the odds were stacked so precipitously against them. The other adults I knew did not seem overly distressed about the imbalances, and certainly not surprised by them, whereas to me they were constantly surprising, they were never not upsetting.
I did not care if Ella went to Princeton, if she was exceptionally pretty, if she grew up to marry a rich man, or really, if she married at all--there were many incarnations of her I felt confident I could embrace, a hippie or a housewife or a career woman. But what I did care about, what I wanted most fervently, was for her to understand that hard work paid off, that decency begat decency, that humility was not a raincoat you occasionally pulled on when you thought conditions called for it, but rather a constant way of existing in the world, knowing that good and bad luck touched everyone and none of us was fully responsible for our fortunes or tragedies. Above all, I wanted my daughter to understand that many people were guided by bitterness and that it was best to avoid these individuals--their moods and behavior were a hornet's nest you had no possible reason to do anything other than bypass and ignore.
(This last one is long, but I couldn't pass it up, being a Midwest girl at heart. And agreeing full heartedly with the whole 3 paragraph passage.)
Then we were back in Wisconsin, a place that in late summer is thrillingly beautiful. When I was young, this was knowledge shared by everyone around me; as an adult, I've never stopped being surprised by how few of the people with whom I interact have any true sense of the states between Pennsylvania and Colorado. Some of these people have spent weeks or months working in such states, but unless they're midwesterners too, to them the region is nothing but polling numbers and caucuses...these people eat at Perkins, and then they complain about the quality of the restaurants.
Admittedly, the area possesses a dowdiness I personally have always found comforting, but to think of Wisconsin specifically or the Midwest as a whole as anything other than beautiful is to ignore the extraordinary power of the land. The lushness of the grass and trees in August, the roll of the hills (far less of the Midwest is flat than outsiders seem to imagine), that rich smell of soil, the evening sunlight over a field of wheat, or the crickets chirping at dusk on a residential street; All of it, it has always made me feel at peace. There is room to breathe, there is a realness of place. The seasons are extreme, but they pass and return, pass and return, and the world seems far steadier than it does from the vantage point of a coastal city.
Certainly picturesque towns can be found in New England or California or the Pacific Northwest, but I can't shake the sense that they're too picturesque. On the East Coast, especially, these places--Princeton, New Jersey, say, or Farmington, Connecticut--seem to me aggressively quaint, unbecomingly smug, and even xenophobic, downright paranoid in their wariness of those who might somehow infringe upon the local charm. I suspect this wariness is tied to the high cost of real estate, the fear that there might not be enough space or money and what there is of both must be clung to and defended. The West Coast, I think, has a similar self-regard--all that talk of proximity to the ocean and the mountains--and a beauty that I can't help seeing as showy-offy. But the Midwest: It is quietly lovely, not preening with the need to have its attributes remarked on. It is the place I am calmest and most myself.
I really think you'd enjoy this book! It balances the political with growing up, life decisions, marriage and babies, friendships, and all the other things that make politics bearable. And Alice Lindgren/Blackwell is one of my favorite characters in a long time.
