The Shadowlands Book

I'm a recent fan of Curtis Sittenfeld. I hadn't read any of her work until I read Prep, but once I finished it, I wanted to read everything she wrote. I was doubly intrigued when I found out that the protagonist of American Wife is a very thinly veiled Laura Bush.

For the most part, I enjoyed American Wife. The first three sections were so engaging that I never wanted to put the book down. Alice Blackwell is the kind of character you wish were real. I found myself feeling like I were in her kitchen, listening to her stories over a cup of coffee. The Alice Blackwell in these sections is a woman that is wonderfully complex and interesting. The real magic is that all the hype about the character being modeled after Laura Bush completely disappeared.

However, that complexity gets lost in the last section. If there was any doubt that Alice is Laura and that Charlie is George W, it gets thrown out the window immediately as Sittenfeld presents the Blackwells with the same history as the Bushes: the controversial 2000 election, the terrorist attacks, the failed war, even a grieving father that protests the war by camping outside the White House. At that point, I feel the book lost some of its magic for me. The prose got much more expository and the story turned heavy handed. I wish the story and its characters had maintained the same complexities it did in its earlier sections.