Rodham
The SUNDAY TIMES bestseller asking: What if Hillary hadn’t married Bill?
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3.9 • 34 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
BY THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF ROMANTIC COMEDY, AMERICAN WIFE and PREP
'This addictive novel is the SLIDING DOORS of American politics. Gripping' Stylist
'Startlingly good. One of my favourite writers' KATE ATKINSON
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'Awfully opinionated for a girl' is what they call Hillary as she grows up in her Chicago suburb.
Smart, diligent, and a bit plain, that's the general consensus. Then Hillary goes to college, and her star rises. At Yale Law School, she continues to be a leader - and catches the eye of driven, handsome and charismatic Bill. But when he asks her to marry him, Hillary gives him a firm No.
How might things have turned out for them, for America, for the world itself, if Hillary Rodham had really turned down Bill Clinton?
With her sharp but always compassionate eye, Sittenfeld explores the loneliness, moral ambivalence and iron determination that characterise the quest for high office, as well as the painful compromises demanded of female ambition in a world ruled by men.
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'A lot of fun. A wonderful sad dream of what might have happened' Guardian
'It ends up being a love letter to a type: the female intellectual, who is given none of the licence of her less talented male peers. At the end, I found myself saying Oh My God' Observer
'An explosive new book' Grazia
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Curtis Sittenfeld’s third, breakthrough novel, American Wife, was a fictional tale of a First Lady who bore plenty of resemblance to Laura Bush. Here, Sittenfeld returns to US politics, this time without changing any names, to imagine the paths Hillary Rodham would have taken had she not married Bill Clinton. Rebuffing Bill’s marriage proposal during the early chapters of the book, she goes on to forge her own compelling tale in the political world. The story works so well because the Hillary portrayed here is convincing and familiar, and as the absorbing plot unfolds, Sittenfeld’s attempts to unveil the private person behind the public persona chime with the real-life history we know. It may be fiction but Rodham has plenty of authentic things to say about politics, prejudice, ambition and the world we live in.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this entertaining political fantasy, Sittenfeld (Eligible) imagines Hillary Clinton's personal and professional life if she and Bill had gone their separate ways instead of marrying. The novel begins with an intimate perspective on historical events: At Wellesley's 1969 graduation, Hillary feels the exhilaration of speaking her mind in public. Two years later, she meets Bill at Yale Law School. He is handsome, larger than life, proud of his Arkansas roots. She is ambitious, smart, hardworking, and opinionated. They fall in love and discuss marriage, but break up because of Bill's philandering. Bill runs for president in 1992 but drops out of the race. Hillary, meanwhile, is a year into her first term as senator from Illinois. When she runs for president, in 2016, Bill is one of three primary challengers. Scenes with cameos from Donald Trump prove livelier than familiar elements like Hillary's chocolate chip cookies, which she brings to a Yale potluck. Still, Sittenfeld movingly captures Hillary's awareness of her transformation into a complicated public figure ("The feeling was in the collapse, the simultaneity, of how I seemed to others and who I really was") Readers won't have to be feminists (though it would help) to relish Sittenfeld's often funny, mostly sympathetic, and always sharp what-if.
