
Published: 09/07/2020

Doing for Hillary Clinton what she did for Laura Bush in American Wife, Sittenfeld dexterously imagines a world in which the presidential hopeful never married Bill Clinton.
Winner of the Costa Novel Award 2020
What if Hillary Rodham had turned down Bill Clinton's proposal of marriage?
In American Wife, Curtis Sittenfeld painted a picture of an ordinary American girl who found herself married to a President - basing it on the life of Laura Bush. In this new novel, she takes another ordinary American girl, Hillary Rodham ('You are awfully opinionated for a girl, Hillary'), and explores how her life might have turned out if she had stayed an independent woman.
Publisher: Transworld Publishers Ltd
ISBN: 9780857526120
Number of pages: 432
Weight: 667 g
Dimensions: 240 x 162 x 38 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
'This addictive novel is the Sliding Doors of American politics. Gripping' - Stylist
'A lot of fun. A wonderful, sad dream of what might have happened' - Guardian
'An explosive new book' - Grazia
'Sittenfeld's Rodhma offers the catharsis of uncomplicated regret' - The New Yorker
'While telling a compelling story, Rodham provides an insightful analysis of the function of sexim in our political discourse. Sittenfeld is at her wittiest when recreating the men who dominate American politics' - Washington Post
'A nauseating, moving, morally suggestive, technically brilliant book that made me think more than any in recent memory about the aims and limits of fiction' - NPR
'Hugely enjoyable' - Wall Street Journal
'Gleefully abandons biographical analysis for thought experimentation' - TIME
'This isn't just fiction as fantasy, this is fiction as therapy. A serious work of literary fiction designed to rally the spirits of liberal readers' - San Francisco Chronicle
'Her ear is attuned to inconvenient truths and double standards, particularly misogyny in America. She specialises in awkward encounters and surprise shifts in power' - The New Statesman
'An ingenious yet plausible glimpse of an alternative reality, and so involving that it occasionally comes as a shock to realise that there is a different reality, and we are living in it' - The Spectator
'By tilting history on its side, Sittenfeld makes Hillary seem a fresh character and remarkably sympathetic' - Evening Standard
'Rodham explores the mysterious territory between the inner and outer lives of a person who has long been a source of fascination, adulation and loathing' - Financial Times
'Getting inside a living person's head sounds like a colossally bad idea, but Sittenfeld makes it convincing here, just as she did with a character based on First Lady Laura Bush in her 2008 novel, American Wife' - BBC Culture
'Deviously clever . . . Sittenfeld's Hillary is both a player in the Game of Thrones and a romance novel heroine. She's a brilliant badass who has found her voice and knows how to use it. She's whoever she wants to be' - The Oprah Magazine
'As Hillary finds her groove, so the momentum and entertainment builds, as does your admiration for how ingeniously and plausibly Sittenfeld has re-written the script' - Daily Mail
'A counterfactual novel ... throbs with energy' - TLS
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“A fantastically well written and intriguing read...”
I love the concept of this novel and Sittenfeld’s writing is outstanding and easy to read considering the complex subject matter. I must admit that I know next to nothing about American politics and although a lot of... More

“Absorbing alternative history of Hillary’s life”
I am a fan of Curtis Sittenfeld and particularly love American Wife, based on the life of Laura Bush, so I had this on pre-order from March, as it wasn’t published until July here in the UK.
I wasn’t disappointed;...
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“An interesting alternate history”
Hillary refused Bill's offer of marriage twice, it was only on the third time that she accepted him. Curtis Sittenfeld's newest novel imagines what could have happened if she had refused him a third time -... More
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