Book #15 Completed! "American Wife" by Curtis Sittenfeld

So you are not supposed to judge a book by its cover right? Then why the Hell do they have cover art/pictures on them anyway? I picked this book by its cover and it worked out alright enough.

Oh wait, before I get into the book I had a story that went something like this:

So this is a true story, or at very least my account of it is true. So a few years (and one head coach ago), the ASU Sun Devil football team was faced with a pretty interesting competition for the starting quarterback job. Quarterback A and Quarterback B were pretty evenly matched during spring practice. QB A was a year older than QB B and most people thought based on just sheer experience that QB A would eventually win the job, based on his tenure. So it was surprising to many that there was no starting quarterback named after spring practice. So comes the summer and still no word from the head coach. Fall practice starts and the coach announces that the competition is still wide open. People are starting to panic now. Sports talk radio is blown up with people calling in complaining about the indecision of the head coach and his alleged incompetence in handling this situation. With a week to go before the start of the season, QB A is named the starting quarterback. Not 48 hours later, the head coach tells the media that he has changed his mind and the competition is still wide open. 24 hours after that, QB B is named the starting quarterback and shortly after that, QB A leaves the team for good. People are up in arms about how this played out. "OMG the head coach is a tool. He can't make a decision to save his life. The season is ruined" etc, etc, etc.

I have a friend who just so happens to know some of the people who are on the football team during this time. Not like scrubs but actual starters. So said friend tells me (and since I heard it from a friend it is purely conjecture so bear that in mind) that he asked his football team friends what happened with that whole QB A/QB B thing and this is what he was told: Many of the leaders on the team were pulling for QB B, not because he was the most gifted or gave them the best chance to win, but rather they were concerned about QB A. See, apparently QB A had a bit of a cocaine habit - purely recreational of course - and was kind of a stuck up prima donna. They also knew that QB A had approached them and some other students with the offer of SELLING them coke if they wanted to get some. Apparently he was working his way up from the consumer side of the business to the distribution side. Anyway, the team members kept it to themselves because they thought the coach would make the right decision on his own and just pick QB B. When he didn't, the leaders on the football team decided to have a meeting with the coach and let him know of their concerns. They did so and that is what lead to the change.

Now, none of the above paragraph was ever made public and the coach was crucified by the fans and the media when the season turned out to be mediocre at best. So much so, he was terminated at the end of the year.

So what does this have to do with the book you ask? The reason why I tell this story is because several times during the book I kept thinking back to this story and the idea that what we see is just the tip of the iceberg. Trust me, it will make as much sense as I ever seem to here in a bit.

Oh, yeah - judge books by their covers. That is important. It is how I decided to read this book. The book is a FICTIONAL account of the character Alice Lindgren. It is a chronological account of her life starting with her early years as the only child to a solidly middle class family in Wisconsin. Her childhood was unremarkable except for her love of books and attachment to her grandmother, whom lived with the family. When Alice is in high school, her and her grandmother take a trip to Chicago to visit a doctor friend of the grandmother's. I probably should have put friend in quotation marks because she is grandma's special "friend". Oh and yea, I did say "she" there. So Alice is conflicted about grandma being a lesbian though I don't know why except for the fact that it is 1962 and I don't think the razor was invented until the early 1980's but I digress. Anyway, Alice meets a boy, falls for boy, drives to a party to see said boy - runs a stop sign - hits a car - kills a person - person happens to be said boy. This chick has bad karma.

Alice is all QQ about the killing of said boy and goes to apologize to his family. It is a Sunday and said family is not home because they are good Wisconsinites and are at church. HOWEVER (you should just stop reading now) said older brother of dead boy is home. Well, yeah - home run!

Brother of dead boy is a jackass. He is not conflicted or emotionally compromised by the death of his brother - he is a sociopath. So, a couple more runs cross the plate and Alice has enough and calls it quits. Guess when the pill was invented? 1963. Guess now what "condition" Alice is in? Lesbian grandma (who is the coolest character in the whole book I must say) to the rescue and so Alice and Granny take a bus ride to Chicago again to see Dr. Wiccam (who is a OB-GYN kind of doctor) and once the anesthesia wears off, Alice is no longer in the family way.

Alice goes to school (not Princeton sadly) and gets her teaching degree. Goes back to school (not Princeton) and gets a master's degree in library science (Like Kelli S!) and she becomes a school librarian. Alice meets Charlie who DID go to Princeton (yay Princeton!) and to the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania - two of my favorite schools ever! Charlie is from a very rich family and after a whirlwind romance, they get hitched something like 8 weeks after they meet - craziness I know right!

Ok so stuff happens, time passes - Charlie drinks then she is going to leave him and he stops. He finds God - God doesn't find her and she it completely fine with this because she does not want to be found. He buys the Milwaukee Brewers then he becomes governor of the state of Wisconsin (at this point do you see the parallel to a real life story?) and then finally the President of the United States of America. Her secret threatens to get out from Dr. Wiccam who now lives in Cicero (which is not a good town by the by) and is 104 years old. Fortunately, the good doctor kicks the bucket before she can tell anyone credible and that is basically it. The end.

Oh before I forget - I really try not to have any grammatical mistakes in my blog but it does happen sometimes, usually more so than not if I have been at the cough syrup so my apologizes.

If you didn't get it, the story presented in "American Wife" is a rough outline of the life of former first lady Laura Bush. Mrs. Bush happens to be one of the most well regarded first ladies in the history of our country (coming in second to Elinor Roosevelt) which is somewhat odd since nobody seemed to like her husband.

Which brings me to my original story - not to preach or anything but too much of public opinion is based on the tip of the iceberg that we either see or are presented with. The other 90% of the truth that is underwater becomes out of sight and out of mind and therefore many decisions are very strong and polarized with incomplete and sometimes, inaccurate, information. Anyway, you should seek out the whole truth before judging - unless it is a book and you are judging it by its cover and then it is perfectly fine and you should go with God on that.

I liked the book. It was a interesting story. The character of Alice I found to be interesting but not overbearing if that makes any sense. I particularly liked what she believed in and how she handled various situations that arose throughout the course of her life. I really liked grandma. I even liked the character of Charlie - mainly because it was obvious that he was a romantic and had strong emotional ties to Alice and their family. Oh and Alice has a secret service agent assigned to her that played football for ASU (which is perfectly plausible since none of our guys ever make in into the pros)

What I didn't like: Did you read the opening story about the ASU quarterbacks? I have provided you with an outline. Now go write a story. I bet almost if not all of you reading this could take that outline and fill in the dialogue to make it into a story, play or even novel. By using First Lady Bush's life as a framework for a story, I felt the author cheated a bit in the creative writing process. It was well written, but come on - the hard work had already been done for you!

I don't think Laura Bush had an abortion but she did kill a kid from her high school in a traffic accident during her senior year (I looked it up). That was sad to learn and I felt bad for Alice and then I really felt bad for Laura Bush. She could have had an abortion, I really don't know. She is, unlike her husband, a pro-choice supporter and identifies herself as agnostic.

The other thing I did not like about this book is that the author tends of go on these flashbacks all the time which do not seem to be related to the topic at hand. Just tell the story in a linear fashion since that is how you laid it out. Seriously!

Oh a review huh - well I would have to say that I would give it a:

Vroom, Vroom, Vroom, Vroom (4 out of 5 "Vroom's" on the motorcycle scale of awesomeness)

and of course the book got some bonus consideration for naming my three favorite schools of all time (ASU, Princeton, and Wharton)

Oh and as a side note - Curtis Sittenfeld is a girl, not a boy. I was going to go on this rant about how I do not feel that a man can bring justice to the emotions and feelings of a woman but then I found out Curtis was a girl and I dropped that whole thing.