In 1971, Hillary Rodham is a young woman full of promise. Life magazine covered her Wellesley commencement speech, she's attending Yale Law School, and she's on the forefront of student activism and the women's rights movement. Then she meets a fellow law student named Bill Clinton. A charismatic Southerner, Bill is already laying the groundwork for his political career.
In each other, Hillary and Bill find a profound intellectual, emotional, and physical connection that neither has previously experienced. In the real world, Hillary followed Bill back to Arkansas, and he proposed several times. Although she turned him down more than once, she eventually accepted and became Hillary Clinton.
But in Curtis Sittenfeld's powerfully imagined tour de force of fiction, Hillary follows a different path. Listening to her doubts about the prospective marriage, she endures a devastating break-up and leaves Arkansas. Over the next four decades, she blazes her own trail-one that unfolds in public as well as in private, that crosses paths again (and again) with Bill Clinton, that raises questions about the trade-offs all of us must make to build a life.
Brilliantly weaving actual historical events into a riveting fictional tale, Sittenfeld delivers an uncannily astute story for our times. In exploring the loneliness, moral ambivalence, and iron determination that characterize the quest for political power, as well as both the exhilaration and painful compromises demanded of female ambition in a world still mostly run by men, Rodham is a singular and unforgettable novel.
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[There was a feeling I got before I spoke in front of an audience and sometimes also before an event that was less public but still important, an event that could have consequences in my life - taking the LSAT's, for example, which I'd done in a classroom on the campuses of Harvard]***
(@penguinrandom, 19 May 2020, 417 pages, ebook, copy from the publisher and voluntarily reviewed, #BlogTour 8 July via @RandomTTours)
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This is a pretty amazing book. I'm not from the USA so I know very basic information about Bill and Hilary Clinton. This is the kind of book that people will have different responses to. Some people might not like the liberties taken will Bill Clinton, portraying him as a sleazy womaniser. Some people may love this. I can see this book being one people love or hate. I personally loved it, a work of sheer brilliance. It's sort of alternative history, a what if novel with amazing depth. A lot of the book os focused around American politics such as running for office, campaigning for President etc. The political system in the US is vastly different from the UK so I was surprised to enjoy this aspect of Rodham and found it quite fascinating actually. This is a fresh, original and brilliant piece of writing,
