1 June 1991

julia roberts is getting married. It's true: Her dress will be an eight-thousand-dollar custom-made two-piece gown from the Tyler Trafficante West Hollywood salon, and at the reception following the ceremony, she'll be able to pull off the train and the long part of the skirt to dance. The bridesmaids' dresses will be sea-foam green, and their shoes (Manolo Blahnik, $425 a pair) will be dyed to match. The bridesmaids themselves will be Julia's agents (she has two), her makeup artist, and a friend who's also an actress, though no one has ever heard of her. The cake will be four-tiered, with violets and sea-foam ribbons of icing.

"What I want to know is where's our invitation?" Elizabeth says. "Did it get lost in the mail?" Elizabeth--Hannah's aunt--is standing by the bed folding laundry while Hannah sits on the floor, reading aloud from the magazine. "And who's her fiancé again?"

"Kiefer Sutherland," Hannah says. "They met on the set of Flatliners."

"Is he cute?"

"He's okay." Actually, he is cute--he has blond stubble and, even better, one blue eye and one green eye--but Hannah is reluctant to reveal her taste; maybe it's bad.

"Let's see him," Elizabeth says, and Hannah holds up the magazine. "Ehh," Elizabeth says. "He's adequate." This makes Hannah think of Darrach. Hannah arrived in Pittsburgh a week ago, while Darrach--he is Elizabeth's husband, Hannah's uncle--was on the road. The evening Darrach got home, after Hannah set the table for dinner and prepared the salad, Darrach said, "You must stay with us forever, Hannah." Also that night, Darrach yelled from the second-floor bathroom, "Elizabeth, this place is a bloody disaster. Hannah will think we're barn animals." He proceeded to get on his knees and start scrubbing. Yes, the tub was grimy, but Hannah couldn't believe it. She has never seen her own father wipe a counter, change a sheet, or take out trash. And here was Darrach on the floor after he'd just returned from seventeen hours of driving. But the thing about Darrach is--he's ugly. He's really ugly. His teeth are brownish and angled in all directions, and he has wild eyebrows, long and wiry and as wayward as his teeth, and he has a tiny ponytail. He's tall and lanky and his accent is nice--he's from Ireland--but still. If Elizabeth considers Kiefer Sutherland only adequate, what does she think of her own husband?

"You know what let's do?" Elizabeth says. She is holding up two socks, both white but clearly different lengths. She shrugs, seemingly to herself, then rolls the socks into a ball and tosses them toward the folded pile. "Let's have a party for Julia. Wedding cake, cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off. We'll toast to her happiness. Sparkling cider for all."

Hannah watches Elizabeth.

"What?" Elizabeth says. "You don't like the idea? I know Julia herself won't show up."

"Oh," Hannah says. "Okay."

When Elizabeth laughs, she opens her mouth so wide that the fillings in her molars are visible. "Hannah," she says, "I'm not nuts. I realize a celebrity won't come to my house just because I invited her."

"I didn't think that," Hannah says. "I knew what you meant." But this is not entirely true; Hannah cannot completely read her aunt. Elizabeth has always been a presence in Hannah's life-- Hannah has a memory of herself at age six, riding in the backseat of Elizabeth's car as Elizabeth sang "You're So Vain" quite loudly and enthusiastically along with the radio--but for the most part, Elizabeth has been a distant presence. Though Hannah's father and Elizabeth are...

 

USA Today...

"Sittenfeld boldly imagines the inner life of a first lady...an intimate and daring story...American Wife is a vicarious experience, an up-close portrait of the interior life of a very complicated woman...cinematic."

 

New Yorker...

"The novel, Sittenfeld's most fully realized yet, artfully evokes the painful reverberations of the past."

 

Time Out New York...

"Compelling...enormously sympathetic...Sittenfeld's remarkable gifts as a storyteller draw you back into the fictional world of Alice Blackwell. She writes in the sharp, realistic tradition of Philip Roth and Richard Ford--clear, unpretentious prose; metaphors so spot-on you barely notice them. Sittenfeld may have lifted the set pieces from a real woman's life, but in the process she has created a wise and insightful character who is entirely her own."

 

Washington Post...

"Ambitious...Sittenfeld installs herself deep within the psyche of the tight-lipped wife of the president and emerges with an evenhanded, compassionate look at her mind and heart...powerfully intimate. Grade: A"

 

"With American Wife, Curtis Sittenfeld has deftly crossed an extraordinarily high wire...I read American Wife in just two or three delicious sittings, struck by the granular clarity of the author's descriptions and the down-to-earth believability of the story, bewitched by the charming, frustrating woman at the center of it: Laura Bush."

 

St Petersburg Times...

"Curtis Sittenfeld is one of our best contemporary chroniclers of class and caste... Sittenfeld imagines this couple so deliciously and so plausibly... Curtis Sittenfeld invents a deep, messy, sympathetic life for a public person whose surface is all we'll ever know."

 

Cleveland Plain Dealer...

"Immensely readable. It's a nuanced portrait of a woman in a singularly fascinating position."

 

Portland Oregonian...

"A broad, deep and utterly convincing account...a portrait of a woman and a marriage that also brings the reader as close to the probable essence of the outgoing president as any other novelist, or any biographer, is likely to get."

 

Boston Magazine...

"We love Sittenfeld. We love her wry, razor-sharp observations. We love her funny, straightforward honesty...[American Wife] is an empathetic, fascinating, and gorgeously written story about a 30-year marriage. We devoured it in one night."

 

Fredericksburg Freelance Star...

"Endearing and poignant, humorous and enlightening, American Wife is a must-read for Sittenfeld fans--and a good first read for would-be converts."

 

St Louis Post Dispatch...

"An entertaining, racy tale that's inspired more than a bit by the life of our current president's wife, Laura Bush...A well-told tale that will leave many readers wondering: How much of Sittenfeld's story might be closer to fact than fiction?"

 

LA Times...

"The scope and detail of American Wife are reminiscent of Richard Russo. Like Russo, she creates characters from the ground up, ancestry, neighborhood, culture and all."

 

"American Wife promises to be another sensation."

 

BookPage ...

"American Wife is a sparkling, sprawling novel...A ridiculously gifted writer...Sittenfeld has harnessed her talents perfectly in American Wife, producing an exhilirating epic infused with humor, pain, and hope."

 

New York Sun ...

"Widely anticipated and vastly entertaining... An intelligent, well-crafted, psychologically astute novel"

 

Seattle Times...

"Highly engaging...fascinating depth."

 

Boston Globe...

"A well-researched, juicy roman a clef about the current first lady."

 

Good Housekeeping...

"With her first line - "Have I made terrible mistakes?" - Alice Blackwell (a fictional First Lady modeled after Laura Bush) reels us into a gripping epic of public and private lives. A gem."

 

The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld
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