Rodham: A Novel
Curtis Sittenfeld, 2020
Random House
432 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780399590917
Summary
From the author of American Wife and Eligible … He proposed. She said no. And it changed her life forever.
In 1971, Hillary Rodham is a young woman full of promise: Life magazine has 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.
And then she meets Bill Clinton. A handsome, charismatic southerner and fellow law student, Bill is already planning his political career. In each other, the two 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 said no more than once, as we all know, she eventually accepted and became Hillary Clinton.
But in Curtis Sittenfeld’s powerfully imagined tour-de-force of fiction, Hillary takes a different road. Feeling doubt about the prospective marriage, she endures their devastating breakup and leaves Arkansas.
Over the next four decades, she blazes her own trail—one that unfolds in public as well as in private, that involves crossing paths again (and again) with Bill Clinton, that raises questions about the tradeoffs all of us must make in building a life.
Brilliantly weaving a riveting fictional tale into actual historical events, Curtis Sittenfeld delivers an uncannily astute and witty 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 run mostly by men, Rodham is a singular and unforgettable novel. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—August 23, 1975
• Where—Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
• Education—B.A., Stanford University; M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop
• Currently—lives in St. Louis, Missouri
Elizabeth Curtis Sittenfeld is an American writer, the author of several novels and a collection of short stories.
Sittenfeld was the second of four children (three girls and a boy) of Paul G. Sittenfeld, an investment adviser, and Elizabeth (Curtis) Sittenfeld, an art history teacher and librarian at Seven Hills School, a private school in Cincinnati.
She attended Seven Hills School through the eighth grade, then attended high school at Groton School, a boarding school in Groton, Massachusetts, graduating in 1993. In 1992, the summer before her senior year, she won Seventeen magazine's fiction contest.
She attended Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, before transferring to Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. At Stanford, she studied Creative Writing, wrote articles for the college newspaper, and edited that paper's weekly arts magazine. At the time, she was also chosen as one of Glamour magazine's College Women of the Year. She earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa.
Novels
• Prep
Her first novel Prep (2005) deals with coming of age, self-identity, and class distinctions in the preppy and competitive atmosphere of a private school.
• The Man of My Dreams
Sittenfeld's second novel, The Man of My Dreams (2006), follows a girl named Hannah from the end of her 8th grade year through her college years at Tufts and into her late twenties.
• American Wife
Sittenfeld's third novel, American Wife (2008), is the tale of Alice Blackwell, a fictional character who shares many similarities with former First Lady Laura Bush.
• Sisterland
Her fourth novel, Sisterland (2013), concerns a set of identical twins who have psychic powers, one of whom hides her strange gift while the other has become a professional psychic.
• Eligible
A 21st-century retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Eligible was released in 2016. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 6/12/2013.)
Book Reviews
[I]ntelligent and respectful and well made but bland…. Rodham never has a thought, in this novel, that stabs you or comes from anywhere close to left field. As if it were the Great Salt Lake, you won’t sink in this book—but it won’t quench your thirst, either…. The best thing about reading Rodham, while living through our government’s response to the coronavirus, is that it allows us to do something some of us were doing already, which is to recall her competence and empathy and to miss her enormously.
Dwight Garner - New York Times
[R]eadable and psychologically acute…. Ms. Sittenfeld is at her best in depicting the bizarre freak show into which presidential elections have devolved…. Ms. Sittenfeld’s one misstep in this hugely enjoyable book was in turning Bill Clinton into a comic-book villain…. Caught up in the novel, I was almost surprised to remember… that these two forged a partnership that has endured in spite of everything— [which] is more interesting than Ms. Sittenfeld’s simplistic good feminist/bad sexist dichotomy.
Brooke Allen - Wall Street Journal
Curtis Sittenfeld’s Rodham descends like an avenging angel… a high-profile novel—not a parody or a joke book, but a serious work of literary fiction…. While telling a compelling story, Rodham provides an insightful analysis of the function of sexism in our political discourse…. Sittenfeld is at her wittiest when re-creating the men who dominate modern American politics… captures Trump better than any other novel has so far… It’s an astounding, slaying parody.
Ron Charles - Washington Post
Smart, engaging, and heartbreakingly plausible…. Hillary always was a policy wonk, and Sittenfeld evokes her smart, detailed voice for good and ill…. In the longing and loneliness, the anger as well as ambition, this Hillary makes Rodham a compelling portrait of a future that might have been.
Clea Simon - Boston Globe
In this entertaining political fantasy, Sittenfeld… begins with an intimate perspective on historical events… [and] movingly captures Hillary’s awareness of her transformation into a complicated public figure…. [An] often funny, mostly sympathetic, and always sharp what-if.
Publishers Weekly
[A] fascinating premise…. Successfully interspersing fact with fiction, Sittenfeld imagines Rodham's personal and professional life without marriage in aching detail in this captivating novel. —Melissa DeWild, Comstock Park, MI
Library Journal
Daring, seductive, and provocative… [an] exhilaratingly trenchant, funny, and affecting tale…. Sittenfeld orchestrates a gloriously cathartic antidote to the actual struggles women presidential candidates face in a caustically divided America.
Booklist
Sittenfeld… [creates] an interior world for a woman everyone thinks they know. This Hillary tracks with the real person who’s been living in public all these years, and it’s enjoyable to hear her think about her own desires, her strengths and weaknesses.
Kirkus Reviews
Rodham is a provocative, bitingly funny re-imagining of what a woman’s life could be if she didn’t need to compromise her own ambitions in support of her partner’s. Sittenfeld has written a nuanced, astute portrait of one of modern history’s most contentious figures, and never shies away from either the thornier aspects of her character, or those of our society.
Refinery29
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for RODHAM ... and then take off on your own:
1. How does this book portray the Hillary we know from her long years in the public's eye? Is the portrayal credible? Is the Hillary Rodham in this novel the same woman (we think) we have known through years of watching and hearing her? What kind of inner life does the novel reveal?
2. Talk about Hillary's 1969 commencement speech at Wellsley, which has been a famous touchstone throughout her public career. Why do you think Curtis Sittenfeld included it in this novel? What does it reveal about Hillary?
3. Talk about Bill Clinton. How does he come across in the novel? Is it a fair portrait, unfair, a funny one, or unpleasant one?
4. Talk about the sexism and the double standard ever present in American politics that Settinfeld details explicitly. Does her depiction feel about right to you? Does she over- or under-do it?
5. What about portrayals of other real-life characters, primarily Donald Trump?
6. In what way does Hillary's youthful idealism fade as she engages with the realities of politics? Is that loss of idealism inevitable? Why or why not?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)