Rodham (Sittenfeld) - Book Reviews

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