‘American Wife’ Becomes Amazon Bestseller
Following a string of reviews, Joyce Carol Oates takes on American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld in Sunday’s NYT BR. The book has since risen to #16 on Amazon’s bestseller list. Holds in libraries have also increased significantly.
Like the other reviewers, Oates finds the portrait of Alice/Laura more compelling than that of Charlie/George W.
Unlike other reviewers, she sees a metaphor in the book (which she says Sittenfeld surely did not intend);
the “American wife” is in fact the American people, or at least those millions of Americans who voted for a less-than-qualified president in two elections — the all-forgiving enabler for whom the bromide “love” excuses all.
American Wife
Curtis Sittenfeld
- Hardcover: $26.00
- Publisher: Random House (September 2, 2008)
- ISBN-10: 1400064759
- ISBN-13: 978-1400064755
- Audio CD: Abridged, $34.95
- Reader: Kimberly Farr
- Publisher: Random House; (September 2, 2008)
- ISBN-10: 0739323865
- ISBN-13: 978-0739323861