'Rodham' review by Bodil Jonsson

In a couple of weeks, Donald Trump will no longer be the US President, over four years since he beat Hillary Clinton. Rodham (2020) is Curtis Sittenfeld’s sixth novel, and her second fictional biography about an American first lady. American Wife (2008) is modeled after the life of Laura Bush while Rodham is an alternative biography about Hillary Clinton. In American Wife she imagines the inner life and observations of Laura Bush but stays true to the real external circumstances. In Rodham, Sittenfeld takes the genre one step further by imagining what could have been if Hillary Rodham had not married Bill Clinton. Just like in Sittenfeld's novel The Man of My Dreams (2007) she offers her female protagonist an alternative to the roles of being a wife and mother. In Rodham, Hillary gets the life she could have had if she had not spent a great deal of her efforts enabling the career of her husband, whose promiscuity always was a liability. The Lewinsky affair was only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

Novels about real events and people will inevitably blur the boundaries between fiction and reality. Even if we understand that we are dealing with fiction, we are defenseless against the images brought to us in stories. Little does it matter that Joyce Carol Oates insists on Blonde (2000) being a work of fiction. For most readers, the real Marilyn Monroe and the fictional character are forever merged. Like Blonde, most fictional biographies, cover the lives of people who are no longer with us. The same goes for works in the alternative history genre, where the most common motif seems to be that of the Nazis not losing WWII, which we see in Philip K Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962) for instance. In Rodham, however, most people in the story are still alive, which is both interesting and somewhat problematic.

In the first part of the novel, Sittenfeld relies on the numerous biographies written about the former first lady, senator and Secretary of State. As in reality, Hillary and Bill meet at Yale, and Hillary moves with him to Arkansas despite her friends’ attempts to stop her from throwing away a brilliant career in New York or Washington. Soon Hillary discovers that her charismatic fiancée is a compulsive philanderer. For a few chapters she broods over the question of whether this is something she can live with or not: He wasn’t too good to be true. But discerning his flaw meant that if I could live with it, I could keep him. At the same point where the narrative diverges from reality, the story also takes a turn, since fictional Hillary concludes that she must leave Bill Clinton behind.

In a way, Sittenfeld offers her readers the same type of catharsis as those rewritten fairytales, where the princesses take charge of their lives instead of waiting around for Prince Charming. The fictional Hillary follows her prince to his kingdom in Lafayette, Arkansas, but then she returns and becomes President of the United States instead. And of course, such things can happen in modern fairy tales, but in the real world, where the story is set, a single, childless woman could not become Commander in Chief in the world’s most powerful country, no matter how brilliant she is or how hard she works. In that sense the novel is utopian.

What I admire about Sittenfeld’s writing is how it always seems so painfully real. In her debut novel Prep (2005) it was a delight mingled with terror to squirm through the pages, as she reminded me of the agonies of being an insecure teenager. In the first part of Rodham however, the same realness is bothering. Normally, I do not mind well written sex scenes, but it is awkward to read about Hillary and Bill having steamy sex. I prefer to not think about a public figure like Hillary with her underwear pulled to her ankles. Still, it is understandable that Sittenfeld chooses to portray Hillary as a sensual being, and not only as a competent woman who chooses her career over husband and children. Sittenfeld’s Hillary would have fortified the preconception that only a certain, less human type of woman, can excel in the corridors of power.

In the deft and precise prose, significant for Sittenfeld, the second part of the novel covers the ordeals of climbing the political ladder both in general and as a woman. Hillary Rodham must of course put up with the double standard women in politics face with unproportioned focus on outer appearance. We follow her journey from youthful idealist to a mature politician who has adjusted to the realities of politics. For someone with only a superficial insight into the political system in the US, it is interesting to get an inside view of how campaigning works. Even for someone who is not particularly interested in politics, the novel ought to be a reasonably entertaining read, because Sittenfeld is always entertaining. When Donald Trump appears in a cameo, or when Bill Clinton re-enters the story as an ageing IT- billionaire, Sittenfeld proves herself as an accomplished satirist. The real parody is of course not the story, but reality.

Some critics have called Rodham fanfiction for feminist Hillary fans, and of course this is a novel that has a strong appeal to progressive women. It is also a story that should be read here and now. Unlike several of Sittenfeld’s other works, I have a hard time seeing how this novel will seem relevant to readers in a decade or so. As a Sittenfeld fan to someone who has never read her books, my recommendation is that you start with one of her earlier works, unless you are a Hillary fan of course.

Words by Bodil Jonsson
Edited by Sophie Williams