'Rodham' Asks: Who Is Hillary Without Bill?
In Curtis Sittenfeld's new novel, Hillary Rodham dumps Bill Clinton and goes on to forge a life of her own, in law and then politics. It's an uncomfortable, moving, technically brilliant book.
In her memoir Living History, Hillary Clinton introduces her husband, Bill Clinton, as "the person who would cause my life to spin in directions that I could never have imagined."
Is it me, or does the word "spin" conjure a car spinning off the road?
Curtis Sittenfeld's new novel, Rodham, imagines what would have happened if she had righted the wheel. Rodham is a nauseating, moving, morally suggestive, technically brilliant book that made me think more than any other in recent memory about the aims and limits of fiction.
Hillary's early life is the same:
