Rodham

Reviews

“[Curtis] Sittenfeld’s Rodham descends like an avenging angel. Here, in the pages of this alternate history about Hillary Rodham Clinton, is the story not of “What Happened” but of “What Could Have Happened.” This isn’t just fiction as fantasy; it’s fiction as therapy.”—The Washington Post

“[A] moving, morally suggestive, technically brilliant book that made me think more than any other in recent memory about the aims and limits of fiction . . . By fanning out alternate narratives . . . [Rodham] asks us to imagine a different world. . . . And from there, what a short —excruciating, hopeful—leap it is to: Everything could be different.”—NPR

“Sittenfeld at her best.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Gritty, gripping.”—Chicago Tribune

“Deviously clever . . . [Rodham] doesn’t have an overt political agenda; it’s less concerned with lionizing or vilifying Hillary than with complicating our notions of her. Sittenfeld’s Hillary is both a player in the Game of Thrones and a romance novel heroine. . . . She’s whoever she wants to be.”—O: The Oprah Magazine

“Delectably discussable, a book tailor-made for book clubs.”—USA Today

“A stay-up-all-night plot . . . a captivating and durable story containing rooms within rooms. Rodham turns into a high-speed bildungsroman about a woman of formidable intellect and self-insight. . . . It’s both an enticement and a challenge.” —Los Angeles Times

“A wild, witty, provocative mishmash of history, real and imagined.”—People

“Sittenfeld movingly captures Hillary’s awareness of her transformation into a complicated public figure. . . . Often funny, mostly sympathetic, and always sharp.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“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
 
“It’s enjoyable to hear [this Hilary] think about her own desires, her strengths and weaknesses, her vulnerabilities and self-justifications; it’s also fun to see how familiar events would still occur under different circumstances.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Startlingly good . . . Sittenfeld is one of my favorite writers.”—Kate Atkinson, author of Big Sky

“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

“Rodham is the ultimate what-could-have-been story.”—HelloGiggles
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