I was able to finish American Wife this morning, on what I hope and pray to be the very last snow day of 2014. I have had enough! Of snow...not reading.
American Wife has been sitting on my shelf for probably close to 2 years. It was a sale book at Barnes and Nobel and the cover was so beautiful, it came home with me and then sat on my shelf until a few weeks ago. If I had known that the wife portrayed in the book was based on Laura Bush, I'd have read it the moment I bought it. I just love Laura Bush--I think she was a wonderful First Lady. I may love her more now that I have caught a tiny glimpse into her life before she stepped foot into The White House. But, for those of you who are not a fan of this particular First Lady, you should know what you are getting into before opening the cover of this book.
The book is divided into sections, each based on the home where the American Wife, Alice Lindgren Blackwell, lived at that time. The final section is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And this final section, as I was warned by other reviewers of this text, is dull and boring. The rest of the book is lively, endearing, and a wonderful read. It is a long book-554 pages. And my copy is rather heavy. You might want to get an e-copy of this one.
Because I do not like books that I can not take something from, I am always searching as I read for the lesson or the moral that will give me something to keep in my heart long after the cover of the book has been closed. What I took from American Wife is a new found appreciation for my life. My normal life. My life where I can say what I want, can wear what I want, can go where I want, and can believe what I want. And for the most part, nobody cares. OK, yes...I am a teacher so I have to be careful of what I say and do and wear, but only publicly. (Yes, I gave up Facebook two years ago because I was worried about offending parents or of not friending parents who may have requested this relationship with me, but considering that not being on FB has made me happier in my life than I ever was while a part of it, I don't think I am having to give up too much because I teach. And since I have less than 3 months left of said teaching career, I think I will be able to manage.) But, poor Alice spent the bulk of her life trying to reconcile who she really was with who the public, and her husband Charlie, wanted her to be. She had to temper everything and she had to base her life on outward appearances. Yuck. That is not the life for me. I have always been much happier blending in with the wallpaper than being in the middle of a room. Right now I am so grateful that the Rob I married, who wanted to be a senator someday, turned in to the 40 year old Rob who is thriving inside an insurance company. Being in front of the public, very watchful eye is not where I'd like to be. Funny thing is, I am fairly certain Alice would like to be on my side of that eye, too. With her book. I think she and I could've been good friends.
I never dog ear book pages. I remember thinking as a child that doing so would hurt the book, but I dog eared page 321. (I bet Alice, the librarian, would never have dog eared book pages either.) Because of these lines from the story:
Oh, how different my life would have been had I not grown up in the same house as my grandmother, how much narrower and blander! She was the reason I was a reader, and being a reader was what had made me myself; it had given me the gifts of curiosity and sympathy, and awareness of the world as an odd and vibrant and contradictory place, and it had made me unafraid of its oddness and vibrancy and contradictions.
These lines made me desperately miss my grandmother, my father's mother, Violet Belle Kuykendall Denison, the women who helped mold me into the woman I am today. In fact, reading about Alice's relationship with her grandmother throughout American Wife made me miss mine so very much. And when I read these lines, I couldn't help but think of her. She was many things for me, but most of all she was my reading partner. I recall going to the library with her each week when I spent summers with her and I remember how she made books seem to be so magical and so special. They were to be treasured and protected. I can close my eyes and see us both tucked into her big bed each night (I shared a room with her during the summers), she on her side, and me on mine. Both of us reading until we just couldn't keep our eyes open anymore and then we'd turn out the light, way past the time when anyone else in the house was awake. She was a gem, that amazing lady. I am so grateful that I was able to call her my grandmother.
You will like reading about Emilie, Alice's grandmother, too. She was a lady before her time. It was because of her that Alice felt so many things that she wasn't supposed to feel and to think so many things that she wasn't supposed to think. Emilie just may have molded her into the First Lady she turned out to be. A First Lady with compassion and caring for the rest of the American people. A First Lady who was realistic and human. A First Lady women like me could relate to. Perhaps that's why I liked Laura Bush so much. In another time and another place, I would've liked to have been the Kindergarten teacher to her librarian.
Happy Reading everyone!
:) Dodie
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