American Wife – Curtis Sittenfeld

Alice Lindgren relates her life story that takes her from suburban obscurity in 1950’s Wisconsin to the White House in the new millennium. Over the five decades she has only four addresses, and these provide the structure for the book. At each location, key events happen that are told in detail, while the years between are covered in broader brushstrokes.

1272 Amity Lane, Riley, Wisconsin is her family home where she lives with her parents and grandmother. Alice and her best friend Dena grow up, go to school, get their first jobs and boyfriends. A tragic event befalls Alice, compounded by an unwise reaction that need her grandmother’s discretion and experience to deal with.

Ten years older, wiser, and still single, Alice has an apartment at 3859 Sproule Street, Madison. She works at a local elementary school as librarian, a job she loves, inspiring children to read. She and Dena move on the fringes of affluent society, which is how she meets Charlie Blackwell. The Blackwells are Wisconsin royalty, meat packaging magnates and political movers and shakers – Charlie’s father was governor, his brother is a congressman. Republican, naturally. And Charlie has ambitions in that direction.

The Blackwell’s politics and the riches and sense of entitlement that go with them, are a turn-off for staunchly Democrat Alice, but Charlie is attractive, charming, and as far as Alice is concerned, persistent.

Alice swiftly becomes Mrs Blackwell and moves into the new marital home at 402 Maronee Drive, Milwaukee. She has to cope with her husband’s ambition, his compulsion to create a legacy and so prove his worth in the family. It is no easy ride, despite the material comforts enjoyed. Eventually, Charlie makes Governor.

No spoiler this, but the next address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington DC, as Alice, with a sense of unreality, lives the life of a FLOTUS, her democratic leanings sitting uncomfortably with US invasions abroad and Roe v Wade under threat at home. And then someone from her Amity Lane past, who knows a secret, gets in touch.

It reads like the autobiography it could have been. Interesting rather than compelling but written well enough to make light of its 600 page length.

Runaway – Peter May

2015; London; someone gets bumped off, and the news report in a Scottish newspaper prompts a dying man to summon two childhood friends to his hospital bed in Glasgow. They must, Maurie explains to Jack and Dave, go back to London to where they ran away as sixteen-year-olds in 1965.

Five of them left that night, suddenly and secretly, and with mixed motives. They were a band, The Shuffle, and London was the place to make it big, but equally they each had their reason to quit their homes and families.

The twin track narratives unfold fifty years apart. In 1965, there are first tastes of sex, drugs and rock and roll; and bad company that leads to discord, disillusionment, and disaster. In 2015, the old guys, who again have reasons to get out of their current domestic settings, face different problems as they attempt to retrace their route to London, aided by Jack’s socially awkward grandson, Ricky.

The juxtaposition of youthful exuberance, attitudes and exploits with the frustrations and limitations of old age, is nicely done (at least viewed from my position in the latter camp). The writing is easy on the eye and both narratives move forward at pace, each to an exciting climax. By the end, secrets held for five decades slip out, providing a moving dénouement.

After my last May read, the disappointing ‘A Silent Death’, this is more like the quality of his excellent Lewis trilogy.