Curtis Sittenfeld is a name I often hear thrown around - usually associated with great praise. Yet, I have never known where to start with her and all the hype over Rodham left me feeling intimidated. All that has changed with American Wife, which I was given by my brother and sister-in-law. This is the perfect example of why you should give books as presents: but for them, I might never have taken the leap with Curtis and I am so grateful that they have shown me the way.

American Wife is described as a “thinly veiled” fictionalised account of Laura Bush, former First Lady of the United States. As someone deeply conscious of their inadequate grasp on American politics, I approached it with some trepidation (perhaps this explains why I shied away from Rodham - which does a similar thing for Hilary Clinton). Those fears were unwarranted, for whilst American politics are unavoidably integral to American Wife, it is more than anything the story of a woman (Alice) with both an extraordinary and very ordinary life.

Alice’s life is mapped out by houses: in her childhood home, teenage Alice lives with her traditionalist parents, allied with her mischievous grandmother; single, in her first home of her own and not-quite-thirty, Alice falls irretrievably in love with Charlie; in their first marital home, Alice battles with her alcoholic husband; and finally, in the Presidential home as First Lady, Alice grapples to retain control as her private life threatens to spill over into her very public one.

Both geographically and socially, then, Alice moves from humble beginnings to a life of dizzying privilege. Her account of navigating that journey is both deeply intimate and strangely distant, an effect achieved because the writing, like Alice, is careful and tightly controlled. At its heart, Alice leads a life of restraint: married to a man whose political views she fundamentally disagrees with, she can never tell anyone what she truly thinks, so much so that she admits she had “become my own confidant”.

The strain of leading this secret inner life comes to a head in the final section of the novel. The jump between homes and time periods, which is fairly seamless earlier in the novel, feels most jarring here because Sittenfeld intentionally places Alice at a greater distance from the reader. She does so by reducing the reader’s access to Alice’s inner thoughts, choosing increasingly to present Alice’s public persona instead. Finally, when Alice breaks her reserve and expresses her actual feelings publicly (with severe repercussions on her personal relationships), it is a relief for both Alice and the reader.

In some ways, placing a real life person (who is still alive) at the novel’s center was distracting - I found myself asking whether the events in the book had really happened. But for the most part, I was too compelled by Alice’s personal story to care about the ‘truth’. Perhaps that is Sittenfield’s intention: by painting Alice’s portrait so richly, she reminds us that we can never really know the truth of lives lived in public. And with that thought I think I am brave enough for my next First Lady - Rodham, here I come!