Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsThis book changed my mind on Hilary Rodham Clinton
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 1, 2020
My husband is an Iraqi war veteran and a Texas republican, so I'm definitely not the typical audience for Rodham. My womens' book club in Dallas decided to read "Rodham" in June. I think the woman who suggested it did it as a bit of a joke. We'd read Curtis Sittenfeld's book "Prep" a few years ago and really enjoyed it, but this seemed like a political gimmick and we were all pretty skeptical.
Funny thing was, the first week we were reading, there were no text messages on our text thread -- everyone got so absorbed into the book, but no one was telling each other how they really felt about it. It took a few glasses of wine at our book club dinner for the tongues to start wagging, and to a woman, we all adored it.
Sittenfeld's brilliance lies in creating compelling, identifiable characters that are utterly authentic (and usually quite flawed). She did this with Lee Fiora in Prep, and she does this at an entirely different level with Rodham. She brings us inside Hillary's mind as a young woman, as Hillary struggles with so many of the same thing we all struggle with -- whether to sacrifice love for career; whether to accept our partner's flaws; and what it means to be a woman coming of age at the end of the 20th century.
The depth of emotions that I experienced as I followed the story over the decades of Hillary's "real" life and the further decades of her "divergiant" life after she refused to marry Bill, had a real impact on me and the other women in my book club. We found "Rodham" to be both a real page-turner, yet also a true work of literature, in that it addressed many complex issues that lie at the heart of the human condition. Every one of us loved the book so much that we've given it to our husbands to read - and they love it too.... Mine is halfway through (he hasn't put it down.
Yesterday he said if she ran again he'd vote for her :) I strongly recommend this book to anyone - it transcends the political fray and is a fascinating read about the inner life of one of the most interesting people in American history, as well as an incredibly entertaining read. It seems like the Trump troll army is already out there try to stop people from reading this by bashing the reviews, but do yourself a favor; prove them wrong and order a copy today!!!!
