NEW YORK — Over the past few years, author Curtis Sittenfeld has gotten to know Hillary Clinton in a way uniquely suited for a novelist — by writing a work of fiction about her.
“I was definitely an admirer of Hillary before I started the book, but writing from her perspective made me feel closer to her,” Sittenfeld, whose “Rodham” comes out Tuesday, wrote to The Associated Press in an email. “I realize that closeness is NOT mutual — we’ve never met. But she feels very familiar to me now in terms of the trajectory of her life, her relationships, her syntax, so when I see clips of her or hear her voice, I think, ‘Oh, that’s my Hillary.'”
Sittenfeld’s new book is her second imagined portrait of a famous woman: “American Wife,” based on the life of Laura Bush, was published in in 2008. But while “American Wife” tells of a high-profile marriage that remains intact despite the narrator’s misgivings, Sittenfeld follows a different path in “Rodham.” The “Hillary” in Sittenfeld’s book breaks off from Bill early and remains Hillary Rodham, a decision which proves fortunate for her.
It’s a premise that has been raised before, including by the author and journalist Rebecca Traister. In a 2015 story for The New Republic, entitled “The Best Thing Hillary Could Do for Her Campaign? Ditch Bill,” Traister wrote of how Hillary was endlessly “pulled back, into the shadow” of Bill Clinton and that he, not she, was the political beneficiary of their relationship.