Happy Monday all!
What if? This book answers the question what if Hillary Rodham never married Bill Clinton?
My Thoughts
What if Hillary didn’t marry Bill? Spoiler alert Trump would never become president, and I’m just saying makes the book worth it! OK let me preface this review by stating I am not a big Hillary Clinton fan. I am liberal and I would love to see a woman be president, she just rubs me the wrong way. Probably for many reasons brought up in this book. This book did really make me think about how we unconsciously judge women differently than men. A woman is a nag or being bossy while a man is being assertive or commanding. In reading this book it appears as though Hillary battled this her entire life. Even as a child her classmates and classmates parents saw her strong assertive personality as her acting like a “boy“. But this is not a love letter to Hillary, the book really shows all sides of her, both the good and the bad. I found the early relationship between Hillary and Bill quite fascinating. If this book is completely true Hillary knew what she was getting into when she married Bill, she made a conscious decision to Mary him warts womanizing and all. But this book is about what happens to Hillary if she does NOT marry Bill.
This might be the very first historical retelling of sorts involving historical people I’m familiar with. Meaning I’ve read books about the Kennedys but I was not alive when JFK was president. It all is kind of like a fairytale of sorts. With the Clintons I actually went and saw Clinton speak when he was running for president in 92, so this was a little surreal. And some of it just did not work. Like the thought of Bill and Hillary having any kind of sexual interactions *yuck* it’s kind of like thinking of your parents having sex. I also think I got a little confused by trying to separate what had actually happened and what hadn’t happened. I am really intrigued by the question of, what if? This book gave me a lot to think about. I also think I like Hillary a lot better after reading this. Or at least I have open my mind to where she was coming from. Now Bill on the other hand, he was not painted well in this book I don’t think. All in all this was a really fascinating well told story and I think people will enjoy it whether they are a Hillary fan or not.
This book in emojis 👩🏻💼 🗳 🎷 📱 🇺🇸
*** Big thank you to Transworld for my gifted copy of this book. All opinions are my own. ***
About the Book
In 1971, Hillary Rodham is a young woman full of promise: Life magazine has covered her Wellesley commencement speech, she’s attending Yale Law School, and she’s on the forefront of student activism and the women’s rights movement. And then she meets Bill Clinton. A handsome, charismatic southerner and fellow law student, Bill is already planning his political career. In each other, the two find a profound intellectual, emotional, and physical connection that neither has previously experienced.
In the real world, Hillary followed Bill back to Arkansas, and he proposed several times; although she said no more than once, as we all know, she eventually accepted and became Hillary Clinton.
But in Curtis Sittenfeld’s powerfully imagined tour-de-force of fiction, Hillary takes a different road. Feeling doubt about the prospective marriage, she endures their devastating breakup and leaves Arkansas. Over the next four decades, she blazes her own trail—one that unfolds in public as well as in private, that involves crossing paths again (and again) with Bill Clinton, that raises questions about the tradeoffs all of us must make in building a life.
Brilliantly weaving a riveting fictional tale into actual historical events, Curtis Sittenfeld delivers an uncannily astute and witty story for our times. In exploring the loneliness, moral ambivalence, and iron determination that characterize the quest for political power, as well as both the exhilaration and painful compromises demanded of female ambition in a world still run mostly by men, Rodham is a singular and unforgettable novel.
Berit Talks Books 
Thanks so much for the blog tour support xx
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