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“... Sean Wilsey’s father, Al, was orphaned as a teenager, dropped out of college, and made a fortune in dairy, real estate and other business ventures. Over fifty when Sean was born, Al flew a helicopter, charmed women and inspired in his son an apparently unquenchable desire for approval. Sean’s mother, Pat, the daughter of poor Texan evangelical ministers, was a beautiful, captivating, flaky quasi-journalist ...”

“... Curtis Sittenfeld’s new novel, American Wife, based on the life of Laura Bush, and sympathetic to her political non-choices, has been getting attention alongside the self-exonerating memoirs and withering insider analyses piling up in the final weeks of the Bush presidency. In its positive assessment of the couple’s marriage (fictionally presented as healthy, affectionate and hot), its willingness to leave ethical issues open to interpretation, and its warnings of the gap between the public and the private person, American Wife is being contrasted with the Oliver Stone movie, W ...”

“... and dorks of all kinds. What we have not seen is someone like Lee Fiora, the reluctant heroine of Curtis Sittenfeld’s first novel, Prep, which is a thoughtful, measured account of life at a top East Coast boarding-school. In a field dominated by shock tactics and deliberate quirkiness, Prep is a straightforward, serious, funny book. Ault School, at ...”

“... bidding war for her as yet unwritten first book. Her apparently effortless ascent raised hackles: Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Prep, talked of feeling ‘Schadenfreudenberger’ as gossip spread that Freudenberger was having difficulty getting started on the book. The publication of Lucky Girls proved her detractors wrong, but US critics were equivocal ...”

“... On election night, while I waited for the returns to come in, I kept tweeting at the writer Curtis Sittenfeld – other than the Greitenses, she was the only person I could think of who lived in Missouri. What was she seeing on the ground? In Sittenfeld’s novel American Wife, the character modelled on Laura ...”