Even if this book were not based on the life of Laura Bush it would still be worth reading. As a work of fiction, it is thoroughly enjoyable. The plot is beautifully paced, the writing quick, clear, absorbing. It is also a heady brew: a damaged heroine, a dashing but flawed beau, tragedy, violence, unrequited love and a lesbian grandmother - all the ingredients for a sweeping saga.

It is also, and I say this as a warning to those readers who might be thinking, “oh look, a novel about Laura Bush, I'll give that to my nan for Christmas”, extremely saucy. Sittenfeld's sex scenes are unashamedly explicit, a disconcerting thought when you consider whom they are supposed to feature. Crikey, you think, this woman is making me fancy George Bush. Such is the power of great writing.

For all that, the sex is not the point of this novel. That is Alice/Laura's journey from a democrat librarian with a deep trauma (she accidentally kills her childhood sweetheart, then has a brief and abusive sexual relationship with the dead boy's brother) to the wife of a racy Republican, and then on towards the White House. It's about the conflict between the public and the personal, the gradual erosion of privacy, the loss of all semblance of normality, the inevitable erection of barriers and the overall battle to preserve sanity.

As an insight into the fishbowl of contemporary politics, it is remarkably sagacious. Sittenfeld is far from blindly sympathetic; but she is very insightful. She understands and communicates well the nature of human beings and the forces that can transform those humans into politicians, both misunderstood and incomprehensible. The constant putting two and two together and getting five; the endless personal attacks on self and family; the out-and-out lies. Most of all, the impossibility of it all and the undeniable truth about politics: the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
Doubleday, £11.99 Buy the book

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