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Rodham is an alternate history book where the American power couple does not exist. Millennials and Gen Z don’t recall the Clinton presidency. We don’t know Hillary Rodham Clinton, besides as "the one who lost to Trump". This book presents protagonist Hillary Rodham, practically an original character to us.
Without spoiling too much, the great complaint I have about this book is a failure to meet its mission. The premise is: what if Hillary Rodham had never married Bill Clinton? The plot could have followed Hillary’s life without him casting a shadow over it. Instead, their interactions thread throughout the book.
However, both of them are given genuine character. The perception of Hillary as cold, opportunistic, and “manlike” is explained. Simultaneously, she shows far more depth to examine the truth of these stereotypes. Her desires and capabilities are not immediately portrayed as necessarily threatening, nor as disqualifying her from being a person.
William Jefferson Clinton gets to be both larger-than-life and in-depth, but his ambition is far more ominous. The best thing to be said for the novel is that it squarely confronts Bill. In our world, he’s widely known as a cheating “womanizer”, but far less attention was ever paid to allegations against him of rape. The novel raises both starkly and asks Hillary to respond.
The Clintons spoke to millions at the Democratic National Convention, in 2020, in support of another alleged predator in Joe Biden. The #MeToo tide still has not impacted upon this enormously prominent figure of a former president. Nor have we really examined the feminist dilemma of how much we can blame a spouse for staying with them.
Alternate history enables the implications of actions to be examined from entirely new angles. Forestalling the Clinton couple buys the distance needed to regard Bill from afar, and to find Hillary’s own place in the world. The book does its best to use Bill’s (unnecessary) presence for a greater purpose. However, he is the only prominent figure to get a really critical inspection.
How does the alternate history shape up otherwise? Creative license to improve a story is fine. However, playing fast-and-loose with the truth often obscures interesting stories. Many U.S Democrats in 2016, sick of the same old, wanted an outsider candidate further to the left. Without an excuse, no such analogue appears in the world of Rodham. A chance to show the evolution of another figure into this opportunity is missed.
Curtis Sittenfield wanted the rewards of rewriting the life of HRC which led to 2016. She desired to do this without the risk of examining the factors that have driven disaster in our timeline, such as the election of multiple openly alleged predators to the presidency. That robs us of real catharsis when we wonder what could have been. Rodham: A Novel drops its unique potential to settle for an interesting, character-driven novel resplendent with neat moments, but no overarching theory or, to my eye, theme.
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