Dynasty undone

Curtis Sittenfeld humourlessly reimagines Hillary Clinton’s life if she hadn’t tied the knot with Bill.

always putting her down – something Bill generously deplores. Anyway they live together in Arkansas where Bill is seeking election as Governor. This section is quite good. They get engaged. However, it can’t go on. Bill is incapable of controlling his priapism and when a woman approaches Hillary to tell her how Bill once “forced himself ” upon her, it’s too much. Hillary opts out and moves to Chicago to work as a public-spirited lawyer. As for Bill, he becomes Governor and runs for the presidency in 1992 – just as he did in real life.

But fiction is different. The little woman he has married hasn’t reallife Hillary’s steel and there’s a car crash of a TV interview. So he doesn’t become President. Instead, he heads for California to become rich; not very interesting.

Meanwhile Hillary plods on. She has broken up with the man she loves, and quite right too. Commitment to public service takes over. Admittedly she is not one hundred per cent virtuous; there are a couple of sneaky betrayals which cost her good friends, but her self-assurance is armour against this.

Having got rid of a Bill Clinton presidency, Sittenfeld has to do some rewriting of American history, but hasn’t much to say about, for instance, John McCain’s terms in the White House, or indeed Barack Obama’s. Meanwhile, Hillary ploughs on. Her first bid for the presidency flops but, just as in real life, you are called upon to admire her tenacity. Does she get there in the end? To answer would be like telling you who killed Roger Ackroyd.

All one can say is that before the reader has reached this point, he or she may have given up on the long trudge through