Book imagines Hillary Clinton never marrying Bill

“Rodham” poses the tantalizing question about what her life would have been like.

Hillary Clinton was, by the estimations of many political pundits, one of the most qualified presidential candidate in history Still, the former first lady, New York senator and secretary of State lost the election to one of the least politically qualified candidates to ever win the office.

It defied logic, common sense and polling that a woman with Clinton’s lengthy resume and career of public service would lose to Donald Trump. Was she that bad a candidate, or was she the victim of a larger cultural moment beyond her control? Was it because she was a woman? Or was she weighed down by her husband’s baggage, including an affair with a White House intern and allegations of sexual misconduct? Could she have broken through that final glass ceiling if she hadn’t married Bill Clinton?

Those are the tantalizing questions posed in Curtis Sittenfeld’s fictional alternate history, “Rodham” (Random House, 432 pp., ★★g☆), which imagines a timeline where 20-something Yale Law School graduate Hillary Rodham ultimately rejects Bill Clinton’s marriage proposal.

It’s difficult to turn down. Hillary is unlucky in love, an overachiever whose brains repel potential suitors. None of her eligible classmates, from middle school in the Chicago suburbs through Wellesley College and Yale, want to date a brain.

That is, until she meets Bill. Tall, leonine, handsome Bill, the Southern seeming gentleman from Arkansas who could have his pick of the litter but fixates on the “defiantly dowdy and flat-voweled” girl whose mind matches his own.

But the warning signs are there from the beginning. At the start of their courtship they meet at a diner, where Bill orders plate after heaping plate of french fries, dipping them greedily into his ice cream sundae. The symbolism is clear: Bill is a man of unmanageable appetites, and he soon proves himself incapable of remaining faithful to Hillary, even while professing his love.

This fictional Hillary ultimately turns down the cheater’s proposal and sets off on her own. It’s a fateful decision that kicks off an alternate timeline that’s part thought experiment, part wish-fulfillment fantasy (at least for some readers). Without Hillary by his side, Bill’s 1992 presidential candidacy goes down in flames. The presidential succession is altered: George H.W. Bush serves two terms, followed by a one-term Jerry Brown presidency, a two-term John McCain presidency and a two-term Barack Obama presidency.

Sittenfeld is an adept mimic, channeling Hillary’s voice in a first-person narrative that places the reader in her head as she navigates love and the American electorate. It’s a familiar place, but never a fully living, breathing one – a neat parlor trick with no real magic behind it.

While the story of her courtship with Bill is vibrant with heartache, the political minutiae that follows – debate prep, fundraiser schmoozing, stump speeches, strategy meetings – drags the story to a crawl.

Nevertheless, as a thought experiment, “Rodham” is delectably discussable, a book tailor-made for book clubs. And “Rodham’s” epigraph, a quote from Hillary Clinton – the real Hillary – from her 2017 memoir, “What Happened,” hits different after finishing the book: “My marriage to Bill Clinton was the most consequential decision of my life. I said no the first two times he asked me. But the third time, I said yes. And I’d do it again.”

One can’t help wondering by the end of “Rodham” – would she really?