[Curtis] Sittenfeld s Rodham descends like an avenging angel. Here, in the pages of this alternate history about Hillary Rodham Clinton, is the story not of What Happened but of What Could Have Happened. This isn t just fiction as fantasy; it s fiction as therapy. The Washington Post
[A] moving, morally suggestive, technically brilliant book that made me think more than any other in recent memory about the aims and limits of fiction . . . By fanning out alternate narratives . . . [Rodham] asks us to imagine a different world. . . . And from there, what a short excruciating, hopeful leap it is to: Everything could be different. NPR
Sittenfeld at her best. The Wall Street Journal
Gritty, gripping. Chicago Tribune
Deviously clever . . . [Rodham] doesn t have an overt political agenda; it s less concerned with lionizing or vilifying Hillary than with complicating our notions of her. Sittenfeld s Hillary is both a player in the Game of Thrones and a romance novel heroine. . . . She s whoever she wants to be. O: The Oprah Magazine
Delectably discussable, a book tailor-made for book clubs. USA Today
A stay-up-all-night plot . . . a captivating and durable story containing rooms within rooms. Rodham turns into a high-speed bildungsroman about a woman of formidable intellect and self-insight. . . . It s both an enticement and a challenge. Los Angeles Times
A wild, witty, provocative mishmash of history, real and imagined. People
Sittenfeld movingly captures Hillary s awareness of her transformation into a complicated public figure. . . . Often funny, mostly sympathetic, and always sharp. Publishers Weekly Daring, seductive, and provocative . . . [an] exhilaratingly trenchant, funny, and affecting tale . . . Sittenfeld orchestrates a gloriously cathartic antidote to the actual struggles women presidential candidates face in a caustically divided America. Booklist It s enjoyable to hear [this Hilary] think about her own desires, her strengths and weaknesses, her vulnerabilities and self-justifications; it s also fun to see how familiar events would still occur under different circumstances. Kirkus Reviews
Startlingly good . . . Sittenfeld is one of my favorite writers. Kate Atkinson, author of Big Sky
Rodham is a provocative, bitingly funny re-imagining of what a woman s life could be if she didn t need to compromise her own ambitions in support of her partner s. Sittenfeld has written a nuanced, astute portrait of one of modern history s most contentious figures, and never shies away from either the thornier aspects of her character, or those of our society. Refinery29
Rodham is the ultimate what-could-have-been story. HelloGiggles
Curtis Sittenfeld is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Prep, The Man of My Dreams, American Wife, Sisterland, and Eligible, and the story collection You Think It, I ll Say It, which have been translated into thirty languages. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Washington Post Magazine, Esquire, and The Best American Short Stories, of which she was the 2020 guest editor.Her nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Time, and Vanity Fair, and on public radio s This American Life.
