Reimagining Hillary Clinton's life, sans Bill

What if a young Hillary Rodham had chosen not to marry future United States President Bill Clinton? American writer Curtis Sittenfeld's sixth novel imagines an alternate reality in which Hillary says no - and how this decision changes the face of a nation.

In this version, Hillary never becomes Mrs Clinton; without her help, Mr Clinton never makes it to the presidency in 1993. When she enters politics, it is as a single woman, and in the 2016 elections, it is not Mr Donald Trump she faces - as she did in reality - but her former lover.

Sittenfeld has received acclaim for novels such as Eligible (2016), a millennial retelling of Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice, and American Wife (2008), about a fictitious First Lady.

Rodham is a kind of inverse American Wife. It shifts archly from collegiate bildungsroman to sharp political drama. Facing off with the ex-boyfriend who got away is a stock rom-com trope, but Sittenfeld has sharpened and upgraded it for the presidential arena. Austen, had she lived today, would probably have relished it.

Rodham opens with Hillary delivering a speech at her Wellesley College graduation - which includes criticising the conservative senator invited to give the commencement speech.

Mrs Clinton has often been criticised for her aloof, frigid demeanour. Sittenfeld, with her cool, crisp prose, renders such a character relatable without making her any more personable.

Her Hillary is, yes, unlikable. She is clinical and calculating - she proceeds with a decision only if she can think of two reasons for it, and vice versa against it - but also painfully insecure, despite her brimming intellect.

Her childhood has been an unending series of put-downs from her father; early boyfriends profess themselves daunted by her intelligence and confidence. When the leonine, charismatic Bill catches her eye at Yale Law School and is more than ready to name her his equal, she falls for him hard.

Their romance is passionate - if perhaps too enthusiastically described - but his infidelity and rumours of sexual predation prove a deal-breaker.

Decades later, as a respected law professor and then senator, she crosses paths with him again and again as both vie for political supremacy.

Sittenfeld excels in her exacting portrait of the double standards female candidates face. Hillary, wearing pantyhose, is forced to have an aide shave her legs before an event. An interviewer asks if she has ever borrowed a tampon from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

By Curtis Sittenfeld

Random House/Paperback/ 420 pages/$29.96/bit.ly/Rodham_CS

Rating: 4 Stars

The Bill of this alternate reality develops into a truly nasty character, one who allows his supporters to chant "Shut her up" about the woman he once loved.

This novel is a fantasy and a truly delicious one at that. Mr Clinton made his foray into fiction when he and author James Patterson wrote the 2018 thriller The President Is Missing. Its brainy action hero of a president read too overwhelmingly like wish-fulfilment.

This is a far more satisfying fantasy, one in which powerful women get their due and Mr Trump, rather than clutching at the reins of an increasingly beleaguered country, is reduced to comic relief.

It is sheer political escapism. And we could all use a break.

If you like this, read: American Wife by the same author (Random House, 2008, $30.20, OpenTrolley. com.sg), about Alice Blackwell - modelled after Mrs Laura Bush - a kindly librarian from small-town Wisconsin who becomes a conflicted First Lady of the US.