On the heels of two best-selling books, (Prep, The Man of My Dreams), young, Iowa-trained author Curtis Sittenfeld is about to release her most controversial book yet—a thinly veiled novel based on Laura Bush's life that is sure to send the White House into a fury. Published by Random House next fall, American Wife tells the story of Alice Blackwell, a quiet librarian whose husband Charlie becomes the bumbling president of the United States. It is, in short, a fictional examination of the life of the First Lady that mingles real facts and incidents with the author's imaginative, fanciful, sometimes sexually charged musings. The result is a masterful highbrow-lowbrow mash-up that satisfies as ass-kicking literary fiction and juicy gossip simultaneously.
On the gossip front, the novel doesn't disappoint. From discovering that her grandmother is a lesbian, killing her high school crush with her car at age 16 (this incident at least is based in fact—Laura Bush was involved in a fatal car accident at that age), having sex with his brother, getting an abortion, and descriptions of sex with the president, Alice's antics are sure to have tongues chattering from coast to coast. While we want to stress that American Wife is primarily a work of fiction, we know that there are those of you who can't wait until the book's September release to read a description of the George W. Bush character's penis. That and more follow: