May 11, 2017
Curtis Sittenfeld imagines what Hillary’s life would have looked like without Bill
by Taylor Sperry
The Clintons really aren’t going anywhere.
In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour at a Women for Women International event last week, Hillary Clinton announced that she is “back to being an activist citizen and part of the resistance.” She also called upon the Trump administration to support women’s rights specifically: “I am going to publicly request that this administration not end our efforts making women’s rights and opportunities central to American foreign policy and national security.” She ain’t been licked yet, is all I’m saying.
And on Monday, of course, we reported that President Bill Clinton is collaborating with James Patterson on a novel, The President Is Missing, which Knopf and Little, Brown will co-publish in June 2018. What we missed is that on that same day, Random House announced a three-book deal with bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld, who is writing an as-yet-untitled novel “told from the point of view of Hillary Rodham, in which (as she did in real life) she turns down marriage proposals from Bill Clinton, then ultimately turns him down once and for all, and how her life spins out from there.”
In her write-up for the Guardian, Bonnie Malkin reminds us, too, that Mrs. Clinton is set to publish “a collection of essays that will reflect on her life and the presidential election” with Simon & Schuster in September. The book will likely be the subject of her event at BookExpo 2017, which was just announced yesterday.
Taylor Sperry is a former Melville House editor.