Curtis Sittenfeld

From the New York Times bestselling author of American Wife and Eligible, a novel that imagines a deeply compelling what-might-have-been: What if Hillary Rodham hadn’t married Bill Clinton? In 1971, Hillary Rodham is a young woman full of promise: Life magazine has covered her Wellesley commencement speech, she’s attending Yale Law School, and she’s on the forefront of student activism and the women’s rights movement. And then she meets Bill Clinton. A handsome, charismatic southerner and fellow law student, Bill is already planning his political career. In each other, the two find a profound intellectual, emotional, and physical connection that neither has previously experienced. In the real world, Hillary followed Bill back to Arkansas, and he proposed several times; although she said no more than once, as we all know, she eventually accepted and became Hillary Clinton. But in Curtis Sittenfeld’s powerfully imagined tour-de-force of fiction, Hillary takes a different road. Feeling doubt about the prospective marriage, she endures their devastating breakup and leaves Arkansas. Over the next four decades, she blazes her own trail—one that unfolds in public as well as in private, that involves crossing paths again (and again) with Bill Clinton, that raises questions about the tradeoffs all of us must make in building a life. Brilliantly weaving a riveting fictional tale into actual historical events, Curtis Sittenfeld delivers an uncannily astute and witty story for our times. In exploring the loneliness, moral ambivalence, and iron determination that characterize the quest for political power, as well as both the exhilaration and painful compromises demanded of female ambition in a world still run mostly by men, Rodham is a singular and unforgettable novel.

A suburban mother of two fantasizes about the downfall of an old friend whose wholesome lifestyle empire may or may not be built on a lie. A high-powered lawyer honeymooning with her husband is caught off guard by the appearance of the girl who tormented her in high school. A shy Ivy League student learns the truth about a classmate’s seemingly enviable life.Curtis Sittenfeld has established a reputation as a sharp chronicler of the modern age who humanizes her subjects even as she skewers them. Now, with this first collection of short fiction, her “astonishing gift for creating characters that take up residence in readers’ heads” (The Washington Post) is showcased like never before. Throughout the ten stories in You Think It, I’ll Say It, Sittenfeld upends assumptions about class, relationships, and gender roles in a nation that feels both adrift and viscerally divided.With moving insight and uncanny precision, Curtis Sittenfeld pinpoints the questionable decisions, missed connections, and sometimes extraordinary coincidences that make up a life. Indeed, she writes what we’re all thinking—if only we could express it with the wit of a master satirist, the storytelling gifts of an old-fashioned raconteur, and the vision of an American original.

A comedy writer thinks she’s sworn off love, until a dreamily handsome pop star flips the script on all her assumptions. Romantic Comedy is a hilarious, observant and deeply tender novel from New York Times–bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld. Sally Milz is a sketch writer for "The Night Owls," the late-night live comedy show that airs each Saturday. With a couple of heartbreaks under her belt, she’s long abandoned the search for love, settling instead for the occasional hook-up, career success, and a close relationship with her stepfather to round out a satisfying life. But when Sally’s friend and fellow writer Danny Horst begins dating Annabel, a glamorous actor who guest-hosted the show, he joins the not-so-exclusive group of talented but average-looking and even dorky men at the show—and in society at large—who’ve gotten romantically involved with incredibly beautiful and accomplished women. Sally channels her annoyance into a sketch called the "Danny Horst Rule," poking fun at this phenomenon while underscoring how unlikely it is that the reverse would ever happen for a woman. Enter Noah Brewster, a pop music sensation with a reputation for dating models, who signed on as both host and musical guest for this week’s show. Dazzled by his charms, Sally hits it off with Noah instantly, and as they collaborate on one sketch after another, she begins to wonder whether there might actually be sparks flying. But this isn’t a romantic comedy; it’s real life. And in real life, someone like him would never date someone like her...right? With her keen observations and trademark ability to bring complex women to life on the page, Sittenfeld explores the neurosis-inducing and heart-fluttering wonder of love, while slyly dissecting the social rituals of romance and gender relations in the modern age.

This version of the Bennet family and Mr. Darcy is one that you have and haven't met before: Liz is a magazine writer in her late thirties who, like her yoga instructor older sister, Jane, lives in New York City. When their father has a health scare, they return to their childhood home in Cincinnati to help and discover that the sprawling Tudor they grew up in is crumbling and the family is in disarray. Youngest sisters Kitty and Lydia are too busy with their CrossFit workouts and Paleo diets to get jobs. Mary, the middle sister, is earning her third online master's degree and barely leaves her room, except for those mysterious Tuesday-night outings she won't discuss. And Mrs. Bennet has one thing on her mind: how to marry off her daughters, especially as Jane's fortieth birthday fast approaches. Enter Chip Bingley, a handsome new-in-town doctor who recently appeared on the juggernaut reality TV dating show Eligible. At a Fourth of July barbecue, Chip takes an immediate interest in Jane, but Chip's friend, neurosurgeon Fitzwilliam Darcy, reveals himself to Liz to be much less charming. . . . And yet, first impressions can be deceiving.

Curtis Sittenfeld’s debut novel, Prep, is an insightful, achingly funny coming-of-age story as well as a brilliant dissection of class, race, and gender in a hothouse of adolescent angst and ambition.Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school’s glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel. As Lee soon learns, Ault is a cloistered world of jaded, attractive teenagers who spend summers on Nantucket and speak in their own clever shorthand. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, Lee becomes a shrewd observer of–and, ultimately, a participant in–their rituals and mores. As a scholarship student, she constantly feels like an outsider and is both drawn to and repelled by other loners. By the time she’s a senior, Lee has created a hard-won place for herself at Ault. But when her behavior takes a self-destructive and highly public turn, her carefully crafted identity within the community is shattered.Ultimately, Lee’s experiences–complicated relationships with teachers; intense friendships with other girls; an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush; conflicts with her parents, from whom Lee feels increasingly distant, coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all.From the Hardcover edition.

On what might become one of the most significant days in her husband’s presidency, Alice Blackwell considers the strange and unlikely path that has led her to the White House–and the repercussions of a life lived, as she puts it, “almost in opposition to itself.” A kind, bookish only child born in the 1940s, Alice learned the virtues of politeness early on from her stolid parents and small Wisconsin hometown. But a tragic accident when she was seventeen shattered her identity and made her understand the fragility of life and the tenuousness of luck. So more than a decade later, when she met boisterous, charismatic Charlie Blackwell, she hardly gave him a second look: She was serious and thoughtful, and he would rather crack a joke than offer a real insight; he was the wealthy son of a bastion family of the Republican party, and she was a school librarian and registered Democrat. Comfortable in her quiet and unassuming life, she felt inured to his charms. And then, much to her surprise, Alice fell for Charlie. As Alice learns to make her way amid the clannish energy and smug confidence of the Blackwell family, navigating the strange rituals of their country club and summer estate, she remains uneasy with her newfound good fortune. And when Charlie eventually becomes President, Alice is thrust into a position she did not seek–one of power and influence, privilege and responsibility. As Charlie’s tumultuous and controversial second term in the White House wears on, Alice must face contradictions years in the making: How can she both love and fundamentally disagree with her husband? How complicit has she been in the trajectory of her own life? What should she do when her private beliefs run against her public persona? In Alice Blackwell, New York Times bestselling author Curtis Sittenfeld has created her most dynamic and complex heroine yet. American Wife is a gorgeously written novel that weaves class, wealth, race, and the exigencies of fate into a brilliant tapestry–a novel in which the unexpected becomes inevitable, and the pleasures and pain of intimacy and love are laid bare.BONUS: This edition includes an excerpt from Curtis Sittenfeld's Sisterland.

A mesmerizing novel of family and identity, loyalty and deception, and the delicate line between truth and belief From an early age, Kate and her identical twin sister, Violet, knew they were unlike everyone else. Kate and Vi were born with peculiar “senses”—innate psychic abilities concerning future events and other people’s secrets. Although Vi embraced her visions, Kate did her best to hide them. Now, years later, their different paths have led them both back to their hometown of St. Louis. Vi has pursued an eccentric career as a psychic medium, while Kate, a devoted wife and mother, has settled down in the suburbs to raise her two young children. But when a minor earthquake hits in the middle of the night, the normal life Kate has always wished for begins to shift. After Vi goes on television to share a premonition that another, more devastating earthquake will soon hit the St. Louis area, Kate is mortified. Equally troubling, however, is her fear that Vi may be right. As the date of the predicted earthquake quickly approaches, Kate is forced to reconcile her fraught relationship with her sister and to face truths about herself she’s long tried to deny.

A funny, fiercely intelligent, and moving collection exploring marriage, friendship, fame, and artistic ambition—including a story that revisits the main character from Curtis Sittenfeld’s iconic novel Prep—from the New York Times bestselling author of Eligible and Romantic ComedyIn her second story collection, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels. In these dazzling stories, she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends, laying bare the moments when their long held beliefs are overturned.In “The Patron Saints of Middle Age,” a woman visits two friends she hasn’t seen since her divorce. In “A for Alone,” a married artist embarks on a creative project intended to disprove the so-called Mike Pence Rule, which suggests that women and men can’t spend time alone together without lusting after each other. And in “Lost but Not Forgotten,” Sittenfeld gives readers of her novel Prep a window into the world of her beloved character Lee Fiora, decades later, when Lee attends an alumni reunion at her boarding school.Hilarious, thought-provoking, and full of tenderness for her characters, Sittenfeld’s stories peel back layer after layer of our inner lives, keeping us riveted to the page with her utterly distinctive voice.

Hannah Gavener is fourteen in the summer of 1991. In the magazines she reads, celebrities plan elaborate weddings; in Hannah’s own life, her parents’ marriage is crumbling. And somewhere in between these two extremes--just maybe--lie the answers to love’s most bewildering questions. But over the next decade and a half, as she moves from Philadelphia to Boston to Albuquerque, Hannah finds that the questions become more rather than less complicated: At what point can you no longer blame your adult failures on your messed-up childhood? Is settling for someone who’s not your soul mate an act of maturity or an admission of defeat? And if you move to another state for a guy who might not love you back, are you being plucky or just pathetic?None of the relationships in Hannah’s life are without complications. There’s her father, whose stubbornness Hannah realizes she’s unfortunately inherited; her gorgeous cousin, Fig, whose misbehavior alternately intrigues and irritates Hannah; Henry, whom Hannah first falls for in college, while he’s dating Fig; and the boyfriends who love her more or less than she deserves, who adore her or break her heart. By the time she’s in her late twenties, Hannah has finally figured out what she wants most--but she doesn’t yet know whether she’ll find the courage to go after it. Full of honesty and humor, The Man of My Dreams is an unnervingly insightful and beautifully written examination of the outside forces and personal choices that make us who we are.

All marriages are hard. Many of them fail. Brock Lewis, an evangelical businessman turned self-published author, has the answer. Follow his international best-selling book’s 12-point “Atomic Doctrine” - make eye contact with your spouse? Always! Use the bathroom in front of them? Never! - and you, too, can build a marriage that thrives.What Hollywood power broker Heather Thiesen knows about marriage is that hers is sputtering, anything but romantic, and utterly exhausting. But she still aspires to turn Brock’s book into the blockbuster romantic comedy she knows it can be - now she just has to convince Brock.Narrated with depth and warmth by Oscar nominee Diane Lane, what follows is a remarkable story about the life partners we choose, the secrets we keep, and the compromises we make by one of America’s funniest and most astute cultural commentators.

An unnervingly funny and sharply observant story about the privilege, class division, and purposeful lives of old friends by Curtis Sittenfeld, the New York Times bestselling author of Rodham.Andy Wofford, middle-aged father and English teacher at a third-tier private school, receives a surprising invitation for a drink from an old college classmate. Once awkward and forgettable, Michael Kinnick has become a famous, wealthy, and absurdly confident lifestyle guru. Of all the people who’d want to catch up, why Michael? After thirty divergent years, why now? Mildly apprehensive, Andy is also very curious.Curtis Sittenfeld’s The Tomorrow Box is part of Currency, a compounding collection of stories about wealth, class, competition, and collapse. If time is money, deposit here with interest. Read or listen in a single sitting.

In this incisive short story about memory and the limits of self-perception, the New York Times bestselling author of Rodham and Prep reflects on motherhood, gender, power dynamics, and the lingering effects of the past.Emily appears to have it all: professional success and a sweet family life. But when her promotion causes her family to relocate to a new city, the move unexpectedly stirs up unpleasant memories of Jack Olney, the handsome jock who bullied her during college.As Emily sorts through her recollections and past humiliations, she decides to reach out to her old dorm mates. Do they remember her? Are they happy? And whatever happened to Jack?With piercing emotional truth, Curtis Sittenfeld explores the indignities we can’t ever seem to shake—and the pitfalls of self-reflection.

“To read their stories felt to me the way I suspect other people feel hearing jazz for the first time,” recalls Curtis Sittenfeld of her initial encounter with the Best American Short Stories series. “They were windows into emotions I had and hadn’t had, into other settings and circumstances and observations and relationships.” Decades later, Sittenfeld was met by the same feeling selecting the stories for this year’s edition. The result is a striking and nuanced collection, bringing to life awkward college students, disgraced public figures, raunchy grandparents, and mystical godmothers. To read these stories is to experience the transporting joys of discovery and affirmation, and to realize that story writing in America continues to flourish. Godmother tea / Selena Anderson --The apartment / T.C. Boyle --A faithful but melancholy account of several barbarities lately committed / Jason Brown --Sibling rivalry / Michael Byers --The nanny / Emma Cline --Halloween / Marian Crotty --Something Street / Carolyn Ferrell --This is pleasure / Mary Gaitskill --In the event / Meng Jin --The children / Andrea Lee --Rubberdust / Sarah Thankam Mathews --It's not you / Elizabeth McCracken --Liberté / Scott Nadelson --Howl Palace / Leigh Newman --The nine-tailed fox explains / Jane Pek --The hands of dirty children / Alejandro Puyana --Octopus VII / Anna Reeser --Enlightenment / William Pei Shih --Kennedy / Kevin Wilson --The special world / Tiphanie Yanique

Three scalding stories from the bestselling author of American Wife.Sittenfeld’s wryly hilarious and insightful new collection, Help Yourself, illuminates human experience and gracefully upends our assumptions about class and race, envy and disappointment, gender dynamics and celebrity.Suburban friends fall out after a racist encounter at a birthday party is caught on video and posted on Facebook; an illustrious Manhattan film crew are victims of their own snobbery when they underestimate a pre-school teacher from the Mid-West; and a group of young writers fight about love and narrative style as they compete for a prestigious bursary.Connecting each of these three stories is Sittenfeld’s truthful yet merciless eye, as her characters stagger from awkwardness, to humiliation and, if they're lucky, to reconciliation. Full of tenderness and compassion, this dazzling collection celebrates our humanity in all its pettiness and glory.

Curtis Sittenfeld's A Regular Couple follows Maggie, a star lawyer who while on her honeymoon encounters her one-time nemesis, Ashley, the faded queen bee of her high school. Discovering that the erstwhile prom queen is married to a bore, Maggie might have felt pity for Ashley. But old resentments surge, and she can't quell the questions that rage within her. Could her wonderful new husband really love her, plain as she is despite her star-lawyer status? Or is he only with her for her money? Is she still that same gullible high-school girl? Shouldn't Maggie be married to the bore, and doesn't her new husband belong with Ashley?

One of the most exceptional voices in literary fiction today, Curtis Sittenfeld is renowned for her rich prose, irresistible storytelling, and fascinating characters who struggle with the rules of gender, race, and privilege. Now, in this convenient eBook bundle, here are her blockbuster bestselling and critically acclaimed novels, Prep and American Wife .PREPNamed One of the Top Ten Books of the Year by The New York TimesLee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when she leaves her family behind in Indiana to attend the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. Over the next four years, her experiences at Ault—complicated relationships with teachers, intense friendships with other girls, an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush—coalesce into a singular portrait of the universal pains and thrills of adolescence.AMERICAN WIFENamed One of the Top Ten Books of the Year by Time, People, and Entertainment WeeklyA bookish only child born in the 1940s and raised in a small Wisconsin town, Alice Lindgren has no idea that she will one day end up in the White House, married to the president. So when the charismatic son of a powerful Republican family sweeps her off her feet, she is surprised to find herself admitted into a world of privilege. As he unexpectedly becomes governor and then president, she discovers that she is married to a man she fundamentally disagrees with yet deeply loves. And upon the advent of her husband’s second term, Alice must finally face questions nearly impossible to answer.Praise for Curtis Sittenfeld“One of the most tender and accurate portraits of adolescence in recent memory.”— San Francisco Chronicle, on Prep“A tart and complex tale of social class, race, and gender politics.”— The Boston Globe, on Prep“[Sittenfeld’s] dialogue captures teenage humor brilliantly, and her characters show remarkable depth.”— Chicago Tribune, on Prep“An intelligent, bighearted novel about a controversial political dynasty.”— Entertainment Weekly, on American Wife“Smart and sophisticated . . . Sittenfeld has an astonishing gift for creating characters that take up residence in readers’ heads.”— The Washington Post, on American Wife“An intimate and daring story . . . Alice is a woman of considerable intellect, compassion and character.” — USA Today, on American Wife

A married woman forms a conspiratorial bond with her husband’s colleague, based on his habit of sidling up to her at dull social occasions with the instruction: “I’ll think it, you say it” and a nod to another guest. Julie’s task is to construct a vignette – part gossip, part mildly derisive characterisation – for Graham’s amusement. The rules of the game are never made explicit; the pair’s roles are never reversed.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERNAMED ONE OF THE BEST NOVELS OF THE YEAR BY Slate Daily Candy St. Louis Post-Dispatch The Guardian (U.K.)“Novelists get called master storytellers all the time, but Sittenfeld really is one. . . . What might be most strikingly excellent about Sisterland is the way Sittenfeld depicts domesticity and motherhood.”—Maggie Shipstead, The Washington Post “Psychologically vivid . . . Sisterland is a testament to [Curtis Sittenfeld’s] growing depth and assurance as a writer.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times “[Sittenfeld’s] gifts are in full effect with this novel, and she uses them to create a genuinely engrossing sense of uncertainty and suspense.”—Sloane Crosley, NPR’s All Things ConsideredCurtis Sittenfeld, author of American Wife and Prep, returns with a mesmerizing novel of family and identity, loyalty and deception, and the delicate line between truth and belief. From an early age, Kate and her identical twin sister, Violet, knew that they were unlike everyone else. Kate and Vi were born with peculiar “senses”—innate psychic abilities concerning future events and other people’s secrets. Though Vi embraced her visions, Kate did her best to hide them. Now, years later, their different paths have led them both back to their hometown of St. Louis. Vi has pursued an eccentric career as a psychic medium, while Kate, a devoted wife and mother, has settled down in the suburbs to raise her two young children. But when a minor earthquake hits in the middle of the night, the normal life Kate has always wished for begins to shift. After Vi goes on television to share a premonition that another, more devastating earthquake will soon hit the St. Louis area, Kate is mortified. Equally troubling, however, is her fear that Vi may be right. As the date of the predicted earthquake quickly approaches, Kate is forced to reconcile her fraught relationship with her sister and to face truths about herself she’s long tried to deny. Funny, haunting, and thought-provoking, Sisterland is a beautifully written novel of the obligation we have toward others, and the responsibility we take for ourselves. With her deep empathy, keen wisdom, and unerring talent for finding the extraordinary moments in our everyday lives, Curtis Sittenfeld is one of the most exceptional voices in literary fiction today.Praise for Sisterland “What’s most captivating about Sisterland is the intimate, intense portrayal of identical twin sisters. . . . [The novel] unfolds like a good prophecy—inevitable and shocking.” —San Francisco Chronicle “The accomplished Sittenfeld . . . is as skillful as ever at developing an intriguing premise and likable characters. . . . Sittenfeld’s affectionate take on sibling rivalry is spot-on.”— People “The power of [Sittenfeld’s] writing and the force of her vision challenge the notion that great fiction must be hard to read. She is a master of dramatic irony, creating fully realized social worlds before laying waste to her heroines’ understanding of them. . . . Her prose [is] a rich delight.”— The Boston Globe “Wise and often wickedly entertaining . . . Readers who have siblings—especially women with sisters—will likely come away feeling as if the author really is psychic.”— USA Today

Ehe, Freundschaft, Die Frauen in Curtis Sittenfelds neuem Erzählband setzen sich mit den großen Themen des Lebens und der Lebensmitte auseinander. Sie sind in den Vierzigern und merken, dass ihre lang gehegten Überzeugungen nicht mehr tragen in einer Welt, die sich beständig ändert. Da gilt es, sie und sich selbst zu hinterfragen und sich aufzumachen zu neuen Ufern. Jill wird vermeintlich gecancelt. Ruth ist damit konfrontiert, dass sie als weibliche Autorin ganz anderen Kriterien ausgesetzt ist als ein Kollege. Jess besucht zwei Freundinnen, die sie seit ihrer Scheidung nicht mehr gesehen hat, und lotet ihre Beziehung neu aus. Bei Lee Fiora, der Protagonistin aus Sittenfelds hochgelobtem Debüt ›Prep‹, ist es das Abschlussjubiläum, das zu einer Auseinandersetzung mit dem früheren Selbst führt. Sittenfelds Geschichten sind unglaublich zeitgeistig, klug, lustig und voller Einfühlungsvermögen. Mit unverkennbarem Scharfblick schildert sie die inneren Konflikte ihrer Figuren, die oft zwischen gesellschaftlichen Normen und ihren persönlichen Wünschen hin- und hergerissen sind.

Lee Fiora, Tochter eines Matratzenhändlers aus Indiana, ist vierzehn, als ihr der Hochglanzprospekt einer Bostoner Eliteschule namens Ault in die Hände fällt. Beeindruckt von der Welt der Reichen und Schönen, bewirbt sie sich um eines der raren Stipendien – mit Erfolg. Doch bald muss sie feststellen, dass die Realität im Internat anders aussieht als in ihren Trä Zu Hause gilt sie als lustig, talentiert, selbstbewusst, in Ault ist sie ein Niemand. Die Eltern fast aller ihrer Mitschüler sind obszön reich, und Lee versucht, sich nicht anmerken zu lassen, dass sie kein Geld hat. Angezogen und zugleich abgestoßen von ihren privilegierten und selbstsicher wirkenden Mitschülern wird sie zur Außenseiterin, zur Expertin im Unsichtbarsein. Dabei beobachtet sie ihre Umgebung genau. Nach und nach schließt sie Freundschaften und verliebt sich sogar, doch ausgerechnet kurz vor dem Abschluss droht ihr alles zu entgleiten. Messerscharf schildert Curtis Sittenfeld die Abgründe des Teenagerdaseins und was es heißt, seinen Platz im Leben zu finden.