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I read Rodham some weeks ago and am of a few different minds about it, because I think you can read this book three different ways: first, as a piece of mainstream fan fiction (because that's exactly what it is); second, as a character study of a woman whose public-facing self is, at this point, a warped amalgamation of various projections; and lastly, as an artifact of what I would call the period of national trauma following the 2016 election.

In the first aspect, as a piece of fan fiction, I actually think the first 1/2 to 2/3 of the book is surprisingly successful (Kudos on AO3, although the Hillary/Bill smut might scar you). As a character portrait, and an exploration of the tension between Hillary's private and public selves, this novel is competent but uninspired. There's a flatness to Sittenfeld's Hillary that she's never quite able to flesh out, and it only gets worse as the book goes on. And in the final aspect, as a broader kind of post-2016 social-political commentary, I think this book is pretty useless. The ending, in particular, engages in some white feminist wishful thinking that has a lot to say about sexism but glosses over the resurgent nationalism, racism, and xenophobia that helped carry Trump to victory four years ago. Even more insidious is Sittenfeld's depiction of Trump as an unlikely Hillary surrogate (yes, really), which plays into the dangerous notion that he's a mere clown who possesses no real ideology. Most of the last 1/3 of this book is baffling at best, and its feel-good ending—which presents the idea of a woman in the White House as a kind of national redemption—rings terribly hollow in 2020.