Book Report #199 White Houses

White Houses by Amy Bloom

I'm still scratching my head about this book. I picked it up because I saw everyone was reading it and I have to do what everyone is doing. I quickly discovered I was reading historical fiction narrated by Eleanor Roosevelt's lesbian lover, Alice Hickok, who was known as the First Friend of The White House.

Their relationship is no secret now, although it was at the time. FDR had his affair(s) and Eleanor had hers. They had a country to run and a nation to inspire so they managed to largely keep their personal lives out of the spotlight.

The story is told out of order. There's a lot of jumping around to different times and places, with the main thread being in a New York apartment where they are holed up in a lovers nest as old ladies. Alice was a strong, opinionated woman and some of the things she had to say about famous people somewhat shocked me, like that she thought Charles Lindbergh killed his own baby and blamed someone else.

She thought of The White House as a dorm, and stayed there frequently. She knew FDR pretty well, as well as a good part of the Roosevelt family. She also grew up poor and abused in the Midwest, so we learn a lot about that and how it was such a different world than the one she later lived in as an accomplished journalist.


General consensus: I couldn't put it down but it felt a bit like salacious gossip dressed as fine literature.