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From Amazon
Christopher Buckley is not so much a novelist as a free-ranging satirist looking for targets. In Thank You for Smoking it was big tobacco and earnest reformers; in God Is My Broker it was business and religion; and in No Way to Treat a First Lady, it's the entire legal profession, not to mention the Washington establishment. The novel opens with the President of the United States returning to the conjugal bed after an illicit Lincoln Bedroom romp with the Streisandesque Babette Van Anka. His wife, the long-suffering Beth McMann, promptly clocks him with a Paul Revere spittoon. Several hours later he dies. "Lady Bethmac," as the First Lady is immediately dubbed by the media, is put on trial, and the resulting media circus gives Buckley lots of opportunity for nicely observed skewerings of legal culture. "Judge Dutch creaked forward in his chair. This is the source of the aura of judges: they have bigger chairs than anyone else. That and the fact that they can sentence people to sit in electrified ones. It's all about chairs." He gets in some neat neologisms--a lawyer performs a "credibilobotomy" on a witness--and sends up the pretensions of law TV: at a roundtable discussion, the guest from Harvard Law is invited "to provide gravitas and to shift uneasily in his seat when the other guests said something provocative." Buckley's Trial of the Millennium is so far-fetched that it seems entirely possible. --Claire Dederer
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Publishers Weekly
The lurid sexual excesses that dominated presidential politics in the late '90s provide plenty of comic fodder for Buckley's latest satire, which doubles as a legal thriller that begins when President Ken MacMann is found dead in bed next to his wife after a vigorous night in a White House guest room with his latest mistress, film star Babette Van Anka. First lady Elizabeth MacMann whose tabloid nickname is Lady Bethmac is first on the suspect list, largely because she bopped Ken with an antique spittoon after his latest infidelity, leaving a bruise that spelled out Paul Revere's name on the late presidential forehead. Beth quickly hires an expensive, successful legal gun named Boyce "Shameless" Baylor, who also happens to be an old flame, and Baylor wades into the sordid mess, using the well-established tactics of tabloid trials to steer his client toward reasonable doubt. But Beth gets cocky after his initial success and insists on taking the stand to clear her reputation, a tactic that backfires so badly that Baylor is forced to resort to jury tampering to try to force a mistrial. Buckley has to use some obvious narrative cliches to get Baylor and MacMann out of the mess after they rekindle their romance, but the good news is that this book is more plot driven than Buckley's earlier satires, making it more coherent and effective over the long haul. The political humor is first-rate as usual, as Buckley has plenty of fun with the slimy, silly mess that is Beltway politics. This is one of his better efforts, which should keep Buckley on the "A" list of American satirists.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Good Airplane Reading (but keep expectations low),
By
This review is from: No Way to Treat a First Lady: A Novel (Paperback)
I bought this book based on the enthusiastic reviews on Amazon as well as the intriguing and tremendous satiric potential offered by its premise. I was disappointed. While often entertaining and readable, this was by no means a spectacular, well-plotted, or thought provoking book. The characters are one dimensional (when they do attempt to evolve into two dimensions the resulting actions are completely implausible). A lot of it is predictable (former lovers.. hm - what will happen next?). Buckley also uses the words "objection" and "sustained" or "overruled" so many times I simply lost interest. There are countless courtroom scenes, but the real plot is pretty much contained in the last 20 pages. There is a difference between satire and simple cynicism - Buckley is definitely more the smart aleck kid criticizing and picking at the obvious targets (from starlets to various governmental agenices). The only enjoyable passages involved the self-absorbed Babette van Anka, another stereotype but so caught up in her own odd universe that she is the only character worth remembering from this book.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Like a warm shower,
By
This review is from: No Way to Treat a First Lady: A Novel (Paperback)
Author Christopher Buckley, whose razor wit somehow transformed a spokesman for the tobacco industry a sympathetic protagonist in Thank You For Smoking, sets his sites on the alleged assassination of the president in No Way To Treat A First Lady. What's next? A comedic treatment of domestic abuse or drug addiction?Whatever it is, based on the two efforts of Mr. Buckley I have read so far, it is bound to be an entertaining and intelligent. This time around, Mr. Buckely sets up fictional circumstances that hilariously skewer the scandals surrounding Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Barbara Streisand, Johnny Cochran and OJ Simpson, Marc Rich, Monica Lewinsky, and the American legal system. Don't be surprised to find yourself laughing, loudly and often. A friend of mine calls this kind of book a "warm shower" -- it's nice when you're in it, he says, but the good feeling doesn't last long once you step out onto the bathmat. It's a characterization I can't deny, but I'll say that this warm shower is better than most. It won't force you to ask yourself important questions, and it won't affect the way you see the world. But as an easy-to-read story that manages to keep the pages turning without insulting anyone's intelligence, it's hard to beat.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good, Entertaining Read,
By
This review is from: No Way to Treat a First Lady: A Novel (Paperback)
"No Way to Treat a First Lady" is an amusing read for the few hours it will take you to finish it. This isn't literary fiction; you won't receive any interesting revelations about life and love.The heroine, Elizabeth Tyler MacMann, is accused of killing her husband, Kenneth Kemble MacMann, war hero and President of the United States. Boyce "Shameless" Baylor is her lawyer and jilted fiancé-she left him twenty-five years ago for the man who would become president. There are plenty of characters, including the actress/mistress/singer/Middle East peace advocate, a renegade spy, and underworld gangsters. Buckley pokes fun of the media, the government, the legal system, and the entertainment industry. With a few clever witticisms and improbable twists, the novel makes its way through the "Trial of the Millennium" until the all the plot threads tie up neatly in the end. I'd recommend "No Way to Treat a First Lady" for a few hours entertainment and not much else.
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