Customer Reviews

No Way to Treat a First Lady: A Novel

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

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.

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.

"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.

It's a cliché, but true! I immensely enjoyed "No Way to Treat a First Lady", and found myself chuckling almost constantly throughout, laughing out loud many times, and laughing uncontrollably on several occasions. If you read this book in public, as I did, be prepared to receive disapproving glances from others who aren't having as good a time as you are.

No Way skewers the Washington political scene, the legal profession, the media, and in particular the Clinton scandals and the O.J. Simpson trial. But ultimately, like all great satire, it is really a no-holds-barred look at our current societal mores and norms.

The main characters in No Way are all composites, which is how Christopher Buckley is able to construct a storyline that departs from the actual events it is satirizing, but is still fully recognizable by anyone who followed the news in the late 1990s. You'll enjoy picking out references to Bill and Hillary Clinton, Barbra Streisand, Marc Rich, Alan Dershowitz, and of course Monica - plus many others. Even Nick Naylor, the hero of Buckley's "Thank You for Smoking", has a bit part in No Way.

I've read most of Buckley's books, and No Way is right up there with his best. I'd put "Thank You for Smoking" first by a hair, followed by No Way, then "God is My Broker". Thank You is slightly more timeless, as No Way's humor will dissipate somewhat with time, as people's recollections of the Clinton years fade.

Christopher Buckley can legitimately lay claim to being America's top working satirist. Keep them coming, Mr. Buckley, sir!

There aren't many authors out there who can make you laugh out loud. Christopher Buckley is one. I liked everything about this book, including his smirky photograph on the back cover. It's like he just knows that you get all his inside jokes! Some of his images are very funny, like the newly sworn-in President Farkley fighting his urge to tap dance with glee during his press conference about the First Lady being indicted. He even chooses his characters' names with a tongue-in-cheek flair: Babette Van Anca, indeed! Some might say that his satire is too in-your-face obvious, too out there (like comments that this first lady is not like Hillary Clinton who only wanted to entertain ladies at tea parties and the reference to the Lincoln Bedroom being well-used), but I think he's hysterical! I look forward to reading his other books in hopes that they are just as good. Nicely done, Mr. Buckley!

Buckley's ridicule of trial attorneys and politicians is hilarious and apt but never bitter. This is a very enjoyable read, as was his _Thank You for Smoking_.

Whether you love the Clintons or hate them you have to admit, they provide some great material for novelists, especially for writers like Christopher Buckley who specialize in political farce. In "No Way to Treat a First Lady" Buckley uses some of the more sensational Clinton outrages to create a hilarious murder mystery and political lampoon that skewers politicians, lawyers, reporters, the O.J. trial, the Hollywood Left and even the Virginia State Police, just to name a few.

The decedent is no less a personage than the president himself, who dies in his sleep after being cold-cocked by a flying spittoon thrown by his wife after he returned from a midnight tryst in the Lincoln Bedroom with an amorous movie star. Sound familiar? Even if you don't subscribe to The American Spectator you might notice a few similarities to the Clintons. The first lady's name is Beth MacMann, called "Lady Bethmac" by the press, get it? There is at least one significant difference--this president was a Vietnam War hero.

The first lady is arrested for murder and the ensuing trial becomes a screwball comedy worthy of Frank Capra. I laughed out loud several times while reading this book. The following excerpt may or may not be funny depending on your sense of humor, but when President Farkley was "deploring racial profiling" because "former secretary of state Colin Powell had again been pulled over by a Virginia State Trooper and spread-eagled across the hood of his car," I laughed till I cried. Buckley has a field day with character names that are parodies of real persons, like Alan Crudmann, famous defense lawyer of the "J.J. Bronco" trial, and Damon Blowwell, the president's political director. There are many more that will be instantly recognized and some, like Dan Rather, whom Buckley doesn't bother to disguise.

The mechanics of this novel may be problematic for literary purists; in some segments it reads more like a screenplay than a literary work, and it lacks precision in the timeline and some of the medical details. But remember, it's a screwball comedy. It is also comedy with a right jab instead of a left hook. Conservatives get a little tired of being the butt of all the political jokes on TV sitcoms. Here, Buckley has fun with the icons of the left, and unless you're a seriously uptight liberal who is offended by the obvious references to the Clintons and their apologists, you should have great fun reading this book.

Christopher Buckley has produced another comic masterpiece, this time placing the Washington culture, lawyer-dom, TV talking heads, and Clintonesque vices squarely in his cross-hairs. Christopher Buckley seems to get no press or respect, but he has snuck up on us, nearly unannounced as the best satirist of this generation. Take this one to the beach and laugh out loud.

A sitting President wakes up dead one spring morning after a late night romp with an actress turned Middle East peace advocate, and a resulting bump on the head by a suspicious and very upset wife. Although the evidence seems weak initially, the Attorney General elects to prosecute the First Lady for murder. She brings in a $1000 per hour litigator, who also happens to be an ex-boyfriend from law school. Turns out the First Lady dumped the attorney for a war hero law student, who later becomes the philandering Commander in Chief. Clearly, this is not based on the Clintons as Clinton was never a war hero, more like the opposite, and it is hard to imagine Hillary having multiple male suiters. Then things get really crazy, with renewed romances and unexpected consequences, charges of jury tampering, false evidence, and defendants determined to not only testify when it seems un-neccesary and risky, but to represent themselves. When you think you have it figured out, here come the international financiers immersed in deals with the Chinese, civil war between the FBI and the CIA, and shadowy fugitive ex-agents with stories of espionage to tell that make Watergate look truly irrelevant.

I recently laughed my way through the CD audio book edition of Buckley's roman a clef (more like a Roman toga party a clef) while driving some of the most stupefyingly dull stretches of the New York State Thruway. It preserved my sanity, kept me awake and in a keen state of anticipation for the next sharply goofy plot turn. Kudos to Tim Matheson for a fine telling of the story. His voice, intonation and strategic pauses were right on the money. A cautionary note: don't play this story when your kids are within earshot unless you like to feel embarrassed.

The ridiculous spectacle of the "trial-of-the-millennium" is not far from today's reality. Its easy to be jaded these days, so it's quite refreshing to step back and laugh a bit. Laugh-out-loud funny and a fast read.