No Way To Treat A First Lady (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
Written in a pre-9/11 world, No Way to Treat a First Lady is a withering satire of the Clinton administration, in particular the relationship between the "philandering" President whose indiscretions run from the time he was governor all the way to the Lincoln Bedroom and the "substantive" First Lady, who is described as "a far cry from Hillary Clinton, who contented herself with taking care of her husband and giving the occasional tea for congressional wives." The humor in this book is amazing, and it's no wonder that Buckley came to be regarded as one of the best satirists alive today. His characters are obvious in their inspiration, but he does a masterful job of making his First Lady actually likable. He also manages to make the philandering husband/President even more disputable than the real-life counterpart, despite having actually served in Vietnam, rather than dodging the draft. The last Buckley book I read had an editing issue (Supreme Courtship), but this novel only had one glaring mistake (that I noticed). The other problems I've had with some of Buckley's work, such as poor pacing and flat characters, aren't a problem here. The pacing runs full-speed from first chapter to last, and in true Buckley fashion the first chapter and last are the only ones that are spent on introducing or wrapping up story. Everything between is a mix of plot advancement, character development, some of the best dialogue written by a modern author (he occasionally strikes a tough or unbelievable chord, but generally the wit and turn of phrase in Buckley's dialogue is clinical in its execution), and references both to in-fiction jokes and real-world-inspired humor. The plot is the only thing that leaves something to be desired here, and that's saying a lot. Nitpicking over choices of plotting, unless they are entirely radical and out of character or tone, is not something I try to engage in. That said, I tend to dislike any instances of deus ex machina. It's a poor device and one I find used to death in modern fiction and mislabeled as a "twist". In reality, it should be labeled as what the author thinks his readers are: "twits". With that said, when it occurs in this book I can look the other way. Sort of. It still bothers me, but this isn't meant to be a serious story of a First Lady's trial for assassinating the President. This is a satire, a spoof of the world of Washington politics, and the device is necessary to elevate the story to the next level of ridiculousness. I liked this book as much as I did Boomsday, the first Buckley book I read. It's not the same kind of humor (I think he was in rare form with Boomsday, which I've now seen other people read and break out laughing aloud, meaning I'm not alone). The humor here is more a twist on expectation, a more true sense of satire than what we tend to expect from satire. The lampooning of Clintonian-era sexual excess and incompetence is not laugh out loud funny, but it's still funny in that tragic way that all good comedy (and Buckley's in particular) is. I've read less realistic and more ludicrous books that purport to be accurate depictions from inside the Clinton White House by bother supporters and opponents. Maybe that's what makes No Way to Treat a First Lady so special.
Funny Ha-Ha, and Funny StrangeHumor is a funny thing. Not long ago I introduced Christopher Buckley to an audience of about 100 people in Berkeley. (No, I didn’t go to Yale with him. This was solely on the strength of having given favorable reviews to several of his novels.) Buckley spoke off the cuff rather than read from his writing, and I found him hilarious. So did about half the audience. Some seemed to be on the verge of falling off their chairs from time to time. But the other half of the audience sat stone-faced, often with arms crossed and eyes darting right and left, apparently waiting for a chance to sneak out of the room.All this is to say that I read No Way to Treat a First Lady, laughing all the way — and maybe you won’t. Whenever as a child I told my mother that something was funny, she would ask, “Funny ha-ha, or funny strange?” Well, this one is a little of both. No Way to Treat a First Lady tells the tale of a philandering President and a long-suffering wife who has, apparently, murdered him in his sleep. See what I mean?Christopher Buckley’s humor is grounded in such situations, not too many steps removed from reality. Don’t get me wrong. The leading characters in this novel in no way resemble two recent residents of the White House. And the supporting cast would be a better fit in a Marx Brothers film than in today’s Washington, DC: the best criminal defense lawyer money can buy, who incidentally was the jilted law-school lover of the First Lady; a blonde Court TV superstar, who is the current, much-younger squeeze of the self-important defense lawyer; bumbling rival trial attorneys; and a motley assortment of FBI and Secret Service agents and White House hangers-on. Even so, you can practically see them behind today’s headlines.I won’t spoil the story by summarizing the plot, which is deliciously complex and as full of surprises as a best-selling thriller. You deserve the chance to discover it on your own.Forewarned, then, that I think Christopher Buckley is one of the funniest writers currently walking the planet, I commend you to my previous reviews of his books: Little Green Men, Florence of Arabia, The White House Mess, and They Eat Puppies, Don’t They? If you read (or have read) these reviews, you know that I don’t think they’re all equally good — Florence of Arabia, for example, was just a little too real for me.Pretty soon I’m going to run out of Buckley’s books, and I’ll just have to start reading them all over again.
What do You think about No Way To Treat A First Lady (2003)?
Suggested by Goodreads based on my "miscellaneous supernatural" shelf. Does this sound like it would fit on that shelf? Will have to check. Maybe his Little Green Men book is on there. I originally read this because the plot sounded suspiciously like what I think happened to George W. Bush when he claimed he choked on a pretzel thing: namely, that Laura got fed up and clocked him one. Buckley has great ideas when he starts out but often they peter out towards the end. They are almost all definitely worth starting. I wish someone would do unabridged audiobooks of these, especially Thank You For Smoking. Read this before I started on Goodreads. Definitely read before 2006. I feel this is one of the top three of his novels - including the other two mentioned.
—Marfita
What a hoot! A war hero president has died and his wife is accused of doing him in by throwing a Paul Revere spitoon at him. Needless to say the man in question has a reputation that would put Bill Clinton to shame so some may say that he got what he deserved. The widow has hired a true shark of a lawyer to defend her. Come to find out they were law school classmates that were engaged and she threw him over for the dead guy. You follow the trial as it proceeds and unfolds exposing all the twist and turns of the incident. Buckleys humor with the relationships, names, and circumstance make it a hoot. Think of Hillary Clinton as a defendant in a murder trial. This book includes Hollywood celebrity and big time money person on the scale of Donald Trump. Definitely worth reading. Read and laugh out loud. You know that it would never happern but you always wonder "what if?"
—Nancy
No Way to Treat a First Lady is now the third Christopher Buckley book I've read, and while it's not my favorite so far, I did like it enough to order a couple more of his novels off of Amazon. His particular brand of humor (smarmy, sarcastic political satire) really does it for me and the fun plots of his books are icing on the cake. In No Way to Treat a First Lady, First Lady Elizabeth MacMann (aka Lady Bethmac) is put on trial after her cheating husband is found dead. She seeks the counsel of an old ex, the most famous lawyer in the country -- "Shameless" Baylor. The result is a skewering of everything from politics to the law to Hollywood stars. Buckley is a funny, funny and his writing is sharp as a tack.Like I said, this wasn't my favorite of his books, mostly because the pacing is kind of wonky -- it moves really fast, then slow, then wraps up quickly again. But it's still a great read and I would highly recommend it, along with Thank You For Smoking and Supreme Courtship.
—Corielle
