White Houses: A Novel

The author presents the contents as being factual until the postscript in whihc she writes it is totally fiction. She seems to not be willing to start with the fictional comment and cause the reader to question the contents of the book.after it is read.

Very disappointing-superficial treatment of a relationship that had more depth and beauty than portrayed here. There was little of Eleanor Roosevelt found in the text and no character development. Seemed like a soap opera.

what a compelling book about love and the vicissitudes of what true love is, no matter what their genders. I admired the way the author portrayed Lorena Hickok, who loved Eleanor and accepted her unconditionally. That kind of acceptance of another is commendable and I suppose what true love is all about.

I love historical fiction but felt the author took too many creative liberties on a friendship that is private and personal. I also felt that not enough light was shed on the amazing contributions the Roosevelts made to our country.

I learned some historic data about Eleanor R. that I didn't previously know. I wasn't at all familiar with the other female character - can't even remember her name - The book did not hold my attention - the only reason i finished it was because I was reading it for a book discussion group. Only one of the six members of the group liked the book. I felt it was a mediocre read and will not be recommending it.

I love historical fiction but felt the author took too many creative liberties on a friendship that is private and personal. I also felt that not enough light was shed on the amazing contributions the Roosevelts made to our country.

I learned some historic data about Eleanor R. that I didn't previously know. I wasn't at all familiar with the other female character - can't even remember her name - The book did not hold my attention - the only reason i finished it was because I was reading it for a book discussion group. Only one of the six members of the group liked the book. I felt it was a mediocre read and will not be recommending it.

I struggled to get through this book. I thought the timeline was so confusing. The author wrote on and on endlessly about people I've never heard of or even care about. That said it has led me to read and learn more about Eleanor Roosevelt.

I have read extensively about Eleanor Roosevelt and the Roosevelt White House and ER's relationship with Lorena Hickok. As a result I looked forward to reading WHITE HOUSES. What a disappointment. The story is written as a flash back by Hick. Why the dialogue is written in the days immediately after the death of the president makes no sense. If you did not have a back ground as to the people who were in the White House, you would be completely lost as to who these people are and their back ground. The continuity of the story is very confusing and frankly, I had to push myself to finish it. I'm going to read UNDISCOVERERED COUNTRY by Kelly O'Connor McNees which is another novel about Eleanor and Hick. It was recommended by several other reviewers as a much better account of the relationship. Amy Bloom should skip writing historical fiction.

This book is about love in the White House between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt (1884 - 1962) and reporter Lorena Hickock (1983 -1968).

Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt did not have the most loving marriage according to numerous historians and personal accounts from people who knew them personally. They had 6 children, 5 of whom lived to adulthood and, aside from their children, the Roosevelts led separate lives. FDR was in a relationship with a woman for many years and even provided her with an apartment where they would meet regularly. Eleanor and "Hick," as her partner was affectionately called enjoyed their lives together. Hick was known for championing women's causes and women's rights such as having an all women's press conference.

Hick is an unsung hero in the New Deal. She inspired and actively encouraged the First Lady to take up writing, such as a syndicated column. These women were a likely pairing. Both had survived emotionally bankrupt childhoods. Both had grown up lonely and desperately unhappy. Both had an active interest in politics and current events. Bloom writes a tender love story between two women who regularly met during a time when same sex unions partners were forced to remain discreet. Ironically, it was common knowledge that Hick was attracted to other women.

Amy Bloom intersperses her telling of the Roosevelt-Hickock union with humor and trenchant observations. She also aims darts and barbs at various members of the Roosevelt family with deadly accuracy and with equally acute humor. That having been said, this book covers a serious topic about the loving relationship of two women and the times in which they lived. Finishing the book is a bittersweet experience as you will miss the people you read about and Amy Bloom's spectacular writing.

Thought this book would be more interesting with the times. There were some parts of the book that were too sexually descriptive of the times together between Eleanor and her friend. It seemed to be a violation of Eleanor’s personal life and would be best kept silent.

The writing style was the best part of this novel. Some of the historical perspective was interesting. A number of things about the relationship between Loretta and Eleanor seemed a little creepy. I'm not knowledgeable how much reliable information information is out there about Loretta's relationships with the Roosevelt children, so I can't really comment how accurate those depictions were, but they seemed a bit of a stretch.

Really did not enjoy this book. The timeline was difficult to follow, and I just couldn't buy into the fact that it is 100% fiction about a true person. Far too many liberties taken with the story line to even be realistic. I would have preferred a more historical account.

I generally really enjoy historical fiction but this could be the worst I’ve ever read. How many ways can one character say the same thing? Apparently as many times as necessary to fill 214 pages. I would not have bothered to finish it, but it is my book club’s selection.

Lately it seems as though there have been many books about Eleanor Roosevelt, particularly about her relationship with Lorena Hickok (aka Hick). Their exact relationship has been speculated about since before FDR was in the White House despite thousands of letters between the two and hundreds of photographs of the pair existing.

This particular book is a work of fiction, not published research although the author has obviously done extensive research into her subjects. The author has taken her research and imagined how the relationship between the two women developed, and endured until their deaths. The author has told the story from Hick's point of view, from her impoverished childhood, through her remarkable career as a journalist and author, her years in and around the White House during and after FDR's remarkable presidency, and even the final years leading to and the aftermath of Eleanor's death. The story is told in a rather puzzling, and sometimes frustrating manner. Instead of proceeding in a strictly chronological manner Bloom has told the story in a non linear manner, as though Hick were reminiscing on her life skipping from time to time and place to place. Although this is an interesting approach, one that did keep the story moving, it was at times challenging to keep the various characters and their changing relationships sorted out. As a result this is a book that really does need to be read more than once in order to really understand all the nuances.

This is a well written book about very interesting subjects who lived in extremely challenging times.

I thought it was a story about Eleanor Roosevelt. Instead it is about her "friend" and rather

I thought it was a story about Eleanor Roosevelt's life. Instead it was a story about her friend and as told by her friend. Actually boring.

Love Amy Bloom. Not so crazy about the Eleanor Roosevelt and friend "relationship." Personally, it just seemed yet another story about one person romantically fully engaged with another person who was "half in" and had a ready escape when things got hard and dry--which they most certainly are destined to do at some point in every relationship. That the relationship involved two women, I guess is simply par for the current social agenda-running that every media source, and now unfortunately, literature seems hell bent on exploiting.

The best part of the book was the last two pages. There is an exquisite descriptive offering contained in those last two pages that is better than the foregoing pages put together.

This is not good writing as too many unproven liberties were taken with the content. You can call it a fiction and fake content, but it was very disappointing. Better editing should have been done. Both women have been gone for a long time and there is nobody to verify or dispute the book left alive.

One novel by Bloom (prof., creative writing, Wesleyan Univ.) was a National Book Award finalist (Come to Me). Another (A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You) was a National Book Critics Circle award nominee and two others have been on the New York Times bestseller list. She is, to say the least, a writer of big heart and generous gifts. Nowhere do they show better than in this tale, grounded in history, of the coming together of two lost souls. One was a hard-scrabble, straight talking reporter, Lorena Hickok. Dirt poor as a child and sexually abused by her brutish father, she was on her own from an early age. She never had the time or the inclination to develop parlor manners. The other was the nation's First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, who however much she wanted to share with other people's discomforts had never known true deprivation. Narrated by Lorena, except for a final chapter musing on Eleanor's death in 1962, the story is told from the perspective of 1945, FDR just dead and Lorena and Eleanor together again but knowing it won't last. Together with Eleanor again, and with the privacy to show their love for each other, Lorena reflects on their meeting, passion and separation. When you read what she has to say about her one true love, you see why Eleanor inspired such devotion in people. She comes as close to a truly good (yet human) person as we can expect to see in our imperfect world. The picture of Franklin is equally on the mark: quick to smile and just as quick to forget, even long held obligations to his assistant and mistress Missy LeHand, but so charming that when you were with him you forgave him or at least forgot to think about his less attractive traits.

This love story seethes with passion, elegiac as often as immediate: it's passion sifted through the screen of memory as much as experienced then. Lorena writes: "Every woman is an intimate landscape. The hills, the valleys, the narrow ledges, the riverbanks, the sudden eruptions of soft or crinkling hair. Here are the plains, the fine dry slopes. Here are the woods, here is the smooth path to the only door I wish to walk through. Eleanor's body is the landscape of my true home." Later: "Under our breasts and in the creases, we smelled like fresh-baked bread in the mornings. We slept naked as babies, breasts and bellies rolling toward each other, our legs entwined like climbing roses. We used to say, we're no beauties, because it was impossible to tell the truth. In bed, we were beauties. We were goddesses. We were the little girls we'd never been: loved, saucy, delighted, and delightful."

The last note I wrote in the book reads: "What a lovely book!"

Lorena Hickok was raped by her father, abandoned in town when her father remarried, stolen away from the Irish family who took her in as a maid, was recruited to work in the office of a traveling freak show, fled the freak show when she spurned the advances of a hermaphrodite, scrapped her way into life as a journalist...and gave up her career to become the companion to Eleanor Roosevelt, even living in the White House, only to find herself literally cut out of every photograph of the life they shared. And meanwhile she served as a witness to history, and advocate for the poor and forgotten, the engine in many ways of the Roosevelts' great liberal endeavors.

Yes, this feels like a story worth knowing, and worth telling. It was also gorgeously written, almost like a poem, as Lorena sort of dreamily recounts her life story in a trip with Eleanor shortly after Franklin's death. The intersection between the stories she tells Eleanor, versus the truth, and how Lorena balances all her different lives and different identities, in service of her one true love -- with Eleanor -- is absolutely beautiful. This is a terrific, lovely book.

Most Americans are aware that Franklin Roosevelt had girls on the side both before and during his presidency, but fewer are aware that Eleanor did, too. This book of historical fiction/fictionalized biography is told from the point of view of Lorena Hickok, Eleanor’s longtime partner. Hickok was raised dirt poor, in an abusive household. She became a journalist and was assigned to cover Franklin’s first presidential campaign. The two felt drawn to each other, despite the wide differences in their personalities and upbringing.

Told from “Hick’s” point of view, the story moves between different times: Hick’s horrible childhood and early working years; the short time when Hick lived in the White House with Eleanor and FDR (and FDR’s girlfriend, Missy LeHand)- Hick was given a job in the administration; an interlude after FDR’s death; and times in between when Eleanor and Hick were separated. While it was all right for FDR’s extramarital relationships to be talked and joked about, it was a different situation for Eleanor. A shroud of secrecy envelopes the two women’s relationship at all times, save for one anonymous getaway on a camping trip.

Bloom went through more than three thousand letters as well as diaries to research this book, so it is meticulously researched, and the prose is marvelous- great descriptives! Eleanor Roosevelt has always been one of my heroes. So I don’t know why, even though I really *liked* the book, I didn’t *love* it. The women never caught fire and came to life for me. Still, definitely four stars out of five.

“Lorena Alice Hickock, you are the surprise of my life. I love you. I love your nerve. I love your laugh. I love your way with a sentence. I love your beautiful eyes and your beautiful skin and I will love you till the day I die.”
I pushed out the words before she could change her mind.
“Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, you amazing, perfect, imperfect woman, you have knocked me sideways. I love you. I love your kindness and your brilliance and your soft heart. I love how you dance and I love your beautiful hands and I will love you till the day I die.”
I took off my sapphire ring and slipped it onto her pinkie. She unpinned the gold watch from her lapel and pinned it on my shirt. She put her arms around my waist. We kissed as if we were in the middle of a cheering crowd, with rice and rose petals raining down on us.”

A sea change has occurred in the way mainstream Americans regard lesbian relationships. This book proves it. We would have laughed at the possibility in the 1980s, that a major publishing house would one day publish this novel depicting a revered First Lady in such a (covert) relationship—while she was in the White House, no less. But Amy Bloom tells it, square and proud, and she lets us know that this is only fiction by an inch or two. Many thanks go to Random House (I will love you till the day I die) and Net Galley for the DRC, which I received free and early in exchange for this honest review. This novel is now for sale.

Nobody can tell a story the way that Bloom does it, and this is her best work yet. The story is told us by Lorena Hickok, a journalist known as “Hick”, an outcast from a starving, dysfunctional family, the type that were legion during America’s Great Depression. The voice is clear, engaging, and so real that it had me at hello, but the story’s greatest success is in embracing the ambiguity at the heart of the First couple, Eleanor and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. So many great things done for the nation; so many entitled, thoughtless acts toward the unwashed minions they knew. A new friend, a favorite visitor brought from cold hard poverty, here and there, to occupy a White House spare bedroom and provide stimulating conversation, a new viewpoint, and to demonstrate the administration’s care for the common folk; then dumped unceremoniously, often without a place to go or money to get there, when they became tiresome or ill or inconvenient. The very wealthy, privileged backgrounds from which the Roosevelts sprung provided them with myopia that comes with living their whole lives in a rarefied environment. It is fascinating to see history unspool as Eleanor visits coal camps and picket lines, visits textile mills where children labor; but then of course, she repairs to the best lodging available before her journey home commences. And Hick is welcome when she is convenient, but she is banished for a time when there’s too much talk.

And yet—oh, how Lorena loved Eleanor, and the reverse was true, but not necessarily in the same measure, with the same fealty, or the same need.

Social class, the dirty secret America has tried to whitewash across the generations, is the monster in the Roosevelt closet. And FDR, perhaps the greatest womanizer to grace the Oval Office, has his PR people tell everyone that he has no manly function what with the paralysis, and that all those pretty girls that come and go are just there to cheer him up. He makes JFK look like a monk in comparison. Yet we cannot hate him entirely, because of the New Deal:

“He was the greatest president of my lifetime and he was a son of a bitch every day…He broke hearts and ambitions across his knee like bits of kindling, and then he dusted off his hands and said, Who’s for cocktails?”

I have a dozen more meaty quotes I’d like to use here, but it’s much better if you get this book, by hook or by crook, and find all of them for yourself. It’s impressive work by any standard, and I defy you to put it down once you’ve begun.

Highly recommended.

The story begins April 1945, just weeks after FDR's death. Lorena Hickok, Eleanor Roosevelt's dear friend, is readying the apartment--Eleanor needs to gather herself after the President's funeral with all its pomp and obligation. She is tired. Bereft. (She only learned after his death that Lucy Mercer had been at Warm Springs with Franklin when he died.) So Eleanor turns to Hick, as she calls Lorena, for comfort and tenderness. The two had met eleven years before and their relationship was an anchor for both of them.
What follows is a flashback of those eleven years, four of them with Hick living in the White House, just down the hall from the President and Eleanor. Lorena Hickok was a trailblazing political journalist for the Associated Press at a time when newspaper women were relegated to the social pages. After an interview with Eleanor shortly before FDR took office, the two women developed a fast friendship. They vacationed together, went on road trips and picnics, corresponded daily when apart.

Author Amy Bloom tells the story of Eleanor and Hick as if the two had been lovers. And it's difficult to know if that was the case. Or not.

Their correspondence was certainly passionate and even sensuous. Here is Eleanor to Hick just after Franklin's inauguration: "I want to put my arms around you ... to hold you close. Your ring is a great comfort. I look at it and I think she does love me, or I wouldn't be wearing it" (Goodwin). Hick moved into the White House after resigning from the AP to work for the Democratic National Committee, but the real reason for her career move might have been to be closer to Eleanor. Her years long relationship with Ellie Morse was in the past, and Hick was smitten with Eleanor. For her part, Eleanor was not at first comfortable in her role as First Lady and it was Hick who saw her potential and urged Eleanor to start her syndicated column My Day and hold press conferences of her own. Each woman had suffered in life and was insecure in her own way--the other provided support and encouragement not found elsewhere.

One of the best books I've ever read about the Roosevelts was Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time covers Franklin and Eleanor during the War years. It's a painstaking look at the couple, one that reveals how their relationship changed over time. Goodwin's book is much less concerned with romanticizing the couple, as did the popular Franklin and Eleanor by Joe Lash. I'm not certain how Goodwin would view this novel, but she did write that the communication between women of the Victorian age needs to be put into the context of the time, that because the relationships between men and women "lacked ease ... women opened their hearts more freely to other women." Goodwin admits the correspondence between Eleanor and Hick does"possess an emotional intensity and sensual explicitness that is hard to disregard," but that a historian recognizes that there is no way to ascertain the true nature of what went on behind closed doors.

Amy Bloom goes behind those doors in a novel that some will find engaging, and others unsettling. But the novel is thought-provoking--maybe enough so that you'll read its perfect companion No Ordinary Time.

An interesting idea poorly executed

I would have been delighted to read a biography of Lorena Hickok that centered around her relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt. I imagine snippets of love letters, diary entries, reflections from people who knew the ladies well, historical events, examples of views on same sex relationships during that time period, perhaps a touch of creative license in bringing these complex women to life on the page using primary sources to suggest the longings and inner conflicts they might have experienced.

In my mind, Ms. Bloom pitched such a story to her publisher and then realized that primary source material was not readily available or, if it was, fleshing it all out was too much work. There are a lot of spaces between paragraphs in this book and a lot of blank pages between sections. It looks like the author is struggling to make the story book length. In my mind, Ms. Bloom decides to make up for the lack of biographical material by imagining life in Ms. Hickok's shoes, writing from her perspective, and calling it fiction.

In the end, the author hamstrings herself with this approach. To invent too many details of the intimate lives of historical figures risks disrespecting them. But without nuance, the story reads like this:

"Eleanor and Lorena were attracted to each other. They had good chemistry and lived with each other on and off for the duration of their lives. FDR knew but he couldn't say much because he had affairs, too."

Maybe the workings of an interesting magazine article, but 200+ pages?

The result is, to me, two dimensional representations of women who, in real life, were vibrant, complex, and courageous. Not enough history to make it historical fiction, not enough biographical material to make it biography, and lacking the nuanced character development and complexity needed for good fiction. Some in the LGBTQ community may find the book validating and moving in a few places; I personally found the description of their putative intimacies quite flat and the book lacked the sort of exploration of sexuality in the historical time period that would make it intellectually interesting.

White Houses by Amy Bloom is the fictionalized account of the unexpected and forbidden affair between Eleanor Roosevelt and reporter Lorena Hickok. They meet in 1932 while Lorena is reporting on Franklin Roosevelt's first presidential campaign. The two women couldn't be more different - Lorena grew up poorer than poor, Eleanor is a Roosevelt. But there is an immediate powerful, passionate connection that develops into a forbidden-for-the-times love affair that endures through the years.

The story is fictional, but the history and characters are real. It's a fascinating glimpse into what was happening in the world, the United States, and the White House in those times.

White Houses has been described as an unforgettable novel, and it is certainly that. The prose is compelling. Eleanor and Franklin are not like you and me; they are part of an American Dynasty, and you feel almost uncomfortable as Lorena never quite fits in. "A Rooseveltian silence" is mentioned and you understand just what the author means to convey. Eleanor is wonderful and loving and caring, but for all that she can be thoughtless and cruel and often unlikeable. Franklin's reputation precedes him. He is presented as the man we've read him to be: many faces, so popular, determined, cruel, angry, and very, very needy. A formidable rival for Lorena.

Amy Bloom's writing is amazing. Moving, elegant, thoughtful, with turns of phrase that you will not soon forget, applicable to an enduring love between any two people. But in the end, although compelling, this story is also unsettling and sad, with tension running throughout. There is a marvelous description of so many love affairs: "…her wish to periodically forget that he was the whole world for her and she was a delightful little village for him." This was meant to apply to Franklin, but in a sense it described Eleanor's actions, whatever her feelings, as well. And through it all, she was the love of Lorena's life, "All those ups and downs, our separations and closed doors, those terrible fights and furies, our cruelties and our silences, seem like nothing, like losing a handbag or missing the morning train."

An excellent read, a reminder that love does not run smoothly, does not conquer all, and life is not a fairy tale, but well worth the living. Note I received a copy of this book from NetGalley.

This is a work of historical fiction about first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her romantic relationship with American journalist Lorena Hickok (nicknamed "Hick"). Born in Wisconsin, Hickok triumphed over a disastrous childhood to eventually become a reporter for the Associated Press (AP). She was assigned to cover Franklin D. Roosevelt's first presidential campaign when she established a close friendship with the future First Lady.

I had an unusual experience reading this book in that I tore through the first third of the book during a short evening, it was so riveting. This occurred while reading about Hick's horrible childhood. Ironically enough, once I transitioned to the next two thirds of the book covering Hick's existence while living amidst the Franklins, I found it much less interesting. While I had an emotional investment in the trevails of Hick's wretched youth and admired her triumph over adversity, I didn't feel that connection to the adult version of her character. I'm not sure if it comes down to her not being likeable or a lack of depth to the writing. Perhaps the sheer poignancy of her upbringing was enough to lure me in, but the rest of the book (sadly) left me wanting.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing this advance reader copy in return for my honest review.

‘White Houses’ is Lorena Hickok’s story and her love affair and rapport with Eleanor Roosevelt. It tells more of Lorena’s story than Eleanor’s, although there are the scenes of them, chastely told, of being in bed… Eleanor pulling her slip off and Lorena unbuttoning her shirt.
Lorena had a cruel and hard childhood which is detailed, not as much is told of the minutiae of her move into the white House. Much is insinuated too of Franklin’s affairs with Lucy Mercer and Missy LeHand.

The reading is a revelation to many, even in fiction form of Eleanor’s life and how many disparaged her looks and her problems with her children. The last section really jumps back in forth in time and might be confusing to some. The author has used letters and research to document her story.

Eleanor Roosevelt's relationship with Lorena Hickok has been a source of controversy since the days it was happening in real-time. Were they secret lovers? Merely close friends? The topic has been endlessly debated. White Houses assumes that they were lovers, which seems reasonable, and purports to tell the story of their relationship. And it does, but not in the way one supposed and not as directly as one might have expected.

White Houses is much more a fictionalized version of Hickok's life. It tells the story of her abusive childhood and her mother's death, continuing into her work as a housekeeper before escaping her father once and for all to strike out on her own in the world. Bloom inserts an odd interlude where Hickok literally runs off with the circus. There, she has a bit of an affair with an intersex circus worker and feels intrigued by a girl with lobster hands. Bloom intends to suffuse the circus' freak show with Hickok's sexual awakening as a lesbian, but the whole affair (no pun intended) feels both glaringly unsubtle and alarmingly out of place.

Eventually, Hickok becomes one of the nation's most famous journalists following her work on the Lindbergh family kidnapping case. She meets Eleanor when she is assigned to cover Franklin's run for president, and instead of running with the theory that the two became fast friends, Bloom plays up their sexual attraction--making their meeting a somewhat deliberate flirtation. And when Franklin becomes president and it becomes clear that Hickok's relationship with the new first lady is now a conflict of interest, Hickok resigns her post at the Associated Press to take a government job and live in the White House.

Part of the problem I have with White Houses is that Bloom skirts a lot of the issues. Was Eleanor conflicted about her sexuality? She doesn't appear to be here. Did her relationship with Hickok strain her relationship with Franklin? It does not appear so at all. We know that Franklin was busy with his own affairs of the heart during his White House years (and before), but would he really not care at all that he was being cuckolded in his own house in full view of his administration and children? Bloom imagines Hickok and Franklin having a sort of buddy-buddy relationship, which seems inexplicable.

Bloom's portrait of the Roosevelts and Hickok is something of a utopia. There is no conflict about sexuality (in a time when homosexuality was considered abnormal and sinful, no less). There is no conflict about the existence of an open marriage in the White House (in a time when marriage was considerably more sacrosanct compared to the modern day, no less). Eleanor and Franklin are free to do whatever they feel is right so long as they are able to keep it out of the papers. Is this true, or is Bloom sanding out the complications in order to tell a simple story?

Well, she's not entirely sanding them out. She inserts a fictitious, closeted gay Roosevelt cousin named Parker Fiske to play out the complications that might have been present within her main romantic triangle. Parker is an able, well-liked man in government who isn't as successful at keeping his private affairs a secret, leading him to attempt to blackmail Hickok into helping him keep his secrets lest he reveal hers.

The problem as I see it is that this fictitious storyline is completely unnecessary. Bloom treats Fiske like an essential plotting device--complicating the love affair between Eleanor and Lorena and helping to bring it to its climax--but is it unreasonable to assume that the climax would have come about without Fiske's interference? After all, it did in real life. Weren't there enough obstacles to their love affair without imagining one? Fiske brings a clichéd sense of intrigue the novel would have been just fine without.

White Houses is at its best when it is simply about Lorena Hickok. Bloom does a great job making Hickok a vibrant being, which makes it all the more unfortunate that most of the rest of the book doesn't quite hold up. Eleanor, in particular, feels flat in comparison--which is something we definitely know isn't accurate historically. Eleanor Roosevelt was one of the nation's most outspoken and active First Ladies--despite growing up insecure and wanting a quiet life out of the spotlight. That conflict is almost entirely absent from White Houses.

Bloom is an exceptional writer. Her description is wonderful and her tone is consistent throughout. It's the structure that lets her down here.

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