White Houses is the first-person fictional biography of Lorena Hickok, Eleanor Roosevelt's lover. The book interweaves several narrative strands - Eleanor's childhood and youth, her relationship with Eleanor and the time after Franklin Roosevelt's death - the point in time from which the story is told. The three strands catch up with one another, but not quite: a certain lack of coherence is perhaps the book's major flaw. Some characters come and go and it's not clear who they are or why they matter, some bits of the story seem 'thrown in' and don't quite fit with the rest...especially Hick's time in a moving circus appears as a sort of squalid dream in retrospect.

Nevertheless, I liked the book a lot. I remain of the opinion that Amy Bloom is a terrific writer and is great at writing about love, particularly between women. She describes the affection, the reckless passion, the friendship, the irritation, the longing...The early chapter about Hick and Eleanor's road trip is one of the most romantic, sexiest portrait of blooming love I have read.

Another interesting aspect of the book was the description of Franklin's presidential "court", a whirlpool of skillfully sketched characters: Franklin - a charming womaniser in spite of his illness, Eleanor, principled and stern, secretaries and assistants, in love or simply devote to their bosses, closeted politicians and greedy cousins. All living under the same roof, hiding, knowing, tolerating - I read a Goodreads review complaining that the White House sounds like a suburban home in Bloom's telling, but I think that's what is terrific. It actually sounds like a whole American suburb out of a convoluted TV series - a mix of House of Cards and Desperate Housewives.