Laura Rider's Masterpiece

How often to you get to read a book where you laugh aloud while reading? Not that often. This book is funny. We make fun of marriage, adultery, the art of writing, even gardening. It is delightful and reminds me of Moliere. P.S. E-mail is a central character. Another book by Francine Prose, I think, featured e mail, a son read his Mom's messages to/from her boyfriend but I do not know of other books where e mail is so crucial.

Laura and Charlie Rider own and run Prairie Wind Farm in rural Wisconsin, with Laura ruling and delegating, and Charlie obliging along. While she is planting and pruning, Laura Rider listens to Jenna Faroli of the famous Jenna Faroli Radio Show and dreams of writing a romance novel. She envisions Jenna simultaneously as a teacher, a confidante, and the heroine of her book. Charlie's chance encounter with Jenna on the side of the road is the turning point, and Laura sees it as a chance to understand what makes Jenna tick. Together, Charlie and Laura begin corresponding with Jenna via e-mails that are at first friendly, but become increasingly intimate. Jenna's interest is at first a surprise, but pretty soon they are all crossing lines they never thought they'd cross. I ran through a gamut of feelings while reading Laura Rider's Masterpiece by Jane Hamilton. My initial thoughts were that the characters were just weird, plain and simple. There were too introspective, too I-believe-in-aliens-and-think-my-cats-have-human-like-lives. Delving deeper into the book, I became interested as to how their lives would turn out, as to how they would ever escape their self-made messes. Finally, I thought of how unlikeable the characters were. Usually, there is at least one that I sympathize with or root for; Laura Rider's Masterpiece had none. All were either manipulative and selfish, or aloof and out of touch with reality, or hypocritical and arrogant. That said I did enjoy the book, and more so after the first twenty pages. At first it was almost too dreamy too be enjoyable, but it eventually moved along into an interesting look at the characters' motivations. Each was scheming to reach his or her objective, and I do not believe anyone actually did.

Part love-story, part comedy, this book held my attention from first page to last. Each of the main characters were so well-developed that the reader understands motives and feels sympathy for them equally. The thing I loved best about this book was its unpredictability.

In Hartley, Wisconsin, after dozen years of marriage, Laura and Charlie Rider are comfortable with each other though their relationship has become nonsexual. They enjoy working together in their Prairie Wind Farm nursery business and especially enjoy good storytelling. However, something subtly changes between the couple when Charlie and radio show host Jenna Faroli begin exchanging emails encouraged by Laura who thinks that will enable her to write a Jane Austen quality romantic masterpiece. Laura persuades Charlie to jointly write fanciful and flowery intimate messages to lure the town's most famous person into "The Project". However, the game they play spins out of control when Charlie begins to desire Jenna; jealous Laura believes she is working on a masterpiece; and Jenna finds herself wanting and loathing Charlie as the "author" of those romantic emails. This is an interesting but strange triangle as each of the prime trio has wants and flaws with a sort of modern day gender bending Cyrano take of who is writing the poetic romantic emails. Throw in Jenna's supportive buddy Dickie into the mix to further complicate the already convoluted relationships. Amusing yet profound, LAURA RIDER'S MASTERPIECE is refreshing and original although the audience will feel Jane Hamilton could have went even further outside the conventional story line. Harriet Klausner

Laura Rider leads an ordinary Midwestern life. She and her husband Charlie own and run a thriving nursery and neither one of them have ever strayed far from their hometowns, let alone Wisconsin. Laura is gifted at designing beautiful gardens and Charlie does the heavy lifting and is gifted at making love. She enjoys gardening, but she harbors a secret desire to write a romance novel. She sees no irony in the fact that she wants to write romance novels when she refuses to sleep with Charlie because he wears her out. When Jenna Faroli, a Wisconsin NPR host whom Laura idolizes, moves to Hartley, Laura sees and seizes the opportunity to make her dreams come true. All is not what it seems in Laura Rider's Masterpiece. Laura Rider is a deliciously unreliable narrator. My first clue that something was not quite right took place at the Garden Club meeting. She was thinking about how badly a relationship with one of the member's brothers ended. Two traumatic things happened as a result that caused her to leave town for a year, but they are mentioned almost as an after thought. I stopped and re-read that section to make sure that I read it correctly. Time and distance diminishes pain, but there was something unsettling about how removed she was from her own past. After Laura returned to town, she did all that she could to ensure that she remained in control. She didn't marry Charlie so much because she loved him as that she could make him heel. He wasn't one to create waves when she what was best for their business and made plans for its future. He simply provided the muscle needed to get the job done. Despite the fact that she was no longer sleeping with him, allowing her to be in control enabled him to stay young at heart. When she encourages Charlie to develop a friendship with Jenna, it's as if she is throwing him a bone for being such a loyal companion. Laura is a psychopathic gardener, planting and fertilizing her seeds to suit her own designs, then ruthlessly ripping the plants out of the ground when she finds that they've borne fruit. It is difficult to say whether it would be best to be on her bad side or her good side. Laura doesn't make a distinction. Laura Rider's Masterpiece is an unusual novel. When Jenna was introduced, her almost condescending world view seemed as much out of place in Hartley as it was with the novel. Laura saw Jenna as her every woman, but to me she stuck out like a sore thumb. However, from the moment I caught a glimpse of what Jane Hamilton was be doing with the story, I couldn't and didn't want to turn back. I was hooked. With the exception of Charlie, a character I adored from the beginning, my opinions and attitudes about Laura and Jenna radically shifted from the beginning to the end. All of these elements combined for a refreshing read. If you enjoy novels with untrustworthy and perhaps antisocial narrators, this is a book you should pick up. The lingering chill from Laura's icy heart will help keep you cool t