MADreads

Not really a masterpiece

July 14th, 2009 Katie H.

I’m rarely completely turned off by a book.  There’s usually some element I can grasp on to, some certain factor I can point to that appeals.  But after reading Jane Hamilton’s latest novel, Laura Rider’s Masterpiece, I find myself regarding it with a sour taste in my mouth. 

Hamilton, a Wisconsin author, usually writes longer novels dealing with the nuances of family issues.  Masterpiece is a complete departure, a farce about the writing life, how the general public relate to celebrity and the deliciously absurd conviction many people harbor that they have a story to tell.  Like most farces, Hamilton uses a bitingly ironic tone, never leaving any doubt that she’s pulling the strings that put her characters through their paces. 

Laura Rider, the proprietor of a landscaping business between Madison and Milwaukee, is utterly smitten with the host of a Milwaukee public radio show, Jenna Faroli.  Happily for her, Jenna is now an inhabitant of the same small town.  A chance encounter between Jenna and Laura’s husband Charlie sets up the development of a love triangle between the three–with Laura penning Charlie’s amourous emails to the lonely Jenna.  Soon, Jenna and Charlie are romping in the woods, strolling through fields of lavender, and meeting up at the Kewaskum Inn.  That Laura plans to write a romance novel with similar characters striving towards ‘a higher consciousness’ in their love affair happens to be a coincidence–right? 

The set up here is more interesting than the conclusion, as it’s pretty obvious where this is headed.  But the problem here lies more in the characterization than the plot.  Hamilton’s characters are easy targets, stereotypes that make play out the farce easily enough but which few readers would be able to make any sort of connection.  Laura is conniving, using her husband ruthlessly while naive enough to think she understands great writing from repeated viewings of Pride and Prejudice.  Dim bulb Charlie would be loveable but for his absolute blindness of how much he is being manipulated by both women.  And Jenna seems the easiest mark of all.  With her spare time filled with French-language Scrabble with poet friends and a husband whose obsession with gourmet cooking is matched only by his compulsive reading, Jenna’s character hits on all the tired markers of upper-class liberal intellectual smugness.  Farce requires a healthy dose of acerbicy, but Hamilton crosses the line into spitefulness.  The whole book has the sense of a mean joke at which everyone feels compelled to laugh, but feels guilty about afterward.

Entry Filed under: Literary Fiction