Laura Rider's Masterpiece

December 8, 2008
Oprah-anointed Hamilton once again takes readers to the Midwest, this time lacing her narrative with winning humor. Laura Rider and her husband, Charlie, live in Hartley, Wis., where they own and run Prairie Wind Farm. After 12 years of marriage, Laura decides to stop sleeping with Charlie, and although lovemaking is his “one superb talent,” she's convinced she's “used up her quota.” Also, Laura has a secret fantasy: to be an author. After she meets local public radio host Jenna Faroli, Laura decides to write a romance and encourages a flirtation between Charlie and Jenna, an experiment that she thinks will help her write her book. Their flirtation quickly slides into an affair, with Laura's sly interference. Laura, at once jealous and pleased, benefits from the inevitable chain of events, while Jenna isn't so lucky. Though the plotting is a bit predictable, the female characters are sharply observed and delineated, and the humorous tone will be an appealing surprise to Hamilton's readers.

April 15, 2009
Hamilton (When Madeline Was Young, 2006, etc.) reinvents the mnageà trois via the Internet in her lively sixth novel.

When stoically married Laura tires of her puppy-like husband Charlie's volcanic sexuality and swears off lovemaking, her energies are reawakened to look beyond the successful"farm nursery" they run together in rural Wisconsin. Laura's dream of writing innovative, grownup romance novels is realized in surprising ways after she meets Milwaukee Public Radio talk show host (and neighbor) Jenna Faroli. Laura engineers Jenna's friendship with chronically extroverted Charlie, then manipulates that friendship by first assisting, then appropriating her husband's e-mail correspondence with his new girl friend/girlfriend. The inevitable occurs, skeletons emerge from both women's marital and familial closets, and a plot cleverly linked to that of a favorite novel (Evelyn Waugh's elegiac Brideshead Revisited) gathers up Jenna and Charlie in its jaws. Laura pulls strings; risks wrecking lives she believes she's enriching; and finds bliss at a climactic writers' conference. This very unusual novel's ballsy premise and haywire momentum are juggled expertly by the accomplished Hamilton, who somehow circumvents legitimate objections (e.g., no reader will believe Laura would not have foreseen Jenna's and Charlie's reactions to being thus thrust together) and keeps us eagerly guessing what further craziness lies in pages ahead. The harrowing story of how her father died serves to explain the narrowness of Laura's vision; nonetheless, she's never fully credible as a mixture of unpretentious charm and emotionally stunted duplicity—it's as if Mary Pickford and Joan Crawford took turns playing the same person in the same movie. Charlie, however, is a wonderful character and an irresistible enigma:"Dreamer, yes; underdog, yes; artist, yes; bonkers, yes."

Eccentric, intriguing, almost perversely readable and entertaining. Hamilton never disappoints.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

March 15, 2009
Best-selling novelist Hamilton turns to domestic satire with mixed results. Though humor is a welcome addition to this talented authors bag of tricks, and her characters are certainly engaging, the quirky story line falls a little short of the standards set by Hamilton in The Book of Ruth (1988) and A Map of the World (1994). Marriage isnt all its cracked up to be for small-town wife Laura Rider. Shes a little bored with the limited parameters of her midwestern life and exhausted from the physical attentions of her amorous husband. When would-be-writer Laura bans the amiable Charlie from the bedroom, she all but orchestrates an affair for him with her idol, Jenna Faroli, a public radio host. As her Machiavellian scheme successfully unfolds, Laura gains grist for her own ambitions. Of course, playing with peoples lives exacts a toll, but Laura doesnt seems to mind the expenseespecially when others pay for it. Though some readers may be puzzled by this new side of Hamilton, others will certainly want to go along for the surprisingly witty ride.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)