Review: Laura Ryder’s Masterpiece by Jane Hamilton
Tamara Minks
Laura Ryder’s Masterpiece is like nothing you’ve ever read by Jane Hamilton, author of four other novels with tragedy at the center, such as the death of a child, or a bicycle accident that leaves a young and newly married woman with the mind of a seven year old. Her past novels examine the kind of tragedies that change individuals and their families forever and force them to re-examine their very selves, to come face to face with the fact that they will never be the same again. In Hamilton’s latest book nobody dies (at least not tragically), and although there is suffering, it is buffered by humor, and not just the chuckle here-chuckle there kind of humor, but by the laugh out loud kind.
Laura Ryder is now 46, probably pre-menopausal, and tired of sex, especially the really good sex she has with her husband, Charlie, who is so pretty to look at the entire population of the small Wisconsin town they inhabit assumes he is gay. She tells her “incredibly flexible” husband that she is “out to pasture,” no more sex for her, thank you very much, and the rest of the novel could be read as an expose on what happens when sex is removed from a marriage that has relied on its sturdy foundation for 12 years. Via email, Laura orchestrates a romance between Charlie and her idol, Jenna Faroli, who hosts her own syndicated talk show on NPR. Laura has decided to become a romance writer without ever being a “reader;” she has decided to let real life be her teacher, specifically the romance between her husband and Jenna. What she wanted “in a dress that came to her ankles and in robin’s-egg-blue high-heeled leather Mary Janes,” was to be an author.
By the novel’s end, my cheeks were sore from laughing, I realized that like any good comedy, Laura Ryder’s Masterpiece asks some pretty serious questions. Is it possible to be a good writer without having read, or to even particularly enjoy reading? Can romance novels be, on any level, literary? What constitutes infidelity? The novel conjures both James Thurber (Is Sex Really Necessary) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (lamenting all those “scribbling women” publishing novels in 18th century America). That these issues are raised in a story where the characters are more interested in the possible existence of alien life forms is all part of the fun. The happy ending that is a must for any comedy is in place, as all of the characters will survive, even Jenna whose marriage and reputation are on the line. But it does have a sense of foreboding too, as the final paragraph claims, the “world was changing-humanity was changing.” It’s as if Hamilton senses the future of the creative process, of novel writing in particular, sees it changing in ways she can’t quite predict, and maybe doesn’t want to.
TAMARA MINKS is an Indiana writer whose first published story is forthcoming in ANOTHER CHICAGO MAGAZINE.