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Laura and Charlie Rider have been married for twelve years. They share their nursery business in rural Wisconsin, their love for their animals, and their zeal for storytelling. Although Charlie's enthusiasm in the bedroom has worn Laura out, although she no longer sleeps with him, they are happy enough going along in their routine.
Jenna Faroli is the host of a popular radio show, and in Laura's mind is the single most famous person in the Town of Dover. When Jenna happens to cross Charlie's path one day, and they begin an e-mail correspondence, Laura cannot resist using Charlie to try out her new writing skills. Together, Laura and Charlie craft florid, strangely intimate messages that entice Jenna in an unexpected way. The project quickly spins out of control. The lines between Laura's words and Charlie's feelings are blurred and complicated, Jenna is transformed in ways that deeply disturb her, and Laura is transformed in her mind's eye into an artist. The transformations are hilarious and poignant, and for Laura Rider, beyond her wildest expectations.
Review:
"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." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
If opposites attract, then these two novels about adultery make a weird couple. Mary McGarry Morris and Jane Hamilton are critically acclaimed writers who've also been blessed by Oprah, but their new books offer entirely different views of the aggrieved wife. "The Last Secret" would be another (!) depressing story of a woman discovering her husband's betrayal, but Morris pumps that... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) old tale full of adrenaline by running a wicked psychological thriller in the background. She signals her approach in an explosive preface that takes place more than two decades before the rest of the novel: Seventeen-year-old Nora has run away with a manipulative grad student who wants her to lure men into their car to rob them, but the scam immediately goes bad, and her boyfriend beats their first john to a pulp with a pipe. When Chapter 1 opens, Nora is a mother of two teens, married to the charming publisher of a New England newspaper. A well-known figure in the town's social and charitable circuit (marvelously satirized), she's on the board of a Catholic home for battered women. But suddenly her perfect life is rocked by the revelation that for four years, her glad-handing husband has been having an affair — "a relationship" — with Nora's best friend. What follows is a painfully insightful depiction of the disorienting effects of such betrayal while husband and wife attempt to preserve the theater of a successful marriage. "Pretending to be happy," Nora laments, "takes enormous energy." The tension stays tight across every page, as we follow Nora's thoughts: "Her sense of time is skewed. ... It's like losing a basic faculty, taste, smell, touch; everything seems unremarkable." What's worse is Nora's corrosive need to know everything, every painful detail, a compulsion that of course never brings her any satisfaction and only aggravates her suspicion, which "bleeds into guilt." Morris is sharpest in her portrayal of Ken, the sensitive, modern husband who freely discloses his betrayal, asks for forgiveness, even cries a bit, and then gets indignant when Nora doesn't move on. It's a bitter critique of the narcissistic confessional culture, with its naive faith in talk therapy and forgiveness. In a particularly galling scene, Ken tells Nora that "as long as they were being honest about their feelings, then she has to know that her recrimination only wears him down, day after day, grinding away at him. Guilt isn't his strong suit. ... He resents her distrust." You can feel millions of betrayed wives reaching for his throat. In the middle of this domestic crisis, Nora's murderous old boyfriend tracks her down, and not just to reminisce about good times. He's a truly frightening character, and Morris stirs the terror by doling out only glimpses of his psychotic behavior. It all leads to a propulsive climax that makes this sensitive work of literary fiction also incredibly exciting. (Don't wait for the inevitable movie version because Hollywood will never preserve the ending's unsettling ambiguity.) Meanwhile, "Laura Rider's Masterpiece" — designed to look like a little 1950s romance novel — is Jane Hamilton's foray into comedy, a surprising departure from her well-known "A Map of the World" and "The Book of Ruth." In this case, adultery isn't revealed to the unsuspecting wife but rather engineered by her in a misguided attempt to practice her writing skills. While Laura Rider dreams of being a novelist, she runs a successful nursery with her husband in Wisconsin. Because they have no children and Charlie is so dazzlingly handsome and sensitive, everyone in town assumes he's gay, but actually, Laura assures us, he's a superhero in the bedroom. After 12 years of marriage, though, "Laura had become permanently tired of his enthusiasm. ... She couldn't bear the thought of any of it, the rattling of her bones, the jarring of her brains as he shook not only the bed but the foundations of the house." And so, they remain happily, platonically married. Their (unbelievably) stable arrangement is disrupted when they meet Laura's hero, Jenna Faroli, a Milwaukee Public Radio celebrity. Laura has projected fantasies onto Jenna Faroli the way the rest of us idolize NPR's Terry Gross: sensitive, insightful, brilliant. Laura hyperventilates when she meets Jenna at the garden club, even though Jenna is disappointingly frumpy, like most radio celebrities. (Sorry, Terry.) In that moment, Laura realizes that she wants to write a novel "about a plain woman who becomes beautiful. A story that finally discovers what a woman needs and wants." Jenna will be her heroine, she decides, and Laura's gorgeous husband will be the man "who can meet those requirements." Moving around these people in her real life will provide her with the material she needs for her book. Hamilton stays high above all these characters, subjecting each in turn to her light satire. Amateur writers, along with the whole universe of advice books, workshops and conventions, also come in for some sustained ribbing, as though Hamilton were venting the frustration of a thousand tedious bookstore readings and summer writing seminars. It's a comedy, yes, but a meta-comedy, a romance novel that's very self-consciously about the nature of romance novels and the romance of writing. Hamilton has cleverly replaced the opening and slamming doors of a sex farce with the opening and closing of e-mail messages. Throughout the affair that she orchestrates, Laura monitors the lovers' "endless kissy-face" e-mails and jumps in now and then with her own notes disguised to look as if they're from Charlie. "One of the unexpected perks of the project," Laura thinks, "was the fact that she felt closer to Charlie than she had in a long time, the two of them merged into the single character who is Jenna's pen pal." The only question is how many lives she'll ruin with her artistic pursuits. To the extent that this romantic intrigue is funny, it's also surprisingly sophisticated and frequently creepy. Hamilton's sharp eye for the private quirks of married life has always been a little unnerving, and now it seems odd that she didn't drop more wit into her previous novels. A cynical friend of Jenna's claims: "No one cares about adultery anymore. ... The end of shame means the novelist no longer has a subject. The novel will die as a result." These two very different books suggest he's wrong on all counts. Follow Charles can be followed at www.twitter.com/roncharles. Reviewed by Ron Charles, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)
Synopsis:
The bestselling author of "A Map of the World" and "The Book of Ruth" has written a sex comedy, and the world is a better place for it (Meg Wolitzer, author of "The Ten Year Nap").
This is a story of a successful businesswoman, owner of a landscape nursery, determined to change course midstream in her life to become a novelist. So far, not unusual, but would you orchestrate an affair involving your husband with another appealing woman to study their reactions and progress to provide material for that first novel? And then be miffed when things turned sexual?
Laura Rider wants to write novels concerned with “conscious romance.” What does a self-actualizing, thoughtful woman want and how does she get it? In her estimation, the man must exhibit a blend of feminine and masculine characteristics: both supportive and take-charge. She had adored Jenna Faroli for years in her role as the hostess of her own radio interview show. When husband Charlie accidentally meets Jenna and e-mails are exchanged, Laura sees her chance. Jenna is exactly the kind of woman that she wants to be in her novels. She, with the full knowledge of her husband, begins a shared e-mail campaign on Charlie’s behalf designed to manipulate Jenna into meeting Charlie. Of course it works, but not entirely as Laura envisioned. The naming of body parts in e-mails isn’t quite what she expected.
The story line is bizarre enough to be somewhat compelling, though still over the edge on believability. Curiously, both Laura and Jenna had been non-sexual for years. Of the three main characters, only Jenna comes across as any where near normal, though not particularly sympathetic. Charlie is simply goofy. Laura starts to operate in fantasy land, scarcely aware that affairs invariably are blinding, become old, and cause hurt and harm and are not some sort of pristine love laboratory. As this strange scenario is falling apart, Laura is a guest on Jenna’s radio show, and is subjected to a withering unbraiding by Jenna for her pretensions of wanting to be a writer. Laura, oblivious to the put-downs, leaves the studio on cloud nine. And it is Jenna who must try to salvage what is left of her life.
In this quirky story, it’s doubtful that the reader can take away much. The author really provides little closure on this strange scenario. In addition, Laura is not consistently presented. She is a space cadet in one scene and more worldly in the next. Though perhaps not the main theme, one thing is evident: using e-mail is problematic, especially when privacy is wanted. The author also visited this topic in her novel Disobedience.
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Product details
214 pages
Grand Central Publishing -
English9780446538954
Reviews:
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"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." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
"Synopsis"
by Ingram,
The bestselling author of "A Map of the World" and "The Book of Ruth" has written a sex comedy, and the world is a better place for it (Meg Wolitzer, author of "The Ten Year Nap").
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