My favorite aspect of Laura Rider’s Masterpiece is how complex it is when you look beyond the satire and purposeful clichés. Jenna is a learned person, quoting from Brideshead Revisited and playing Scrabble in different languages, yet her e-mails to Charlie are like something from a high school diary. Laura is a capable businesswoman with a hands-in-dirt job who wants to enter the literary world. Even though she tries to be more worldly like Jenna and fails, her personal development lends itself to understanding human behavior in a complex way. Hamilton crafts a story about educated vs. laboring people, sex vs. marriage, learning vs. experiencing, and satire vs. the actual absurdity of being a human.

I bought Laura Rider’s Masterpiece at a Goodwill because I loved her novel The Book of Ruth. When I got home and saw the low ratings on Goodreads, I was disappointed. But, I already owned the book so I went in with low expectations. I found the novel quite funny and revealing regardless of the low ratings on Goodreads, feeling it is worth 4-5 stars.