.LacyMB reviews Hester, in which Laurie_Albanese puts a fresh, female-focused spin on the origins of Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic The Scarlet Letter.
is an American classic familiar to almost anyone who took an eleventh-grade English class. Your mileage will almost certainly vary when it comes to how you feel about the novel—it can be difficult to find its heavy themes of sin and shame compelling in a modern-day context or square our own sensibilities with Hester Prynne’s insistence on protecting a man’s reputation at the expense of her own.
A chance encounter leaves her drawn to Nat Hathorne, a young aspiring writer struggling to get his stories taken seriously and trying to come to terms with both the legacy of the town he lives in and his own family’s involvement in Salem’s most infamous event. Initially, he seems to see Isobel as a sort of charmingly magical muse and encourages her in her dreams of crafting elaborate designs in a dress shop of her own.
But as heroines go, Isobel is easy to root for and a joy to read about—much more so, some might say than the Hester Prynne she will supposedly inspire. Her imagination and love of design are expressed through the lush descriptions of her many tailoring projects, including delicate gloves dotted with rich and colorful details and a showstopper of a shawl depicting the Garden of Eden that’s meant to help establish her professional reputation in town.
Albanese deftly weaves in many real-life historical elements into this tale: The world of nineteenth-century Salem is fully lived in and richly realized, even as it incorporates snippets from the stories of several of the women who were wrongly accused of witchcraft in its not-so-distant past.
Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter
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