Hester by Laurie Lico Albanese weaves a backstory for a woman who (in this version) provided the inspiration for The Scarlet Letter‘s Hester Prynee. Young Scottish woman Isobel marries an apothecary whom she believes will provide for her a stable future. Isobel soon finds, however, that her husband has debts and is addicted to laudanum. Their troubles follow them across the ocean to their new home of Salem, MA. Just as soon as they arrive, her husband takes work aboard a ship, leaving Hester to fend for herself in this new world. She must rely on her talent of sewing and embroidery to survive.
Isobel’s gift comes from what she and her mother called “the colors,” which is what we now know as grapheme–color synesthesia. To Isobel, letters, words, and voices have specific colors attached to them. For example, the letter A is red. Isobel incorporates her interpretation of letters and words to colors in her embroidery and sewing, which soon gains popularity in a local shop. At the same time, Isobel meets a young Nathaniel Hathorne who is taken with Isobel’s unique beauty and quick mind. And Isobel, in turn, is taken with his brooding artist nature. But for all his charm, Nathaniel seems to objectify and use Isobel as a means for his own creativity and pleasure. Isobel befriends a few young women in Salem including her neighbor and a free Black woman, Mercy, Nell an Irish servant, and Abigail her co-worker at the dress shop.
Albanese’s descriptions of colors to words, letters, and voices are descriptive, both tangible and visceral. The use of Isobel having grapheme–color synesthesia was an interesting character trait for an author to write, which made Isobel’s interpretations of the world around her interesting to read.
One part of this novel really rubbed me the wrong way, and it was a conversation between Mercy, the free Black woman, and Isobel about social structure in Salem. Mercy basically says that Isobel being Scottish means she is treated the same way Black people are treated. I find it very hard to believe that a Black woman would have said this to a white woman, even if that woman was poor, Scottish, or Irish, considering many people in the early to mid 19th century still viewed people of African descent as sub-human.
One other gripe I had, not as pressing as the first, was that toward the end I found the writing to be repetitive and predictable–all a bit on the nose.
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