March 2024 - Hester

 

 

“But there's another kind of strength we've got...It comes from knowing the difference between who you are and who they think you are.”
― Laurie Lico Albanese, Hester

HESTER

by Laurie Lico Albanese (2022)

Discussion -  March 20, 1pm

For more about the book, check out the author's website.

A good, non-spoiler summary is here: www.secretvictorianist.com/2022/12/neo-victorian-voices-hester-laurie-lico.html

Copies of the book, including audiobook, are available at the library. It is also on Libby (audio and ebook) and Hoopla (audio). 

At Main Street Bookends or Gibson's, mention our group and they will kindly offer a discount.

Resources below (check back for more through the month)

Learn more:

• About the book and authors from the Author's website or an Interview with the author (may have spoilers)
• About synesthesia from this 200-year history of the phenomenon
• About (or plan a visit to) Salem, Mass.
• Salem Maritime National Historic Site
• House of the Seven Gables I toured this last October - it's well worth a tour
• Salem Witch Museum
• The memorial to the victims of the witch hunt is a must-do.
  
• About Hawthorne in Salem and Hawthorne's connections to "the witch delusion" 
• About How to embroider a flower: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9t1qX-xi7s 

Read more...

• Hawthorne - his The Scarlet Letter (set in Boston) and The House of the Seven Gables (set in Salem) are both apropos here, of course.
  
• NOTE: if you don't want spoilers for The Scarlet Letter while reading Hester, I think these are the only 4 parts with spoilers: 304-305, bottom half of 313, and 317. If you avoid reading these pages, you won't spoil a later reading of SL, and you won't be lost at all in Hester (but go back to them after you read SL!).
  
• Fiction about Writers: https://www.beyondthebookends.com/fiction-books-about-writers/
  
• Fiction about witch hunts:
• Lots of recent publications here: https://offtheshelf.com/2023/09/historical-fiction-witch-books/
• Long list here: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/75416.Witch_Hunts_in_Historical_Fiction
• A Kind of Spark, by Elle McNicoll (YA novel that discusses witch hunts in Scotland)
• Needlework in Fiction: 
• https://www.artinfiction.com/blog/a-stitch-in-time-five-novels-inspired-by-embroidery  
• A Goodread's list
  
• The Scarlet Letter - Hester Prynne is an accomplished needleworker
• The Fair Maid of Perth (mentioned page 190), by Walter Scott
  
• NF and Fiction about synesthesia: https://www.thesynesthesiatree.com/2021/02/books-about-synesthesia.html
• Susan Cheever's American Bloomsbury is a "smart, dishy romp through the intersecting personal lives of a cluster of geniuses who all lived in Concord, Massachusetts, in the mid-1800s" including Hawthorne (quote is not mine, but from that link).