Albanese dissects fascinating concepts in this narrative: how writers obtain their subject matter, the infusion of personal facts into fictional stories, what happens when the exploration of moral ambiguity becomes interpreted as moral authority.

The writer in question is Nathaniel Hawthorne and the subject is his distressed damsel Hester Prynne. We don't meet Hester, we meet Isobel- the seamstress who inspires her creation, as we journey from Scotland to Salem, get a taste of the 1800s new-immigrant experience, and watch a rebel-rousing young Nathaniel fail our feminist sensibilities. Horribly.

Had the book stayed here, it would've had me. The story was well researched and beautifully written, flowing from synesthesia (seeing colors in letters) to witchcraft to basic female survival on a seamless loom. And I loved learning more about Hawthorne's sordid family history. However, it strayed and like most philanderers wound up spread too thin.

I'm calling out structure as my biggest problem in modern literature and I'm going to draw a quick argument. Great Gatsby / Beautiful Little Fools: Cantor followed Fitzgerald's outline to a T, she simply told the same story from the female perspective and hit it out of the park.

Albanese reconstructs events from Hawthorne's early life that could have inspired the writing of TSL and the story grew too expansive. Ultimately she lost the plot and when I realized the third timeline was a book within a book, which means Albanese was writing a narrative AS Hawthorne, I shut down.

Not going to lie, the writer in me was taken aback. Whatever with the subject matter and depictions of the female condition. From a prose standpoint, TSL is one of the best books written.

Yet I still enjoyed the story and haven't figured out who was worse, Gatsby through Daisy's eyes or Nathaniel through pre-Hester's?