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Hannah Calder was born in the UK and moved to Canada when she was fifteen. She lived in Barcelona, Seoul, and Vancouver prior to moving to Vernon where she teaches English at Okanagan College. Along the way she has been a social worker in Kent and a nanny in Chicago; and she has published poetry in West Coast Line, The Capilano Review and dANDelion.
After she received her MA in English Literature from Simon Fraser University in 2004, Calder moved to Barcelona and wrote her first novel More House (New Star, 2009), a work of experimental writing, much concerned with gender. "I was born without a penis," says the narrator, "... I learned to divide a room into groups--those with penises and those without--at an early age." More House was praised by Anakana Schofield as "A fusion, a collage, a bold endeavor of a literary work, a 'new' novel if you like."
Her second novel, Piranesi's Figures, is similarily investigative as she examines love among the psychological ruins of at least two marriages and one attempt at child-rearing. Again, she contorts novelistic conventions, sexual practices, and family dynamics, causing Michael Turner to blurb, "Reading Calder is to move through the world barefoot over asphalt, grass, sand and water. This is sensual, insightful writing." Her publisher describes the book as "a dense witches-brew of storytelling, a feminist-tinged fairy-tale that drapes the dirtiest secrets of domestic wreckage and illicit love in fancy dress and commands them to twirl around for our amusement."
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Hester in Sunlight
by Hannah Calder (New Star $22)
Review by Susan Sanford Blades (BCBW 2025)
Hester Prynne, the main character and wearer of the infamous red “A” in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s nineteenth-century novel, The Scarlet Letter, has been revisited in literature several times—from a prequel featuring Hawthorne himself, to a sequel narrating Hester’s life post-Scarlet Letter. Hannah Calder’s third novel, Hester in Sunlight, beckons Hester Prynne back to the page, but does so in typical Calder fashion, which is to say, in a very atypical way.
Calder’s book features an unnamed author/narrator who is attempting to write a novel about Hester Prynne. This unnamed author creates a family to appear in their book that, they admit, is closely based on their real-life family. As the unnamed author struggles both with an increasing depression and with the task of writing a novel about Hester, they spend what began as a weekend but then stretches into an unknown number of days in the country with the above-mentioned family. It seems like it might be Christmas time at first, but the seasons and weather change at the author’s discretion. The book ping-pongs between story lines featuring Hester’s life and the author’s life in short, one- to two-page long chapters. I use the term “storyline” loosely here, since there is no real narrative arc to speak of in this exercise in metafiction.
Throughout the book, the author dives into sections of The Scarlet Letter and stews in them awhile, critiquing Hawthorne’s Hester and comparing Hester’s life to the author/narrator’s life. They note that we, in our twenty-first century lives, are as constrained as seventeenth century Hester—only the shackles have changed. The author looks out their window into “the woods behind this dark life of rules and schedules and inboxes.” They liken their teenaged niece and nephew, stuck in “Internet quicksand” to Hawthorne’s Gossips, trapped in their attention-seeking Puritan blame game. Calder is most successful in making a connection between Hester and the author/narrator as people living outside the edges of societal acceptability. The author authentically captures the guilt, the shame, the illicit nature of a mother who writes. They wear a red “A” of their own when they continually remove themself from their family in order to work on this novel—an act misunderstood and begrudged by their husband and child. Interestingly, where Hester’s society is made aware of her sin through the fruits of her act (her out-of-wedlock daughter, Pearl), the author’s act of writing is sinful, seemingly, because it often bears no tangible fruit.
The author also tackles the issue of gender identity, which is where this novel strays from its original task of comparison with The Scarlet Letter. The author’s child is gender fluid, and the author comes out to their family as nonbinary. An “‘other man’,” they say, “lives inside [them] and berates [their] fleshy parts.” These are thoughtful meditations on gender, but they aren’t fleshed out enough to take the novel anywhere.
Sentence by sentence, calder’s book is a triumph—her prose is elegant, with stunning imagery, diction and humour. But though its form, in its defiance of convention, suits its content, this book may be a victim of its own cleverness. With its many literary allusions—to Hawthorne, John Donne and others, it at times reads like an inside joke to those who hold English degrees and may alienate those who do not.
Beyond the sentence level, the book has no narrative arc to speak of. The author’s musings circle around a continuously postponed family picnic, one they can barely bring themselves to think about due to their depression and the repercussions of past family trauma that is only ever hinted at. This picnic would have been enough to bring the elements of the book together, to guide the reader to a climax of sorts, to some epiphanies about the author’s strained relationship with their family. But this picnic never happens. The author themself asserts, “these still images, these flashes of place and time, pine for narrative, pretend to be narrative” and calls their work an “un-story,” but I wonder if it’s a bit of a cop-out to write an un-story about a writer writing an un-story.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate unconventional novels. Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2024), in which she created a narrative by alphabetizing her diaries from a ten-year portion of her life, was one of my favourites of last year. My frustration with Hester in Sunlight lies in the fact that it does not accomplish what it set out to do. The author ostensibly embarked upon this project to give Hester a voice they believe Hawthorne did not allow her. “I want [Hester] to be alive,” they proclaim. But by creating this work that exists solely in the musings of the author, we never see Hester in a recreated scene, where she might actually use her voice, speak dialogue, take actions, change the course of her story. The author’s words, though beautiful, never actually bring Hester back to life.
9781554202102
Victoria-based Susan Sanford Blades published her debut novel, Fake It So Real, (Nightwood) in 2020.
BOOKS:
More House (New Star, 2009) $19 978-1-55420-042-9
Piranesi's Figures (New Star, 2016) $21 9781554201129
[BCBW 2016]
After she received her MA in English Literature from Simon Fraser University in 2004, Calder moved to Barcelona and wrote her first novel More House (New Star, 2009), a work of experimental writing, much concerned with gender. "I was born without a penis," says the narrator, "... I learned to divide a room into groups--those with penises and those without--at an early age." More House was praised by Anakana Schofield as "A fusion, a collage, a bold endeavor of a literary work, a 'new' novel if you like."
Her second novel, Piranesi's Figures, is similarily investigative as she examines love among the psychological ruins of at least two marriages and one attempt at child-rearing. Again, she contorts novelistic conventions, sexual practices, and family dynamics, causing Michael Turner to blurb, "Reading Calder is to move through the world barefoot over asphalt, grass, sand and water. This is sensual, insightful writing." Her publisher describes the book as "a dense witches-brew of storytelling, a feminist-tinged fairy-tale that drapes the dirtiest secrets of domestic wreckage and illicit love in fancy dress and commands them to twirl around for our amusement."
+++
Hester in Sunlight
by Hannah Calder (New Star $22)
Review by Susan Sanford Blades (BCBW 2025)
Hester Prynne, the main character and wearer of the infamous red “A” in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s nineteenth-century novel, The Scarlet Letter, has been revisited in literature several times—from a prequel featuring Hawthorne himself, to a sequel narrating Hester’s life post-Scarlet Letter. Hannah Calder’s third novel, Hester in Sunlight, beckons Hester Prynne back to the page, but does so in typical Calder fashion, which is to say, in a very atypical way.
Calder’s book features an unnamed author/narrator who is attempting to write a novel about Hester Prynne. This unnamed author creates a family to appear in their book that, they admit, is closely based on their real-life family. As the unnamed author struggles both with an increasing depression and with the task of writing a novel about Hester, they spend what began as a weekend but then stretches into an unknown number of days in the country with the above-mentioned family. It seems like it might be Christmas time at first, but the seasons and weather change at the author’s discretion. The book ping-pongs between story lines featuring Hester’s life and the author’s life in short, one- to two-page long chapters. I use the term “storyline” loosely here, since there is no real narrative arc to speak of in this exercise in metafiction.
Throughout the book, the author dives into sections of The Scarlet Letter and stews in them awhile, critiquing Hawthorne’s Hester and comparing Hester’s life to the author/narrator’s life. They note that we, in our twenty-first century lives, are as constrained as seventeenth century Hester—only the shackles have changed. The author looks out their window into “the woods behind this dark life of rules and schedules and inboxes.” They liken their teenaged niece and nephew, stuck in “Internet quicksand” to Hawthorne’s Gossips, trapped in their attention-seeking Puritan blame game. Calder is most successful in making a connection between Hester and the author/narrator as people living outside the edges of societal acceptability. The author authentically captures the guilt, the shame, the illicit nature of a mother who writes. They wear a red “A” of their own when they continually remove themself from their family in order to work on this novel—an act misunderstood and begrudged by their husband and child. Interestingly, where Hester’s society is made aware of her sin through the fruits of her act (her out-of-wedlock daughter, Pearl), the author’s act of writing is sinful, seemingly, because it often bears no tangible fruit.
The author also tackles the issue of gender identity, which is where this novel strays from its original task of comparison with The Scarlet Letter. The author’s child is gender fluid, and the author comes out to their family as nonbinary. An “‘other man’,” they say, “lives inside [them] and berates [their] fleshy parts.” These are thoughtful meditations on gender, but they aren’t fleshed out enough to take the novel anywhere.
Sentence by sentence, calder’s book is a triumph—her prose is elegant, with stunning imagery, diction and humour. But though its form, in its defiance of convention, suits its content, this book may be a victim of its own cleverness. With its many literary allusions—to Hawthorne, John Donne and others, it at times reads like an inside joke to those who hold English degrees and may alienate those who do not.
Beyond the sentence level, the book has no narrative arc to speak of. The author’s musings circle around a continuously postponed family picnic, one they can barely bring themselves to think about due to their depression and the repercussions of past family trauma that is only ever hinted at. This picnic would have been enough to bring the elements of the book together, to guide the reader to a climax of sorts, to some epiphanies about the author’s strained relationship with their family. But this picnic never happens. The author themself asserts, “these still images, these flashes of place and time, pine for narrative, pretend to be narrative” and calls their work an “un-story,” but I wonder if it’s a bit of a cop-out to write an un-story about a writer writing an un-story.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate unconventional novels. Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries (Farrar, Straus & Giroux 2024), in which she created a narrative by alphabetizing her diaries from a ten-year portion of her life, was one of my favourites of last year. My frustration with Hester in Sunlight lies in the fact that it does not accomplish what it set out to do. The author ostensibly embarked upon this project to give Hester a voice they believe Hawthorne did not allow her. “I want [Hester] to be alive,” they proclaim. But by creating this work that exists solely in the musings of the author, we never see Hester in a recreated scene, where she might actually use her voice, speak dialogue, take actions, change the course of her story. The author’s words, though beautiful, never actually bring Hester back to life.
9781554202102
Victoria-based Susan Sanford Blades published her debut novel, Fake It So Real, (Nightwood) in 2020.
BOOKS:
More House (New Star, 2009) $19 978-1-55420-042-9
Piranesi's Figures (New Star, 2016) $21 9781554201129
[BCBW 2016]
Articles: 1 Article for this author
Piranesi’s Figures by Hannah Calder (New Star $21)
Review (2016)
Review by Jaiden Dembo
Hannah calder's debut novel More House (New Star, 2009) was praised as "a fusion, a collage, a bold endeavor of literary work, a 'new' novel"; by Anakana Schofield.
Her Piranesi's Figures is another experimental novel that strays from a conventional narrative approach with settings in contemporary Rome, 18th century Rome, mid-20th century Margate (England), Heidelberg (Germany) and the Okanagan.
The title refers to 18th century artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi whose architectural etchings of grand buildings are peopled by decrepit humans in the foreground.
Both Piranesi and his hordes of ragged, seemingly homeless figures (representing humanity at large) appear in Calder's new novel which began eight years ago as a story about mentally ill artists.
In Calder's world of fiction there is no reality that can be relied on, anything is viable-there's always the opportunity to erase the words on the page and start the scene over.
The main characters are three sets of dysfunctional, married couples-Hilda and Jorgen, Bill and Violet, and Florence and Stephen. No one appears content in their current romantic arrangement. This leads to frequent affairs, unplanned pregnancies, abortions and miscarriages.
As Calder twists our traditional concepts of sexual practices and family dynamics, Piranesi's Figures also explores the dissatisfaction of unfulfilling employment. Hilda would rather be an artist than a nurse but she lacks the talent for it.
There are a handful of guidelines that keep the characters in check, and allow for a loosely maintained structure with the use of an all-knowing History Book that fact checks for the reality that is being written for these characters.
Meanwhile Piranesi's Figures bends time and jumps from one locale to the next, from one century to the next, as characters travel from one story into another, like passengers visiting different countries. They always return to their original story and await their fates.
If that sounds obtuse, well, that's what happens when you invent characters who know they are characters, who have their own ideas and desires and don't feel like sticking to the script. Despite their reluctance to obey the author, they are bound to act out their destinies and the whims of their creator.
The only thing these characters can hope for is that when the novel ends they could be reborn, rewritten, or borrowed and put into another tale that better suits their needs. Until then you can see them waltzing through centuries, returning to ancient Rome and then back again to the 1940s in Germany and England.
Piranesi's Figures is another bold endeavour. Hannah Calder has explored the limitations of the modern family, and the painful longing for one. Like marriage, it's not for the faint of heart.
9781554201129
BCBW associate editor Jaiden Dembo lives in Surrey.
BCBW (Autumn 2016)
