Edward Hamlin wove music, family and Chicago into literary sonata

Edward Hamlin is the winner of the Nelson Algren Award, the Iowa Short Fiction Award and the Colorado Review’s Nelligan Prize. His story collection, “Night in Erg Chebbi and Other Stories,” won the Colorado Book Award in 2016. An accomplished composer and guitarist, Hamlin’s musical work has appeared on four CDs and in a short film. “Sonata in Wax” is his debut novel. He  lives with his wife and German shepherd, Cousteau, in the foothills north of Boulder.

SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory – what’s it about and what inspired you to write it? 

Edward Hamline: The book is a confluence of several passions of mine. I long ago fell in love with French piano music from around the turn of the 20^th century—think Ravel, Satie, Debussy, Fauré—and as a musician myself I’ve spent many years learning the art of recording. Both of these interests are central to the book. 

I’d also wanted to write about my Boston ancestors, the Sanborn half of Chase and Sanborn Coffee, whose rags-to-riches-to-rags arc is such an interesting window into a certain species of 19^th-century American capitalism and class migration. The patriarch, my great-great-grandfather James Sanborn, built a great American brand from next to nothing, only to have his son squander most of the family fortune on mansions, yachts, women and other “men’s pleasures,” as he put it in divorce court.

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Along the way there was a child bride, an attempted strangling, possible incest, bitter lawsuits between family members, and all sorts of other spicy scandals. Irresistible stuff for a novelist. I didn’t inherit any of the money, but I did inherit the stories, thank goodness. 

The braided structure of the book—a storyline set in contemporary Chicago interwoven with one set a century earlier in Boston and France—brings all these threads together into one tale, with the sonata, recorded on wax cylinders, serving as a sort of shuttle passing back and forth between them.

SunLit: Place the excerpt you selected in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole and why did you select it?

Hamlin: The excerpt contains the opening pages of the book, which I call the Prélude in keeping with my musical structure. This is the moment when our protagonist in the modern story, classical music producer Ben Weil, first hears an extraordinary piano sonata recorded a hundred years earlier by one of the characters in the World War I-era storyline. (To name him would be to drop a spoiler, so I won’t.) Ben realizes that the piece is at least 50 years ahead of its time musically, which sets in motion one of the central mysteries of the novel. 

We also learn something about Ben and the hardships he’s facing in his personal life, all of which conspire to make him uniquely receptive to the music. I really enjoyed writing this section, because I had to try to capture the lived, embodied, ecstatic experience of hearing breathtaking music just when you needed it. I hope my readers can connect Ben’s experience with something they’ve felt themselves, some musical moment that’s brought them to their knees.

SunLit: What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write? 

Hamlin: So many! Being a lover of music and a musician, of course; being an amateur audio engineer; being the last living descendant of the Sanborns. And being a Chicagoan for many years . . . my editor calls the book a love letter to Chicago, and it is certainly that, in part. Writing about my old hometown while sitting in Boulder—during COVID, when I couldn’t really hop on a plane to walk the old streets—was quite an act of memory.

“Sonata in Wax”

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SunLit: What did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding of your craft and/or the subject matter?

Hamlin: This was the first time I’d ever written historical fiction, though only one of the two storylines is set in the past. I love doing research, so that was great fun, and I had a wonderful helper in the person of historian Ellen Knight, an expert on the Sanborns as well as a Ph.D. musicologist with a specialty in the turn-of-the-century Boston classical music world, which is central to my book. Both before and after COVID I had a chance to visit the Sanborn mansion outside Boston, which of course was richly inspiring—my grandmother, who appears in the book as a teenage society girl, grew up there. 

SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?

Hamlin: Managing the sequence of reveals was challenging, as they crossed a wide cast of characters and a hundred years of plot events. Keeping track of who knew what when literally required a spreadsheet. It was also a challenge to make decisions, both micro and macro, about how to treat the historical figures, especially when they were my own ancestors. It would have been so much easier if I could have just shared a meal with them.

This was also my first go at writing a braided storyline, outside of a short story or two. That was a huge and wonderful challenge indeed.

SunLit: What do you want readers to take from this book? 

Hamlin: First and foremost, I’d like them to enjoy a ripping good yarn. Then I’d love for them to share in a certain excitement about music and the experience of listening to music closely. 

And mystery: the mystery of how music transcends time so effortlessly. That still amazes me. Listen to enough Beethoven and you’ll realize that he’d be the highest of high-maintenance friends—yet one you’d gladly cook dinner for, any day of the week, because at any moment he might toss off a comment that would make you rethink your entire life.

SunLit: Is there a central theme that drives the story forward?

Hamlin: Yes. The story turns on a lie of omission, and I think the book is in some ways a quite serious interrogation of what lying and atonement really mean. What are the consequences of a lie of omission versus an overt lie? What are the deeper consequences of confessing a lie—the effect on one’s self-concept, for example—and what should the liar do if he or she knows that the confession will trigger consequences vastly disproportionate to the harm the lie caused in the first place? 

I hope the book gives readers pause to think through some of these questions in dialogue with my characters, because I do believe they’re things we’ve all dealt with at one time or another.

SunLit: Tell us about your next project.

Hamlin: I’m just wrapping up a new novel about a widow and her estranged son, who enters into a deep personal crisis while overseas and beyond his frightened mother’s reach. The book’s essential ingredients include, among many other things, grief, love in both youth and middle age, suicide, rosemary, Tuscany and Mumbai. There’s a road trip; there’s the Mediterranean sun; there’s a certain amount of excellent wine and a certain amount of irrecoverable regret. And then there’s love. 

A few more quick items:

Currently on your nightstand for recreational reading: My friend Erika Krouse’s fantastic new story collection, “Save Me Stranger.” Edward Dusinberre’s “Beethoven for a Later Age: Living With the String Quartets.” R. L. Maizes’ excellent collection, “We Love Anderson Cooper.” Jesmyn Ward’s “Salvage the Bones” (I’m always late to the party . . . ). Colum McCann’s new novel, “Twist.”

First book you remember really making an impression on you as a kid: “Frankenstein”!

Best writing advice you’ve ever received:  Once you learn your chops, forget all the writing advice.

Favorite fictional literary character: Only one? So cruel. I suppose Hanna in “The English Patient,” or Ursula in Kate Atkinson’s “Life After Life”—but really, where to begin? 

Literary guilty pleasure (title or genre): Not exactly what you’re looking for, I realize, but I suppose most of my literary guilt has to do with never catching up on my reading. Relatedly, I do feel guilty about almost wholly ignoring the worlds of nonfiction and poetry because I’m always behind the eight ball on fiction.

Digital, print or audio – favorite medium to consume literature: Print.

One book you’ve read multiple times: “The English Patient”

Other than writing utensils, one thing you must have within reach when you write: Coffee! (I do come from coffee people, remember.)

Best antidote for writer’s block: Writing.

Most valuable beta reader: That’s a hard one. Different beta readers are helpful in different ways. I’m about to send my latest novel off to several, some of them fellow writers, others super-attentive critical readers, and others just friends who like to read and are probably representative of my hoped-for audience. And my agent, who’s read more books than I ever will and always has astute notes for me.