[WARNING: Some of the information that follows contains what might be construed as clues to outcomes, or broad hints, about plot, authorial intent, or sources, etc., pertaining to Sonata in Wax. If you definitely don’t want any information on the book, that probably means you intend to read it, which is certainly the best outcome. If that’s the case, you can give what follows a pass, and return to it after you’ve finished reading the book.]
Basso Profundo: In a piece of correspondence, you mentioned that I “got what you were trying to do" in the novel. What did you mean by that?
Edward Hamlin: When I said I thought you got what I was doing, that was mostly about the centrality of the actual music and the musicians’ interpretation of it—the fact that the music (not just the sonata) was in some ways an important character in the story. Also, you saw how the dual timelines each contribute to the unearthing of the mystery, with the reader having to pick up clues from both.
Let me extract your other questions one by one:
BP: I like how Jacques’s performance of the piece is handled so obliquely. And that you had Loeffler and Casals in the room for it. I doubt I would have had the sophistication or the know-how to handle it as low-key or as subtly as that. The sonata you describe is wildly ahead of its time, with its apparently free form and its jazz passages—I loved it. The presaging of jazz seems like a bold choice on your part. Did you ever have second thoughts about describing it that way?
EH: There were a couple of key plot events that I decided to handle somewhat off-stage—the first performance of the sonata in the Boston timeline, which we experience only through Elisabeth’s fond but fraught recollection, and Robin’s actual breakup with Ben, which we experience only through Ben’s painful memories. These pivotal events are not played out in scene. I could have gone either way with it, but in both those cases the central thing was the protagonist’s lived, emotional experience of the events; I wanted the reader to directly and empathetically experience that response, not so much the events themselves. The emotional gestalt of the events was what was most real for them, so I wanted it to be most real for the reader, too.
As far as the jazz elements in the sonata, no, I had no second thoughts about that. They were always part of the piece musically.
BP: You also did an amazing job of capturing the zeitgeist of the time—what horrors they went through, both the butchery in faraway places and plagues at home. Did you rely on any family lore for that theme, or was it more general, in the well known way a novelist uses his imagination to achieve verisimilitude?
EH: It was mostly research rather than family lore or pure imagination. The really minute details—Elisabeth walking out at night in her “Louis heels,” for example—came from research, but then I had to decide how to use them. Two helpful resources were my friend Ellen Knight, the Winchester town historian who helped me immensely by unearthing articles about the Sanborns all through the writing, and my firsthand familiarity with the Sanborn mansion, which I’ve visited twice. Aigremont has been reclaimed and restored and is now a cultural center. It’s where my grandmother, Helen Sanborn, grew up, as portrayed in the novel. And it’s where my great-grandfather, Oren, frittered away all the money, none of which made it to my generation.
Ellen Knight was very helpful in filling in the blanks in my knowledge of the house. For example, the layout of the basement morgue and the parking spot in back where the corpses were loaded onto trucks, or the back stairs where Westerlake and Elisabeth meet—these were things Ellen helped me fill in and visualize, sometimes with photos she went and took even though the pandemic was on. She was wonderful.
BP: You sure made economical use of your characters. Having Nikki and bringing back Robin as an ally was a very generous tack for your readers. I found it gratifying. Was it part of the plan from the get-go?
EH: No, I didn’t know about that until deep into the writing. I had the sense that Nikki would always be at Ben’s side, and I hoped Robin would reappear in his life, but it wasn’t until the big concert began to develop that all the details came to light. I like that element of surprise.
I actually wrote a coda, parallel to the Plum Island coda, to explore what happened with Ben and Robin after that night, but decided in the end not to go there. Better that we all wonder.
BP: Are any of your fictional world class musicians based on actual people? This would probably take a one-word answer, since you obviously can’t name names.
Only obliquely. I’m not immersed enough in the classical music world to set up a guessing game like that. Jérôme Assouline was at one point an actual musician instead, but I later fictionalized him because I wasn’t comfortable making up so much dialogue for the actual, living musician. Ana Clara has elements of several concert pianists of her generation, but she’s her own unique mix of brilliance and hubris. I had a lot of fun creating her, but I really don’t see us being friends anytime soon.
Many thanks to Edward Hamlin for his gracious candor. These answers are great, sir!
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