Winning review for The Gilded Chamber

3:20pm Friday 19th August 2005

The Gilded Chamber By Rebecca Kohn...

Review by: Pandy Grenville-Evans, Kendal...

This book is magical. The writer creates a subtle difference between the shabbiness of the lives that the harem girls are forced to live, and the richness of the king's world although they are both dimensions of the same waste, and idleness of the life.

The harem is shabby in its decor and in its furniture. The personal treatment that the girls receive lacks all consideration of even their most basic needs. Both the building and the girls are neglected and there is no personal privacy or space, rights or positions apart from a select few, who can make the lives of the rest more or less comfortable. In contrast, the royal quarters are lavish beyond excess.

The routine that maintains this opulent lifestyle is tired and tedious, therefore everything related to the king is debased because the unappreciated luxury is wasted. The only people who are honest and true are the few Jews represented in the book. Their situations are repressed, poor and unassuming, their lives hard but this makes them true to themselves, and somehow ordinary', normal'.

The detail that the writer has created in the girls lives and in their surroundings is totally absorbing. Just how do you go about researching a harem girl's life style from so long ago? And the descriptions are so breath taking, if it were a travel guide we would all long to be there.

There is a delicacy of touch in the writing, which does not make judgements on people as anything else but trapped in the artificially created (and perhaps false) set ways. The text seeks to find good in every person, and wants to make changes for the better.

Perhaps it is the personality of harem girl Ester, who is so young and hopeful, despite having witnessed some horrendous times. Perhaps it's the first person narrative, which makes the story so personal and close. Perhaps it's the intimate detail of the girls everyday lives that binds you to them. Whatever it is, I could not put down this book down; I even took it into the sauna with me!

I had an uncorrected proof copy to read and review and I was so absorbed that it literally fell to pieces as I read, I was desperate to find out what happens to the girls - always my sign of a winner.

Well I don't know if this will get it's final printing and make it onto the best sellers lists but if it does (and it should) I got there first!

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