DainyBernstein reviewed The Gilded Chamber by Rebecca Kohn
Review of 'The Gilded Chamber' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
The writing is excellent, and I liked the first few times that I could recognize a direct translation of the Biblical Hebrew.
But I found most of the characters flat - Esther is developed, but the others are left as shadows in the margins of the text. I wanted more about Puah and Mordechai especially. Esther never stops loving Mordechai, but his portrayal in the few times we see him gave me no reason to even like him, let alone understand Esther's enduring love for him. A childish love, yes. After all she's been through? Absolutely not. Make him beg. But then, I also didn't see any indication of what Esther and the text see as his undeniable love for her...
Some of the themes really piqued my interest, and I wanted to see how Kohn would give Esther complexity, but the themes are all raised and not really dealt …
The writing is excellent, and I liked the first few times that I could recognize a direct translation of the Biblical Hebrew.
But I found most of the characters flat - Esther is developed, but the others are left as shadows in the margins of the text. I wanted more about Puah and Mordechai especially. Esther never stops loving Mordechai, but his portrayal in the few times we see him gave me no reason to even like him, let alone understand Esther's enduring love for him. A childish love, yes. After all she's been through? Absolutely not. Make him beg. But then, I also didn't see any indication of what Esther and the text see as his undeniable love for her...
Some of the themes really piqued my interest, and I wanted to see how Kohn would give Esther complexity, but the themes are all raised and not really dealt with. It's made clear towards the beginning that the way women and girls are perceived as "vessels" is not condoned, but as Esther learns to do what she needs to in order to survive, that theme is dropped and by the end, discussion of a young girl's betrothal happens with no reservation.
There's also an excessive amount of dwelling on "manhood" - the eunuchs' lack of "manhood" and King Xerxes' "manhood" - the word itself is a choice, and it's indicative of what disturbed me about this whole book. Other related disturbing details were a random moment when King Xerxes invites a boy to join his sexual encounter with Esther, and Esther recoils in disgust - the text makes it seem like Esther is disgusted by the king's arousal by a male, which comes off as extremely homophobic, just as the dwelling on "manhood" smacks of transphobia. (I am not calling the author homophobic or transphobic, just commenting on the effect of her text.) The constant, nonstop description of Hegei as large, the descriptions of him "heaving his bulk" around, was so fatphobic and off-putting.
The end of the novel is a bit slapdash. The author says she follows the story after the Biblical text and leaves the ending open to possibility, but the huge and abrupt jumps in time between each scene make it feel like we're just hurtling towards a neat resolution instead of actually watching the court intrigue play out.
I enjoyed reading this book mostly as an intellectual exercise, not so much as a novel for itself.