The Aviary Gate

Mystery, suspense, and romance are important elements of this production, but it's sensuality that predominates as Hickman takes us deep into the politics of the sixteenth-century Topkapi Palace harem in Istanbul. There are two plots, the 1599 romance between Celia Lamprey, shipwrecked and turned into a harem concubine, and her English merchant suitor, and a much weaker present-day plot that finds Elizabeth Staveley driven to understand Celia's history. The latter story fades as Josephine Bailey leads us through the intricacies of harem life. She metes out sensory details with an elegance that gives power to scents and sensations. Employing varying emotional tones and a variety of accents, she helps listeners understand the secrecy, subversiveness, and survival mechanisms of the clashing harem women. S.W. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

February 18, 2008
Sixteenth-century sexual politics inside the Ottoman sultan's harem come to life as Hickman (Courtesans
) takes her fascination with fallen women into the fictional realm with this historical novel featuring exotic locales and erotic situations. Linking past and present heroines, the story follows Oxford researcher Elizabeth Staveley as she uncovers the 400-year-old story of Celia Lamprey, a sea captain's daughter engaged to merchant-turned-diplomat Paul Pindar when she's lost in a shipwreck. Celia doesn't drown, of course. She becomes a concubine-in-training in Constantinople, where Paul serves as secretary to the British Embassy. When the embassy sends a gift to the sultan (a ship made of spun sugar), Paul finds out that Celia is alive and well. Meanwhile, the sultan's chief black eunuch has been poisoned and as his favorite concubine battles for supremacy with his mother, both women draw Celia into their intrigues. Despite all this, the book never transforms into a literary tour-de-force (like A.S. Byatt's Possession
), partly because the author is trying to balance too many story lines. Hickman creates richly described imaginative moments, but like Celia's early encounters with the sultan, the excitement is never consummated.