THE AVIARY GATE

by Katie Hickman



The Aviary Gate is the story of love, politics, intrigue and murder in an Ottoman Sultan's harem. DPhil candidate Elizabeth Staveley is researching the life of an English woman believed lost in a shipwreck. But a chance find seems to support Elizabeth's belief that the woman, Celia Lamprey, did not die, but lived in captivity in the palace of the Sultan.

The historical/modern parallel stories of The Aviary Gate reminded me of a Turkish version of The Rossetti Letter. This book ends quite a bit more ambiguously than Rossetti, but there is something appealing about leaving the precise fates of some of the characters to the imagination of the reader. The ending in my head was poetically tragic: Annetta weeping silently in her bed, waiting for the distant sound of gunfire across the water. . .

Who is Annetta? Why would there be gunfire? There's only one way to find out! :-)

Have you read The Aviary Gate? How did you envision the ending?



Other books with parallel stories in different time periods:

The Rossetti Letter
Stealing Athena