It may be that with a star and a half I'm being too generous, but then having tried this novel of Queen Esther after the eye-bleedingly awful The Other Boleyn Girl, this didn't seem so wretched in comparison. Which doesn't mean it's good, and it didn't hold my interest and only its appearance on a historical fiction recommendation list caused me to give it over 50 pages.
I wasn't taken with the style at all. For one, this is first person, yet early on she's telling us of scenes in the palace with Xerxes she couldn't have witnessed--yes, I know, they could have been reported to her the way the doings of say Bush's or Obama's cabinet meetings are reported to those of us who have never seen the inside of the White House, but it seemed jarring. Then there were the flashbacks done in eye-straining italics--always to me an amateurish move, as if stupid font tricks will drape gauze before our eyes. Kohn also went well over her quota in exclamation points and her dialogue was graceless.
Finally, the author's Esther struck me as vapid, especially in her devotion to the spineless Mordecai her betrothed (and uncle!) Yes, I know, this wasn't a modern woman, but one raised in a patriarchal culture. That didn't stop Diamant (whose Red Tent this novel was compared to on the cover) from making her heroine a compelling figure without feeling anachronistic. But then Diamant can write...
