Nine Chambers of Her Heart

“Nine Cameras of Her Heart” is not quite an ordinary book in several ways. There is no single main character. The main heroine appears to us only in descriptions by other characters, and we never meet her directly—we see her only through reflections. Nine different people remember their relationship with a woman— the one they loved or the one who loved them. These memories, like pieces of a puzzle, are gathered into a single mirrored tapestry, in which we see an integral personality and the connected story. This story stretches from East to West through cities and years. And in each new account, we encounter echoes of the previous stories—so the entire text by Janice Paryat forms, in a sense, a “mirror series,” a corridor of reflections, through which the main heroine moves. Janice Paryat offers readers an elegant parable: we reflect ourselves in other people’s consciousness, like in mirrors. And each of these mirrors is part of us.