MODERN HAREM

To create joy and bring Sunshine into peoples everyday life, in a metropolis like London, seems only to be a satisfying act, but how do you know, what you do comforts others? Who tell you what is good and bad for others, and why do you listen to these people?
Anne Billson handles these questions in the short story Sunshine from 1993, through a 1st person narrator of the female main character, who is never named.
She arrives to London, snotty and frustrated by “…a gaping void within me, waiting to be filled.” (p. 80 l. 30-31) Even tough she “…earned lots of money …” (p. 80 l. 28-29), something was missing and she felt “… I was going places, but never seemed to arrive.” (p. 80 l. 30) But suddenly the story’s pivotal point, Charlie, shows up and fills her gaping void with desire and knowledge about “…that, at last, I had found my other half.” (p 81 l. 10-11). To look in his eyes started an “…extraordinary wave of emotion…” (p. 81 l. 9) and she was saved as a new person.
This is the explanation to the first part of the story, which is a scene from the tube in London where the main character plays the guitar to delight the passengers. It starts in media res, which captures the reader’s attention and clarify the story’s themes through the act. We wonder why she does this, and is left with unexplained information. This flows into an unfulfilled feeling in lack of coherence and we need to read on.
Later we are explained Charlie’s functions as the leader of a harem, whose members he found “lost and alone” in the city of London.

His explanation to why he only “saves” women from the pit of London and its lost souls, is that “…only women deserved to be saved.” (p. 81 l. 26) They all live in Corydon, an absolutely normal suburb, in a small house but“…it wasn’t his house, but he acted as though it was. ” (p. 81 l. 26-27). Charlie lives with 12 women in the