24 Hours in Shogun’s Japan by Mark Hudson

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This is part of a series in which each book explores the history of a different time and place through the lens of one twenty-four-hour day. I haven’t come across any of the previous books, but I was drawn to this one because I know relatively little about Japan’s history and wanted to add to my limited knowledge. Most of what I do know about this period (the Tokugawa shogunate of 1603 to 1868) comes from novels like James Clavell’s Shogun so I thought it would be interesting to read some nonfiction on the subject – although as it turned out, this book is an unusual combination of fiction and nonfiction.

24 Hours in Shogun’s Japan focuses on a day in 1614 and devotes one chapter to each hour of the day, beginning at midnight. The chapters are headed with both the Western time and the equivalent Japanese term, a system introduced from China – for example, Upper Hour of the Rat or Lower Hour of the Dragon – which I thought was a nice touch. We are then given a short fictional story providing a snapshot of one person’s life as they go about their usual daily activities during that hour. As we progress through the day one hour at a time, we meet a range of characters from all walks of life – a doctor, a pilgrim, a merchant, a pirate and many more – and each one has their own story to be told.

The stories are too short to be very satisfying as works of fiction, but they are there to serve a purpose and they do that very well, providing snapshots of all aspects of daily life – the food people ate, the clothes they wore, the housing they lived in and the types of job they did. Some of the characters who stood out for me included a tea master preparing for the elaborate ritual of the tea ceremony, a fisherman trying to persuade everyone to buy a new type of fish they’d never even seen, a Kabuki dancer performing on stage by the river in Kyoto and a man known as a Yamabushi, or mountain ascetic, getting ready to climb Mount Fuji.

Each chapter includes some key historical facts, there are illustrations and at the end of the book there’s an index and a list of sources and suggestions for further reading. If you want something more academic you would need to look elsewhere, but this is an excellent starting point. The book is obviously intended as an introduction to the time period and the style and structure make it very accessible to readers who are new to the subject.

If you like the sound of the format of these books but aren’t interested in Shogun-era Japan, the others in the series cover Ancient China, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Athens, Ancient Rome and the Viking World. They’re not all by the same author but I assume they’re all written in a similar way. I found this one a quick and informative read, so I would probably consider reading another one.

Can you recommend any good books about Japanese history?

Thanks to Michael O’Mara Books for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Lost Orphans of Lyon by Helen Parusel

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There are so many books set during the two world wars, it can be easy to think that you’ve read enough of them and don’t need any more…but I’m so pleased I didn’t overlook The Lost Orphans of Lyon. Although I’ve read other novels about the French Resistance, this one touches on aspects that were new to me, such as the role of the Huguenot community of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in sheltering hundreds of child refugees fleeing the Nazis.

Although the novel is inspired by real historical events, the story is told through the eyes of two fictional women. Yvette Dubois and her husband Armand have been married for just two weeks when they receive the news that Armand’s brother, Lucien, has died, leaving them to inherit his crumbling château and vineyard in the French countryside. Armand insists that he can’t leave his business in Lyon, so it falls to Yvette to take on the management of their new property. With only a hostile housekeeper for company, Yvette is annoyed at being abandoned so early into her marriage, but she soon finds a sense of purpose when she hears a knocking from behind a tapestry in the library. Pulling back the tapestry, she opens a hidden door to discover a young woman with two small children. It seems that Lucien was part of an escape network smuggling vulnerable children to safety in the nearby village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.

To put things in context, it’s September 1942 and a large part of France is under Nazi occupation. The area around Lucien’s château has remained part of the ‘free zone’, but will soon become occupied as well. When Yvette decides to continue Lucien’s work, she knows how dangerous it will be – particularly when she learns that Armand is collaborating with the Germans.

Part of the book is also written from the perspective of Marie, a seventeen-year-old girl who lives in Chambon. Marie is in love with Pierre, a man who has joined the maquis – the band of armed fighters hiding in the countryside and working on behalf of the French Resistance. Determined to play her own part in defying the Nazis, Marie takes on the job of collecting the children at the other end of the tunnel from the château and bringing them to the village to be housed.

Yvette and Marie are both very engaging characters – two women from completely different backgrounds, but dedicated to the same cause. I liked both of them and was equally invested in each of the two narratives. This is a book I didn’t want to put down…and when I did have to, I couldn’t wait to get back to it! With the stakes being so high, there’s a real sense of danger throughout the novel (the Nazi characters are as horrible and brutal as you would expect) and there’s no guarantee that any of the people involved in the escape chain are going to survive.

As well as the storyline with the children, Yvette and Marie both have their own personal stories – Yvette’s discovery that her husband isn’t the man she thought she knew and Marie’s love for Pierre, despite the disapproval of her parents – as well as some subplots involving other characters, such as the servants at the château. I thought the balance between the historical and the personal was just about right, although other readers may prefer more or less of one or the other. Overall, though, I found this a vivid and moving portrayal of life in Occupied France.

This is the first book I’ve read by Helen Parusel. I see she has written three others dealing with the resistance movements in other parts of Europe, so after enjoying this book so much, I would definitely like to try another one. I just need to decide which one to choose next!

Thanks to Boldwood Books for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Classics Club Spin #44: The Result

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The result of the latest Classics Club Spin has been revealed today.

The idea of the Spin was to list twenty books from my Classics Club list, number them 1 to 20, and the number announced by the Classics Club represents the book I have to read before 5th July 2026. The number that has been selected is…

9

And this means the book I need to read is…

The Persian Boy by Mary Renault

Bagoas, abducted as a boy and sold as a eunuch, has been transported to the heart of the Persian court as courtesan to King Darius. But when the Macedon army conquers his homeland, Bagoas finds freedom at the hands of their golden young commander, whose name is already becoming a legend: Alexander.

Their encounter sparks a passionate devotion that shapes the Persian boy’s future – and deepens into a relationship that will sustain them both through assassination plots, political intrigue and the threat of Alexander’s own restless ambition. This is a spellbinding tale of power, loyalty and loss – a vision of history transfigured by love.

~

I read the first book in this trilogy, Fire from Heaven, last year and although I didn’t love it, I did find it fascinating. This is the second book and I’ll be interested to see what I think of it.

Have you read this – or anything else by Mary Renault?

Letter to My Judge by Georges Simenon

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Translated by Howard Curtis

Georges Simenon is more famous for his Maigret detective series, but he also wrote a large number of standalone psychological thrillers which he described as romans durs, or ‘hard novels’, in reference to the dark, bleak atmosphere and difficult, harrowing lives of the characters. I’ve read five of them now and Letter to My Judge is the darkest so far. It was originally published in French in 1947 and is now available from Penguin Classics in a new English translation.

As the title suggests, the book is written in the form of a letter. The writer is Dr Charles Alavoine and we know from the beginning that he is in prison, having just been found guilty of murder. The Judge of the title is an examining magistrate, or juge d’instruction to use the French term, the person responsible for carrying out a pre-trial investigation and preparing the evidence. During his trial, Charles heard the Judge state that he didn’t think the murder was premeditated, so he’s decided to write him a letter proving that it really was premeditated and that he knew exactly what he was doing when he committed the crime. It may seem an odd thing to want to prove, but Charles feels that it’s important to have his full story heard by someone.

In his letter, Alavoine begins by looking back at his early days when he qualified as a doctor and bought a practice in the town of La Roche-sur-Yon in western France. We then hear about his first wife, who died in childbirth, and the arrival of Armande, who came to take care of his young daughters and ended up marrying him. Armande is a practical, capable woman who quickly begins to dominate the household, the medical practice and every aspect of her husband’s life. Charles doesn’t love her but he needs a wife and she seems to be as good a choice as any. Things change when he meets a young woman, Martine, at a station and feels a desire for her that he has never felt for Armande. Charles is determined not to lose Martine now that he has found her, but events quickly begin to spiral out of control, leading to the crime for which he will later stand trial.

With the whole book written from Charles Alavoine’s perspective, this means we get right inside the mind of a killer, which makes this an intense, uncomfortable read. Alavoine has few, if any, redeeming qualities and is an unpleasant, abusive person from beginning to end. Apparently this was a deeply personal book for Simenon, who said “I wrote it in order to rid myself of my ghosts, not to commit the same deed carried out by my protagonist”. It seems that Simenon himself, like Alavoine, treated the women in his life badly, which is disappointing to know, although he at least had enough self-awareness to write an honest, reflective book like this one. It’s definitely a very disturbing story, though, even more so than the others I’ve read by him and I’m sure the autobiographical aspect is partly responsible for that.

As well as being an unsettling book to read, it’s also quite a gripping one. Although there’s not really any mystery as we already know the outcome of Alavoine’s story from the beginning, we don’t know what led him to that point so there’s still some suspense as we watch everything unfold. It’s not my favourite of the romans durs I’ve read so far, but it’s certainly a powerful novel and not one I’ll forget easily.

Thanks to Penguin Classics for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Classics Club Spin #44: My list

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It’s time for another Classics Club Spin! If you’re not sure what they are, here’s a reminder:

The rules for Spin #44:

* List any twenty books you have left to read from your Classics Club list.
* Number them from 1 to 20.
* On Sunday 17th May the Classics Club will announce a number.
* This is the book you need to read by 5th July 2026.

And here’s my list:

1. The Rose and the Yew Tree by Mary Westmacott
2. The Duke’s Children by Anthony Trollope
3. The Lantern Bearers by Rosemary Sutcliff
4. The War of the Worlds by HG Wells
5. The Women’s War by Alexandre Dumas
6. The Blue Castle by LM Montgomery
7. Brighton Rock by Graham Greene
8. The Talented Mr Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
9. The Persian Boy by Mary Renault
10. Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell
11. Shadows on the Rock by Willa Cather
12. Othello by William Shakespeare
13. Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury
14. My Brother Michael by Mary Stewart
15. Judith by Noel Streatfeild
16. No Fond Return of Love by Barbara Pym
17. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
18. The Kill by Émile Zola
19. The Moon and Sixpence by W Somerset Maugham
20. The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley

~

As I just started a new Classics Club list in January this year, I had plenty of books to choose from for my Spin list. It was tempting to just include shorter books, but as I will still need to read the long ones eventually I’ve put a few of those on the list as well.

Which number do you think I should be hoping for?

Top Ten Tuesday: Characters named after flowers

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This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is: “May Flowers (This is a companion to the April Showers topic from last month. Interpret however you’d like: books with flowers on the cover, colorful covers, books set in springtime, books where flowers/plants are a common theme, titles with flower names in them, characters named after flowers, covers that are as pretty as flowers, books featuring gardens, etc.)”

There were lots of possible options this week! I’ve previously listed books with flowers in the titles, so this time I decided to go with characters named after flowers.

1. Lily by Rose Tremain is a dark novel about a young woman, Lily Mortimer, accused of murder in Victorian London.

2. Daisy Muir in A Pink Front Door by Stella Gibbons is one of those people who always finds herself trying to solve other people’s problems!

3. A Single Thread by Tracy Chevalier tells the story of Violet Speedwell, a single woman whose fiancé was killed in the First World War.

4. Heather Badcock is poisoned during a party in Agatha Christie’s The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side and it’s up to Miss Marple to find the murderer!

5. Murder at Gulls Nest by Jess Kidd is a 1950s seaside mystery and features a puppeteer, Professor Poppy, who runs a Punch and Judy show.

6. Not the name of a specific flower, but flowers in general – Flora is one of the two children (the other being her brother Miles) who appear in Henry James’ classic Gothic novella The Turn of the Screw.

7. The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal has two characters with flowery names – Iris Whittle and her sister Rose, who both work at Mrs Salter’s Doll Emporium, painting faces on china dolls.

8. In The Key in the Lock by Beth Underdown, Ivy Boscawen is trying to come to terms with the death of her son in the trenches of the Western Front, bringing back memories of another boy who died under suspicious circumstances thirty years earlier.

9. I loved The Ghost Writer by John Harwood, about a man who discovers a collection of ghost stories written by his great-grandmother, Viola Hatherley. It seems to be out of print now, which is a shame.

10. One of my favourite books as a child, Watership Down by Richard Adams, features several rabbits named after flowers, including Dandelion and Bluebell.

~

Have you read any of these books? Which other characters with flowery names can you think of?

Vile Lady Villains by Danai Christopoulou

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Literature is full of villains, many of them women. Sometimes they are based on real people and sometimes they are purely fictional. Sometimes their reputations for villainy are deserved and sometimes they’re not. But what would happen if two female villains from two very different works of literature crossed paths, got to know each other and worked together to write new endings to their stories? This is what Danai Christopoulou sets out to explore in Vile Lady Villains.

Our first lady villain is Lady Macbeth. We meet her after she and her husband have carried out their plot to murder King Duncan and she is trying to wash the blood from her hands. She asks the three witches for help and is given a potion to drink, but it doesn’t have the effect she hopes for – instead of removing her burden of guilt, it transports her to an endless corridor lined with doors. Drawn to one with a bloodstained handle to match her bloodstained hand, she opens it and finds herself in a room where another murder has just taken place…

Klytemnestra has just killed her husband, Agamemnon, and is standing over his dead body. The murder was revenge for the death of their daughter, Iphigenia, whom Agamemnon sacrificed in return for winds to sail to the Trojan War, and for bringing his concubine Cassandra home with him. Suddenly a door in the wall appears and a woman dressed in black stumbles onto the scene of the crime…

This is how Christopoulou brings together Lady Macbeth and Klytemnestra (spelled with a K in the book rather than the more common C), two women from different times and different worlds. Together they become lost in a realm of stories, pursued by a mysterious goddess known as the Shepherd, or the Mistress of the House of Books. The Shepherd holds the keys to reopen their doors, but the more time our two villains spend together the more they begin to question whether they really want to return to their own stories and if so, is there anything they can do to redeem themselves first?

This is a difficult book to classify – it’s fantasy and also metafiction; there’s an element of historical fiction where Lady Macbeth’s story intersects with the real woman who inspired her character, Gruoch; there’s Greek mythology with Klytemnestra’s storyline; and there’s a thread of romance running through the novel as well. To be honest, although I could tell from the blurb that this would be an unusual story, I wasn’t really prepared for quite how bizarre it actually was. I enjoyed the beginning and the end but felt lost for a while in the middle. Also, the two women are referred to throughout the book by nicknames they give each other: Lady Macbeth becomes Anassa (the ancient Greek word for queen) and Klytemnestra becomes Claret, a reference to the colour of blood. I found this unnecessarily confusing, although I understand the thinking behind the two women wanting to choose their own names rather than the ones given to them by their creators.

The book is beautifully written, if a bit too flowery at times, which is particularly impressive as Christopoulou explains in her acknowledgements the extra challenges she faced due to English not being her first language. She also gets around the problem of an Ancient Greek woman and an 11th century Scottish woman being able to understand each other by making it one of the rules of the realm of stories, under the control of the three witches (who appear to Claret as the Three Fates, or Moirai). I don’t think it’s essential to have any knowledge of either Shakespeare or mythology, but it certainly helps! This is a very imaginative book with a lot of layers and a lot going on; ultimately it was just a bit too strange for me, but I’m sure the right reader will love it.

Thanks to Michael Joseph, Penguin Random House for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.