Category: Classics

The Persian Boy by Mary Renault

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First published in 1972, this is the second book in Mary Renault’s Alexander the Great trilogy, following Fire from Heaven, which I read last year. It was also the book chosen for me to read in the latest Classics Club Spin (the deadline was earlier this month, but I find that Mary Renault’s novels need a lot of concentration and shouldn’t be rushed, so I took more time to finish it).

Fire from Heaven covered Alexander’s childhood and early adult life, up to the death of his father, Philip II of Macedon, and his own accession to the throne; The Persian Boy takes us through the final seven years of his life and has a slightly different style and focus. Unlike the previous book, which was written in the third person, this one is narrated entirely by Bagoas, Alexander’s servant, friend and lover.

We first meet Bagoas as a young boy, the son of a Persian nobleman who is betrayed and killed by his enemies. Bagoas himself is captured, castrated and sold into slavery, eventually finding himself at the court of King Darius III. Having become a favourite of the king, his life is thrown into uncertainty again when Darius is defeated by the Macedonian army and Bagoas is presented to Darius’ conqueror, Alexander, as a gift. At first he is disgusted by what he sees as the barbaric ways of the Macedonians, but over time he becomes a trusted member of Alexander’s inner circle, with a close friendship and romantic relationship beginning to form between the two.

With the book being written from Bagoas’ perspective, the story has a more intimate feel than Fire from Heaven. As Bagoas is a courtier, not a soldier or a fighter, battles are seen from a distance; although he travels with Alexander and his men, Bagoas does not accompany them on the battlefield but waits in camp for them to return, sharing with us the outcome and some insights into the impact, both mental and physical, on the people involved in the battle. So although Alexander’s success as a great military leader is certainly not ignored, the focus here is more on Alexander as a human being. Through Bagoas’ eyes we see a more tender, vulnerable side of Alexander, a man who often feels lonely and isolated, so relies on Bagoas to provide love, warmth and friendship.

I do feel that because of the choice to tell this part of Alexander’s story from the perspective of someone who loved him, we get quite a one-sided view of him. It’s a very sympathetic, heroic portrayal and we don’t hear much of how his enemies viewed him or what his wife Roxane thought or felt – she is pushed completely to the sidelines of Bagoas’ account (understandably, as she tries to poison him, and he wants no more to do with her after that). Hephaistion, Alexander’s lifelong companion, also has a relatively small part in the novel as he and Bagoas mostly avoid each other, having an uneasy relationship as rivals for Alexander’s affection. Renault frequently compares Alexander and Hephaistion to Achilles and Patroclus, something they apparently publicly identified themselves with, but I felt that the emotional impact of Hephaistion’s death later in the novel was lost because of seeing so little of him, especially compared to the first book where he had a much bigger role.

One aspect of the book I found particularly interesting was seeing how both Alexander and Bagoas adapt to the differences between Greek and Persian culture. Alexander wishes to unite the Greek people with the Persian people he has conquered and as time goes by, Bagoas observes him wearing Persian dress and trying to introduce Persian customs such as prostration (which meets with strong opposition from his Macedonian men).

Although there’s obviously a limit to how much we can truly know about the world of the 4th century BC, Alexander’s life has been well documented and Renault discusses in her author’s note the sources she has used and decisions she has made. Bagoas himself only appears a few times in historical sources, but Renault is such a gifted writer she makes everything he says and does seem plausible. I’m looking forward to reading Funeral Games, the final part of the trilogy, which deals with Alexander’s death and its aftermath.

Book 10/20 of 20 Books of Summer

This is also book 6/50 from my third Classics Club list.

The Kill by Émile Zola

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Translated by Brian Nelson

This is the second book in Émile Zola’s Les Rougon-Macquart cycle, if reading in order of publication. A few years ago I read the first book, The Fortune of the Rougons, which lays the foundations for the rest of the series, but each novel is also designed to stand alone. The connection between them is that each book features characters who belong to rival branches of the same family, the Rougons and the Macquarts, all descended from Adelaïde Fouque, whom we met in the first novel. The Kill, or La Curée to give it its French title, was published in 1872 and is set during the Second French Empire (1852-1870).

The Kill follows Aristide Rougon, son of Pierre Rougon from the first book, as he leaves his home in Provence and settles in Paris, where he changes his name to Aristide Saccard. It’s a good time to arrive in Paris as the city is currently undergoing huge renovations with new boulevards, parks and landmarks being created under the supervision of Baron Haussmann. Ambitious and ruthless, Aristide starts buying up properties he has discovered are targeted for demolition then claiming compensation from the city at vastly inflated levels. He’s beginning to make a fortune through this corrupt scheme when his wife becomes terminally ill. Before she has even died, Aristide is already arranging his next marriage – to Renée, a girl from a rich family who will come with a large dowry.

The marriage is not a very happy one, with both husband and wife aware that it’s not much more than a business deal. Bored, Renée begins an affair with Maxime, Aristide’s son by his first wife. Maxime is several years younger and expected to marry the wealthy but consumptive Louise de Mareuil, but he is excited by the idea of a forbidden, incestuous relationship with his stepmother. In an interesting reversal of normal gender stereotypes, Zola portrays Maxime as delicate, feminine and beautiful while describing Renée as having masculine traits and being the stronger, more assertive of the two. Their affair forms one major thread of the novel; the other is concerned with Aristide’s business schemes and his attempts to get Renée to sign over the deeds to her family home.

The Kill, then, is a book that focuses on the lives of the rich and privileged. It’s a very descriptive book, as Zola brings to life the huge, opulent mansions, exquisite clothing, lavish banquets and luxurious carriages of the very wealthy. The title is a hunting term referring to the scraps of prey that are thrown to the hounds at the end of the hunt and Zola uses this as a metaphor for the greed of the businessmen who are fighting for money, power and influence and taking whatever they can from the rebuilding of the city. There wasn’t a single character I liked or had much sympathy for (although Aristide’s sister Sidonie was a great villain!) and I found all the descriptions of extravagance and waste overwhelming and distasteful, but I know that was the point of the novel so it certainly achieves its purpose. Apparently Zola himself was a poor journalist at the time of writing this book and had no personal experience of the sort of world he was describing, so everything had to be written purely from research, which makes it even more impressive.

I’m aware that there are several English translations of this book available, including an old one you can download free from Project Gutenberg, but I read a modern (2004) translation by Brian Nelson and do recommend it. I also found the introduction to my Oxford World’s Classics edition interesting as it discusses not just the story but also Baron Haussmann’s transformation of Paris. One of the projects that took place under Haussmann was the creation of the glass and iron structure that housed the Les Halles food market, which is the setting of the third book in the series, The Belly of Paris, and the next one I’m planning to read!

Book 8/20 of 20 Books of Summer

I’m also counting this towards Paris in July hosted by Emma of Words and Peace.

This is also book 5/50 from my third Classics Club list.

The Rose and the Yew Tree by Mary Westmacott

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This month’s theme for the Read Christie 2026 challenge is ‘Best-Kept Secret’ and we’re focusing on the six novels Christie wrote under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott. I have already read three of them – Giant’s Bread, Unfinished Portrait and A Daughter’s a Daughter – so I decided to read The Rose and the Yew Tree next as it’s also on my lists for both the Classics Club and the 20 Books of Summer challenge.

The Rose and the Yew Tree is narrated by Hugh Norreys, who breaks off his engagement to Jennifer after being badly injured in a car accident. Confined to a wheelchair, Hugh moves to St Loo in Cornwall to live with his brother and sister-in-law, Robert and Teresa. His condition has left him feeling bitter and worthless and he secretly keeps a bottle of pills to hand in case he decides to end his life. However, he finds several things in St Loo to distract him from thoughts of suicide…

First of all, Hugh is introduced to Lady St Loo, widow of the seventh baron, along with her sister, sister-in-law and granddaughter Isabella. Hugh has never met anyone quite like the beautiful, strange Isabella; she has a calmness and poise he’s never encountered before and several characters in the book refer to her as a fairytale princess. But Hugh is not the only man drawn to Isabella; she also catches the eye of John Gabriel, the Tory party candidate for St Loo in the upcoming elections.

Gabriel is the son of a plumber and has done his best to work his way up the social ladder, but still feels a sense of inferiority around people of a higher class, although this is masked by his confident, charismatic exterior. He’s not a natural Tory – in fact, he doesn’t have any strong political views one way or the other – but he wants a career in politics and thinks he’ll have more chance of standing out than he would in the Labour party. Gabriel’s campaign plays a large part in the novel, as does his complex relationship with Isabella, whom he both desires and resents (the resentment because she belongs to the aristocracy he despises so much).

First published in 1948, the novel takes its title from the poem, Little Gidding by TS Eliot: “The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree Are of equal duration.” I won’t explain the significance here, but you’ll understand it once you’ve read the book. Compared to the other Westmacott novels I’ve read, I found this one particularly complex – not necessarily the plot, which is quite straightforward, but in terms of the psychology and the underlying messages. It’s also much more than a simple romance (the Westmacotts are often described as romances, but I think that’s misleading).

I enjoyed the political element of the novel, set during the build to the 1945 General Election, which would result in a landslide Labour win over Winston Churchill’s Conservatives. What’s striking is how many of the characters get caught up in the election campaign without actually having any particular political allegiances – Hugh admits to not really understanding politics, Teresa claims the parties are all the same, Gabriel is just interested in the power and social standing a political career will give him, and Isabella only cares because it’s important to Gabriel. We also see how a candidate’s personal actions can affect their reputation with the public, for better or worse (such as rescuing a child or becoming involved with a married woman). Christie doesn’t often write about politics on a smaller scale like this – although several of her books deal with international espionage and intrigue – so I found it fascinating.

Of the four Westmacotts I’ve now read, I think this one and A Daughter’s a Daughter are the best, but I still have The Burden and Absent in the Spring to come!

Book 7/20 of 20 Books of Summer

This is also book 4/50 from my third Classics Club list.

Gigi and The Cat by Colette – #ReadingtheMeow2026

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Translated by Roger Senhouse (Gigi) and Antonia White (The Cat).

I wasn’t sure what to read for this year’s Reading the Meow (a yearly cat-themed reading event hosted by Mallika), but then I came across this pair of stories by the French author Colette – Gigi, first published in 1933, and The Cat, which first appeared in 1944 as La Chatte. I’ve never read anything by Colette and have been intending to for a long time, so I thought this would be a good opportunity. Only the second story fits the Reading the Meow theme, but as this Vintage Classics edition includes both, I’m reviewing Gigi here as well.

I’ll start with The Cat, which is novella length and follows a young newly married couple, Alain and Camille. Alain, an only child, has grown up at the centre of his mother’s world and although he finds his new wife attractive, he doesn’t feel ready to leave behind the comforts of his family home to embark on a new life with her. This is frustrating for Camille, particularly after they move temporarily into a friend’s apartment and she discovers that Alain keeps sneaking back home to visit his mother and his beloved Russian Blue cat, Saha. Alain misses Saha so much that eventually she comes to live with them and from this point it becomes obvious that there’s only room for one female in Alain’s heart – and it’s not Camille! As the days go by, Camille grows more and more jealous of her husband’s cat until she finally decides that she needs to take action…

I found this a dark, unsettling story and although it’s also quite a simple one on the surface, there’s a lot of psychological depth. Camille and Alain are complete opposites in terms of personalities – Alain is quiet, sensitive and introverted, while Camille is lively and outgoing – and they begin to irritate each other as soon as they’re married. They have very different outlooks on life, with Camille being ambitious and forward-thinking and Alain struggling to move on and leave his childhood behind. Saha has been his companion for many years and is his last connection to the safety and security of his past, so Camille finds herself competing not just against the cat, but also everything the cat represents. I suspect she and Alain would have discovered their incompatibility anyway, but Saha’s presence makes it happen much more quickly!

Gigi is about half the length of The Cat and is a much lighter story. The title character, Gilberte (known as Gigi), is fifteen years old, that awkward age where you’re not quite an adult and not quite a child. Her mother is preoccupied with her career as a singer in a Parisian music hall and has left most of Gigi’s upbringing to her grandmother and Aunt Alicia, who are grooming her for life as a courtesan, like themselves. With Gigi’s mother, who works for a living, as a warning of what happens if a woman fails to find a wealthy man to support her, Gigi is being educated in all the skills her grandmother and aunt consider necessary for her future – dancing, table manners, rolling cigars and knowing the value of expensive jewels. The only man currently in Gigi’s life on whom she could try out these skills is family friend Gaston Lachaille. Grandmother and Alicia begin making plans for Gigi to become Gaston’s mistress, but it seems Gigi herself has other ideas!

Gigi is fun to read (if you ignore the morals of two older women pushing a fifteen-year-old girl into a relationship with a thirty-three-year-old man) and is a story about choosing your own way in life and doing what you want to do rather than what other people think you should do. It’s certainly a more uplifting story than The Cat, although I personally found The Cat more interesting and a perfect choice for Reading the Meow.

Have you read either of these stories? What else should I read by Colette?

~

Book 1/20 of 20 Books of Summer

Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (re-read)

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I hadn’t been planning a re-read of this book, but when FictionFan announced a review-along I couldn’t resist joining in. I’m not sure exactly when I first read it, but it must have been around twenty years ago when I went through a phase of reading Victorian sensation novels (if you’re not familiar with the term, the sensation novel was a popular genre of 19th century fiction featuring shocking crimes in ordinary domestic settings). This is one that I particularly enjoyed so I was happy to read it again and am looking forward to reading the other review-along participants’ reviews to see what everyone else thought!

Lady Audley’s Secret was published in 1862 and was Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s most successful novel, although she wrote more than eighty others, as well as some short stories. The first thing I discovered when I started to re-read it is that I could barely remember anything at all about it, so it was almost like experiencing it for the first time again.

The novel opens with the marriage of Sir Michael Audley and Lucy Graham. Lucy is young and beautiful and Sir Michael, a middle-aged widower, is enchanted by his new wife. Little is known about her past before she arrived in the village as governess to the local doctor’s children, but Sir Michael doesn’t care – Lucy’s happiness is all that matters to him. Meanwhile, his nephew, Robert Audley, has just been reacquainted with his old friend George Talboys, who has been in Australia for three years. George, who had found himself struggling financially, had left his wife, Helen, in England while he went off to improve his fortunes. Now that he’s returned, he’s looking forward to seeing her again and is heartbroken when he discovers that she has died during his absence.

Robert does his best to comfort his friend and brings him to Audley Court to meet Sir Michael, hoping it will help to take his mind off things. However, when George disappears without explanation, Robert begins to grow suspicious of his uncle’s new wife. Convinced that George has been murdered and that the new Lady Audley is implicated, Robert begins to investigate her past and is shocked by what he discovers.

I won’t discuss the plot in any more detail as I don’t want to give too much away, but all the typical elements of a sensation novel are here: murder, arson, family secrets, stolen letters, faked telegrams, blackmail, hidden identities, thunderstorms and all sort of lies and deception! The book also touches on some more serious topics, such as the subject of madness, how it was viewed in the 19th century and how it was often used as a convenient excuse to have women locked away in order to avoid embarrassment or scandal. It’s not really difficult to guess some of the secrets but, remembering that this was one of the first and most influential books of its type, I expect readers at the time would have found it more shocking and unpredictable. It would also have had some extra relevance for Victorian readers, as Braddon took inspiration from the high profile Constance Kent murder case of 1860, which also inspired parts of Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone and, much later, The Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale.

One thing I had forgotten from my previous read was how little of the story is actually written from Lady Audley’s perspective. Instead, we spend most of the novel in Robert Audley’s company as he tries to get to the bottom of his friend’s disappearance. Although ‘detective fiction’ didn’t really exist in 1861 in the way we know it today, Robert, who is a lawyer, takes on the role of an amateur detective, tracing clues, gathering evidence and speaking to witnesses. It’s fascinating to watch him gradually begin to unravel the truth, although I didn’t always agree with what he did with the information he uncovered! Because most of what we see and learn of Lady Audley is from Robert’s point of view, she’s very much the villain of the book, but I think it’s clear that Braddon wants us to at least have some sympathy for her circumstances, if not her actions. I was a bit disappointed that George’s sister, Clara Talboys, doesn’t play a bigger part in the story, though – when she’s first introduced, it seems she’s going to join Robert in his investigations, but she barely appears again until the end.

I enjoyed my re-read, then; it’s a very readable book and although it’s quite a long one and the pace slows down at times, I still flew through the pages faster than you would expect. I’ve also read two other books by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, both of which I’ve reviewed on my blog: Aurora Floyd and The Doctor’s Wife. The first has quite a similar feel to Lady Audley’s Secret, although I didn’t find it as exciting, but the latter is very different. I’ll definitely try to explore more of Braddon’s books soon, but I would also like to revisit East Lynne by Ellen Wood and some of my favourite Wilkie Collins sensation novels.

Here are the reviews of the other review-along participants. Let me know if I’ve missed yours!

FictionFan’s Book Reviews

Rose Reads Novels

Novel Deelights

Kelly’s Thoughts and Ramblings

What? Me Read?

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.

The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch

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I’ve read very little of Iris Murdoch’s work – her Booker Prize winner The Sea, The Sea many years ago, which I can barely remember but know I struggled with, and a lesser known novel, A Word Child, which I really enjoyed. When picking another book by Murdoch for my new Classics Club list, then, I had plenty to choose from and decided on The Black Prince almost at random. I started to read it in March for Reading Ireland Month (although the book is set in England, Murdoch is an Irish author) but I had too many other books needing to be read at that time, so I put it aside and came back to it last week.

Published in 1973, The Black Prince is presented as a manuscript written by Bradley Pearson who has recently retired from his job as Inspector of Taxes to concentrate on his writing. Bradley’s book – an account of some life-changing events which occurred when he was fifty-eight years old – is framed by a foreword from his editor, P. Loxias, and a series of postscripts written by the other characters in the story. Although it’s easy to become absorbed in Bradley’s narrative and forget that it’s a book-within-a-book, the different perspectives we see at the end are a reminder that Bradley isn’t necessarily the most reliable of narrators and may not have been entirely honest with us. Of course, there’s no guarantee that the other characters are telling the truth either, so be prepared for a novel that’s ambiguous, thought-provoking and doesn’t tie everything up neatly at the end.

Bradley’s story begins as he decides to leave London for the summer and rent a cottage by the sea where he can work on his book in peace. Before he manages to depart, however, he is repeatedly delayed by a sequence of frustrating and unwelcome incidents. First, there’s an urgent telephone call from his friend and rival, Arnold Baffin, a much more successful and popular author than Bradley himself. Arnold is convinced he has killed his wife, Rachel, so Bradley rushes to their house only to find that it’s a false alarm and Rachel is not dead after all. Bradley’s involvement in the Baffins’ domestic disputes, though, leads to Rachel believing she’s in love with him. Then, Bradley’s sister, Priscilla, arrives at his flat tearful and distraught; her marriage has broken up and she’s depressed and homeless. And a third woman has also reappeared in Bradley’s life – his ex-wife, Christian, who has just returned from America along with her annoying brother, Francis.

The first half of the novel deals with Bradley’s relationships with these people as he tries to disentangle himself from the various situations he’s become caught up in and I have to admit, at this point I was finding the book a bit tedious and didn’t think I was going to enjoy it. That changed halfway through when Bradley falls in love with the Baffins’ twenty-year-old daughter, Julian, who has been pleading with him to tutor her in classic literature, particularly Shakespeare. Needless to say, Arnold and Rachel are not happy when they find out – there’s a thirty-eight year age difference – but the ensuing drama makes the second half of the novel much more compelling than the first.

Before I started reading, I wasn’t sure of the relevance of the title. In history, the Black Prince refers to Edward of Woodstock, the eldest son of Edward III, but in the context of Murdoch’s novel, the reference is actually to Hamlet. The play is alluded to many times during the novel and specifically discussed by Bradley and Julian (it’s while Julian is describing how she once dressed in black to play Hamlet that Bradley discovers he’s in love with her). I’m sure it’s no coincidence that Bradley Pearson himself shares initials with the Black Prince. Other names are also significant, including P. Loxias, the name of the fictional editor – Loxias is another name for Apollo, the Greek god of truth and prophecy, very appropriate in a book that makes us question what is true and what isn’t. And I spotted other examples of symbolism throughout the novel, such as the bronze water buffalo lady, an ornament which is passed from one character to another and is broken and mended at various points in the story.

This is a fascinating novel, then, and although I found it slow to start, I had been drawn in by the middle of the book and was glad I’d persevered. I’ve also been left with a lot to think about; as I said, it’s all very ambiguous and there are lots of unanswered questions at the end. If you’ve read it, let me know what you thought.

This is book 3/50 from my third Classics Club list.