Category: Reviews

Troubled Waters by Ichiyō Higuchi – #WITMonth

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Translated by Bryan Karetnyk

August is Women in Translation Month and I’ve chosen to start with a collection of short stories by an author often described as Japan’s first professional woman writer of the modern era. Born Higuchi Natsuko in 1872, she was the daughter of a peasant who had just managed to achieve samurai status a year before the Meiji Restoration period began, leading to the samurai caste being abolished. After her father’s death, Higuchi and her mother and sister were left struggling financially and Higuchi decided to support her family through her writing. Using the pseudonym Higuchi Ichiyō (in Japanese, the first name comes last), she had her first story published in a magazine in 1892 and went on to write more stories, poems, essays and a diary before dying from tuberculosis at the age of just twenty-four.

This new collection from Pushkin Press contains five of her stories published between 1893 and 1895. The first, A Snowy Day (Yuki no hi), is a beautifully written story in which our narrator looks back on her school days, when she fell in love with an unsuitable man, and reflects on the disillusionment she now feels due to decisions made during that time. Although it’s the shortest story in the book, it has a powerful emotional impact and was the perfect introduction to Higuchi’s work. The second story New Year’s Eve (Ōtsugomori) was even better – probably my favourite of the five. It follows O-Mine, a young woman working as a maid in a rich household, who asks her employer for an advance on her salary so she can help her uncle who is ill and struggling financially. Her employer agrees then cruelly pretends to forget, leaving O-Mine contemplating stealing. I particularly loved the ending which is ambiguous but also very satisfying.

Growing Pains (Takekurabe) is a novella-length story and another I enjoyed. It tells the story of a group of young people living in Yoshiwara, Tokyo’s red light district, and revolves around a feud between two rival gangs, one led by Chōkichi, the son of a construction foreman, and the other by Shōtarō, a pawnbroker’s son. We also meet the shy, serious Nobu, whose father is the local priest, and fourteen-year-old Midori, a bright, lively girl who is being groomed to become a courtesan like her older sister. As this group of children grow older they begin to discover that their hopes and dreams for the future are unlikely to come true as their paths have already been laid out for them by their parents and society. I loved all the insights we get into Japanese culture and the summer and winter festivals, and because this is the longest story in the collection, there’s more time for character development as well.

Karetnyk states in his introduction at the beginning of the book that he has tried to preserve Ichiyō’s classical Japanese writing style, which means there are no quotation marks around dialogue, with sentences and paragraphs often running together into one long section of prose. I found the first three stories easy enough to follow, but for some reason the style was more of a problem for me with the fourth, Troubled Waters (Nigorie), and I sometimes struggled to tell where one person had finished speaking and another had started. For that reason, this story wasn’t one of my favourites, but it’s still a striking depiction of the fate of courtesans, focusing on O-Riki and one of her clients, who has become infatuated with her.

The final story is This Mortal Coil (Utsusemi) and it’s another very short one. It explores a young woman’s overwhelming feelings of guilt that cause her to descend into mental and physical illness. I found it the weakest of the five stories in the book, but it was still interesting and apparently this is the first time this particular story has been translated into English. I would definitely recommend this collection as a whole for what it tells us about Meiji-era Japan and the lives of women during that period. For me personally, most of the Japanese literature I’ve read has been crime, so it was good to have the opportunity to try something different!

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

Book 15/20 of 20 Books of Summer

The Boleyn Secret by Alison Weir

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Alison Weir has written so many novels about the Tudors it’s surprising that she’s still able to find different angles and perspectives to write from. In The Boleyn Secret, she tells the story of Kate Carey, daughter of Anne Boleyn’s sister Mary and, some believe, Henry VIII himself. There have been other books about Kate, but I haven’t read any (apart from where she’s mentioned as a minor character), so reading a whole book from her point of view was something new for me.

Katherine Carey (referred to as Kate throughout the book, so I will do the same) was born in 1524 to Mary Boleyn and her husband, William Carey, However, as Mary was having an affair with Henry VIII around this time, many historians have suggested that he was the true father, although this has never been confirmed and Henry never acknowledged Kate as his daughter. For the purposes of this novel, Weir assumes that the rumours were true and that Kate was aware that Henry was her father. She uses this idea to explore how this knowledge may have impacted on Kate’s life, how she discovered it and whether she wanted it to be known.

The book begins with the twelve-year-old Kate witnessing the execution of her aunt, Anne Boleyn (another story that has never been confirmed). We are then taken through the whole of Kate’s life, encompassing her close relationship with her cousin and half-sister Elizabeth (the future queen), her marriage to Sir Francis Knollys, her view on key historical events such as Henry VIII’s next four marriages, the reigns of Edward VI and Queen Mary, religious change and turmoil, and finally the long reign of Queen Elizabeth and the downfall of Mary, Queen of Scots.

Having read all of Weir’s Six Tudor Queens series and several of her other Tudor novels, a lot of this felt repetitive as I was just seeing the same events from yet another perspective. However, there was still plenty of new material, mainly surrounding Kate’s family life with Francis and their sixteen (yes, sixteen!) children. Kate and Francis appear to have had a genuinely happy marriage, a nice change from all the unhappy marriages that often fill the pages of historical novels! I particularly enjoyed the part of the book where they, as Calvinists, go into exile in Europe during the reign of Mary I and her Protestant burnings. Weir admits in her author’s note, though, that this episode of their lives is poorly documented so she had to use her imagination here.

Elizabeth is a huge presence in Kate’s life; they are very close from childhood and Kate loves her as a sister, although she’s never quite sure whether Elizabeth knows the truth about their relationship and is afraid to bring the subject up herself. Elizabeth is presented as a complex person of many contradictions: she can be exceptionally generous and thoughtful, but also incredibly selfish; she often seems cold-hearted and appears to be jealous and resentful of Kate’s loving marriage to Francis, but she also has a vulnerable side and relies on Kate for friendship and support. It’s frustrating to see how Elizabeth repeatedly finds ways to keep Kate and Francis apart, purely because she doesn’t want to share Kate with anyone else; I don’t think I could have kept forgiving her the way Kate did – but of course, in the turbulent Tudor period it was important to stay on the right side of your king or queen!

Overall, I enjoyed this book but I thought it felt unnecessarily long, a common criticism I have of Alison Weir’s novels. I understand that she wants to include as much information as possible to give a full picture of the subject she’s writing about, but this is fiction, not non-fiction, and I’m sure there must have been things that could be left out or condensed to make the story more fun to read. Still, it was interesting to have the opportunity to learn more about Kate Carey and her family. Alison Weir’s next novel will be The Pretender’s Wife, about Lady Catherine Gordon and Perkin Warbeck, so that’s something to look forward to.

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

Book 14/20 of 20 Books of Summer

No Fair Maidens by Kim Willis

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I’ve read a lot of Greek mythology but very little British mythology, so when I came across No Fair Maidens on NetGalley it seemed like a good opportunity to rectify that. However, I don’t think I read the description of the book properly as it wasn’t quite the exploration of British goddesses that I’d expected but more of a memoir of the author’s own personal journey. Looking at other reviews, it seems a lot of people made the same mistake, but I think as long as you know what kind of book it is before you start, there’s still a lot to enjoy here.

Kim Willis begins by telling us about a time in her life when she began to struggle with mental health issues. She had just been told (wrongly) that she would never be able to have children and was left feeling depressed and empty. It was then that she took a trip to the mouth of the River Severn and drew inspiration from the story of the goddess Sabrina (or Hafren in Welsh), whose name over the centuries became Severn. Sabrina and her two sisters fell to earth in the form of single raindrops and then each chose her own route to the sea, growing and swelling as they went. Willis found it motivating to think of these three women charting a path for themselves with no maps to show the way – and this led her to investigate the stories of other mythical British women.

I had heard of some of the women featured in the book; Morgan le Fay, who appears in the Arthurian legends usually as King Arthur’s half-sister, is probably the most famous, but I was also already familiar with Melusine, the water spirit who turns into a snake for several days each month. The others I knew little to nothing about – Coventina, Arianrhod, Scáthach and my two favourites, Cerridwen and Gwendoline. I won’t say too much about any of the individual women as you may prefer to discover their stories for yourself, but all of them are fascinating and, interestingly, they are all associated with water in some way.

However, relatively little time is spent on the actual myths; most of them are told in just a few pages embedded into each chapter. Much more attention is given to the author’s own reactions to learning about the myths, how she found them inspiring and healing and how they gave her the strength to move forward. Although I appreciate her courage in being so open and honest with the reader about her life and her mental health, I didn’t personally find any of this particularly interesting and struggled to identify with her personality and way of life. I’m sure other readers will like this aspect of the book and find it helpful; it just depends on what you’re looking for, I think.

I did enjoy reading about the author’s travels around England, Scotland and Wales to get to the source of each of the stories and stand on the land where our eight mythological women may once have stood. I’ve been left wanting to know more about these myths – and maybe I’ll actually get round to reading The Mabinogion one of these days!

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

Book 13/20 of 20 Books of Summer

The Forever Summer by Lulu Taylor

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The first thing to say about this book is that it’s definitely not the light summer read you would probably expect from the cover and title. It’s actually a tale of lies, betrayal and treason set during the rise of the Nazis in 1930s Germany. It’s the first Lulu Taylor book I’ve read and I really enjoyed it.

The novel opens with a brief section set in the modern day, introducing us to Lottie Conway, a young woman who has grown up under the shadow of a family scandal – one linked with the actions of two women at the start of the Second World War. The Conway name has become tarnished by association, although the details have always been vague. When a new blockbuster film is made about the incident, Lottie decides it’s time to speak to the one person who knows exactly what happened: her grandmother, Dinah.

Dinah’s story begins in 1931 when her wealthy friend, Marina, invites her to a dinner party. Here she meets Marina’s cousin, William Conway, whom she hasn’t seen since they were children and they quickly fall in love and decide to marry. The marriage isn’t welcomed by everyone – William’s mother refuses to even speak to Dinah, which she assumes is due to her poor background – but the two are blissfully happy and head to Germany on their honeymoon. They’re planning to visit Rosemary, another of William’s cousins, at her school in Munich, but first William wants to visit the site of the Battle of Blenheim. However, they are not the only British tourists in the area that day…Winston Churchill is also visiting the battlefield, having some time on his hands after resigning from the Conservative shadow cabinet.

The Conways’ lives are changed forever by that chance meeting with Churchill, who believes that William, who works for the Foreign Office, can be of use to him in providing information on activity in Germany and the British government’s response to it. But they also make another new acquaintance in Munich who will have an equally big influence on their future fates: Ernst Hanfstaengl, known as Putzi, a close friend of Adolf Hitler, leader of the increasingly powerful Nazi Party.

The Forever Summer is quite a long book but was a faster read than I expected as I was so gripped by it. I loved the way the author obscures the true intentions of the characters from us, leaving us questioning who can and cannot be trusted. A good example of this is Victoria Gauntlett, one of the women who brought shame on the Conway family; it’s never quite clear whether Victoria is spying for Britain, spying for Germany, a double agent or just an innocent young woman. We only see her through Dinah’s eyes and Dinah is hardly an unbiased observer, as she is jealous of Victoria’s close friendship with William. By the time we reach the end of the book, then, there are lots of secrets to be revealed and some surprising twists to look out for along the way.

What I found most interesting, though, was the portrayal of the mood in Munich during the build to the war. When Dinah first visits for her honeymoon in 1932, she can sense a tension in the air even then; there are already men on the streets wearing brown uniforms with the swastika insignia and disturbing rumours of their plans for Jews. When she returns just three years later, the atmosphere has become much more oppressive; there’s a stronger military presence and Nazi flags line the boulevards and hang from shops and houses. I was also fascinated by the depiction of Putzi Hanfstaengl, a real person although I don’t think I’ve come across him in fiction before. Most poignantly of all, the book explores the question of whether another war was inevitable or if anything could have been done differently during that period that may have prevented it.

I’ll have to investigate some of Lulu Taylor’s other books; I had previously dismissed them as probably not being for me, but I’m interested in trying more of them now.

Thanks to Pan Macmillan for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Book 12/20 of 20 Books of Summer

This Immortal Heart by Jennifer Saint

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This is the latest of Jennifer Saint’s novels telling the stories of female figures from Greek mythology. Previously she’s written about Ariadne, Elektra, Atalanta and Hera; now it’s the turn of Aphrodite, the goddess of love.

Beginning with the moment she’s born, the daughter of Uranus stepping fully formed from the sea, the novel takes us through many of the key events and myths associated with Aphrodite. Like the previous book, Hera, it has an episodic feel, but it’s all tied together by the overarching story of Aphrodite’s romance with Ares, the god of war. With love and war being opposites, Aphrodite and Ares seem an unlikely pairing, but maybe that’s why they’re attracted to each other – they represent the two sides of human nature, with passion the driving force behind both. Their relationship causes quite a stir on Mount Olympus, particularly when Aphrodite is forced into marriage with Ares’ brother Hephaestus, the god of fire and blacksmiths.

The triangle of Aphrodite, Ares and Hephaestus is the main focus of the novel, but we also see how Aphrodite becomes involved with various other characters from Greek myth: she brings to life Galatea, the statue of a woman created by Pygmalion; tries unsuccessfully to protect Pandora from the schemes of Zeus; and falls in love with the beautiful Adonis. I loved these glimpses we get into the world of the mortals and wished we could have explored some of these myths in more depth.

The whole book is narrated by Aphrodite herself and although I did like her, I felt that she was a bit too passive at times. It seemed that she spent a lot of time reacting to the actions of others rather than making things happen and I didn’t really get a sense of her being a strong, powerful goddess like the others on Mount Olympus. As for Ares, he’s not a popular god, being proud, angry and devoted to war and destruction, but a more tender side does begin to emerge later in the book. However, there’s no tender side to his companion Eris, the goddess of strife and discord, whom I found a fascinating but chilling character with her obvious delight in death, misery and suffering.

The parts of the book I found most interesting were those involving Hephaestus, a much more sympathetic character than Ares, being concerned with creating rather than destroying, and treated badly by Zeus. His marriage with Aphrodite comes about when he takes his revenge by binding Hera to a magical golden chair, leading Zeus to promise that the first god to free her will be given Aphrodite as a wife. There’s naturally some overlap here with Hera’s story in the previous novel but, interestingly, things don’t play out in exactly the same way. As Jennifer Saint explains in her author’s note, there’s more than one version of each myth so when writing her novels she chooses the one that feels most appropriate for the story she’s trying to tell – as well as keeping things fresh for the reader.

Although this isn’t my favourite Jennifer Saint novel, it was nice to have the opportunity to learn a bit more about Aphrodite as I’d never read a book specifically about her before. I’ll be interested to see which woman from Greek mythology she writes about next.

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

Book 11/20 of 20 Books of Summer

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 Alchemist’s Secret by Clare Marchant

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The Alchemist’s Secret is the story of two women separated by four centuries but linked through one house – Woodham Hall in Suffolk. In 1672, Jeanne is living at the Hall with her older sister, Marie, and young niece, Hélène. Jeanne is still unmarried at the age of twenty-four and looks set to remain a spinster, but she doesn’t really care. She’s happy devoting her time to painting and practising her alchemy skills, and there’s no money for a dowry anyway. Marie, on the other hand, is very unhappily married; her husband, Sir Robert Woodham, is having an affair with a widowed neighbour who has given him the sons Marie has been unable to provide. Eventually, Sir Robert decides to move his mistress into the Hall and tells Marie and Jeanne he is sending them to a convent in France where they will stay for the rest of their lives.

Back in their home country – the two women had left France ten years earlier, when Marie married Sir Robert – they are determined to find a way to escape from their captivity and get back to England and Hélène. Their adventures take them to the court of the Sun King where they make some new acquaintances whom they hope can help them take revenge against Sir Robert and resume their rightful places at Woodham Hall.

Meanwhile, in 2026, we meet the current residents of Woodham Hall – Simon and his daughter, Paige, who has just returned home after the break-up of her marriage. Simon has been hiring the house out as a wedding venue but is starting to struggle financially and is in need of new ideas. Paige begins to research the history of the Hall and the Woodham family and comes across an intriguing painting which seems to depict a poisoning which took place in the house centuries earlier. But who was the artist – and, more importantly, who were the victims and why were they killed?

I liked The Alchemist’s Secret, although it’s yet another example of a book with dual timelines where most of the drama unfolds in one of them, leaving the other feeling a bit superfluous. The 17th century storyline dominates this book and I found it by far the most interesting. The plot was slightly far-fetched at times and there were moments when attitudes or actions didn’t quite ring true to the period, but otherwise I was much more absorbed in Jeanne and Marie’s story than I was in Paige’s. I loved the parts of the book set in Paris and at the Palace of Versailles (which is still under construction in 1672 – no Hall of Mirrors yet) and I thought this made a good contrast to the English country house that forms the setting for the majority of the novel.

There’s not a lot of mystery involved, as it’s obvious that the events depicted in the painting are connected to the historical storyline, but I enjoyed seeing how the characters get to that point and how things play out afterwards. I’m not sure if the title is really representative of the novel, though; alchemy is barely mentioned, although it doesn’t matter too much as the story is interesting enough even without it! This is the first book I’ve read by Clare Marchant but I’m planning to read her new one, The Curse of the Saltmarsh Girl, and am tempted to try some of her others as they all sound intriguing.

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