The Pillow Book of the Flower Samurai by Barbara Lazar

Kozaisho is the Fifth Daughter of a poor farming family in 12thC Japan. Often reduced to starvation level, Kozaisho is, nevertheless, a loved child so when her father sells her to a local Lord when she is just 9 years old, she is shocked and desperate. Her owner has her taught the skills of a refined servant so that she can be an adornment to her master's house. She is taught how to dance, handle fans, dress well and entertain guests. She is also subjected to the harsh judgement of the overseer. When she offend her master yet again, he sells her on to the owner of a Village of Outcasts and she is trained to be a Woman-for-Play, or prostitute. 

She learns her trade well and uses it to her own advantage until she is visited by a customer who is a member of the Court of the Taira Clan, which is struggling against rivals for supremacy in the country's leadership. She becomes the mistress, and then powerful wife, of the Lord Michimori.

Throughout her journey, Kozaisho learns about the loyalties of friendship, different kinds of love and how even women can become fighting Samurai (the soldier class). She witnesses, at first hand, an epic struggle for power and how ambition can be thwarted by opposing might.  

I really enjoyed this story and learned much about this period in Japan's history. I did feel, however, that Kozaisho's story could have been told in tighter fashion without losing any of the detail or poetry. 538 pages is just a tad too long.

The Pillow Book of the Flower Samurai is published by Headline, ISBN 978-0-7553-8928-5

Calling Me Home by Julie Kibler

Did you read 'The Help' by Katherine Stockett? If you did, and liked it, you'll love this.

Dorrie Curtis is a single mother and owner of a single chair hairdressing salon in Arlington, Texas. One of her customers in Isabelle McAllister, an elderly lady who had been born into a privileged family in the whites only town of Shalerville, Kentucky in the 1920s. Dorrie and Isabelle become friends and, when Isabelle is called to a funeral in Ohio, she asks Dorrie to drive her there, a car journey of 2 days.

On the journey, Isabelle tells Dorrie the story of her life; of how, as a naive teenage, she fell in love with Robert, the son of her family's black cook. The love affair reverberates down the years and, through the experiences of of Isabelle and Robert, we see the prejudices, hatred and violence that fuelled the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

What we don't learn, until the heartbreaking final chapter, is the identity of the person Isabelle is travelling to see buried. The reader is desperate for Isabelle to be spared more pain, but Julie Kibler handles this part of the story with delicacy and compassion.

A must read.

Calling me Home is published by panmacmillan, ISBN 978-1-4472-1256-0

The Lower River by Paul Theroux

Paul Theroux is a travel writer as well as a writer of fiction, and knows his locations from personal experience, not just research. In this novel his main character, Andrew Hock, is the owner of a gents outfitters in the town of Medford, Massachusetts. He's a solitary man locked in a loveless marriage, with a daughter who appears to think of him only in terms of what he should give her.

Shopping patterns are changing and Andrew recognises that his business is gradually dying. He dreams of retiring and returning to the place where he was once happy - they Lower River in Malawi, Africa - when he spent some time in the Peace Corps. He's built up his memories into a kind of talisman, and sees them as not just a beautiful past experience but a dream of a happy future.

But memories can deceive. When Andrew arrives at the Lower River he finds that everything has changed and even his memories aren't what he believed they were. What follows is a story of deception, failure and even violence until Andrew is reduced to the status of prisoner and desperate man.

I found myself constantly on edge whilst reading this novel, eager for Andrew to wrest success from failure and find a way to repair the damage of which he became a victim. The end of the story disappointed me somewhat, in that it was so sudden, and over so quickly, that it was a total contrast with the slow build up of tension throughout the story. I'd have liked to see a little bit more of Andrew's tale and what happened in the following days. Still, perhaps that's just me wanting to tidy up the loose ends!

The Lower River is published by Penguin, ISBN 978-0-241-95774-5