Historical Fiction Books > Arthur Golden Historical Fiction Books

Advantages: hard to put down, easy to read
Disadvantages: hard to put down!

...have heard of the book, Memoirs of a Geisha, just as I have. I've never really had much of an interest in the book, probably because my usual novel of choice would be crime fiction and also due to my lack of understanding of the Geisha and Japanese culture. However, I found a slightly tatty copy of this book in a local book sale for 25p and decided to broaden my horizons! The story begins in 1929 during the great depression. Yoroido, a small peasant ...
...specialising in Japanese art. Memoirs of a Geisha was first published in 1997, the paperback copy I have is published by Vintage in 1998 and has 434 pages. The cover is grey showing the brightly painted red lips of a geisha. The RRP is £6.99 but obviously, given its age, I recommend searching for a very cheap second hand copy! It was also made into a film in 2005, if anyone has seen it please let me know if it's worth watching! (The criteria is ... Read review

Advantages: Great Read
Disadvantages: None

...in reading books set in the past, just so I can get a bit of an insight into how my ancestors may have lived. OK so at the moment I haven't found any royalty in my tree but I have found out that my Great x 3 Grandfather worked as a Carpenter in the Tower of London for Queen Victoria and traced my tree back to around 1580 when Queen Elizabeth I would have been on the throne. Although being an East Ender now living in Derbyshire quite a few of my ancestors ...
...ancestors could well have seen the Royalty of their day, out and about riding through the streets of London to get to other places. So some of the obvious books to read would be Charles Dickens, for an insight into the Victorian era and Philippa Gregory for an insight into the Tudor period. I read both Charles Dickens' Oliver and Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl whilst on holiday earlier in the year and recently have finished Philippa Gregory's ... Read review

Advantages: Easy read
Disadvantages: none

...and i had to read Regeneration as part of my A2 english literature course. War literature is something i have never read or ever really been interested in but Pat Barker's book blew me away. The mixture of fact and fiction in the book works perfectly. Barker uses real people and created a realistic story around them and has created characters to help bring out other sides to them. Prior is my favorite character in the book as we see as one of the ...
...interview that he was 'designed to irritate Rivers' and that is exactly what he does because he is a cocky, working class officer who almost flirts with Rivers to show off his bi-sexuality. There are many important themes explored in the book, one of which is women in the war. It isnt a main plot in the book but Sarah Lumb and her munitionette friends opened my eyes to see how war was for women as it isnt something one often connects with the war ... Read review

Advantages: A fantastic read
Disadvantages: Trying to find another book that measures up to this one

...book having been intrigued by the hype surrounding it. What I expected was that it would sit on my shelf, along with the countless other unread books. What I found instead, was that after reading just the first opening pages, I was hooked! Khaled Hosseini's beautiful and evocative language draws the reader into Amir's Afghanistan, and teaches the politics and turbulent past of the country without the reader even realising it. It is a fantastic book ... Read review

Advantages: occasionally moving; well written
Disadvantages: sad; heavy-going

This is a wide ranging novel, whose overall theme would seem to be that there is no end to what men can endure. Throughout the novel, pain and fear are the dominant feelings; mud and blood are the prominent visuals. Although this is typically considered a great novel, I am not convinced that I enjoyed reading this novel, because I, personally, prefer a different style of writing. Stephen Wraysford is a young man visiting Amiens, France in 1910 at ...
...the wife of his host, a young woman trapped in a loveless, passionless marriage, and the first part of the novel is concerned with their passionate journey together. The relationship develops so swiftly as to be almost unbelievable and none of the characters comes across as particularly likeable, despite the sad back stories the lovers are given by Faulkes. Soon the action moves to the trenches in France where Jack Firebrace, a miner, is listening ... Read review