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Book review - The Courtesan and the Samurai by Lesley Downer
Exotic locations, lives torn apart by adversity...and heart-stopping romance.
Lesley Downer’s sumptuous novels are the stuff of dreams for girls who just want to curl up with a good book and escape!
Her much-acclaimed debut, The Last Concubine, was a hard act to follow but this fact-based story of two young people caught up in Japan’s bitter civil war of the 1860s is another seductive thriller.
Inspired by real historical events, The Courtesan and the Samurai features two star-crossed lovers whose lives converge against an epic backdrop of savage combat, lush sensuality and dangerous secrets.
Seventeen-year-old Hana is a good Japanese wife in Tokyo...she keeps her eyebrows neatly shaved, polishes her teeth black, oils her long black hair and does her best to behave in the proper way.
But secretly she wishes her destiny could have been different.
Her husband is a samurai warrior, a fierce taskmaster who beats her when he is angry and spends much of his time at war.
As he leaves on yet another campaign, she knows that this time his absence will leave her vulnerable because rebels from the south have occupied the city.
When her home is attacked by a horde of rampaging soldiers, she flees into the night but soon discovers that the world outside is large and hostile.
Tricked into the promise of a safe haven, she is led to the bustling Yoshiwara quarter, infamous for its pleasure palaces and licentious sex traders.
Sold into one of the many brothels, she is subjected to violence and rape, and forced to train as a courtesan.
As she is groomed in her new arts...painting her face white, towering her hair into ornate coiled loops, decking herself out in layers of kimonos...Hana learns that the only fruit forbidden to her is falling in love.
So when samurai, adventurer and fugitive soldier Yozo Tajima walks into the Yoshiwara, their lives are on a collision course that puts them both in danger of death...Downer’s love and knowledge of all things oriental gives her novels a classy edge...impressively descriptive, well researched and brimming with all the colour, culture and customs of a distant world, this is historical romance at its best.
(Bantam Press, hardback, £12.99)
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