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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Thomas Trofimuk 295967572X|title=Waiting for ColumbusPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I was hooked instantly by Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the title. Originalpurpose of this journey is, thought-provoking, quirkyis uncertain. The book revolves around a youngish man who Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and has been admitted persuaded our narrator to an insane asylum (these two words alone make me want to shiver) accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in modern-day Spain. The staff have their work cut out. He doesn't remember his name or anything at all about his the past. He's sporadically violent - as the pair travel to the station by coach and he says he the train is Christopher Columbus! As the Americans would say, go figurea steam locomotive. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330518844</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Su TongMakenna Goodman|title=The Boat to RedemptionHelen of Nowhere|rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ku Dongliang It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and his fatherrelationship, Ku Wenxuanembodies this feeling. However, are forced to live on Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a barge on force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the river following Ku Wenxuan's fall from graceprotagonist is indirect yet intimate. Originally believed to be As the son former owner of a revolutionary martyrthe countryside house he's considering, it is eventually proved that Mr Ku was not so - as Helen represents a resultvolta in his life, her past tied to his position in society takes a nose-divepotential fresh start. Dongliang suffers as a result of thisThe realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, finding it hard to make friends within the barge community and on shore. Then describes her as ''an orphaned girl moves onto the barges and finds a place in Dongliangentity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''s apparently cold heart. Will she be able to take him out of himself? Or will Although shelives in an assisted living facility now, too, turn her back on him?Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>038561344X</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Iain BanksOlga Tokarczuk|title=The Steep Approach to Garbadale|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It took me a while to realise that Iain Banks is, most of all, a teller of tales - I would call him a story-teller had this term not became a compliment-cum-invective usually reserved for the Jeffrey Archers and Dan Browns of the modern publishing world. This ability to tell stories - not to plot as much as to weave a yarn - combines with a penchant for creating appealing contexts for Banks' narratives to unfold in (this gets magnificently realised in the world building House of his [[:Category:Iain M Banks|Iain M. Banks]] alter-ego) and populating them with memorableDay, larger than life but usually short House of caricature, characters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349119287</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mary McCarthy |title=The GroupNight|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='Given 'What's the attention paid to relations between the sexes, good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it would be tempting to call The Group a forerunner of today?'s chick lit. It's not.'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Janice GallowayThea Lenarduzzi|title=Collected StoriesThe Tower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet Windisch. A miller in a small village, he trudges through there, and through his neighbours, and through his life, counting his days and hours, for reasons that are not initially clear. But he does want something - he is waiting for a passport so he can leave for other climes. The perks of his job ''How unctuous are the bags fats of flour he leaves by the mayoranother's house with regularitylife, as an open bribe, but there might be a bigger sacrifice to have to makehow dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1852421398</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julian BarnesJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Staring at the SunVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jean's first Incident involved Uncle Leslie, hyacinths and golf tees. It's perhaps best forgotten, but Jean doesnAll was strange''t forget. Uncle Leslie figures large .. This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in her life - mostly on the golf course - until the War comes and he runs away to America. He's replaced by Tommy ProsserVaim, a grounded pilot who once saw the sun rise twice fictional fishing village in one day Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and excites as many questions in Jean as he ever answers. Tommy is replaced by Michael, a policemanEline, whom Jean eventually marries. He doesn't know why minks are excessively tenacious two of life and he doesn't much care. But Jean does. She cares much less for the Dutch cap that Michael sent her off to obtain before the wedding and much less again for their rather disastrous adventures protagonists caught in the bedroomits melancholic current. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099540096</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Russell Celyn JonesClaire-Louise Bennett|title=The Ninth Wave (New Stories from the Mabinogion) Big Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Pwyll rules a medieval-style fiefdom Everything in a post-climate change Wales. Life this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is different steeped in many ways - there's anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a new-but-old social order built on feudalism symbol of intimacy and horsepower is the main means closeness, becomes evidence of transportlove lost. But in many ways When the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me,'' it's much the same is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, her ex- people still fight one anotherpartner, towns still have sink estates, rich boys still have too much time on their hands and precious little meaning in their livesa ghost she conjures to test her detachment. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1854115146</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Owen SheersHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=White Ravens (New Stories from the Mabinogion)Lili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In the old taleFirst published in 1953 in French, Branwen this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the sister hearts of Bendigeidfran - the giant King of Britain. She marries the King of Ireland, who doesn't treat her well. She manages to send Bendigeidfran a message via a tamed starling its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and war and killings ensue. In this new tale, a young girl has just walked away sentences from her brothers who, in their proper position on the wake of the devastating foot page and mouth outbreakpositions them elsewhere, are despoiling their heritage by rustling and illegally slaughtering sheepdisjointed, truncated. She meets an old man who tells her a story involving the superstitions about the ravens in Like the Tower lives of Londonher characters, propaganda work during World War II, and an equally doomed love affairthey are often left tragically incomplete. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1854115030</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Becoming ''One Boat'' is a mother brings deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a whole new world contemplative realm of fear into your life. Suddenly you see the danger in every situation, philosophical musings and fear fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and trepidation can be become your constant companions. In this novellaprotagonist, we meet a young mother who is married to a logical scientistTeresa. They attempt to control their children's futures on Set against the evocative backdrop of a scientific basissmall coastal Greek town, growing their own fruit this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and vegetables, giving their children nothing sugary, eating no eggs for a whole year until any adverse affects from them were disprovedits power to provoke profound introspection. But Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after meeting with an enigmatic stranger our young mother begins to struggle as he introduces ideas the death of freedom into both her worldparents. She begins an affair with himPrompted by her mourning, begins to let things slip at home her narrative voice is meditative and with deeply self-aware, inviting the childrenreader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a book that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, yet finds she since its narrative structure is still continuously haunted by the sense of an ever-present dangerfragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844717216</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Katherine MayEowyn Ivey|title=Burning OutBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Violet has it all – a well-paid job, and a luxurious apartment all to herself. Everything is catered for; her meals, her clothes, and her health are all how she would like them to be3. But the life she is leading is beginning to take its toll. On the verge of snapping, a drained and somewhat out-of-sorts Violet, withdraws back to her home town. There, she meets someone familiar, a ghost reminding her of how she used to be ten years earlier – a young carefree girl, full of life. Only this isn't a ghost, but a girl living the life Violet once lived – exactly the same. Haunted by the past Violet realizes history is repeating itself and is convinced events will happen again. Events that will in turn haunt the girl.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906727392</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Tove Jansson|title=The True Deceiver|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Most people ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of my age will have come across Jansson's work unwittinglyBirdie, via the televised renditions young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the Moomin talesAlaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Emaleen. The readers amongst us would then have been entranced Described as a few years ago ''wild card'', she feels stuck in her day-to discover that at last Thomas Teal had set about -day life, and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the translation into EnglishNorth Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, first of The Summer Book taciturn and then of solitary man, who says he has a collection of short stories which were published as 'A Winter Bookcabin over there, she feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0954899571</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Daniel Kehlmann Sally Rooney|title=Me and KaminskiIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=After reviewing several long books, Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it's been refreshing to read such a fluent yet pared down story as 'Kaminski into words. Her dialogue is gripping and Me'. In itso brilliantly frustrating, Sebastian Zollner, the obnoxious main character, shoves himself forward in a desperate attempt to research a best seller which will re-ignite his career as an art criticher characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Kaminski, Among the proposed subjectmany relationships woven into this story, was a fashionable painter long ago, but now, ancient and chronically ill, has virtually slid into oblivion. So the second-rate writer central one for readers to unravel is on a loser unless he can dig up some juicy details to hook the art world fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and general publicPeter Koubek.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847249892</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Hilary Dixon|title=When Rooks Speak of Love|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Arthur Transcombe is Ivan, a middle-aged, grey-haired, self-effacing poet. Unremarkable really - on the outside. He has, howeversocially awkward chess prodigy, managed to achieve some success contrasts sharply with his poemsolder brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. (Being Following their father's passing after a guest speaker at long battle with cancer, the Cheltenham Literary Festival is no mean feat)brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials. He is also a babe magnet!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904529429</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David Malouf Fyodor Dostoyevsky|title=RansomWhite Nights
|rating=5
|genre=Literary FictionShort Stories|summary=Taking his theme from a small part of Homer's Iliad, Malouf tells the story of the king of Troy, Priam's grief-stricken voyage into the Greek camp to ransom Troy's wealth for the body of his fallen son, Hector, killed by the equally grief-stricken Achilles whose great friend Hector had killed As always in battle before Achilles took his cruel revenge. Malouf tells the story in sparseDostoyevsky, yet lyrical and poetic fashion suggesting the personal stories behind the epic themes that Homer relatedcharacter work is sublime. It One is an exquisitely written piece managing to be both deeply moving as well as never left wondering what a great piece of story tellingcharacter is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184159</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David Vann James Baldwin|title=Legend of a SuicideGiovanni's Room
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Some books defy categorisation and that's the case with 'Giovanni'Legend of a Suicides Room''. Is it Literary Fiction? Is it a series of short stories linked by a common themefollows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, or a novella with supporting pieces? Is it fiction as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a strong autobiographical thread running through it? The simple answer gay bar. While David is engaged to all these questions Hella, who is ''yes'' – for travelling in Spain, the real tension in the book is all that and more. It's also a compelling page-turner – I began reading at ten o'clock last night and finished it at three thirty this morning, resenting every moment away novel arises not from his infidelity but from the book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141043784</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Milan Kundera|title=The Book of Laughter and Forgetting|rating=4deeper conflict within himself.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Itis David's with a somehow guilty feeling that I admit that I have never been particularly fond of Milan Kundera. He's certainly a very good writer crippling shame and undoubtedly a very intelligent man capable denial of interesting philosophical insights. All those qualities contributed to a cult status accorded to Kundera, compounded by the frisson of political subversion – never a harmful thing for a writer from what used to be known as Eastern Europe (but which returned to its status as Middle (or Central) Europe his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with the fall of the Iron Curtain)Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>057117437X</amazonuk>0141186356
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andrew Miller Alba de Cespedes |title=One Morning Like A BirdForbidden Notebook
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Tokyo in 1940 is a place that we British tend not to give a great deal This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of thought to. Japan entered suspense and tension from the warmoment our protagonist, we sayValeria Cossati, with the attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, completely forgetting that Japan, like most of the rest of the worldpurchases her forbidden notebook, was already a country at war. She had been fighting in China since 1937 and was making in-roads into European colonial territory learns about herself in the area as wellmost intimate and revealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340825154</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sadie Jones Ottessa Moshfegh|title=Small Wars|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Even though our world is ostensibly at peace, hundreds of localized, unwinnable conflicts continue to grumble on. Mostly, we only hear and care about the ones involving 'our boys', as if war was some giant game My Year of football. But it isn't, Rest and ''Small Wars'' reflects on the casualties of war in a story set in Cyprus in the Two-Way Family Favourites era of the nineteen-fifties. It may turn out to be an important book as the public mood turns against the 'war on terror' in Afghanistan. It's certainly a prescient one.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184558</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Evelyn Waugh|title=A Handful of DustRelaxation|rating=53
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A complex class society which evolved into a highly sophisticated culture At best, this novel is invariably a fertile ground for development scathing critique of modern society and reveals the fragility of social satirehuman relationships; at worst, it is the cynical, predictable and British literature would have been hugely depleted if all novels that can be regarded as such were suddenly to disappearslightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. Evelyn Waugh made the genre his ownThis unlikely heroine, a slim, attractive and ''A Handful of Dust'' newly orphaned girl in her twenties is a sublime example of his mastery of disillusioned with the world, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, her solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141183969</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=William Trevor Matthew Tree|title=Love and SummerWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Love Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and Summer'' is set in the small town chronic underachiever whose dreams of Rathmoye in a rural Ireland 'some years after the middle being exceptional at any of the last century'. The novel charts the doomed love affair between Ellie, a young farmer's wife, his artistic passions all failed miserably and Florian, the Irish-Italian son who had endless crises of two artistsself confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, but it as much about the place cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and time in which it is sethimself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670918245</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bryony Doran B0C47LV1PC|title=The China BirdFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Edward is Can you make a sad and solitary figure. Late middle-aged''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, twisted-spined and hump-backed, a loner who works in is the archive basement of question should you make it? Or is the libraryquestion if you did, lodges with Mrs Ingrams who makes his tea and ruins his laundry, and hoards letters from his motherwould it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jude Morgan Mosby Woods|title=The Taste of SorrowA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The children were born West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in Thorntonthe West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a suburb of Bradfordpush for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, and compared with where they were to go it there was a soft livingman with precognition. Howarth was high up on Imagine the Yorkshire Moorsstrategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, industrialised and with weather which chilled to right? Perhaps the bone. The parsonage was four-square but draughty and not exactly welcomingmost valuable asset in history. They, of courseImagine then, were the Brontë familythat this man loses this ability. The father was the impoverished curate and his six children had somehow What would governments do to be cared for after his wife's death from cancer.get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755338898</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Agnes Owens 0571379559|title=The Complete NovellasHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Who ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is Agnes Owens? the story of four people. A Scottish author who portrays working class life from Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the nineteen forties and fiftiesriverbank, built of broken bricks. Now an octogenarianInsubstantial as it might look, apparently Agnes Owens started writing at it's stood the age passage of 58time, storms and floods. Here are five previously published stories collected into one new editionHer husband, Richard, a companion volume struggles to her short storiesgrow his vegetables, published to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in 2008sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. I Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't think youbelieve that they'll be disappointedre related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971373</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=J M CoetzeeKay Chronister|title=SummertimeDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=''Summertime'' With a world that is the third of a series of fictionalised autobiographies by J M Coetzeebecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, following on from ''Boyhood'' and ''Youth''post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. ThereWhether it is a robotic takeover, that sounds straightforward enough, doesn't it? Excepta world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, in this 'autobiography' (or 'autrebiography' as one critic described the earlier volumes) the subject genre is deada way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. So, clearly, this story isn't 'trueDesert Creatures''. But then, how true by Kay Chronister is an ordinary autobiography? And to what extent is it a function new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to use fiction to reveal truth? So many questions, and I haven't even begunfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846553180</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=James LeverEric LaRocca|title=Me CheetaThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=45|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Straight out of the golden age of Hollywood comes the bitchiest, most revealing memoir from one of its starsHorror taps into something primeval within us. There are scores It is used as a way to be settledreflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', stars to be insultedwhether that is a home invader, secrets to be hinted at none too subtleya monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and lost opportunities to be longed for. Oh, and by the star telling all? Well, for those end of you who can't tell from the title (or even the picture on the front cover) itstory, beatable. Eric LaRocca's Cheeta - chimpanzee star ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the Tarzan filmshorrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007280165</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Erick Setiawan Madelaine Lucas|title=Of Bees and MistThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The first few chapters of this amazing work, had me scratching my head, and pondering, 'what on earth is this about'Love, and where is it going?I' It struck me as simply bizarre. Howeverd read, I was quickly reeled in, supposed to be a light and the initially disparate cast of charactersweightless feeling, who seemed more like caricatures, soon but I had lives of their own - and fascinating ones at that!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755348532</amazonuk>}}always longed for gravity''
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Michael Grothaus
|title=Beautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Colm Toibin Jennifer Saint|title=BrooklynAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Colm Tóibín's quietly powerful new novel, Brooklyn, opens in the author's own home town I was as worthy as any one of Enniscorthythem. I would get on board that ship, County Wexford in the 1950sI vowed. We are sitting with his conscientiously introverted heroineI would take my place, Eilis Lacey, as she watches through not just in the upstairs living room window as her more glamorous older sister Rose walks briskly home from work. Rose is popular at name of the local golf club, with many male admirers. Meanwhile, Eilis' three brothers have all gone to England where there is work to be hadgoddess. There are few opportunities in Enniscorthy, It was for employment or anything else. Eilis is lucky to be offered a Sunday job in Miss Kelly's grocery shopthe sake of my name, a shop Eilis' widowed mother will not entertoo. Later, Eilis will entertain her mother and sister with imitations of Miss KellyAtalanta's voice. Showing everything only through Eilis' eyes, Tóibín brilliantly evokes life in the claustrophobically tight-knit town.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918121</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Roddy DoyleAmanthi Harris|title=Paddy Clarke Ha Ha HaBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I'm kind of Padma, a reverse literary snobyoung Sri Lankan, in that I tend has returned to avoid books that win awardsthe Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. I've found that such books are often very well written, but they're not always good readingThis is a place she spent her formative years. As shameful as it It is to admitnot a place she was born into, I would much rather read for story but the one she thinks of as for fancy wordshome. Clearly I'm not alone How she came to be at the Villa, as in 1993how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the year Roddy Doyle's 'score'Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha'for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma' won s present fails to escape her past and much like the Booker Prizemusical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the bestseller lists contained [[:Category:John Grisham|John Grisham]], Sue Townsend and Jeffrey ArcherVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099535084</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sarah Waters 178563335X|title=The Little StrangerSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When was the last time you couldnwe first meet Rachel Bird she't put s a trainee vicar, sitting in on a Booker nominated novel down? PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Sarah WatersHer husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, author of acclaimed novels whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won'Fingersmitht let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she' s been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and ''The Night Watch'' has written Christopher hoped that a chilling psychological ghost story that kept me guessing until walk on the very last pagebeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844086011</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James Kelman 1398515388|title=How Late It Was, How LateThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Sammy has just woken up outside First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in what looks likes a park after a heavy night of drinkingturn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. He can't remember much – how he got there The deaths were uncountable, or why he is wearing some old trainers and not his new shoesthe loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He doesnwasn't know whata dog person but the convenience store owner's happened comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his wallet or why people are staring at him. He does remember some things – one being a row of some sorts he'd had with Helen, his girlfriend. Now he has been arrested, beaten up by the police, car door and released back onto Tamon the street againdog jumped in. He needs to find a way to get home, the only problem is; he has just gone blind.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546272</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Douglas Coupland0989715337|title=Generation APapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I think with Douglas Coupland you either love him or hate him. So I suppose I should probably say straight off that he's one of my favourite writers'Some frogs had gotten into the well. I've read all his fiction, and I just about peed my pants with excitement at getting to review this latest offering, ''Generation A ''. Those Walter stood waist-deep in the know will see that he is jumping off from fragrant water, naked except for his earlier novelbeaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, ''Generation X'', that dealt sticky gray pearls with three disillusioned twenty-somethings who seem to have opted out tadpoles inside them. Two of life, working 'Mcjobs' in the Californian desert dogs leaned over the opening and telling each other stories to pass barked down at the strange noise of the timebuckets as he filled them. Here, with this new generation, there's storytelling again, ' How is that for an opening? The style of this time amongst five characters, all from different places novel in the worldform of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, and different agesturning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, who are brought together through one singular event in each has the most wonderful turn of their lives - they are each stung by a beephrase, starts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434019836</amazonuk>
}}
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