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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joshua Ferris Jeremy Cooper|title=The UnnamedDiscord|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Tim Farnsworth seemed to have it all. He loved his wife Jane and daughter Becka and his job Discord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as a partner in prestigious law firm was enjoyablebetween persons, fulfilling and financially rewarding. The fly in the ointment was that sometimes he was overtaken by a compulsion to walk. The time of daythings, the weather or the occasion did not matter – when the compulsion came he had to walk until he was physically exhausted and fell asleep immediately after calling his wife to come and collect him. There seemed to be no medical explanation for what was happening – and Tim and Jane had tried every source they could find – but Tim was still reluctant to accept that this was a mental rather than a physical illness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917702</amazonuk>}}ideas)
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Laila Lalami Polly Barton|title=Secret Son|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=''Secret Son'' is the story of Youssef El-Mekki, the slum-dwelling teenage son of single mother Rachida. Youssef has always been told that his father is deadWhat Am I, so when he finds out his mother has lied to conceal the fact that he was born out of wedlock, he plunges headlong into an identity crisis. He tracks down his real father, a wealthy businessman called Nabil Amrani who is surprisingly enthusiastic about his illegitimate son's arrival. Nabil has recently fallen out with his daughter and he seizes this opportunity to mould Youssef into the obedient son he has always wanted.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918296</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Aravind Adiga|title=The White Tiger|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Balram Halwai, a Bangalore entrepreneur (of sorts) and a natural philosopher, hears that there is a planned visit from the Chinese leader to India to learn the source of Indian entrepreneurial talent. Balram knows that the story he will be told by the Indian leader will be a long way from the true story of modern Indian life, and so resolves, over the course of seven nights, to write to the Chinese premier with the story of his life and his own journey from a poor son of a rickshaw driver to the head of his own business.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843547228</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Matthew Condon|title=The Trout OperaA Deer?
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Judges Carrington and Thorpe recline in leather armchairs on the verandah of BuckleyPolly Barton's Crossing hotel debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and watch in silence as a giant trout shuffles across the bridgegoverning metaphor. The Judgesnarrator, despite their initial prominence and convincing back-story giving them newly relocated from London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the process of localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a new audience. Barton treats this as a valid reason paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for being in Buckley's Crossinguniversality, language is endlessly repackaged, will not really concern usits originality at risk of disappearing altogether. They are there to represent From this, the novel opens out into a typewider, resonant question: a visitor to small town Australia, a fisherman from the city, a seeker after something what extent do we translate ourselves in the Snowy that probably isn't fish. We shallorder to be understood, howeveraccepted, be concerned with the giant trout.or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>038561506X</amazonuk>1804272175
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Clare MorrallMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=The Man Who DisappearedDisappearing Act
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I was drawn to this book straight away. FirstlyDespite her anonymisation of place names and people, the jacket cover is lovely. The subliminal Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is read me, please read meunmistakable. We are introduced A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the Kendall family; mother, father town of F for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and three children. All leading unremarkablenudged by forces beyond her control, rather ordinary livesher journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. The fatherSwept up in this series of events, Felix, works hard M eventually offers to provide step in for his familya circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. He loves them all dearly. They all love him back. It is The train functions as a secure family unit. Until - completely out motif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the blue - he simply disappears. His family is distraught reshaping of identity and mystified. We all know a retreat into fantasy, an impulse that a person cannot simply disappear. But Felix Kendall has taken himself off lies at the very heart of the radarnovel form itself. Why?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340994274</amazonuk>1804272329
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christopher Isherwood295967572X|title=A Single ManPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If youOur unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they've ever wanted to know re going and what goes on inside someone's mind you'll love the purpose of this short noveljourney is, first published back in 1964is uncertain. We join George Falconer just at Django found the tickets ''on the moment he awakes from sleep floor somewhere'' and witness his innermost thoughts as he goes about a typical dayhas persuaded our narrator to accompany him. It all sounds pretty dull and monotonous Why not? Not much else is clear either - but what makes this exciting is that George isn't just any old professor living we are probably in the past as the American Dream, oh no, he's so detached from pair travel to the banal normality of station by coach and the world that he's almost outside of his own body at timestrain is a steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548828</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Angelica GarnettMakenna Goodman|title=The Unspoken TruthHelen of Nowhere|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I would 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 normally start quite right. The protagonist, a review with disgraced professor on the biography brink of the authorlosing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, but radical and unnerving: Helen. The Unspoken Truth connection between Helen and the protagonist is presented as autobiographical fiction by a child indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the Bloomsbury Group – countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in fact his life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the subtitle protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form'A Quartet of Bloomsbury Stories'. The blurb on the inside cover even identifies Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which character is based on the author in each of reader gets the four stories, just in case we sense are not surealtogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184353</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amos OzOlga Tokarczuk|title=Rhyming Life and DeathHouse of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Rhyming Love and Death is a kind ''What's the good of philosophical love letter to literature, or perhaps more so to fiction. It is a book about how to write, about the compulsion to write, and about the strange world that the writer of fiction must live keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099521024</amazonuk>}}it?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom WolfeThea Lenarduzzi|title=The Bonfire of the VanitiesTower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In his own mindthis compelling novel, bond trader Sherman McCoy is a 'Master Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the Universeprotagonist of this tale. Just as T'. He has a pleasant wifes story is being told, the story of a beautiful mistresssecond protagonist is unveiled: Annie, and a sweet six year old the daughter. Henry Lamb is of a black student from wealthy family in the projects. Under normal circumstances19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, itcaptures T's clear that McCoyimagination. Annie's world and Lamb's world would never overlap. But when McCoy and his mistress Maria Ruskin end up lost in the Bronxfate is, above all, and an accident leads enticing story to Lamb being hit by McCoy's MercedesT. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a chain quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of events start which will lead to his downfallmyth, fable and fantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099548798</amazonuk>1804271799
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kate Cole-AdamsJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Walking to the MoonVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We meet the main character Jessica, or Jess as she is usually called, deep in an emotional black hole''All was strange''... She can see no light at This haunting phrase encapsulates the end pervading sense of the tunnel. And right from the start, right from page oneotherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, we have a sense of the beautiful fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and poetic language Eline, two of Cole-Adams. 'Time and I have a new arrangement. We leave each other alone.' And indeed time is not important in this novel. We have all the time protagonists caught in the world would probably be the motto of the medical staff - if they had oneits melancholic current. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849161348</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ru FreemanClaire-Louise Bennett|title=A Disobedient Girl|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=''A Disobedient Girl'' follows two women struggling to retain control of their lives in the face of servitude. Latha is a servant girl to the affluent Vithanage family, whose daughter, TharaBig Kiss, is Latha's age. As children, the girls are the best of friends, but they are destined to be separated by class, which is made painfully obvious when boys come into the picture. Meanwhile, Biso serves a cruel and drunken husband who beats her and terrorises her children, one of whom is another man's love child. Biso's husband murdered her lover in a hateful rage when he uncovered her affair and she realises that she must escape his house if she and her children are to live. Latha too seeks escape, but she finds it in the arms of Thara's boyfriend and this sets off a chain of events that will echo far into her future.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917958</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Simon Robson|title=CatchBye-Bye |rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Catharine's husband Tom is away on business Everything in Birminghamthis book, and so Catharine awakes alone for the first time in their little cottage at the end of their lane. They moved there a few months previouslyhowever sweet or seemingly innocent, and since then Catharine has spent her days quietly awaiting her husband's return from work. She is sure that she will figure out, some day, what her purpose steeped in life isanguish and distortion. She thought it might be to have Even a baby, but they have been trying for some time and it hasn't happened as yet. Meanwhile she waitskiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and thinkscloseness, and waitsbecomes evidence of love lost. In When the lounge stands her pianonarrator cries out internally, a stark reminder of the life she didn't manage to realise because although she studied music she found'come over here and kiss me, quite quickly, that in spite of being passionate she lacked any kind of talent for '' it whatsoeveris less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. So, on The imagined recipient of this day, alone at home, Catharine finds herself tormented by the piano's presence and over-thinking every second of the day. She worries away at who she plea isXavier, and what her life isex-partner, as her loneliness and the day itself unravel around a ghost she conjures to test herdetachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224090232</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joe MenoHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=The Great PerhapsLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jonathan Casper faints when he sees clouds. His wife Madeline worries about everythingFirst published in 1953 in French, not least the way the pigeons that she this novel is studying are murdering each other. Their seventeen year old daughter Amelia wants to overthrow a timeless text which wrenches the evil empire hearts of capitalism its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and is making her own bomb, while fourteen year old Thisbe is looking for God sentences from their proper position on the page and praying to him. Jonathan's fatherpositions them elsewhere, seventy six year old Henrydisjointed, is planning his disappearancetruncated. Jonathan and Madeline may be on Like the verge lives of splitting upher characters, to the dismay of both daughtersthey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330512471</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elizabeth KostovaJonathan Buckley|title=The Swan ThievesOne Boat|rating=24
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=1999 – A renowned painter''One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, Robert Oliverdrawing the reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, goes mad, attacking Teresa. Set against the evocative backdrop of a painting with a knife. He's arrestedsmall coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and sent its power to a psychiatrist who is also an artistprovoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the death of both her parents. The psychiatrist, Andrew Marlowe, can't get his patient to talk to him, but tries to investigate what drove him to this Prompted by talking to his wife and his girlfriendher mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and reading some letters Oliver seems obsessed with. 1879 – Beatrice de Clerval, aspiring artistdeeply self-aware, corresponds with inviting the reader into her uncle-by-marriage Olivier Vignot, labyrinthine cogitations. It is a more experienced painter. Their letters will be found by Robert Oliver, 120 years laterbook that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and will lead to his loss of sanityironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847442404</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Atiq RahimiEowyn Ivey|title=The Patience StoneBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Set in Afghanistan, ''The Patience StoneBlack Woods Blue Sky'' is tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a partly allegorical tale of bar waitress, a Muslim wife tending to setting which enables her bad habits and her comatose soldier husband who has been shot in the neckaccidental neglect of Emaleen. As Described as a ''wild card'', she cares for himfeels stuck in her day-to-day life, for and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the first time ever she is able North Fork to speak to him without fear fulfil her desires of censorship a simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man, who says he becomeshas a cabin over there, for her, like the mythical Patience Stone she feels called to which you tell your troubles go - and when the stone finally burstsbring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, you are free from your torments. But also this might mean the Apocalypsecalling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184167</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joyce Carol OatesSally Rooney|title=A Fair MaidenIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=I've recently read Sally Rooney has studied the terrific short story collection ''The Female Of The Species'' also by Oates chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and couldn't wait to start so brilliantly frustrating, as her latest bookcharacters never quite say exactly what they feel. I felt sure that I was in Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for a literary treat - readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and I wasPeter Koubek. FirstlyIvan, the book itselfa socially awkward chess prodigy, a hardback contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a beautifully nostalgic cover is successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a book loverlong battle with cancer, the brothers's delightalready strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847248586</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dai Sijie Fyodor Dostoyevsky|title=Once on a Moonless NightWhite Nights|rating=3.5|genre=Literary FictionShort Stories|summary=A French female scholar, studying As always in ChinaDostoyevsky, finds herself caught up in the search for a lost, sacred text that was inscribed on an ancient scroll. The scroll was torn in two by Emperor Puyi years ago, and was lostcharacter work is sublime. After falling in love with One is never left wondering what a young grocer called Tumchooq the young woman becomes caught up in tales within tales, as she finds that Tumchooq's father found character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and translated half of the missing scroll and became obsessed temperaments with finding the other half, and soon Tumchooq too becomes embroiled in the searchremarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099521326</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Thomas Trofimuk James Baldwin|title=Waiting for ColumbusGiovanni's Room
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.
|isbn=0141186356
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Alba de Cespedes
|title=Forbidden Notebook
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I was hooked instantly by This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the title. Originalmoment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, thought-provokingpurchases her forbidden notebook, quirky. The book revolves around a youngish man who has been admitted to an insane asylum (these two words alone make me want to shiver) and learns about herself in modern-day Spain. The staff have their work cut out. He doesn't remember his name or anything at all about his past. He's sporadically violent - the most intimate and he says he is Christopher Columbus! As the Americans would say, go figurerevealing ways. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330518844</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Su TongOttessa Moshfegh|title=The Boat to RedemptionMy Year of Rest and Relaxation
|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ku Dongliang and his fatherAt best, Ku Wenxuan, are forced to live on this novel is a barge on scathing critique of modern society and reveals the river following Ku Wenxuan's fall from grace. Originally believed to be the son fragility of a revolutionary martyrhuman relationships; at worst, it is eventually proved that Mr Ku was not so - as a resultthe cynical, his position in society takes a nose-divepredictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. Dongliang suffers as This unlikely heroine, a result of thisslim, finding it hard to make friends within the barge community attractive and on shore. Then an newly orphaned girl moves onto in her twenties is disillusioned with the barges and finds a place world, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, her solution lies in Dongliangher hibernation.|isbn=1784707422}}{{Frontpage|author=Matthew Tree|title=We's apparently cold heartll Never Know|rating=4. Will she 5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be able to take him out different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself? Or will sheto his studies, too, turn her back on him?cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>038561344X</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Iain BanksB0C47LV1PC|title=The Steep Approach to GarbadaleFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It took me Can you make a while to realise that Iain Banks ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or isthe question if you did, 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 it land? The catch is that the answer for the Jeffrey Archers and Dan Browns of the modern publishing worldboth could well be.... no. This ability to tell stories - not to plot as much ''Fragility'' is set 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 city of his [[:Category:Iain M Banks|Iain M. Banks]] alter-ego) and populating them with memorablePortland, larger than life but usually short of caricatureOregon, characters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349119287</amazonuk>cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mary McCarthy Mosby Woods|title=The GroupA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The West isn'Given t the attention paid dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to relations between mend this or even if mending it is the sexesbest course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, it would be tempting to call The Group a forerunner of today's chick litpush for climate action there. It's notA feeling that nobody is in actual charge.' So writes Candace BushnellImagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the writer behind the TV series Sex and the City, strategic advantage in the introduction to this new Virago Modern Classics edition asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of The Group by Mary McCarthycircumstances. First published in 1963That man would be valuable, this novel is about right? Perhaps the lives of a group of young women after leaving college most valuable asset in 1933history. Imagine then, including careers, relationships, sex, babies, parents, and moneythat this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844085937</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Janice Galloway0571379559|title=Collected StoriesThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet Windisch''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. A miller Tess Hembry's roots are in a small villageJamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, he trudges through thereshe lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and through his neighboursfloods. Her husband, Richard, and through struggles to grow his lifevegetables, counting his days to complete the delivery rounds - and hours, for reasons that are not initially clearto bring in sufficient money. But he does want something They have twin boys - he is waiting for a passport so he can leave for other climesSonny and Max, the rainbow twins. The perks of Sonny's colouring reflects his job are the bags of flour he leaves by the mayormother's house with regularityJamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, as much less twins and there's an open bribe, but there might be a bigger sacrifice to have to makeassumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1852421398</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julian BarnesKay Chronister|title=Staring at the SunDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Jean's first Incident involved Uncle LeslieWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, hyacinths and golf teespost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. It's perhaps best forgottenWhether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, but Jean doesn't forget. Uncle Leslie figures large in her life - mostly on the golf course - until the War comes and he runs away this genre is a way for humans to Americacathartically experience their most existential fears. He's replaced 'Desert Creatures'' by Tommy Prosser, Kay Chronister is a grounded pilot who once saw new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the sun rise twice in one day and excites as many questions in Jean as he ever answersfears that exist for humanity today. Tommy It is replaced by Michael, a policeman, whom Jean eventually marries. He doesn't know why minks are excessively tenacious of life and he doesn't much care. But Jean does. She cares much less for the Dutch cap shocking novel that Michael sent her off still manages to obtain before the wedding and much less again for their rather disastrous adventures in the bedroomfind hope. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099540096</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Russell Celyn JonesEric LaRocca|title=The Ninth Wave (New Stories from the Mabinogion) Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Pwyll rules Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a medieval-style fiefdom in way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a post-climate change Wales. Life ''Big Bad'', whether that is different in many ways - there's a new-but-old social order built on feudalism home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and horsepower is , by the main means end of transportthe story, beatable. But in many ways itEric LaRocca's much ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the same - people still fight one anotherhorrors of illness, towns still have sink estates, rich boys still have too much time on their hands grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and precious little meaning in their livesare harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115146</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Owen SheersMadelaine Lucas|title=White Ravens (New Stories from the Mabinogion)Thirst for Salt|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In the old tale''Love, Branwen is the sister of Bendigeidfran - the giant King of Britain. She marries the King of IrelandI'd read, who doesn't treat her well. She manages was supposed to send Bendigeidfran be a message via a tamed starling light and war and killings ensue.weightless feeling, but I had 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.''
''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|isbn=191458564X}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shirley JacksonJennifer Saint|title=We Have Always Lived In The CastleAtalanta|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Mary Katherine Blackwood, also known ''I was as worthy as Merricatany one of them. I would get on board that ship, is eighteenI vowed. I would take my place, and lives with her older sister Constance not just in the family home where 'Blackwoods had always lived'name of the goddess. Merricat quickly draws It was for the reader into her world by a series of matter sake of fact but bizarre statements – her likes include her sister and death cap mushroomsmy name, and everyone else in her family is deadtoo. The wealthy Blackwood family has always kept the house 'steady against the worldAtalanta', shutting out other people, and they live near a village. Merricat believes that 'The people of the village have always hated us', and tells us that she hates them too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141191457</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Katherine MayAmanthi Harris|title=Burning OutBeautiful Place|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Violet has it all – a well-paid jobPadma, and a luxurious apartment all to herself. Everything is catered for; her mealsyoung Sri Lankan, her clothes, and her health are all how she would like them has returned to be. But the life she is leading is beginning to take its toll. On Villa Hibiscus on the verge southern coast of snapping, her home country. This is a drained and somewhat out-of-sorts Violet, withdraws back to place she spent her home townformative years. There It is not a place she was born into, but the one she meets someone familiar, a ghost reminding her thinks of how as home. How she used came to be ten years earlier – a young carefree girlat the Villa, full of life. Only this isn't a ghosthow it became her home, but a girl living and the machinations that have flowed through her life Violet once lived – exactly ever since she first arrived there provide the same''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Haunted by the Padma's present fails to escape her past Violet realizes history is repeating itself and is convinced events will happen again. Events much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that will in turn haunt happens at the girlVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906727392</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tove Jansson178563335X|title=The True DeceiverSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Most people of my age will have come across JanssonWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's work unwittinglydaughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, via on the televised renditions 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 Moomin tales. The readers amongst us would vicar, Gail, but then have she's been entranced a few doing the job for more than thirty years ago to discover . Rachel and Christopher hoped that at last Thomas Teal had set about a walk on the translation into English, first of The Summer Book and beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then of a collection of short stories which were published as 'A Winter Book'Hannah went missing. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954899571</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Daniel Kehlmann 1398515388|title=Me The Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and KaminskiAlison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=After reviewing several long booksFirst of all, it's been refreshing to read such a fluent yet pared down story as 'Kaminski and Me'. In itwas the earthquake, Sebastian Zollnerdeep in the ocean floor, which created the obnoxious main charactertsunami and this, shoves himself forward in a desperate attempt to research a best seller which will re-ignite his career as an art critic. Kaminskiturn, caused the proposed subject, nuclear meltdown. The result was a fashionable painter long ago, but nowcomplete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, ancient and chronically ill, has virtually slid into oblivionthe loss of livelihoods was widespread. So The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the secondtsunami -rate writer is on Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a loser unless dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he can dig up some juicy details would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to hook open his car door and Tamon the art world and general publicdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847249892</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hilary Dixon0989715337|title=When Rooks Speak of LovePapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Arthur Transcombe is a middle-aged, grey-haired, self-effacing poet''Some frogs had gotten into the well. Unremarkable really '' ''Walter stood waist- on deep in the outsidefragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. He has, howeverLong strands of their eggs wove around him, managed to achieve some success sticky gray pearls with his poemstadpoles inside them. (Being a guest speaker Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the Cheltenham Literary Festival is no mean feat)strange noise of the buckets as he filled them. He is also a babe magnet!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529429</amazonuk>}}''
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