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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kathryn StockettJeremy Cooper|title=The HelpDiscord|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Jackson, Mississippi: 1960. The talk at the bridge club and the tennis club is of what Jackie Kennedy is wearing. They're white women, of course and they're free to play because a coloured woman will be looking after the children, doing the shopping and cleaning the house. They're trusted to bring the children up, but they're not trusted to be honest about the silver. Aibileen is raising her seventeenth white child but something hardened in her heart when her son died whilst the white bosses looked the other way. They took his body to the coloureds' hospital and rolled it off the back of the truck and left.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141039280</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Olga Grushin|title=The Concert Ticket|rating=43.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=''The Concert Ticket'' follows the lives of a family in Soviet Russia who have grown desperately distant from one another. Sergei, the father, is a frustrated musician who longs to play the pre-revolutionary masterpieces of composers like Igor Selinsky but is forced to play the kind of patriotic ditties he despises. His schoolteacher wife, Anna, longs for his love, but is never quite able to get his attention with her shy gestures. Their shiftless son, Alexander, has quietly given up going to school and spends his days hanging around the park, consorting with undesirables. Also living in their house is Anna's silent, elderly mother.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918482</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Aatish Taseer|title=The Temple-Goers|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Aatish Taseer is probably best known for his journalism, publishing regularly in the Indian press, in Prospect, and perhaps most prolifically in Time magazine. He has won acclaim for his memoirDiscord: Stranger to History in which hea lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, raised by his Indian Sikh motherthings, traces his absent Muslim father across the border in Pakistan – and also for his translations of the short stories of Saadat Hasan Manto.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918504</amazonuk>}}or ideas)
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mary Yukari WatersPolly Barton|title=The FavoritesWhat Am I, A Deer?|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This story Polly Barton's debut novel is set in Kyotoan intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, Japannewly relocated from London to Berlin, starting in June 1978. Fourteen year old Sarah Rexford and her works translating video games into Japanese motherthrough the process of localisation, Yoko, have come back from the US rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to stay with family for a few weeksnew audience. Sarah was born and brought up Barton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, in Japan but has lived in the US with her mother and white American father striving for five years. She universality, language is very conscious endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of the differences between life in Kyoto and in Fielder's Butte, Californiadisappearing altogether. Here in KyotoFrom this, the women, including Sarah and her mumnovel opens out into a wider, go shopping every day for food, and the food is very different – in an opening scene, Sarah is trying to explain resonant question: to her grandfather what she normally has for breakfast extent do we translate ourselves in the USorder to be understood, accepted, and becoming aware of the gulf between her life in Japan and in California.or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847392334</amazonuk>1804272175
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rose TremainMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=TrespassThe Disappearing Act
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Set Despite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the hills town of Southern France, Trespass F for a literary festival she is to be a novel about sibling love guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and rivalrynudged by forces beyond her control, disputed territory and ultimately revengeher journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. In the French corner are Aramon Lunel, resident Swept up in this series of the Mas Lunelevents, and his sister Audrun who lives M eventually offers to step in for a cottage in circus performer who has unexpectedly left the groundsshow. In the English corner are Victoria Verey, The train functions as a garden designer, motif of transience and her partnerimpermanence, an untalented watercolourist, Kitty. The catalyst that brings these together is while the circus embodies the arrival in France reshaping of Anthony Verey, Victoria's sister whose exclusive antiques business in London is failing identity and who decides to follow his sister in finding a new life in France. Aramon is tempted to sell his family Mas by retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the lure very heart of 'foreign' money even if that means that his sister's house has to be destroyed to secure the dealnovel form itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701177942</amazonuk>1804272329
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Castle Freeman295967572X|title=All That I HavePale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Castle Freeman may sound like two thirds of Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a firm train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of provincial solicitors but thankfully this Castle Freeman journey is a man very skilled in writing about the law rather than practicing it. In his latest novel Freeman tells an intriguing tale involving local Sheriff Lucian Wing and his practical yet low-key approach to maintaining order in rural Vermont, is uncertain. Not for Wing Django found the gung ho approach to fighting crime. He doesntickets ''t wear a uniform, he drives a battered old car rather than on the standard issue sherifffloor somewhere''s wagon and his gun, so ubiquitous in US law enforcement, has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is safely tucked away in his bottom drawer. Everyone clear either - but we are probably in the area knows past as the sheriff and pair travel to the station by coach and large they respect him and his slightly unorthodox way of doing businessthe train is a steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715639021</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dan RhodesMakenna Goodman|title=Little Hands ClappingHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=The first character to mention in It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a moth. It's a human moth, drawn hard-to the flame -place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a museum disgraced professor on the brink of suicide - a supposedly cautionarylosing both his career and his relationship, life-affirmingembodies this feeling. However, memento moriGoodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, somewhere in Germanyradical and unnerving: Helen. Its curator The connection between Helen and the protagonist is an old hand at lonelyindirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he's considering, unloved museumsHelen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to his potential fresh from an art gallery in an airport - it didn't take off - start. The realtor who notices shows the noise of protagonist around the latest suicide to happen in the museumhouse shares stories about Helen, and goes right back to sleepdescribes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. A spider crawls into his mouth and Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets eatenthe sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847675298</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Olga Tokarczuk
|title=House of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joshua Ferris Thea Lenarduzzi|title=The UnnamedTower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Tim Farnsworth seemed to have it all''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. He loved his wife Jane and Just as T's story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter Becka and his job as of a partner wealthy family in prestigious law firm was enjoyablethe 19th century, fulfilling and financially rewarding. The fly who died of tuberculosis after being locked in the ointment was that sometimes he was overtaken by a compulsion to walktower, captures T's imagination. The time of dayAnnie's fate is, above all, 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 an enticing story to come and collect himT. There seemed to be no medical explanation It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for what was happening – truth and knowledge, and Tim in service of myth, fable 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 illnessfantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670917702</amazonuk>1804271799
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joe TreasureJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=BesottedVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It is late August 1982, the day when O level results come out''All was strange''.. Michael Cartwright already knows he has failed his exams and is dreading his parents finding out. He, his twin brother Kieran (who has done very well) and their younger sisters are on This haunting phrase encapsulates the family holidaypervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, staying with their mother's parents a fictional fishing village in Kilross, County Cork. To escape boredom Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and his parents' angerEline, he wanders round two of the village, where he meets Fergal Noonan, training to be a priest, and lively Peggy O'Connor. He has his first kiss and a bit more with Peggy. The family soon goes home to Cheltenham, but their brief visit to Ireland will have far reaching significanceprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330511726</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Laila Lalami Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Secret Son|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=''Secret Son'' is the story of Youssef El-MekkiBig Kiss, the slumBye-dwelling teenage son of single mother Rachida. Youssef has always been told that his father is dead, 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 TigerBye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Balram HalwaiEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a Bangalore entrepreneur (kiss, usually a symbol of sorts) intimacy and a natural philosophercloseness, hears that there is a planned visit from the Chinese leader to India to learn the source becomes evidence of Indian entrepreneurial talentlove lost. Balram knows that When the story he will be told by the Indian leader will be a long way from the true story of modern Indian lifenarrator cries out internally, ''come over here and so resolveskiss me, over the course '' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of seven nightsthis plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, to write to the Chinese premier with the story of his life and his own journey from a poor son of a rickshaw driver ghost she conjures to the head of his own businesstest her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1843547228</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Matthew CondonHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=The Trout OperaLili is Crying|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Judges Carrington and Thorpe recline First published in 1953 in leather armchairs on French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the verandah hearts of Buckley's Crossing hotel its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and watch in silence as a giant trout shuffles across sentences from their proper position on the bridge. The Judges, despite their initial prominence page and convincing back-story giving positions them a valid reason for being in Buckley's Crossingelsewhere, disjointed, will not really concern ustruncated. They are there to represent a type: a visitor to small town Australia, a fisherman from Like the citylives of her characters, a seeker after something in the Snowy that probably isn't fish. We shall, however, be concerned with the giant troutthey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>038561506X</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Clare MorrallJonathan Buckley|title=The Man Who DisappearedOne Boat
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I was drawn to this book straight away. Firstly''One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the jacket cover is lovely. The subliminal message is read mereader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, please read meTeresa. We are introduced to Set against the Kendall family; motherevocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, father this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and three childrenits power to provoke profound introspection. All leading unremarkable, rather ordinary livesTeresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the death of both her parents. The fatherPrompted by her mourning, Felixher narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-aware, works hard to provide for his family. He loves them all dearly. They all love him backinviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a secure family unit. Until - completely out book that not only requires but inspires depth of the blue - he simply disappears. His family thought, since its narrative structure is distraught fragmentary and mystified. We all know that a person cannot simply disappear. But Felix Kendall has taken himself off the radarironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion. Why?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340994274</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christopher IsherwoodEowyn Ivey|title=A Single ManBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=43.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you've ever wanted to know what goes on inside someone's mind youBlack Woods Blue Sky''ll love this short noveltells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, first published back in 1964. We join George Falconer just at who longs for a life beyond the moment he awakes from sleep Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and witness his innermost thoughts her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Described as he goes about a typical ''wild card'', she feels stuck in her day. It all sounds pretty dull -to-day life, and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and monotonous but what makes this exciting is that George isn't just any old professor living live on the American DreamNorth Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, oh noa strange, taciturn and solitary man, who says hehas a cabin over there, she feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen's so detached from the banal normality of the world that he's almost outside of his own body at timeslives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099548828</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Angelica GarnettSally Rooney|title=The Unspoken TruthIntermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=I would not normally start a review with Sally Rooney has studied the biography chessboard of the author, but The Unspoken Truth life and is presented as autobiographical fiction by something of a child of the Bloomsbury Group – in fact the subtitle grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is 'A Quartet of Bloomsbury Stories'gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. The blurb on Among the inside cover even identifies which character many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is based on the author fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in each of Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the four stories, just in case we are not surebrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184353</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amos OzFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=Rhyming Life and DeathWhite Nights
|rating=5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=As always in Dostoyevsky, the character work is sublime. One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity.
|isbn=0241619785
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=James Baldwin
|title=Giovanni'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=Rhyming Love This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and Death is a kind of philosophical love letter to literaturetension from the moment our protagonist, or perhaps more so to fiction. It is a book about how to writeValeria Cossati, about the compulsion to writepurchases her forbidden notebook, and learns about herself in the strange world that the writer of fiction must live inmost intimate and revealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099521024</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul MurrayOttessa Moshfegh|title=Skippy DiesMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Life in Seabrook College At best, this novel is a mess. Some scathing critique of modern society and reveals the staff are young enough to remember their own school days therefragility of human relationships; at worst, but many are certainly too old for that. A lot of it is the boys are victims of ragging and bullying for being too chunkycynical, or too smart - but some are so chunky predictable and smart there's a certain kudos to themslightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. The female of the species is This unlikely heroine, a thing only spied from their own school next doorslim, attractive and only met by selling them ritalin as a weight-control pillnewly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the world, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, or meeting them at the very rare combined school discoher solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241141826</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom WolfeMatthew Tree|title=The Bonfire of the VanitiesWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his own mindfather, bond trader Sherman McCoy is a 'Master drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of the Universe'. He has a pleasant wife, a beautiful mistress, his artistic passions all failed miserably and a sweet six year old daughterwho had endless crises of self confidence. Henry Lamb is a black student from the projects. Under normal circumstancesSo Tim applied himself to his studies, it's clear that McCoy's world and Lamb's world would never overlap. But when McCoy and cultivated his abilities rather than his mistress Maria Ruskin end up lost in the Bronx, daydreams and an accident leads to Lamb being hit by McCoy's Mercedes, a chain of events start which will lead to his downfallset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099548798</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kate Cole-AdamsB0C47LV1PC|title=Walking to the MoonFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We meet the main character JessicaCan you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, or Jess as she is usually called, deep in an emotional black hole. She can see no light at the end of question should you make it? Or is the tunnel. And right from the startquestion if you did, right from page one, we have a sense of would it land? The catch is that the beautiful and poetic language of Cole-Adamsanswer for both could well be. '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 in the world would probably be the motto of the medical staff - if they had oneno. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849161348</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Simon RobsonMosby Woods|title=CatchA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=CatharineThe West isn's husband Tom is away on business t the dominant force it once was. Nobody in Birmingham, and so Catharine awakes alone for the first time in their little cottage at West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the end best course of their laneaction. They moved there a few months previously, and since then Catharine has spent her days quietly awaiting her husband's return from workGovernments are flailing. She is sure that she will figure outA war here, some day, what her purpose in life is. She thought it might be to have a baby, but they have been trying push for some time and it hasn't happened as yetclimate action there. Meanwhile she waits, and thinks, and waitsA feeling that nobody is in actual charge. In the lounge stands her pianoImagine then, there was a stark reminder of man with precognition. Imagine the life she didn't manage to realise because although she studied music she found, quite quickly, that strategic advantage in spite of being passionate she lacked this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any kind set of talent for it whatsoevercircumstances. SoThat man would be valuable, on this day, alone at home, Catharine finds herself tormented by right? Perhaps the piano's presence and over-thinking every second of the daymost valuable asset in history. She worries away at who she isImagine then, and what her life is, as her loneliness and the day itself unravel around herthat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224090232</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joe Meno0571379559|title=The Great PerhapsHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jonathan Casper faints when he sees clouds''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. His wife Madeline worries about everything Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, not least but instead, she lives in the way house on the pigeons that she is studying are murdering each otherriverbank, built of broken bricks. Their seventeen year old daughter Amelia wants to overthrow Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the evil empire passage of capitalism time, storms and is making her own bombfloods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, while fourteen year old Thisbe is looking for God to complete the delivery rounds - and praying to himbring in sufficient money. Jonathan They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, seventy six year old Henry, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is planning out with his disappearance. Jonathan and Madeline may be on the verge of splitting up, to the dismay of both daughtersmother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330512471</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=Elizabeth KostovaKay Chronister|title=The Swan ThievesDesert Creatures|rating=24|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=1999 – A renowned painterWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, Robert Oliverpost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, goes mada world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, attacking this genre is a painting with a knifeway for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. He's arrested, and sent to 'Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a psychiatrist who new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is also an artista shocking novel that still manages to find hope. |isbn=1803364998}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Eric LaRocca|title= The psychiatrist, Andrew Marlowe, can't get his patient to talk to him, but tries to investigate what drove him to this by talking Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to his wife reflect our darkest emotions and his girlfriend, how we as humans react and reading some letters Oliver seems obsessed withprocess them. 1879 – Beatrice de ClervalMost horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, aspiring artista monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, corresponds with her uncle-by-marriage Olivier Vignotthe end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more experienced painterinterested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Their letters will be found by Robert Oliver, 120 years later, Horrors that linger and will lead are harder to his loss of sanitydefeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847442404</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Atiq RahimiMadelaine Lucas|title=The Patience StoneThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Set in Afghanistan, ''The Patience Stone'Love, I' is a partly allegorical tale of a Muslim wife tending to her comatose soldier husband who has been shot in the neck. As she cares for himd read, for the first time ever she is able was supposed to speak to him without fear of censorship be a light and he becomesweightless feeling, but I had always longed for her, like the mythical Patience Stone to which you tell your troubles and when the stone finally bursts, you are free from your torments. But also this might mean the Apocalypse.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184167</amazonuk>}}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=Thomas Trofimuk Jennifer Saint|title=Waiting for ColumbusAtalanta|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''I was hooked instantly by the titleas worthy as any one of them. OriginalI would get on board that ship, thought-provokingI vowed. I would take my place, 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) not just in modern-day Spain. The staff have their work cut out. He doesn't remember his the name or anything at all about his pastof the goddess. He's sporadically violent - and he says he is Christopher Columbus! As It was for the Americans would saysake of my name, go figuretoo. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330518844</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mary McCarthy Amanthi Harris|title=The GroupBeautiful Place|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='Given Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the attention paid to relations between Villa Hibiscus on the sexes, it would be tempting to call The Group southern coast of her home country. This is a forerunner of today's chick litplace she spent her formative years. It's is not.' So writes Candace Bushnella place she was born into, but the writer behind one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the TV series Sex Villa, how it became her home, and the City, in machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the introduction to ''score'' for this new Virago Modern Classics edition of The Group by Mary McCarthygentle and yet subtly violent novel. First published in 1963, this novel is about Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the lives musical score of a group of young women after leaving college in 1933film, including careers, relationships, sex, babies, parents, and moneythat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844085937</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Janice Galloway178563335X|title=Collected StoriesSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=In this collectionWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, stories are taken from two previous volumes, Blood sitting in on a PCC meeting and Where You Find Itwondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. The forty Her husband, Christopher, collects six-two snap shots of life are mainly of women year-old Hannah and young girlsher elder brother, struggling with emotionsJamie, sometimes realized and sometimes notwhilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. In all Holthorpe, there seems to be an underlying link of isolation and truth. The settings are variedon the Norfolk coast, from is a visit to the dentist to the lovely place known as home, but Rachel is struggling to develop a walk real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the eveningjob for more than thirty years. We have Rachel and Christopher hoped that a peek into walk on the deepest darkest corners of everyday relationships, with lovers, partners and most of all ourselvesbeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540398</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Herta Muller1398515388|title=The PassportBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=34.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Meet Windisch. A miller in a small villageFirst of all, he trudges through thereit was the earthquake, and through his neighboursdeep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and through his lifethis, counting his days and hoursin turn, for reasons that are not initially clearcaused the nuclear meltdown. But he does want something - he is waiting for a passport so he can leave for other climesThe result was complete and utter devastation. The perks deaths were uncountable, and the loss of his job are livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the bags list of flour he leaves by priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the mayorconvenience store owner's house with regularity, as an comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open bribe, but there might be a bigger sacrifice to have to makehis car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1852421398</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jennifer Johnston0989715337|title=Truth or FictionPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Caroline Wallace is not a happy woman''Some frogs had gotten into the well. She has waited ten years '' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, naked except for her lover to propose to her, and now just as he finally does, she has to go to Dublin to interview faded literary star Desmond Fitzmauricehis beaten leather hat. Desmond promises his tale will be brimful Long strands of 'sex and violence'their eggs wove around him, but Caroline has no idea sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the mystery that lies dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the heart strange noise of his storythe buckets as he filled them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755330544</amazonuk>}}''
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