==Literary fiction==
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{{newreview
|author=Ian Mackenzie
|title=City of Strangers
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=Paul Metzger – mid thirties, with a failed marriage, a broken relationship with his brother (who converted to Judaism), and a dying father (who is an ex-Nazi). Straight away there are obvious flaws with his family dynamic. As his writing career fails to take off he's left to churn out thousands of words for articles that have no meaning to him, the dregs of the publishing world. His life isn't quite as high flying as he hoped. But then Paul gets offered a lucrative book deal; the one thing he has wanted for years. The only catch is he has to write about his father.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099531852</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Matthew Yorke
|summary=Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen (oh, how I love that title!) will almost certainly not be to everyone's taste, but I confess that I loved its originality, boldness, sassy style and the humour of it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144612</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Paolo Giordano
|title=The Solitude of Prime Numbers
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The Solitude of Prime Numbers'' follows the lives of Alice and Mattia from childhood to middle age. Alice is a wilful anorexic, scarred by a childhood skiing accident and an overbearing father. Mattia is an reclusive self-harmer trying to live with the guilt of having been responsible for his disabled twin sister's death. Their paths cross at a school friend's party during a painful adolescence and their lives are destined to intertwine throughout the coming years, despite the chronic awkwardness of their courtship.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552775983</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Juli Zeh
|title=Dark Matter
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Dark Matter'' is translated from German and nothing has been 'lost in translation' here. The lives of two very bright academics are interwoven throughout. Students Sebastian and Oskar are the very best of friends; it's almost as if they share the same heartbeat. However, as they grow into adulthood real life comes along and tends to get in the way. Sebastian settles for domestic bliss. Their friendship cools off, becomes a little tense and strained.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846552087</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Margaret Forster
|title=Isa and May
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Isamay is a would-be academic and she's writing a thesis about grandmothers in history, inspired, one suspects, by her own grandmothers, Isa and May. Her efforts are constantly diverted by the present needs of her grandmothers and the secrets about their pasts which rise to the surface when she least expects them. There's another complication too. Isamay is in her thirties and has never wanted a child, but reconsiders, despite the fact that her partner, Ian, is adamant that he doesn't want children. The more Isamay delves, the more she realises that there are secrets in Ian's past too.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184663</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Kathryn Stockett
|title=The Help
|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=4.5
|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 memoir: Stranger to History in which he, raised by his Indian Sikh mother, 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>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tom Connolly
|title=The Spider Truces
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The title of this debut novel by Tom Connolly is enigmatic, mysterious. It draws the reader in - just like a fly to a spider's web. And in fairness 'The Spider Truces' does exactly what it say on the tin as the main character, Ellis, is obsessed and terrified in equal measure, of spiders.
... and when you live in an old house, as the O'Rourke family does, there are plenty of spiders and other creepy crawlies about.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956251528</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mary Yukari Waters
|title=The Favorites
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This story is set in Kyoto, Japan, starting in June 1978. Fourteen year old Sarah Rexford and her Japanese mother, Yoko, have come back from the US to stay with family for a few weeks. Sarah was born and brought up in Japan but has lived in the US with her mother and white American father for five years. She is very conscious of the differences between life in Kyoto and in Fielder's Butte, California. Here in Kyoto, the women, including Sarah and her mum, go shopping every day for food, and the food is very different – in an opening scene, Sarah is trying to explain to her grandfather what she normally has for breakfast in the US, and becoming aware of the gulf between her life in Japan and in California.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847392334</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Rose Tremain
|title=Trespass
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Set in the hills of Southern France, Trespass is a novel about sibling love and rivalry, disputed territory and ultimately revenge. In the French corner are Aramon Lunel, resident of the Mas Lunel, and his sister Audrun who lives in a cottage in the grounds. In the English corner are Victoria Verey, a garden designer, and her partner, an untalented watercolourist, Kitty. The catalyst that brings these together is the arrival in France of Anthony Verey, Victoria's sister whose exclusive antiques business in London is failing and who decides to follow his sister in finding a new life in France. Aramon is tempted to sell his family Mas by the lure of 'foreign' money even if that means that his sister's house has to be destroyed to secure the deal.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701177942</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Castle Freeman
|title=All That I Have
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Castle Freeman may sound like two thirds of a firm of provincial solicitors but thankfully this Castle Freeman 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. Not for Wing the gung ho approach to fighting crime. He doesn't wear a uniform, he drives a battered old car rather than the standard issue sheriff's wagon and his gun, so ubiquitous in US law enforcement, is safely tucked away in his bottom drawer. Everyone in the area knows the sheriff and by and large they respect him and his slightly unorthodox way of doing business.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715639021</amazonuk>
}}
