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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreview|author=Maile Chapman|title=Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto|rating=4Frontpage|genreisbn=Literary Fiction295967572X|summary=American nurse Sunny Taylor needed to get away from home and everything familiar. She takes a gamble into the unknown and ends up in Finland. The language barrier seems to be the least of her problems. As a healthy, relatively young female she sees on a daily basis ailments, minor and major, imagined and otherwise. ''Suvanto'' (which gives the novel its title) is the name of the well-known and well-regarded hospital. It operates on a tier system - those who can pay well for medical care and those who are less well-off. And the accommodation, level of nursing and medical care and even the food also operate on this tiered system.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548674</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewPale Pieces|author=Steven Amsterdam|title=Things We Didn't See ComingG M Stevens|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This book has gained praise from the likes of the Washington Post and the Financial times so I was really looking forward Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a good - even great readtrain journey with his companion Django. But did I get it? I think that opening on Where they're going and what the eve purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the millennium (tickets ''on the most recent one) is pretty special in itself and should be a good floor somewhere'hook' and has persuaded our narrator to draw the reader inaccompany him. The narrator, young, male (Why not named as yet) and his family ? Not much else is clear either - but we are packing probably in the family car for past as the journey ahead. The poor car is full pair travel to bursting. Dad is a sceptic and he's taking no chances with this millennium situation the station by coach and he's instructed his family to pack more than the usual festive presents this time. They've (well, dad has) made the decision to get as far away from London as they can - just in case. Just in case of what exactly train is never mentioned, only implied. So it's New Year celebrations with the grandparentsa steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009954704X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexander MaksikMakenna Goodman|title=You Deserve NothingHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Does 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 world need another brink of losing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he'inspirational teacher lets down studentss considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form' story? It's debatable. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, but this one is really rather goodHelen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848545703</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Judith HermannOlga Tokarczuk|title=Alice|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Alice'' is a collection of five short stories, linked thematically since they all deal with the subject House of death, but they are also linked because the central character, AliceDay, is the same in each story. So rather than feeling like short stories the book has a hint House of the novel to it, yet the stories are never completed or fully told so it's a novel where you're not always sure what's going on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668529X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=S J Watson|title=Before I Go To SleepNight
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Rather ironically, 'Before I Go To Sleep' is not What's the good of a book world that keeps changing like that you will forget in a hurry. Imagine, if you will, waking up every morning with no memory of who you are, where you are, or who the person lying next to you in bed is. You ? How can remember things during the day, but once you one go to sleep, your mind is effectively wiped clean. This is the slightly unusual form of amnesia that the narrator, Christine suffers from on calmly living in Watsonit?''s first novel that is a daring and gripping literary thriller.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857520172</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jacqueline YallopThea Lenarduzzi|title=ObedienceThe Tower|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The story opens with a much younger Sister Bernard - no more than a girl really. The daily lives of the nuns is regulated, with long hours for prayer, meditation and solitude. Everyone is housed, fed and watered adequately and that's as far as it goes. No little luxuries to speak of. Nothing to temper the harshness and the silence. Visits from family members 'How unctuous are forbidden also. However, the young Sister Bernard appears to not only be coping very well with all fats of this but even embracing it. She doesnanother't grumble or complain about anything. Howevers life, even although she may appear saintly she is human, just like the rest of us and temptation does come along how dizzying their sugars in the shape of a young manour bloodstream''. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857891014</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Louis B JonesJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=RadianceVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Mark Perdue took his daughter, Carlotta – or Lotta, as she's known – on an indulgent fantasy weekend in Los Angeles. Lotta and some other teenagers were going to live the celebrity lifestyle for a few days, with gigs, recordings and stretch limos to ferry them around. Mark's got problems of his own. He ''All wasstrange'' an eminent physicist but illness has taken its toll. His wife is still suffering .. This haunting phrase encapsulates the emotional effects pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a late-term abortion – the family called the foetus 'Noddy' – fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and Lotta can't reconcile how she feels about the loss of her unborn siblingEline, even going as far as to say that she would have given up the next ten years two of her life to look after the child. And Mark? Well, on the tarmac at LAX it dawns on him that a heart attack would be a convenient way out of everythingprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>158243736X</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alice LaPlanteClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Turn of MindBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is a beautifully-presented book with its eye-catching front cover steeped in anguish and poetic titledistortion. Jennifer has had Even a busy kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and fulfilling professional life as a well-respected medical surgeoncloseness, becomes evidence of love lost. Until now. SheWhen the narrator cries out internally, 's gradually losing bits of her mind to Alzheimer's. Her family is supportive come over here and keep popping in on a regular basis plus therekiss me,''s now it is less an invitation than a livedesperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, her ex-in carerpartner, Magdalena, so that daily life and daily chores are just about covereda ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846554632</amazonuk>1804271934
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jose Saramago Helene Bessette and Margaret Jull CostaKate Briggs (translator)|title=The Elephant's Journey|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=This novel Lili is inspired by a real event – the marriage gift of an elephant from Dom João III of Portugal to his cousin Maximilian, the Hapsburg Archduke of Austria. When the gift was accepted, the elephant Solomon, his mahout Subhro and numerous soldiers, oxen and porters, walked from Lisbon to Vienna to deliver the present, arriving in 1552. This is the story of that journey.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546884</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ross Raisin|title=WaterlineCrying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Raisin has an enviable portfolio for one so youngFirst published in 1953 in French, having been named ''Sunday Times Young Writer Of The Year 2009'' and his [[God's Own Country by Ross Raisin|previous this novel]] receiving fulsome praise. No pressure then with this book. The story opens with all members is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the Little family paying their respects to Cathy. Some have travelled further than others as they all squeeze into Mick's modest housepage and positions them elsewhere, disjointed, somewhere in Glasgow. A less-than-posh parttruncated. Mick is obviously numb with Like the shock of it all (even although his wife's death was not sudden - she had been ill for some time). It's clear that some lives of the familyher characters, distant members, feel uncomfortable and don't quite know how to actthey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670917354</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jamil AhmadJonathan Buckley|title=The Wandering FalconOne Boat
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary="In ''One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the tangle reader into a contemplative realm of crumbling, weather-beaten philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and broken hillsprotagonist, where Teresa. Set against the borders evocative backdrop of Irana small coastal Greek town, Pakistan this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and Afghanistan meet, is a military outpost…" Thus begins its power to provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the tale death of Tor Baz, the Black Falconboth her parents. To this desolate place come two wanderersPrompted by her mourning, a man her narrative voice is meditative and a woman seeking refugedeeply self-aware, inviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. Refuge It is denied them, since it places duties a book that the fort commander cannot accept, not only requires but instead he offers them shelter from the wind inspires depth of a hundred and twenty days. For as long as they want it. Shelterthought, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and foodironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241145155</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anthony BurgessEowyn Ivey|title=A Clockwork OrangeBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=43.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A Clockwork Orange comes under ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the heading young mother of "books you feel you ought to have read by now"toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Mostly these are books that you donDescribed as a ''wild card''t necessarily want , she feels stuck in her day-to read-day life, but are considered such classics that an inability and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to pass any kind fulfil her desires of comment upon them suggests a gaping hole in your educationsimple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man, who says he has 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 lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241951445</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anna GavaldaSally Rooney|title=Breaking AwayIntermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Garance Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is on her way to something of a family weddinggrandmaster at putting it into words. In the car with her brother Her dialogue is gripping and his wife she thinks about all so brilliantly frustrating, as her siblings, characters never quite say exactly what's happened in their lives and who they have all becomefeel. Throughout Among the journey she finds herself bickering constantly with her sister-in-law who always rubs her up many relationships woven into this story, the wrong way, and central one for readers to unravel is the first time Garance senses some tension from her brother too who is usually calm fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and collected at all timesPeter Koubek. Is everything okay in his life or is his wife finally beginning to wear his patience thin? They take Ivan, a detour en route to pick up another siblingsocially awkward chess prodigy, much to Carine's annoyancecontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, and then on reaching the wedding there's a surprise successful lawyer living in store for all of them as the four siblings find themselves on an unplanned escape, together once again, rediscovering Dublin. Following their youthful selves in father's passing after a funlong battle with cancer, brief break from their real livesthe brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906040400</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Haley TannerFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=Vaclav and LenaWhite Nights
|rating=5
|genre=Literary FictionShort Stories|summary=Vaclav and Lena are both children of Russian immigrants, growing up As always in Brooklyn. Vaclav dreams of becoming a fantastic magician, with his friend Lena as his assistantDostoyevsky, and as children they practise their routine together, making lists of the things they'll need, the costumes they will wear and the tricks they will performcharacter work is sublime. Vaclav One is confident and happy, but Lena never left wondering what a character is quiet, withdrawn thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and struggles temperaments with speaking English. Yet Vaclav believes, always, that they are destined to be together. Even when Lena disappears one day and is gone from his life for many years still he hopes that, somehow, he will find her againremarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434020443</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Neil JordanJames Baldwin|title=MistakenGiovanni's Room|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The front cover photograph and ''Giovanni's Room'' follows the blurb on the back cover give this book a mistynarrator David, floatyan American man living in Paris, ethereal feel. The story starts at the endas he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, if you get my drift. The adult Kevin attends an Italian bartender he meets in a local funeral but he's careful to remain low-key, hidden almostgay bar. Why While David is that? And whose funeral is it anyway? As early as page 6engaged to Hella, Jordan's poetic and atmospheric style who is apparent travelling in lines such as ' ... close to Spain, the line of yew trees, were real tension in the massed umbrellas of novel arises not from his infidelity but from the mourners, retreating, like so many mushrooms come alive in a fairy-tale forestdeeper conflict within himself.It is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848544197</amazonuk>0141186356
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Helen HumphreysAlba de Cespedes |title=The Reinvention of LoveForbidden Notebook
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=1961 was a year This Italian work of change, a time, as Jacobsen puts it, ''when men became boys feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and housewives women''. At tension from the outset Finn and his mother are leading a quietmoment our protagonist, rather timorous life in a working class Oslo suburb. Then change overwhelms themValeria Cossati, not through world eventspurchases her forbidden notebook, but and learns about herself in the form of a mysterious child who is Finn's half sister. Linda is not like other children most intimate and Finn's attempt to deal with her impact on his family is the central thread in this quintessential story of growing uprevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857050184</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Salman RushdieOttessa Moshfegh|title=Luka and the Fire of Life|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Back in 1990, Salman Rushdie followed up his controversial 'Satanic Verses' with a book dedicated to his then nine year old son, Zafar, called 'Haroun and the Sea My Year of Stories'. Now, his second son, Milan, finally gets a book of his own, although he had to wait until he was 13 for his father to get around to it. 'Luka and the Fire of Life' is very much a follow up to 'Haroun' Rest and it is certainly helpful, although not necessary, if you have read that book as many of the events in the first book are referred to here.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555328</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Manuel de Lope and John Cullen (Translator)|title=The Wrong BloodRelaxation|rating=43
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Although de Lope has written over At best, this novel is a dozen novelsscathing critique of modern society and reveals the fragility of human relationships; at worst, this it is the first to be translated into Englishcynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. The cover is as pretty as This unlikely heroine, a picture slim, attractive and screams 'Spanish.' So farnewly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the world, so good. But I have but resolves not to admit that on the whole most of the European novels I've read lose sleep over the last year or soit: in fact, have fallen short of the mark for meher solution lies in her hibernation. Will this one prove to be different?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099551853</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Aravind AdigaMatthew Tree|title=Last Man In TowerWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Following a Man Booker winning book like [[The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga|The White Tiger]] is always going Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a daunting challenge for drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any writer, let alone one when that book was the author's first novelof his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. In 'Last Man in Tower' Adiga perhaps sensibly turns So Tim applied himself to a proven structure that allows his story-telling skills to flourish. Gone are clever structural ideasstudies, like 'The White Tiger's' letter format cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and instead we get a straightforward engaging story set in modern day Mumbai where a rich builder is seeking to force residents of an old apartment block to sell their flats to enable redevelopmenthimself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848875169</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christos TsiolkasB0C47LV1PC|title=LoadedFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ari is just nineteen, of Greek descent but living in Melbourne with his family. HeCan you make a ''Yo birthing person''s gayjoke? And if you could, unemployed and not in education. He wants to get away from is the traditional Greek life of his parents and their friends but has no idea how to do question should you make it. He falls back on ? Or is the only life that he knows: clubsquestion if you did, parties, anonymous sex, a cocktail of drugs and alcohol. But will even this be enough to dull the painwould it land? Told vividly in The catch is that the first person and sexually explicit it's a short book – a novella – which grabs you and has answer for both could well be.... no intention of letting you go until it spits you out at the other end.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099757710</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julie MyersonMosby Woods|title=ThenA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The front cover West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is graphic and tellingquite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A frozen London with its skyscrapers emitting black smoke and random fires across war here, a desolate landscapepush for climate action there. As early as the second paragraph we see A feeling that something nobody is wrongin actual charge. Imagine then, something cataclysmic has happened there was a man with precognition. Imagine the lines ''People are eating the birds ... fighting over strategic advantage in this asset; a handful man who can tell you what will happen given any set of scorched sparrowscircumstances.'' The story is told in the first person by the central character which gives it immediacy and draws That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the reader straight most valuable asset inhistory.Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224093754</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0571379559|title=WhateverThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Michel HouellebecqFiona Williams|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Interviewed by BBC film critic Mark Kermode shortly before his 60th birthday''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, Woody Allen gave she lives in the house on the bequiffed one this somewhat startling piece riverbank, built of advicebroken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it''You get s stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and to my agebring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, you realise that when you die you're really not losing that muchthe rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother' Those words sprang to mind while reading ''Whatevers Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, first novel by Michel Houellebecq. The main protagonist in much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she'Whatever'' may be only half the age of the film director, but the outlook on life shared by both men seems strikingly similars his nanny. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687845</amazonuk>
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{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Carlos AlbaKay Chronister|title=The Songs of Manolo EscobarDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Antonio With a world that is the secondbecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-born son to Spanish parents, living in Glasgowapocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. He's embarrassed to be anything other than ScottishWhether it is a robotic takeover, and he tries everything to hide his family background from friends at schoola world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, refusing this genre is a way for humans to speak Spanish with his parents and struggling to forge his own identity in lifecathartically experience their most existential fears. In his middle age, he suddenly finds his life falling apart around him as his marriage begins to fail and his increasingly frail father becomes obsessed with ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the proper burial of his parents back in Spainfears that exist for humanity today. Antonio continues to play It is a rather emotionally distant part in his parents' lives, but then finds himself drawn further and further into the truth about his father's past which, ultimately, leads him shocking novel that still manages to question his own past and the path his future might takefind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184697173X</amazonuk>1803364998
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{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Ann PatchettEric LaRocca|title=State of WonderThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Anders Eckman Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is dead. The news has been delivered in the form an aerogram – remember those blue paper-cum-envelope things we used as a way to use to write to foreign pen-pals when the notion of befriending reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a person you'd never met in 'Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a foreign country still seemed exotic? This flimsy piece ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of paper was delivered to Eckmanthe story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's employers''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. After all it was them that had sent him down to It is a collection of short stories more interested in the Brazilian Amazon to find the enigmatic and evasive Dr Annik Swensonhorrors of illness, grief and more precisely find out exactly how she was getting on with developing the drug humiliation. Horrors that was costing the firm so much of their research budgetlinger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408818590</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jean RhysMadelaine Lucas|title=Wide Sargasso SeaThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In the late eighteen thirties the father of an English gentleman conspires to marry him off to a landed Jamaican Creole as a means of giving his second son an estate and stopping him being a burden on the family. Written in the nineteen sixties, 'Wide Sargasso Sea' was inspired by Rochester's first wife in ''Jane Eyre''Love, and is an impressionistic, hallucinatory account of that womanI's alienation and subsequent descent into madness that can be d read as a prequel , was supposed to the Bronte novel. The book covers Antoinette's childhood in Jamaica and her honeymoon on be a small Caribbean island with her new husband light and their domestic servantsweightless feeling, and the point of view shifts between Antoinette and her husband.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241951550</amazonuk>}}but I had always longed for gravity''
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{{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=Jenn AshworthJennifer Saint|title=Cold LightAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Cold Light'' is the story I was as worthy as any one of three teenage girls who become involved in a predatory adult worldthem. As the story opens we're looking back I would get on what happened from a decade later and we know board that one of the girlsship, ChloëI vowed. I would take my place, died not just in a Valentine's Day suicide pactthe name of the goddess. The town council has finally decided on a memorial to Chloë – it's to be a summerhouse at It was for the side sake of the pond where she drownedmy name, although ittoo. Atalanta's difficult to understand quite why anyone would want to sit there. The ground-breaking ceremony is being televised when it becomes obvious that something has gone terribly wrong. But Lola, our narrator, knows that they've found a body. She also knows who it is.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444721445</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer EganAmanthi Harris|title=A Visit From the Goon SquadBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Apparently there's a saying that 'time's Padma, a goon' - noyoung Sri Lankan, I'd never heard of it and has returned to be fair, neither had the first character to whom it is said in Jennifer Egan's 'A Visit from Villa Hibiscus on the Goon Squad', but together with a pair southern coast of epigraphs from Proust, it's clear that time her home country. This is very definitely what is being explored herea place she spent her formative years. Egan's subject area It is all loosely based around not a place she was born into, but the music worldone she thinks of as home. Her central character, if one can How she came to be said to existat the Villa, is Bennie Salazarhow it became her home, a music mogul who we encounter both directly and tangentially at various stages of his up and down career. the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'Goon Squad'for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma' is also s present fails to escape her past and much like the title musical score of an Elvis Costello tracka film, continuing that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the music theme as Egan uses the music industry as a lens to examine timeVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849010331</amazonuk>1784631930
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lauren Liebenberg178563335X|title=The West Rand Jive Cats Boxing ClubSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Best friends Tommy When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and Chris are 12 years wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-oldHannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. It Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is 1958 a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and they are growing up she's in a small mining town near Johannesburgawe of the vicar, Gail, South Africabut then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. They are learning to box Rachel and to dance to rock and roll musicChristopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844084892</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James Frey1398515388|title=The Final Testament of Boy and the Holy BibleDog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=34.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=The Rabbis say that First of all , it was the signs are there from earthquake, deep in the birth of Ben Zion Avrohom that he is ocean floor, which created the Messiah. That's a lot of anyone to cope with tsunami andthis, like Jesus, there's much of Ben's early life that is untold here. When he is involved in an horrific accident on a building site that he miraculously survives, albeit with terrible scaringturn, caused the prophecies appear to be truenuclear meltdown. He develops a form of epilepsy during which he appears to speak to God The result was complete and utter devastation. He is fluent in ancient languages despite never learning them The deaths were uncountable, knows all and the Holy books by heart and yet distains all forms loss of religion, instead spreading his message of love to all who meet him in modern day New Yorklivelihoods was widespread.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848543174</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mirza Waheed|title= The Collaborator|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The Collaborator fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the title is our narrator, tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a sensitive bookish young manconvenience store. He is the son of the headman of wasn't a small village in a side valley of dog person but the Kashmir. The heritage of the people is convenience store owner's comment that of nomads. The village has been settled for less than a generation. Everything they have has been built by he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the sheer hard graft of the people themselves… including the recently completed mosquedog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918954</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alan Warner0989715337|title=The Stars in Papa on the Bright SkyMoon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In 1999, Alan Warner introduced us to a wonderful set of characters in 'The Sopranos' when a school choir from a backwater town in Scotland went on a trip to Some frogs had gotten into the big city. Much debauchery ensuedwell. 'The Stars in the Bright Sky' once again reunites most of the original gang and there is no need to have read the first book to pick up on the diverse characters. Now though, they've grown up (or at least got older!) and are gathered at Gatwick Airport to set off on a girls' holiday.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009946182X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Elia Barcelo and David Frye (Translator)|title=The Goldsmith's Secret|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='The Goldsmith's Secret' has a wonderfully romantic beginning; alone on a snowy night in New York, the craftsman is puzzling over how to tell his story, and how to separate reality from the overwhelming memories in his mind.
}}
