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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James Kelman295967572X|title=Mo Said She Was QuirkyPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Mo may have said that Helen was quirky - neurotic might have been Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a more accurate assessment of train journey with his partner thoughcompanion Django. Although not a first person narrative, James KelmanWhere they's latest is another dramatic monologue, although re going and what the first time he has placed a female as his main character. Helen purpose of this journey is a single mother, working nights as a croupier in a London casino. Mo is her Asian boyfrienduncertain. In fairness to Helen, she Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and has a lot persuaded our narrator to worry about - a damaged upbringing that has seen her older brother leave home without trace, a failed marriage, and a life of constant struggleaccompany him. As usual with Kelman, his approach Why not? Not much else is tender, yet gritty and often gently amusing. He's always sympathetic to his main characters. However, if you clear either - but we are new probably in the past as the pair travel to Kelman, be warned that he is a writer that the station by coach and the train is heavy on a distinctive style more than plot per sesteam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144566</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ivo StourtonMakenna Goodman|title=The Book Lover's Tale|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Matt will admit that his writing career failed, and so he had to join his wife in interior design, where he can use his love of books to arrange - at a cost - the contents, design and most importantly the colours, Helen of upper class people's home libraries for them. He'll concede that it's a good way to get into the houses, and beds, of rich women, such as his latest flame, Claudia. But why is this, his confession, talking of murder?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552773875</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Banville|title=Ancient LightNowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The narrator It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in John Banville's ''Ancient Light'' your life is Alex Cleavenot quite right. The protagonist, a stage actor in disgraced professor on the curtain call brink of losing both his careerand his relationship, embodies this feeling. For reasons that become clearer towards 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 end former owner of the book, countryside house he is recalling his first relationship's considering, when as Helen represents a teenager volta in 1950s Irelandhis life, he had a passionate affair with the mother of her past tied to his best friendpotential fresh start. HoweverThe realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, his past and describes her as ''an entity that is also blighted by recollections of his own daughterpure consciousness, beyond form''s suicide ten years previously. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670920614</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David RainOlga Tokarczuk|title=The Heat House of Day, House of the SunNight
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=David Rain is far too young to be writing this exquisitely. That''What's all Ithe good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?''m going to say.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jeremy ChambersThea Lenarduzzi|title=The Vintage and the GleaningTower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Smithy, a retired sheep shearer, now works on a vineyard in ''How unctuous are the countryside fats of Victoria, Australia. Too poor to retire and too ill from the after effects of his former alcoholic lifestyle to return to the physically arduous world of shearinganother's life, he exists rather than lives amongst his mates and near his son and daughter-how dizzying their sugars in-law. Meanwhile rumours abound about the deeds of local thug, Brett Clayton and, whether true or not, heour bloodstream's definitely someone to be avoided. However, when Brett's wife Charlotte leaves him and asks Smithy to take her in, he does so without a second thought. Sheltered under his roof and protection, Charlotte confides in Smithy, forcing him to remember his own past and dreams. Meanwhile the unspoken question remains: Brett knows where Charlotte is so what's he going to do about it?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780871635</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alix OhlinJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=InsideVaim|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Grace, a therapist, stumbles upon a young man in the woods who has attempted to commit suicide, and her vocational interests are immediately engaged. The novel takes us through their complex relationship, both its surface routines and day to day moments but also Grace's eventually successful search for the reasons behind Tug's desperationAll was strange''... Ohlin interlaces with This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this the story of Mitch, Grace's ex-husbandset in Vaim, a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and of AnnieEline, one two of her clients, chronicling both their relationship with Grace, but also their network of families and friends, acquaintances and colleaguesthe protagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780871104</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michel HouellebecqClaire-Louise Bennett|title=The Map and the TerritoryBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jed MartinEverything in this book, initially a photographer and later painterhowever sweet or seemingly innocent, has a singular take on the world is steeped in anguish and his craftdistortion. This novel takes him from obscurity as Even a kiss, usually a reclusive student to fame as the doyenne symbol of the contemporary art scene intimacy and in this journey we see exposed both the underlying values but in many ways the essential emptiness closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. When the art world. He is narrator cries out internally, 'taken up', feted come over here and courted by critics and patronskiss me, by those who know nothing but monetary value, and Houellebecq doesn't let any opportunity for ' it is less an invitation than a sharp gibe at galleries, art critics and agents go pastdesperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The key to Jed's fame imagined recipient of this plea is ironically his complete anonymityXavier, and Houellebecq’s creation of the catarrh dribbling agent Marylin who manages Jed’s ‘outing’ is one of the classics of modern satireher ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099554577</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jose SaramagoHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=CainLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Death is only the beginning, or so some say, and the first death of one human at the hands of another - Cain's slaying of Abel with what always seemed an unlikely murder weapon - is the start of this excoriating drive through what Cain felt when set against the god that both snubbed his sacrifices and allowed, despite alleged omnipotence, the murder First published in 1953 in the first place. Riding a donkeyFrench, this Cain takes up life as personal guard and lover to Lilith, but also leaves the Land of Nod for diverse Old Testament locations, where he sees the stories of the golden calf, the tower of Babel, Sodom and Gomorrah and more at first hand. All they ever do novel is make him realise the gulf between what god is supposed to benevolently embody, and how he acts.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552248</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sarah Quigley|title=The Conductor|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Composer Dmitri Shostakovich can block anything out whilst he's writing music: his wife Nina's voice, his children arguing, even a timeless text which wrenches the side effects hearts of living in Stalinist Leningrad. However, life is about to become more than an annoying distraction from music as Germany declares war on Russia and gradually initiates what history will come to know as the Siege of Leningrad. Shostakovich then realises, its readers just as gradually, that his music may serve a purpose to sustain his compatriots in the absence of sufficient food Bessette wrenches words and hope. His Seventh Symphony becomes a protest against oppression, but he needs an orchestra to play it and the top musicians have been evacuated to save the country's cultural heritage. He therefore turns to Karl Eliasberg, the aspiring but third rate conductor of a cobbled together orchestra. Music can create miracles but, for Eliasberg and his musicians, being able to play it will be the biggest miracle of all.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>190880002X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Umberto Eco|title=The Prague Cemetery|rating=3|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=If sentences from their proper position on the popular press is to be believed, then those of us who write book reviews do so to show off our own (non-existent) talents as writers whilst trying to condemn the abilities of far greater worth. Well, not quite. I would not pretend to have a tiny iota-fragment of the talent that Umberto Eco has. Nor would I seek to decry his latest opus. On the other hand, I am an ordinary reader – one moreover that enjoyed The Name of the Rose immensely – page and I really struggled with ''The Prague Cemetery''. I didn't struggle to get through it. It is actually quite an easy read, if you just read the surface of it. I did struggle to see the point of it. It may well just be me. I put my hands up.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555972</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sam Thompson|title=Communion Town|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Communion Town – one city but it may as well be many as each person's perception of it is coloured by their experiences within it. Each chapter introduces us to a different storypositions them elsewhere, a different viewpoint and thereforedisjointed, practically a different citytruncated. Starting with the ominous, creepy story of Nicolas, through stories encapsulating such themes as recaptured friendship, murder and an enigmatic take on Like the life lives of a private investigatorher characters, we start to piece together the nature of Communion Town..they are often left tragically incomplete. or do we?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007454767</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Austin RatnerJonathan Buckley|title=The Jump ArtistOne Boat
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Austin Ratner's debut novel, ''The Jump ArtistOne Boat''is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, first published in drawing the US in 2009, is reader into a fictionalised account contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. Set against the extraordinary life evocative backdrop of celebrated photographer, Philippe Halsman. Born a Latvian Jewsmall coastal Greek town, as a young man in 1928 he was walking in this work masterfully captures the Austrian mountains when he saw his father fall magic of its setting and its power to his deathprovoke profound introspection. This would be traumatic for anyone, but Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the issues were compounded when he was accused death of murder both her parents. Prompted by the Austrian courts in what was probably antiher mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-semitic and certainly xenophobic in explanation. Philippe's second trialaware, inviting the first failing potentially because his mother had engaged reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a Jewish lawyerbook that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, details the fundamental lack of evidence since its narrative structure is fragmentary and shoddy police work behind the accusationironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670921599</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Martin AmisEowyn Ivey|title=Lionel AsboBlack Woods Blue Sky
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Martin Amis can be relied upon to create some pretty nasty''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, self-centred central characters. Usually they are upper class cads and bounders but in Lionel Asbo his central character is at the polar opposite in terms young mother of class. He's violenttoddler Emaleen, uncouth and ignorant. He's who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a criminal whose usual sidekicks are bar waitress, a pair setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of vicious pit bullsEmaleen. His Described as a 'manner' is a fictitious down trodden area of London called Diston Town where he lives wild card'', she feels stuck in a tower block with his nephewher day-to-day life, Des, who in fact is and yearns to cross the central character in Wolverine river and live on the bookNorth Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. DesWhen she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, in contrast is far more sympathetic - intelligent taciturn and kindsolitary man, that is if you overlook the fact that as who says he has a 15 year old he had an affair cabin over there, she feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with his grandmother, Lionel's motherher. HeyWithout realising it, no onethis calling will transform hers and Emaleen's perfectlives forever. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224096206</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ben FountainSally Rooney|title=Billy Lynn's Long Halftime WalkIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction|summary=In Ben Fountain's ''Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk'', Billy Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and what is left something of his Bravo troop colleagues are back from the war in Iraq following a brave firefight caught on camera by embedded journalistsgrandmaster at putting it into words. The US armyHer dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, keen to gain PR from the event has brought them back on an optimistically titled 'Victory Tour' despite the fact that as her characters never quite say exactly what they are all to be re-deployed the next weekfeel. The majority of the book takes place on Among the last day of many relationships woven into this tour when Billy is in his home-state of Texasstory, where the Bush link makes it even more pro-war, as the boys are invited central one for readers to attend that most American of PR events, unravel is the Thanksgiving football game at the Dallas Cowboys stadiumfraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Accompanying the troop is Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a veteran Hollywood producer who has promised the soldiers that he can sell successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their story to father's passing after a movie studio for mega-bucks. If only it were that simplelong battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857864386</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=L R FredericksFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=FarundellWhite Nights|rating=3.5|genre=Historical FictionShort Stories|summary=American Paul Asher is damaged by memories and dreams originating from World War I, or at least he thinks that's where they're from. Once the war is over and, as he's estranged from his father As always in the USDostoyevsky, Paul decides to remain in the UK to find character workis sublime. Work comes to him as he's asked to assist Lord Percy Damory at Farundell, the Damory ancestral home. Paul's job One is straightforward: Sir Percy needs someone to whom he can dictate memoirs of never left wondering what a well-travelled life among distant tribes. However Paul's life at Farundell will be anything but straightforward thanks to the Damorys' apparent eccentricities, an ancestor from the 18th century who refuses to be labelled as a ghost character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and, of course, there's Sylvietemperaments with remarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184854328X</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=L R FredericksJames Baldwin|title=FateGiovanni's Room
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=It''Giovanni's Room'' follows the 18th century and 11 year old Francis Damory 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 spoken engaged to by great great grandfatherHella, Tobias. Nothing odd except that Tobias who is dead and speaks via a portrait travelling in FarundellSpain, the family's Oxfordshire home. Hence begins the obsession that will take real tension in the adult Sir Francis across novel arises not from his infidelity but from the world and through a lifetime of adventures to track Tobias downdeeper conflict within himself. The longer Francis looks, the more he realises that Great Great Grandfather isnIt is David't dead s crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that, therefore, Francis wants whatever he's onultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184854331X</amazonuk>0141186356
}}
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A BBC film crew is sent to India to make a documentary about This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an Indian prison with a difference. There are no walls, the prisoners hold down jobs and their families live with them as a condition air of acceptance. In fact, to all intents suspense and purposes, it seems like an ordinary village which is all tension from the more unusual when you consider that they all share the same crime category; all the prisoners have been convicted of murder. The programme makers (20-something British-bornmoment our protagonist, Indian director RayValeria Cossati, ruthless producer Serena and ex-convict-turned-presenterpurchases her forbidden notebook, Nathan) are expecting an eventful shoot and, learns about herself in return, the inhabitants are expecting a film unit exhibiting the standards for which the BBC has become world famous. Both parties will be sorely disappointedmost intimate and revealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670917087</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lionel ShriverOttessa Moshfegh|title=The New RepublicMy Year of Rest and Relaxation
|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Lionel Shriver adds a beard-shaped appendage to Southern Portugal in The New Republic and immediately has it fighting for independenceAt best, taking this novel is a wry look at terrorism as well as the ethics scathing critique of modern society and reveals the international press corps. After a series fragility of international terrorism actshuman relationships; at worst, it is the Os Soldados Ousados De Barbacynical, or the SOB for shortpredictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. This unlikely heroine, have gone quiet at the same time as charismatic journalist Barrington Sadler has vanished without a trace. Insecure former lawyer Edgar Kellogg steps into Barrington's post: Kellogg on slim, attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the hunt for serial killersworld, as but resolves not to lose sleep over it were: in fact, her solution lies in her hibernation. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007459807</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anne SwardMatthew Tree|title=BreathlessWe'll Never Know|rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There are those Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be 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 say that, on an individual level, books are like Marmite: you love it or you hate it. Oh, if only it were so easyhad endless crises of self confidence. ''Breathless'' is one of those that I neither love nor hateSo Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and yet am not totally uninspired by eitherset himself high but achievable ambitions. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051032</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0C47LV1PC
|title=Fragility
|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Martin KohanMosby Woods|title=School for PatriotsA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=ThereThe West isn's a fair chance that t the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if you pick up a South American novel, mending it's going to score quite highly on is the 'seriously odd' scalebest course of action. Governments are flailing. Martín Kohan's School A war here, a push for Patriots, translated by Nick Caistor, doesn't disappoint climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in that regardactual charge. The main characterImagine then, María Teresa, is an innocent, shy teaching assistant at there was a Buenos Aires school that is run on military academy style disciplineman with precognition. The running of Imagine the school is itself something of strategic advantage in this asset; a surprise but that's not man who can tell you what makes this strangewill happen given any set of circumstances. What ramps up That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the 'odd' factor here is that she spends vast amounts of this short novel hiding most valuable asset in the boys' loohistory. Imagine then, ostensibly to catch young boys smoking despite there being no evidence that any student has contravened this rule in man loses this locationability. One might say she has nothing What would governments do to go on. Then again, best not in the circumstances. get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687438</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alonso Cueto and Frank Wynne (translator)0571379559|title=The Blue HourHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Adrian Ormache''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, middle class Peruvian lawyerbut instead, has a beautiful wifeshe lives in the house on the riverbank, two daughters built of the sort to make any parent proud and a comfortable lifestylebroken bricks. His parents divorced when he was small so, Insubstantial as he lived with his motherit might look, he has fragmented memories it's stood the passage of a grufftime, distant dadstorms and floods. Despite Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his father's aloofvegetables, dictatorial manner, Adrian has always comforted himself with to complete the fact he played a useful role as a landdelivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys -bound naval officerSonny and Max, fighting Senderista terrorists for the good of Perurainbow twins. After the death of Sonny's colouring reflects his mother everything changes's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Adrian finds documents People don't believe that lead him away from they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his beliefs, towards a truth mother that will shatter more than his fathershe's imagehis nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434019410</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Fiona McGregorKay Chronister|title=Indelible InkDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Once wealthy, middle class Australian suburbanite Marie King never thought she'd be starting With a new life at 59 but here she world that isbecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, divorced and having to sell the marital homepost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Unfortunately, attached to the marital home Whether it is the marital garden into which Marie didn't only give life but also pour her own life. Howevera robotic takeover, Marie tries to be positive and decides that if she's going to be a new personworld devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, she may as well go the whole this genre is a wayfor humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. This means tattoos (much to her offsprings' horror) and an unlikely friendship with tattooist Rhys. With 'Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that comes aligns many of the realisation fears that the privileged suburb of Mossman isn't all there exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to Sydney. There's much more to the city, and indeed herself, than she first thoughtfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857894129</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Jude MorganEric LaRocca|title=The Secret Life of William ShakespeareTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Historical FictionHorror|summary=Books about Shakespeare vary hugely both in terms of approach Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and qualityprocess them. Some focus on historical factMost horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, while others play rather more loosely with by the romance end of his life. Fortunately for readersthe story, Jude Morgan's books are rather more reliably excellentbeatable. WhatEric LaRocca's more, he has a track record of fiction that concerns great writers, having previously tackled the Brontës (''The Taste of SorrowTrees Grew Because I Bled There'') is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and the romantic poets (''Passion'')humiliation. So my expectations were already quite high coming into his Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''The Secret Life of William ShakespeareBig Bad'' - expectations that he has again surpassed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755358228</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David VannMadelaine Lucas|title=DirtThirst for Salt|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We're back in the mid-nineteen-eighties in a suburb of Sacramento and Galen lives with his mother on the family walnut farm. The farm's not what it wasLove, largely having been left to its own devices since the death of GalenI's abusive grandfather some years before. Galen's ''father'' is something of an unknown quantity - his mother won't even discuss who he d read, was or tell Galen anything about himsupposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but then sheI had always longed for gravity's able to shut her mind to most things which she finds unpleasant. ''Her'' mother has been moved from the farm to a nursing home - she's still quite active but her memory is going. Suzie-Q's sister, Helen is determined to get her hands on the family money for the benefit of her seventeen-year-old daughter, Jennifer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434021962</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{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=Marcello FoisJennifer Saint|title=Memory of the AbyssAtalanta|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We are on Sardinia, over a hundred years ago. It is a land of legend, where storytellers can see a different nature to the moon each night and convey that in their earthly stories. It's a world 'I was as worthy as any one of wonder, where sheep can fall from the skies for more than one reasonthem. It's a poor landI would get on board that ship, where lads are expected to be responsible shepherds by the time they are tenI vowed. As a result people look after each other - exceptI would take my place, while returning from a Christening Samuele and his father are refused basic hospitality. Later when the boy runs away one night the land falls away beneath him - yet he finds a girl to ground him to this earth. Which is most relevant when he goes to war, and particularly when he comes back and finds himself a wronged man, and in need of vengeance...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906694001</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kim Thuy and Sheila Fischman (translator)|title=Ru|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Everyone of a certain age will remember the American withdrawal from Vietnam not just in 1975. This was the answer to years name of student protests and the prayers of many US parents who saw sons like theirs drafted to war only to return in body bagsgoddess. As far as the west was concerned, the suffering It was over. However, for the Vietnamese people, the suffering continued as the Khmer Rouge and then the invading Cambodians killedsake of my name, tortured and destroyed people who were just trying to survivetoo. ''RuAtalanta'' is written by and about one such person.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685486</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kathleen MacMahonAmanthi Harris|title=This Is How It EndsBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This is an incredibly gentle (and gently funny) love story set in Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the winter southern coast of 2008 when the Irish economy was booming and the US were about to elect their first black presidenther home country. Hugh ( This is a deliciously grumpy surgeon) and his currently unemployed architect daughter Addie lived happily in an Irish seaside townplace she spent her formative years. Ok, he'd broken both his wrists tripping over Addie's dog and Addie found it hard It is not to cry sometimesa place she was born into, but they were alright. Then the one day, out she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the blueVilla, they receive a voicemail message from Brunohow it became her home, a distant American relative whoand the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the 's just popped over the ocean to say 'Hi!score' Remembering the last US relative who came to visit (it didn't go well), Addie for this gentle and Hugh decide yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to ignore the phone... and the front door... escape her past and much like the occupant musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the bench seat across the road... He's bound to go home eventuallyVilla. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847445462</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Carolyn Jess-Cooke178563335X|title=The Boy Who Could See DemonsSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=FantasyLiterary Fiction|summary=Alex can see demons. HeWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's been able a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to ever since his dad left when he was five years oldpick the children up. Some demons are hideous Her husband, some are frighteningChristopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and some just lurk her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in corners doing not much at all-law won't let her see her grandson. One Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is called Ruena lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and heshe's Alexin awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she's best friendbeen doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher 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>0749953136</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jess Richards1398515388|title=Snake RopesThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=It's First of all, it was the time for earthquake, deep in the tall mainland men to come to ocean floor, which created the island to tradetsunami and this, in turn, so 16 year old Mary preparescaused the nuclear meltdown. She brings out her handmade 'broideries' The result was complete and hides Barneyutter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, her little brother, in a cupboardand the loss of livelihoods was widespread. This is a necessary preparation born The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of fear, for priorities but - six months after the island boys have been vanishing, taken by the traderstsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. On this particular day MaryHe wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's broideries go, but so does Barneycomment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144473783X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ginny Baily0989715337|title=Africa JunctionPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Adele has made a mess of her life and she knows it''Some frogs had gotten into the well. Working with '' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the stresses fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of being a teacher as well as a single mother and having shrugged off a disastrous relationshiptheir eggs wove around him, her life seems to be set on self-destructsticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Part Two of the problem is that dogs leaned over the past won't leave her alone. Adele is haunted by opening and barked down at the memory strange noise of Ellena, a friend from her childhood in Senegal, Africathe buckets as he filled them. With one unthinking, childish action, Adele inadvertently devastated Ellena's family so, in order to go forward, Adele must go back to the continent where it all began. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552728</amazonuk>}}'
}}