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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeanette Winterson295967572X|title=The Daylight Gate|rating=4.5|genre=Fantasy|summary=1610s Lancashire, and Alice Nutter is the best landowner you could wish for. Single, rich and connected, she takes no sides in the religious schisms James I has inherited, and takes no bull from those trying to oppress the poor, putting them up and feeding them when no-one else will. But those poor are seen as sinful by others - amoral, dirty in mind, body and spirit, and in league with the devil. And people are beginning to question Alice's attitudes, choice of company - and ageless beauty. This, then, is the based-on-truth story of how Alice Nutter got to be one of the accused in the Pendle Witch trials.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099561859</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewPale Pieces|author=Tupelo Hassman|title=GirlchildG M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Rory Dawn Hendrix (RD for short) lives Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with her mother in his companion Django. Where they're going and what the ironically named Calle de las Flores or Street purpose of Flowers; a pretty name masking a less than idyllic setting. For Calle this journey is a trailer park for those living a life sentence of poverty, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the inhabitants being as upwardly mobile as their static, seedy homes. RD has half brothers but they live with their father, leaving RD to live alone with her mother floor somewhere'' and nearby grandmother, a father being a luxury that Rory Dawn has learnt persuaded our narrator to live withoutaccompany him. Rory Dawn Why not? Not much else is also a Girl Scout and has a handbook to prove it clear either - but she's we are probably in a troop of one, alone with the ideals of an organisation that she only glimpses through disadvantage and in past as the same way that she glimpses pair travel to the materialistic world beyond her means. However, her mother wants more for her than station by coach and the teen pregnancies that seem to have become their family heirloom and there train is hope as RD is highly intelligent; but can this be enough?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178087104X</amazonuk>a steam locomotive.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anita DesaiMakenna Goodman|title=The Artist Helen of DisappearanceNowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Anita Desai's ''The Artist It could be argued that the pervading theme of Disappearance'' this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a collection disgraced professor on the brink of three novellas losing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with several satisfying unifying featuresa force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. All are set in modern day India, all involve some looking back in time The connection between Helen and all three involve some consideration the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the creative art - who it is forcountryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, what happens her past tied to it once it leaves his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the artist's control house shares stories about Helen, and who describes her as 'owns' it. Most of all, each one an entity that is beautifully writtenpure consciousness, with strong characters and evocative descriptions of personal lossbeyond form''. In terms of length each is relatively short - around 50 pages long - but after each one you feel that you've been engrossed Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the story just as much as if you had read a novel of more conventional lengthreader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099553953</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=James KelmanOlga Tokarczuk|title=Mo Said She Was QuirkyHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Mo may have said that Helen was quirky - neurotic might have been a more accurate assessment of his partner though. Although not a first person narrative, James Kelman''What's latest is another dramatic monologue, although the first time he has placed a female as his main character. Helen is a single mother, working nights as good of a croupier in a London casino. Mo is her Asian boyfriend. In fairness to Helen, she has a lot to worry about - a damaged upbringing world that has seen her older brother leave home without trace, a failed marriage, and a life of constant struggle. As usual with Kelman, his approach is tender, yet gritty and often gently amusing. He's always sympathetic to his main characters. However, if you are new to Kelman, be warned keeps changing like that he is a writer that is heavy ? How can one go on a distinctive style more than plot per se.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144566</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ivo Stourton|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 calmly living in interior design, where he can use his love of books to arrange - at a cost - the contents, design and most importantly the colours, of upper class peopleit?'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>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David RainThea Lenarduzzi|title=The Heat of the SunTower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=David Rain is far too young to be writing this exquisitely. That''How unctuous are the fats of another's all Ilife, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''m going to say.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jeremy ChambersJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=The Vintage and the GleaningVaim|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Smithy, a retired sheep shearer, now works on a vineyard in the countryside of Victoria, Australia''All was strange''.. Too poor to retire and too ill from the after effects of his former alcoholic lifestyle to return to the physically arduous world of shearing, he exists rather than lives amongst his mates and near his son and daughter-in-law. Meanwhile rumours abound about This haunting phrase encapsulates the deeds pervading sense of local thug, Brett Clayton and, whether true or not, he's definitely someone to be avoided. However, when Brett's wife Charlotte leaves him and asks Smithy to take her otherworldliness which permeates this story set inVaim, he does so without a second thought. Sheltered under his roof fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and protectionEline, Charlotte confides two of the protagonists caught in Smithy, forcing him to remember his own past and dreamsits melancholic current. Meanwhile the unspoken question remains: Brett knows where Charlotte is so what's he going to do about it?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780871635</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Timeri N MurariClaire-Louise Bennett|title=The Taliban Cricket ClubBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We all knowEverything in this book, however sweet or think we knowseemingly innocent, how oppressive life was for Afghans, particularly Afghan women, under the Taliban regime, but when you read this novel, boy do you get a sense of how tough it really wasis steeped in anguish and distortion.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1742378846</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Alix Ohlin|title=Inside|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Grace, Even a therapistkiss, stumbles upon usually a young man in the woods who has attempted to commit suicide, symbol of intimacy and her vocational interests are immediately engaged. The novel takes us through their complex relationshipcloseness, both its surface routines and day to day moments but also Grace's eventually successful search for the reasons behind Tug's desperationbecomes evidence of love lost. Ohlin interlaces with this When the story of Mitchnarrator cries out internally, Grace's ex-husband, 'come over here and of Anniekiss me, one of '' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her clients, chronicling both their relationship with Grace, but also their network of families and friends, acquaintances and colleaguesemotional numbness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780871104</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Michel Houellebecq|title=The Map and the Territory|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Jed Martin, initially a photographer and later painter, has a singular take on the world and his craft. This novel takes him from obscurity as a reclusive student to fame as the doyenne imagined recipient of the contemporary art scene and in this journey we see exposed both the underlying values but in many ways the essential emptiness of the art world. He plea is 'taken up'Xavier, feted and courted by critics and patrons, by those who know nothing but monetary valueher ex-partner, and Houellebecq doesn't let any opportunity for a sharp gibe at galleries, art critics and agents go past. The key ghost she conjures to Jed's fame is ironically his complete anonymity, and Houellebecq’s creation of the catarrh dribbling agent Marylin who manages Jed’s ‘outing’ is one of the classics of modern satiretest 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 and, of course, there's Sylvie.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184854328X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=L R Fredericks|title=Fate|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=It's the 18th century and 11 year old Francis Damory character is spoken to by great great grandfather, Tobias. Nothing odd except that Tobias is dead thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and speaks via a portrait in Farundell, the family's Oxfordshire home. Hence begins the obsession that will take the adult Sir Francis across the world and through a lifetime of adventures to track Tobias down. The longer Francis looks, the more he realises that Great Great Grandfather isn't dead and that, therefore, Francis wants whatever he's ontemperaments with remarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184854331X</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Natasa Dragnic and Liesl Schillinger (translator)James Baldwin|title=Every Day, Every HourGiovanni's Room
|rating=4.5
|genre=HumourLiterary Fiction |summary=Dora and Luka meet and become firm friends. In normal situations one might add ''and a whole lot moreGiovanni's Room'' to that sentencefollows the narrator David, but Dora and Luka are an American man living in KindergartenParis, which makes their intense relationship hard as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to define. As they grow into adultsHella, however, it becomes obvious that there who is something between them and no matter how much theytravelling in Spain, or their circumstances, try to fight this it is there and is the real tension in the novel arises not going to fade awayfrom his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. Dora’s parents move her across the continent, careers develop It is David's crippling shame and flourish, out denial of nowhere they are enveloped by family lives, but still there is an invisible bond his sexuality that draws them back to one anotherultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701186941</amazonuk>0141186356
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alissa Walser and Jamie Bulloch (translator)Alba de Cespedes |title=MesmerizedForbidden Notebook
|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?''
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}}{{Frontpage|author= Kay Chronister|title= Desert Creatures|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|isbn=1803364998}}{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Fannie FlaggEric LaRocca|title=The Trees Grew Because I Still Dream About YouBled There|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= 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 process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the 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 interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.}}{{Frontpage|author=Madelaine Lucas|title=Thirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=At the age of 60''Love, Maggie FortenburyI's glory days seem d read, was supposed to have passed her by. An ex-Miss Alabamabe a light and weightless feeling, she headed but I had always longed for the fame she dreamt of in gravity'the Big Apple' and ended Told from a retrospective view, instead, making disastrous life choices a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that took once defined her along a different route. However she had made one good decision: to work for Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the diminutive Hazel Whisenkott, midget and founder of Red Mountain Realty. Now, as Hazel is dead, and despite her friendship affair with a man twenty years her colleagues (obese, optimistic Brenda and moaning Ethel), suicide seems senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the next logical stepsummer after. It has to be done correctly as Maggie comes from Set against the backdrop of an era when you wouldnisolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt't want to let anyone down or any commitment unfulfilled. Therefore picking ' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her final day becomes increasingly difficult when other things get in the wayolder lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, including a troupe of Whirling Dervisheshow it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099555484</amazonuk>0861546490
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Michael Grothaus
|title=Beautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.''
''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|isbn=191458564X}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Fiona McGregorJennifer Saint|title=Indelible InkAtalanta|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Once wealthy, middle class Australian suburbanite Marie King never thought she'd be starting a new life at 59 but here she is'I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, divorced and having to sell the marital homeI vowed. UnfortunatelyI would take my place, attached to not just in the name of the marital home is goddess. It was for the marital garden into which Marie didnsake of my name, too. Atalanta''t only give life but also pour her own life Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. However Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Marie tries to be positive Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and decides that if she's going fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to be join the Argonauts, a new personfierce band of warriors, she may as well go descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the whole way. This means tattoos (much chance to her offspringsfight in Artemis' horror) name and an unlikely friendship with tattooist Rhyscarve out her own legendary place in history. With that comes the realisation that the privileged suburb What follows is a whirlwind of Mossman isn't all there is to Sydney. There's much more to the city, challenges and discovery and indeed herselfthrough it, than Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she first thoughtmarries, it will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857894129</amazonuk>1472292154
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jude MorganAmanthi Harris|title=The Secret Life of William ShakespeareBeautiful Place|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=Books about Shakespeare vary hugely both in terms Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of approach and qualityher home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. Some focus on historical fact It is not a place she was born into, while others play rather more loosely with but the romance one she thinks of his lifeas home. Fortunately for readers How she came to be at the Villa, Jude Morgan's books are rather more reliably excellent. What's morehow it became her home, he has a track record of fiction and the machinations that concerns great writers, having previously tackled have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the Brontës (''The Taste of Sorrowscore'') for this gentle and the romantic poets (''Passion'')yet subtly violent novel. So my expectations were already quite high coming into his Padma''The Secret Life s present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of William Shakespeare'' - expectations a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that he has again surpassedhappens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755358228</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Vann178563335X|title=DirtSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=WeWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she're back in the mid-nineteen-eighties s a trainee vicar, sitting in on a suburb of Sacramento PCC meeting and Galen lives with his mother on wondering why they're held when you need to pick the family walnut farmchildren up. The farm's not what it wasHer husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, largely having been left to its own devices since the death of Galen's abusive grandfather some years beforewhilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. GalenThelma's ''father'' is something of an unknown quantity daughter-in- his mother law won't even discuss who he was or tell Galen anything about him, but then she's able to shut let her see her mind to most things which she finds unpleasantgrandson. ''Her'' mother has been moved from Holthorpe, on the farm Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a nursing home real bond with the parish - and she's still quite active in awe of the vicar, Gail, but her memory is going. Suzie-Qthen she's sister, Helen is determined to get her hands on been doing the family money job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the benefit of her seventeenbeach would do them some good -year-old daughter, Jenniferit was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434021962</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chuck Palahniuk1398515388|title=Invisible Monsters RemixThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary='Don't expect this to be First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the kind of story that goes: tsunami and thenthis, and thenin turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and thenutter devastation.' And yet... Once upon a time I collected a couple of Palahniuk booksThe deaths were uncountable, upon his first, ''Fight Club''-inspired flush and the loss of British success, and never got round to reading themlivelihoods was widespread. And then The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the book reviewing gods conspired to give me [[Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk|Pygmy]], [[Telllist of priorities but -All by Chuck Palahniuk|Tellsix months after the tsunami -All]] and [[Damned by Chuck Palahniuk|Damned]] to peruseKazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. And then I still didnHe wasn't go back through his past works. But then a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he revised Invisible Monsters, would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his second-written car door and third-published novel, and I got to look at it after allTamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099575051</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Marie N'Diaye and John Fletcher (translator)0989715337|title=Three Strong WomenPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As it says on ''Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the tinfragrant water, this powerful novel revolves naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around three womenhim, connected by their strength and two countries and diverse cultures (France and Africa) but also other, more subtle factorssticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. (More Two of that later.) First there's lawyer, Norah, returning to Africa the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the behest strange noise of her estranged father. There has never been love lost between the buckets as he filled them, mainly because her father prefers to ignore his female offspring; therefore his reason for the summons is a mystery, until... The second story '' How is that for an opening? The style of African teacher, Fanta, forced by an event beyond her control to leave Africa and settle this novel in France with her husband Rudy. Then the final section belongs to Khady, widowed after three years form of marriage interconnected short stories goes from succinct and sent laconic to France by her Cinderella-esque mother-in-lawwistful and musing, turning on a sixpence. As Khady's status as a childless widow is financially unattractiveAnd author Marco North, it who has been deemed that she would be the most wonderful turn of more use sending money back from Europe... once she has entered France phrase, starts as an illegal immigranthe means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050567</amazonuk>
}}
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