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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shani Boianjiu295967572X|title=The People of Forever are not AfraidPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=45

|summary=YaelOur unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of this journey is, Lea and Avishag go through their final years at high school in a little Israeli town is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the Lebanese border floor somewhere'' and then on has persuaded our narrator to the inevitable: the Israeli Defense Force (IDF)accompany him. Gender Why not? Not much else is immaterial, all Israeli citizens must serve at least two years and for these girls clear either - but we are probably in the moment arrives after graduation. Yael's posting seems futile past as she guards a training base against marauding lads, sneaking across the border pair travel to pinch perfume from pockets rather than pose any real security threat. Lea's assignment on a border checkpoint searching the daily line of immigrant workers station by coach and the train is riddled with routine. Avishag joins up with her own demons, her brother Dan having died after his national service. She knows how it happened but continues to struggle with why; something she must handle alonea steam locomotive. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781090092</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Barbara PymMakenna Goodman|title=A Glass Helen of BlessingsNowhere

|summary=Wilmet Forsyth It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a married womanhard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, childless and living a life disgraced professor on the brink of leisurelosing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. She However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and her friend Rowena met their husbands - both Majors - in Italy, where they served as Wrens during the warunnerving: Helen. Rowena now has three children The connection between Helen and her husband David might just be developing a wandering eyethe protagonist is indirect yet intimate. WilmetAs the former owner of the countryside house he's husbandconsidering, RodneyHelen represents a volta in his life, is still ''Noddy'' her past tied to his mother with whom they livepotential fresh start. Unburdened by children or domestic responsibility Wilmet lunches or shops and becomes involved in The realtor who shows the social life of protagonist around the local churchhouse shares stories about Helen, St Lukeand describes her as 's. But it's her relationship with Piersan entity that is pure consciousness, Rowenabeyond form''s somewhat wayward brother. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which might pose the biggest threat to her comfortable, if rather boring existencereader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844085805</amazonuk>1804272205

The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in that image is the house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Toni JordanThea Lenarduzzi|title=Nine DaysThe Tower

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Christopher 'Kip' Westaway lives in a suburb How unctuous are the fats of Melbourneanother's life, Australia with mother Jeanhow dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, sister Connie and his twinThea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, Francisthe protagonist of this tale. KipJust as T's mother considers him story is being told, the story of a layabout who doesn't deserve second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the special privileges daughter of his educationally elite brother and so he works at a wealthy family in the big house next door for the Hustings19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, above all, caring for their horsesan enticing story to T. One day Mr Husting presents Kip with It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a shilling; their little secretquest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. As its 1939, that|isbn=1804271799}}{{Frontpage|author=Jon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Vaim|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''All was strange''s a fair amount ... This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of money so Kip hides it awayotherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not realising how special that coin will become as feel more real for Jatgeir and Eline, two of the decades passprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444763555</amazonuk>1804271829

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sarah ButlerClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Ten Things I've Learnt About LoveBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=4.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Alice returns home to spend time with her dying father. She's been travelling Everything in Mongoliathis book, finding temporary escape from the issues that had haunted her life in London but nowhowever sweet or seemingly innocent, on her return, events bring the pain she thought was behind her into sharp focus. Meanwhile Daniel is an elderly vagrant who calls the streets of London homesteeped in anguish and distortion. He seeks his lost childEven a kiss, leaving usually a trail symbol of intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of random items across love lost. When the city in the hope of reunion like someone occupying a verse of narrator cries out internally, ''Eleanor Rigbycome over here and kiss me,''it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. Disparate livesThe imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, seeking love and acceptance in a world that seems ghost she conjures to exclude ittest her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447222490</amazonuk>1804271934

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yan LiankeHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Lenin's KissesLili is Crying

|summary=Yan Lianke's 2004 First published in 1953 in French, this novelis a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the page and positions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. Like the lives of her characters, they are often left tragically incomplete.|isbn=1804271675}}{{Frontpage|author=Jonathan Buckley|title=One Boat|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''Lenin's KissesOne Boat''is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. Set against the evocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, newly this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and beautifully translated its power to provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the death of both her parents. Prompted by Carlos Rojasher mourning, her narrative voice is a rare meditative and fascinating exampledeeply self-aware, inviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a book that not just only requires but inspires depth of Chinese fiction from a writer living thought, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and working in Chinaironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|isbn=1804271764}}{{Frontpage|author=Eowyn Ivey|title=Black Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, but also who longs for a book that has won literary awards (life beyond the prestigious Chinese Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Described as a ''Lao She Literary Awardwild card''), now available she feels stuck in English. In many respects, the fact that this book won such a literary prize is somewhat surprising her day- not I hasten to add because of any lack of quality - but because Liankeday life, who has previously sailed too close and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the political wind for Chinese censors, here presents North Fork to fulfil her desires of a not altogether flattering view of Chinese politicssimple life surrounded by nature. It's When she meets Arthur Nielson, a book that is literary with strange, taciturn and solitary man, who says he has a capital Lcabin over there, she feels called to go - and while the core of the plot is relatively simplebring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, what makes this book so interesting is the structure calling will transform hers and way the story is toldEmaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701188073</amazonuk>1472279042

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jan-Philipp SendkerSally Rooney|title=The Art Intermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction |summary=Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of Hearing Heartbeatsa grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469}}{{Frontpage|author=Fyodor Dostoyevsky|title=White Nights|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=As always in Dostoyevsky, the character work is sublime. One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity.|isbn=0241619785}}{{Frontpage|author=James Baldwin|title=Giovanni's Room

|summary=Sendker is German-born (Hamburg 1960) This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and worked as American correspondent for ''Stern'' (1990 to 95) and then as its Asian correspondent tension from '95 to '99. He now lives in Berlin. This probably gives him enough global insight to write about a US-born high flyer with an Asian heritage heading off to Burma to find out the truth of moment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, purchases her father's disappearance. It probably also gives him forbidden notebook, and learns about herself in the language skills to do it in English without recourse to a translatormost intimate and revealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184697240X</amazonuk>1782278222

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=George Bernard ShawOttessa Moshfegh|title=Cashel Byron's ProfessionMy Year of Rest and Relaxation

|summary=''Cashel Byron’s Profession'' At best, this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the fourth fragility of five 'Novels of My Nonage'human relationships; at worst,written by George Bernard Shaw in 1882. In it is the preface cynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of the bookan unlikeable protagonist. This unlikely heroine, Shaw heavily criticises these early worksa slim, which were rejected by attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the publishing houses of the timeworld, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, blaming her solution lies in her hibernation.|isbn=1784707422}}{{Frontpage|author=Matthew Tree|title=We'll Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his immaturity father, a drunk and lack chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of experience in life. He was clearly unhappy about the way he his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had written some endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to his charactersstudies, stating that: '...he has not in cultivated his nonage the satisfaction of knowing that abilities rather than his guesses at life are truedaydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848547471</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chris WomersleyMosby Woods|title=The Low RoadA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=Wild is a man on The West isn't the rundominant force it once was. In a slow, underhand and underwhelming way he Nobody in the West is leaving behind danger, mistakes and unhappiness in his past, and has fetched up in a nondescript motel. However quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is only the beginningbest course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for he climate action there. A feeling that nobody is quickly ordered to put his medical training to good use in the case of Leeactual charge. Imagine then, when there was a man with precognition. Imagine the latter is dumped into his care with strategic advantage in this asset; a gunshot woundman who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. LeeThat man would be valuable, too, is a man on right? Perhaps the run - from danger, mistakes and unhappiness most valuable asset in his futurehistory. But Imagine then, that this pairing are not the only people running in man loses this pitch black thrillerability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780870574</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Claudie GallayKay Chronister|title=In 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}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Eric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to 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 Gold horrors of Timeillness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.}}{{Frontpage|author=Madelaine Lucas|title=Thirst for Salt|rating=4.5

|summary=A young father (''Love, I'm not sure we ever know his name) leaves his Montreuil apartment d read, was supposed to be a light and takes his wife and their seven-weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-old twin daughters on long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the annual holiday summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the coastsummer after. They have a house, La Téméraire, overlooking Set against the sea a few kilometres south backdrop of Dieppe. Theyan isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt''d bought details the house just after the girls were born 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and go there every summer, familial relationships and maybe for a weekend or two in the Spring. Never in winterhow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051261</amazonuk>0861546490

''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}}{{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Saint|title=Atalanta|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the name of the goddess. It was for the sake of my name, too. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing.|isbn=1472292154}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philippe ClaudelAmanthi Harris|title=The InvestigationBeautiful Place|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|isbn=1784631930}}{{Frontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=Sea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=45

|summary=And When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you think you had it badneed to pick the children up. Our hero gets off Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a train at the right station, but doesn't get collected by those hesobbing parishioner. Thelma's working on behalf of, candaughter-in-law won't have his order at let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the bar fulfilledNorfolk coast, is a lovely place, cannot get but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the place parish - and she's in awe of work on timethe vicar, Gail, but then cannot find she's been doing the hotel almost opposite without job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a major trek through a snowy, unsavoury walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but completely empty cityit was probably what they needed. And when he gets to then Hannah went missing.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the hotel - well that nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the other people he meets there are a whole new category loss of oddlivelihoods was widespread. Is this how things are supposed to be The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - is this limbo, Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a nightmare or just convenience store. He wasn't a novel our hero is trapped dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051547</amazonuk>.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jenn Ashworth0989715337|title=The Friday GospelsPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=54

|summary=There are five in ''Some frogs had gotten into the Leeke familywell. Martin is the father and he works in the mail sorting office. There's not a lot of ''pleasure '' Walter stood waist-deep in Martin's lifethe fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, but if you were making a list you'd put Bovril sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the top strange noise of itthe buckets as he filled them. She's a labrador and Martin's obsessed with her training. Well, he's partly obsessed with the training and the training  How is partly that for an excuse for his other obsession. Nina owns two labradors opening? The style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and Martin sees them (he laconic to wistful and Ninamusing, that is - not he and the labs) as having turning on a future togethersixpence. It would be easy to be criticalAnd author Marco North, but Martin's wife is in a wheelchair. Pauline's been unwell since who has the birth most wonderful turn of their youngest child. She's not quite doubly incontinentphrase, but accidents are frequent and embarrassing. She's also got a penchant for spending starts as he means to go on home improvements - despite the fact that there ''really'' isn't the money for them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444707728</amazonuk>