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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__{{Frontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=Pale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=5|genre=Literary fiction=Fiction|summary=Our 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, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.__NOTOC__}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jude CookMakenna Goodman|title=Byron EasyHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Byron Easy It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a 30hard-yearto-old poet and product of a failed marriage who, place feeling that something in turnyour life is not quite right. The protagonist, has a failed marriage disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his owncareer and his relationship, embodies this feeling. He works in However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a shop whilst waiting to be discovered as a poet. How did his depression-tinted life reach this point? Once there was hopeforce which is seductive, love radical and many good times unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and, as the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he sits on a train travelling to his mother's for Christmas with considering, Helen represents a bag full of moneyvolta in his life, he reflects and ponders while trying her past tied to escape something more tangible his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and dangerous than describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the pastsense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434021938</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Olga Tokarczuk
|title=House of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?''
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=Andrea EamesThea Lenarduzzi|title=The White ShadowTower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''.As In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is being told, the story of a general principle I am second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a little tired wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of books that start at the endtuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. I want Annie's fate is, above all, an enticing story to argue T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for a return to good old fashioned narrative where stories start at the beginningtruth and knowledge, and in service of myth, go on until fable and fantasy. |isbn=1804271799}}{{Frontpage|author=Jon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Vaim|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''All was strange''... This haunting phrase encapsulates the endpervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and then stopEline, two of the protagonists caught in its melancholic current. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099565420</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=I J KayClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Mountains of the MoonBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The story starts harshlyEverything in this book, with a release from prisonhowever sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a bail hostelkiss, usually a refuge for people with mental health problems as a better-than-nothing-lied-to-be-obtained kind symbol of a sanctuary intimacy and a slow easing back into societycloseness, becomes evidence of love lost. If you can call a housing association flatWhen the narrator cries out internally, with a decorating voucher ''come over here and no furniturekiss me, only occasional power and annoying neighbours ''society''it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099554739</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennie RooneyHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Red JoanLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It is very obvious where Jennie Rooney has taken the idea for her novel ''Red Joan'' from. As she acknowledges fully, it has its origin First published in the 1999 story of Melita Norwood whose espionage for the Russians wasn't discovered until she was 1953 in her late 80sFrench, but while Norwood was this novel is a dyed in timeless text which wrenches the wool communist, Rooney offers a more complex back story to her character, Joan. The result is a very different type hearts of spy novel than normal. Joan, a widowed grandmother, is going about her day to day life when MI5 come knocking its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on her door to ask about her past. The narrative switches between their questions to her the page and her recollections of her time at Cambridge in the late 1930s where communist feelings werepositions them elsewhere, by somedisjointed, given a more sympathetic eartruncated. When Joan falls for Leo, Like the cousin lives of her Russian born friend Sonyacharacters, she gets dragged into a world that is dangerous and morally complexthey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701187573</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jason HinojosaJonathan Buckley|title=The Conception of Zachary MuseOne Boat
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Evangeline Muse gives birth ''One 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, this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and its power to Zachary alone in provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the death of both her parents. Prompted by her mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-aware, inviting the reader into her special lagoon… labyrinthine cogitations. It is a book that not only requires but thatinspires depth of thought, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and ironically 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''s starting at tells the story of Birdie, the end. In young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the beginningAlaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, Thomas Greene is a tutor setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Described as a ''wild card'', she feels stuck in her day-to-day life, and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and Will Archer live on the North Fork to fulfil her desires of a talented wood carver who both accept employment from Michael Musesimple life surrounded by nature. What they don't realise at that moment isWhen she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man, once they meet his beautiful daughterwho says he has a cabin over there, Evangelineshe feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, nothing this calling will ever be the same again for any of themtransform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>9380905440</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andrew CowanSally Rooney|title=Worthless MenIntermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction |summary=Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a 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
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=If you read a lot of fiction about World War One, it's tempting to imagine pre-war England as an idyl of peace and innocence. Andrew Cowan'Giovanni's Room''Worthless Men'' depicts a much more gritty and earthy England. Set follows the narrator David, an American man living in 1916 Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in an industrial and market town, it weaves together several narratives that combine to depict a hard life even before the outbreak of wargay bar. In factWhile David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, its easier to imagine the lure of adventure that real tension in the war initially offered as a change novel arises not from his infidelity but from the harsh realities of life at home, although by the time Cowandeeper conflict within himself. It is David's novel begins, the grim reality crippling shame and denial of what is involved has dampened much of this enthusiasmhis sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>144475940X</amazonuk>0141186356
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Meike ZiervogelAlba de Cespedes |title=MagdaForbidden Notebook
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet a woman whoThis Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the moment our protagonist, despite praying to remain virginalValeria Cossati, had seven children. Meet a woman whose mother thought purchases her ''hoity-toity''forbidden notebook, and spoilt, and who thought she should go to work learns about herself in a factory at school age to know her place better. Meet a woman of whom her oldest daughter would write 'I don't care what Mother says. Mother isn't always right. No, she definitely isn't.' All three women are, of course, one and the same, most intimate and they're Magda Goebbels, the woman who epitomised more than anyone the Nazi wiferevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907773401</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shani BoianjiuOttessa Moshfegh|title=The People My Year of Forever are not AfraidRest and Relaxation|rating=43
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=YaelAt best, Lea and Avishag go through their final years at high school in this novel is a little Israeli town on the Lebanese border scathing critique of modern society and then on to reveals the inevitable: fragility of human relationships; at worst, it is the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). Gender is immaterialcynical, all Israeli citizens must serve at least two years predictable and for these girls the moment arrives after graduationslightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. Yael's posting seems futile as she guards This unlikely heroine, a training base against marauding ladsslim, sneaking across the border 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 attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is riddled disillusioned with routine. Avishag joins up with her own demonsthe world, her brother Dan having died after his national service. She knows how it happened but continues resolves not to struggle with why; something she must handle alonelose sleep over it: in fact, her solution lies in her hibernation. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781090092</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Barbara PymMatthew Tree|title=A Glass of BlessingsWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Wilmet Forsyth is Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a married woman, childless drunk and living a life chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of leisure. She and her friend Rowena met their husbands - both Majors - in Italy, where they served as Wrens during the war. Rowena now has three children and her husband David might just be developing a wandering eye. Wilmet's husband, Rodney, is still ''Noddy'' to his mother with whom they live. Unburdened by children or domestic responsibility Wilmet lunches or shops artistic passions all failed miserably and becomes involved in the social life who had endless crises of the local church, St Luke'sself confidence. But it's her relationship with Piers, Rowena's somewhat wayward brother, which might pose the biggest threat So Tim applied himself to her comfortablehis studies, if cultivated his abilities rather boring existencethan his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844085805</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.
''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Toni JordanMosby Woods|title=Nine DaysA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?|isbn=B0C9SNG8R1}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0571379559|title=The House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Christopher 'Kip' Westaway The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in a suburb the house on the riverbank, built of Melbournebroken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, Australia with mother Jeanit's stood the passage of time, sister Connie storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twinboys - Sonny and Max, Francisthe rainbow twins. KipSonny's colouring reflects his mother considers him a layabout who doesn't deserve the special privileges of s Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his educationally elite brother and so he works at the big house next door for the Hustings, caring for their horsesfather. One day Mr Husting presents Kip People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with a shilling; their little secret. As its 1939, his mother thatshe's a fair amount of money so Kip hides it away, not realising how special that coin will become as the decades passhis nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444763555</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}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sarah ButlerKay Chronister|title=Ten Things 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 IBled 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 've Learnt About Love'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=General Literary Fiction|summary=Alice returns home ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to spend time with her dying father. Shebe a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''s been travelling in Mongolia Told from a retrospective view, finding temporary escape from a young woman unravels the issues year-long relationship that had haunted once defined her life in London but now. Overlaid with later wisdom, on the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her return, events bring senior from its inception – the pain she thought was behind her into sharp focus. Meanwhile Daniel is an elderly vagrant who calls summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the streets of London homesummer after. He seeks his lost child, leaving a trail of random items across Set against the city in the hope of reunion like someone occupying a verse backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'Eleanor Rigby'details the 24-year-old narrator'. Disparate livess deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, seeking love how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and acceptance in a world that seems to exclude how italtered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447222490</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=Yan LiankeJennifer Saint|title=Lenin's KissesAtalanta|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Yan Lianke's 2004 novel, ''Lenin's Kisses''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, newly and beautifully translated by Carlos Rojas, is a rare and fascinating exampleI vowed. I would take my place, not just of Chinese fiction from a writer living and working in China, but also a book that has won literary awards (the prestigious Chinese ''Lao She Literary Award''), now available in English. In many respects, the fact that this book won such a literary prize is somewhat surprising - not I hasten to add because name of any lack of quality - but because Lianke, who has previously sailed too close to the political wind for Chinese censors, here presents a not altogether flattering view of Chinese politicsgoddess. It's a book that is literary with a capital L, and while was for the core sake of the plot is relatively simplemy name, what makes this book so interesting is the structure and way the story is toldtoo.Atalanta''|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701188073</amazonuk>}}Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=George Bernard ShawAmanthi Harris|title=Cashel Byron's ProfessionBeautiful Place|rating=35
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Cashel Byron’s Profession'' is Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the fourth southern coast of five 'Novels of My Nonage'her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into,written by George Bernard Shaw in 1882. In but the preface one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the bookVilla, Shaw heavily criticises these early workshow it became her home, which were rejected by and the publishing houses of machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the time, blaming his immaturity ''score'' for this gentle and lack of experience in lifeyet subtly violent novel. He was clearly unhappy about Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the way he had written some musical score of his charactersa film, stating that: '...he has not in his nonage the satisfaction of knowing strand weaves its way through everything that his guesses happens at life are truethe Villa.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848547471</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chris Womersley178563335X|title=The Low RoadSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Wild is When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a man trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the runchildren up. In a slowHer husband, Christopher, underhand collects six-year-old Hannah and underwhelming way he is leaving behind dangerher elder brother, mistakes and unhappiness in his pastJamie, and has fetched up whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in a nondescript motel-law won't let her see her grandson. However this Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is only the beginninga lovely place, for he but Rachel is quickly ordered struggling to put his medical training to good use develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the case of Leevicar, Gail, when but then she's been doing the latter is dumped into his care with a gunshot woundjob for more than thirty years. Lee, too, is Rachel and Christopher hoped that a man walk on the run beach would do them some good - from danger, mistakes and unhappiness in his futureit was stormy but it was probably what they needed. But this pairing are not the only people running in this pitch black thrillerAnd then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780870574</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Claudie Gallay1398515388|title=In The Boy and the Gold of TimeDog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=A young father (I'm not sure we ever know his name) leaves his Montreuil apartment First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and takes his wife this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and their seven-year-old twin daughters on the annual holiday to the coastutter devastation. They have a houseThe deaths were uncountable, La Téméraire, overlooking and the sea a few kilometres south loss of Dieppelivelihoods was widespread. They'd bought The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the house just list of priorities but - six months after the girls were born and go there every summer, and maybe for tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a weekend or two in the Springconvenience store. Never He wasn't a 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 winter.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051261</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Philippe Claudel0989715337|title=The InvestigationPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=And you think you ''Some frogs had it badgotten into the well. Our hero gets off a train at the right station, but doesn't get collected by those he's working on behalf of, can ''t have his order at Walter stood waist-deep in the bar fulfilledfragrant water, cannot get to the place naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of work on timetheir eggs wove around him, then cannot find sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the hotel almost opposite without a major trek through a snowy, unsavoury but completely empty city. And when he gets to dogs leaned over the hotel - well that opening and barked down at the strange noise of the other people buckets as he meets there are a whole new category filled them.'' How is that for an opening? The style of odd. Is this how things are supposed novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to be - is this limbowistful and musing, turning on a nightmare or just a novel our hero is trapped in?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051547</amazonuk>sixpence. And author Marco North, who has the most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to go on.
}}
