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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alice McDermottJeremy Cooper|title=SomeoneDiscord|rating=43.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Marie is growing up in 1920s Brooklyn andDiscord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, although not financially rich she's or ideas) The principal example of discord within the securenovel, cared for child as with most instances of Irish parents from one discord, is easily located. The two protagonists of the many waves of immigration which the US has promised to welcomenovel, Rebekah Rosen and Evie Bennet, are as different as they come. Marie's friend Pegeen Rebekah is from Irish/Syrian stock an uptight, traditional and is dying for romantic love no-nonsense composer close to come her way. Marie's brother Gabe retirement, while Evie is singled out for Catholic seminary and priesthood. Marie thinks a force of nature, bounding onto the future is musical scene as safe as the loved ones around her but the future is an unknown country a precocious saxophonist, oozing with talent and her journey towards it hasncharm. The two, predictably, don't finished yetalways see eye to eye, their approaches different and Evie's progressive views at odds with Rebekah's conservative leaning. However, something connects them beyond just their musical project: a sort of fragile alliance formed within the clamour.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408847248</amazonuk>1804272264
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Ice-Cold HeavenPolly Barton|authortitle=Mirko BonneWhat Am I, A Deer?
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=They say Polly Barton's debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that if you fall off a horse you should get back on one right awayuses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, but even so… I don't think many people who had only just left their first love – a shopgirl in their village – for their second – exploring the world on sailing cargo ships – would leap newly relocated from London to a further voyage having been wrecked and stranded off Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the coast process of South America for well over localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a weeknew audience. But Merce here does – he wants to follow his best friend on to Barton treats this as a ship called ''The Endurance'' and head with Shackleton to the Antarctic. But Merce paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is only seventeenendlessly repackaged, and is rejected – causing him to stow away onto one its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. From this, the world's worst ever journeys.novel opens out into a wider, resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, accepted, or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715645846</amazonuk>1804272175
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Year of Miracle Maria Stepanova and GriefSasha Dugdale (Translator)|authortitle=Leonid BorodinThe Disappearing Act|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=From a space Despite her anonymisation of 25 yearsplace names and people, our narrator looks back on what happened when he was 12 years oldStepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. Twenty five years that had A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for a literary festival she is to elapsebe a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, because that was the promise that he madeher journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. He is now happySwept up in this series of events, happy M eventually offers to have kept step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the secret show. The train functions as he promised Sarma he woulda motif of transience and impermanence, and happier that he can now tell while the circus embodies the story: he can tell us reshaping of everything identity and a retreat into fantasy, an impulse that happened in his childhood that year on lies at the shores very heart of the oldest lake in the world, Lake Baikalnovel form itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0704373246</amazonuk>1804272329
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=The Rabbit Back Literature SocietyPale Pieces|author=Pasi Ilmari JaaskelainenG M Stevens|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ella Milana Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a language train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and literature supply teacher currently teaching in her hometown what the purpose of Rabbit Back and dealing with challenging revelations in her lifethis journey is, is uncertain. Ella is unexpectedly invited to join Django found the tickets ''on the hugely successful floor somewhere'' and influential Rabbit Back Literature Society, a group of nine authors who were hand selected and mentored from childhood by Finland’s greatest author (Laura White) has persuaded our narrator to become literary icons in their own rightaccompany him. There weere always intended to be ten members of the society but Laura White has Why not selected a new member for decades and the appointment of Ella ? Not much else is a massive literary event. The ceremony clear either - but we are probably in honour of Ella’s new membership the past as the pair travel to the incredibly elite society is unfortunately overshadowed station by Laura White’s disappearance at coach and the ceremony itselftrain is a steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908968982</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Angela YoungMakenna Goodman|title=Speaking Helen of LoveNowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=For some people it's impossible It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to tell another person -place feeling that they love them something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and both are damagedhis relationship, embodies this feeling. Iris could not tell her daughterHowever, VivieGoodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, that she loved her radical and Matthew, Vivie's childhood friend, neighbour unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and would-be lover could not tell her how he feltthe protagonist is indirect yet intimate. For all three As the result was years former owner of separation with Vivie feeling that she was fundamentally unloveable and the whole situation was further complicated by Iriscountryside house he's mental disintegration and considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her treatment removing most of her memories of Vivie's childhoodpast tied to his potential fresh start. If that sounds depressing The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and soul-destroying then I am doing describes her as ''Speaking of Lovean entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form'' . Although she lives in an injustice because it's also a story of trustassisted living facility now, reconciliation and learning to speak about your feelingsHelen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00G4401G4</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Call of the UndertowOlga Tokarczuk|authortitle=Linda CracknellHouse of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you read a lot of books, then ''What's the fact good of your life is a world that keeps changing like that you are always part-way through at least ? How can one of them. You read all of the time. Over breakfast, in the bath, waiting for trains, go on trains, between trains. You make a cup of tea in order to have an excuse to sit-and-read for half an hour. But even so, most of your reading is done calmly living in stolen moments – often in moments when a nagging voice from the gremlin-centre of your brain is reminding you that you ''shouldit?'' be doing something else.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908754303</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Close Your EyesThea Lenarduzzi|authortitle=Ewan MorrisonThe Tower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=1981: Emma remembers driving through a blizzard''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. That is In this compelling novel, her mother was drivingThea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, she was just a childthe protagonist of this tale. She remembers her mother singing. Throughout everythingJust as T's story is being told, what she remembersthe story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, what everyone remembersthe daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, is how her mother sang. Actually, she remembers lots who died of other things about her mother. Snippets mostly. Then she remembers losing her… tuberculosis after being dropped locked in London at her Dada tower, captures T'simagination. Annie's fate is, who didn't really seem like the dad above all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which she remembered… then ''the Social'' taking her awayconsumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099565757</amazonuk>1804271799
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The CommitmentsJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |authortitle=Roddy DoyleVaim|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It's the mid to late 1980s, and Outspan, Derek and Ray have just formed a band. The trio is three days old, with 'Ray on the Casio and his little sisterAll was strange's glockenspiel, Outspan on his brother's acoustic guitar, [and] Derek on nothing', as he can't afford a bass. They already feel directionless. They don't mind Depeche Mode, but Derek and Outspan draw . This haunting phrase encapsulates the line at The Human League, pervading sense of otherworldliness which is one of Ray's favourite groups. Such musical differences are already darkening the band's conception. There is also a problem with their name: And And And. Ray believes they should have an explanation mark after the second And, as it would 'look deadly on the posters'. Outspanpermeates this story set in Vaim, however, thinks Ray's an idiot, and tells him where to stick his second exclamation mark. But Outspan has a plan. They need to find Jimmy Rabbitte, fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for when it comes to musicJatgeir and Eline, Jimmy knowstwo of the protagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009958753X</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Madonna on the MoonClaire-Louise Bennett|authortitle=Rolf BauerdickBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Things are certainly strange Everything in the small rural town of Baia Luna; all the stereotypes one would suspect this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a newly-Communist mountain village are turned on their head. People vocally feel free to dismiss the Soviet changes and technologykiss, but secretly at the dead usually a symbol of night enter the fields to try intimacy and hear the sounds closeness, becomes evidence of Sputnik blipping its orbit overheadlove lost. Gypsy men willingly get baptised into When the ways and religions of their narrator cries out internally, ''gajocome over here and kiss me,'' neighbours. The most forceful character it is less an invitation than a teenager called Fritz, best friend of narrator Pavel, and son desperate attempt to an ethnic German photographerconfirm her emotional numbness. Part The imagined recipient of Fritz's power seems to rest on him knowing a lot more than others about the village schoolteacher – enoughthis plea is Xavier, perhapsher ex-partner, for a ghost she conjures to test her to disappear overnight?detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848875045</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Aimee BenderHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=The Color MasterLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=Another parade First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of fascinating, unusual personalities its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and oddevents sentences from their proper position on the author of [[Willful Creatures by Aimee Bender|WillfulCreatures]]page and positions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. This time out [[:Category:Aimee Bender|Aimee]]introduces us to people like Hans Like the fake Nazilives of her characters, young William to whomall people look the same and Janet who decides to spice up herlove-life with detrimental results. Among other things we alsowitness a less-than-altruistic anti-war demonstration and an oddoccurrence in an orchard showing how odd an apple-only diet could makeusthey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091953898</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David VannJonathan Buckley|title=Goat MountainOne Boat
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The eleven-year-old boy''One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, his father, grandfather drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and Tomprotagonist, Teresa. Set against the evocative backdrop of a family friendsmall coastal Greek town, were on their annual hunting trip to this work masterfully captures the family's 640-acre ranch in northern California. Strictly the boy wasn't old enough to hunt but family lore said that this time he would be allowed magic of its setting and its power to kill his first buckprovoke profound introspection. On Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the way to their camp they spotted a poacher and the boy's father set up his rifle and loaded reason she has visited it - hoping that shooting after the bolt would tell the poacher that he'd been spotteddeath of both her parents. The boy - we never know his name Prompted by her mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self- was allowed to look through the rifle siteaware, but he pulled inviting the triggerreader into her labyrinthine cogitations. Nothing would ever be the same again. For any It is a book that not only requires but inspires depth of themthought, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434021989</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Over My Dead BodyEowyn Ivey|authortitle=Hazel McHaffieBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=43.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a patient in dire need of life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a heartbar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and a pair her accidental neglect of lungs, ceases to pray for the survival of her son for the following uncomfortable reason: 'Feels like you're asking for somebody else to dieEmaleen.Described as a ' Though merely an extra in the main plot of McHaffie's ''Over My Dead Bodywild card'', she feels stuck in her day-to-day life, and yearns to cross the situation Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man, who says he has a cabin over there, she feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, this mother quite successfully conveys just how complex the ethics of organ donation arecalling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0992623103</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Peter Stjernstrom and Rod Bradbury (translator)Sally Rooney|title=The Best Book Intermezzo|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 Worldbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469}}{{Frontpage|author=Fyodor Dostoyevsky|title=White Nights
|rating=5
|genre=Literary FictionShort Stories|summary=Titus Jensen may not have written many great novels for a while (if ever) but his festival readings of others' works are renowned. WhyAs always in Dostoyevsky, his rendition of ''The Diseases of the Swedish Monarchs from Gustavas Vasa to Gustav V'' has been compared favourably to his offerings from ''Handbook for Volvo 245''character work is sublime. However, one drunken night he and romantic poet Eddie X agree that One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their fame on the festival circuit would be insignificant by comparison if they could write the best book in the world; a combination of all genres, appealing to all tastes innermost dispositions and making all the best seller categoriestemperaments with remarkable clarity. They start work on it the next day but, rather than collaborate, each wants the lone glory. The race (or should that be battle?) to the publishing date is on!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1843914808</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adriaan van DisJames Baldwin|title=BetrayalGiovanni's Room
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Giovanni's Room'' follows the 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 engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.
|isbn=0141186356
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Alba de Cespedes
|title=Forbidden Notebook
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Dutchman Mulder renews his acquaintance with his old friend Donald as he returns to South AfricaThis Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the moment our protagonist, a land he knew well Valeria Cossati, purchases her forbidden notebook, and learns about herself in the days of apartheid. Life may have moved on and apartheid ceased but some things have worsened. Have Mulder and Donald made any difference at all? As they recall their shadier youth, they have one more chance to struggle for someone's freedom against all odds most intimate and a violent societyrevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051849</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Her Privates WeOttessa Moshfegh|authortitle=Frederic ManningMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=4.53
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ernest Hemingway called Frederic Manning's ''Her Privates We'' 'The finest and noblest book of men in war' he had ever read. But Hemingway wasn't a very trustworthy manAt best, so we tend to defer judgement. He this novel is, however, useful for contrast. Hemingway's tales a scathing critique of war (such as ''A Farewell to Arms'' modern society and ''For Whom reveals the Bell Tolls'') usually involve macho misfits and trite love stories, feats fragility of derring-do and filmic dialoguehuman relationships; all the thingsat worst, in fact, that have no place in Manning's First World War novel. Why it is this? Well, by the time Hemingway started driving a Red Cross ambulance on the Italian front (1918), Manning's service was already over. Neverthelesscynical, unlike the illustrious (predictable and self-mythologising) Hemingway, Manning spent his war deep in the trenches slightly trite tale of the Somme, mixing it with the proletarian soldieryan unlikeable protagonist. As suchThis unlikely heroine, ''Her Privates We'' is a brutal novel concerning the 'subterraneanslim, furtive, twilight life' of attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the average Tommyworld, a work of startling powerbut resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, and one that completely eclipses the war novels of the romantic Hemingwayher solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184668787X</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ruth OzekiMatthew Tree|title=A Tale for the Time BeingWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Ruth finds a 'Hello Kitty' bag washed up on the shore of Whaletown, the small Canadian island that she and her husband Oliver call home. As Ruth opens it and begins reading the diary safely protected inside, she learns about NaoTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a teenager in Japan. Through her writing Nao becomes real drunk and the tales chronic underachiever whose dreams of her varied life, struggles being exceptional at school any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and fascinating relatives compels Ruth who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to search for herhis studies, or at least to discover her fatecultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857867970</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=Tash AwMosby Woods|title=Five Star BillionaireA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=China 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 booming economy push for people climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a position to take man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantagein this asset; people like Gary the pop star who once won a talent show, Yinghui the lingerie magnate or her childhood friend and property developer Justin man who feels the weight can tell you what will happen given any set of his family's expectationscircumstances. Then there's PhoebeThat man would be valuable, moving to Shanghai from right? Perhaps the country on a promise and a belief most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to attract success one must act as if one already has it. Life will bring them into each other's orbit but get it won't leave any of them the same as when they started.back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007494157</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jhumpa Lahiri0571379559|title=The LowlandHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Subhash and Udayan Mitra are brothers growing up in an India growing into its post-independence status''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Subhash goes along with UdayanTess Hembry's ideas roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's Udayan who's stood the radicalpassage of time, fighting against the injustices of an elitism that remains once the British have left Indiastorms and floods. Eventually they go their separate waysHer husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, one studying abroad to avoid conflict complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the other becoming more deeply embroiledrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Life canPeople don't go on like this forever believe that they're related, much less twins and it doesnthere't but the reverberations seem to, affecting generation after generation as Subhash realises s an assumption when Max is out with his mother that the search for peace isnshe't always an external things his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408828111</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=Colum McCannKay Chronister|title=TransAtlanticDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Dystopian Fiction|summary=In 1845 exWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-slaveapocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, black American Frederick Douglass visits Ireland this genre is a way for a lecture tour about freedom and emancipation only humans to discover hecathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures's not preaching ' 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 the converted after allfind hope. In 1919 Alcock and Brown climb |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 rickety aircraft way to fly the Atlantic reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and land in Limerickprocess them. In 1994 Senator George Mitchell also travels to Ireland watched by Most horror fiction feature a world ''Big Bad'', whether thatis a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's about to see ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a miracle collection of negotiationshort stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Meanwhile through it all Lily Horrors that linger and her descendants are also there, not only watching history but living it on both sides of the Atlanticharder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408829371</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The LuminariesMadelaine Lucas|authortitle=Eleanor CattonThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Eleanor Catton's 'Love, I'The Luminaries'' is set in the New Zealand gold rush of the late 1860s. It's d read, was supposed to be a story about greed, power, gold, dreams, opium, secrets, betrayal light and identityweightless feeling, but most of allI had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, it's a celebration of young woman unravels the art of story tellingyear-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, both in terms of Catton's book and the stories narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her characters have senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to tellits sorrowful end the summer after. ItSet against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's the kind of book that is perfect escapism and which wraps you up in deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its world. If you like bigall-consuming nature, chunky books that you can get lost in for hours, then this is one for youhow it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847084311</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|titleauthor=Four New Words for LoveJennifer Saint|authortitle=Michael CannonAtalanta|rating=35
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Christopher meets Gina ''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on Waterloo Bridgeboard that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the name of the goddess. He is newly widowedIt was for the sake of my name, she is newly homeless; hetoo. Atalanta's an elderly Londoner, she's Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a young Glaswegian. It daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a defining event in both their livesformidable huntress, but that only becomes clear in one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the future. Of pressing concern in Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the present is Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the rather rude policeman looking chance to move Gina on. The situation is nearing crisis. Sensing fight in Artemis' name and carve out her desperation, Christopher impulsively asks her to come home with him, a proposal she tentatively acceptsown legendary place in history. Yet it What follows is this one benevolent act that gives birth to an odd and platonic friendship, a relationship based on silences whirlwind of challenges and lacunas, discovery and one which Michael Cannon's fourth novelthrough it, Atalanta must remember Artemis''Four New Words for Love''fatal warning: that if she marries, looks to delicately unravelit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908754249</amazonuk>1472292154
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eve Amanthi Harris|title=The Marrying of Chani KaufmanBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=After waiting till all Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her elder sisters' weddings were done and dusted in true ultra-orthodox Jewish stylehome country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, it's now 19-year-old Chani's turnbut the one she thinks of as home. She's only met Baruch How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her fiancéhome, four times and he hasn't even seen the machinations that have flowed through her elbows but life ever since she first arrived there provide the match is made ''score'' for this gentle and the day eventually arrivesyet subtly violent novel. Baruch secretly studies forbidden gentile literature Padma's present fails to escape her past and Chani has an inquisitive streak often perceived as rebellious so God knows what much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the future holdsVilla. Perhaps they should take the Rabbi's marriage as an example? Or perhaps not…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908737433</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alison MacLeod178563335X|title=UnexplodedSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=ItWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's 1940 and Britain lives in fear of a Nazi invasion that could happen any day. In case the worst happenstrainee vicar, Evelyn's husband Geoffrey has buried sitting in on a little something for her PCC meeting and their young son Philip in wondering why they're held when you need to pick the gardenchildren up. He tells Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her the tin contains elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a bit of money and his favourite photo of themsobbing parishioner. As she digs it up from impulse rather than necessity, she discovers that thereThelma's no photo but what there is instead makes Evelyn doubt that she knows the man she married. The events that follow make Evelyn realise that indeed she doesndaughter-in-law won'tlet her see her grandson. Meanwhile Holthorpe, on the war continues and Norfolk coast, is a German does invade their liveslovely place, but not in Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the way that either of them could envisage.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241142636</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Hannah Kent|title=Burial Rites|rating=4.5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=Fridrik, Agnes parish - and Sigridur are accused she's in awe of murdering two men one Icelandic night in 1829 before setting fire to their home. Now Agnes awaits execution, imprisoned in the farm of a lowly local family whovicar, rumour has itGail, wouldnbut then she't be too great a loss if s been doing the prisoner becomes dangerousjob for more than thirty years. Margrit Jonsdottir (the farmer's wife) doesn't feel threatened Rachel and sets the shocked, malnourished Agnes to work. Gradually Agnes reveals the events of Christopher hoped that night to Margrit and Toti, a young priestwalk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. Her version seems to be a little different from what everyone else concluded, predictably… Or perhaps not so predictablyAnd then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447233166</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=HarvestThe Boy and the Dog|author=Jim CraceSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=As harvest comes First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, inturn, a village finds itself under threatcaused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. Invaded by a series of unfamiliar visitors The deaths were uncountable, it will find itself utterly transformed over a short but apocalyptic seven days. We watch through and the eyes of Walter Thirsk as three vagabonds escaping the enclosure loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their fields are blamed for owners came far down the trangressions list of others, as priorities but - six months after the chartmaker Mr Quill enumerates the common land, and as Master Kenttsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn's benevolent rule is overtaken by t a new dog person but the convenience store owner, who comes with enforcers in the name of ''profit, progress s comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and enterprise'' - or sheep farming as Walter quickly realisesTamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330445669</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Meg Wolitzer0989715337|title=The InterestingsPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Back ''Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in 1974 six teenagers met at summer camp and did all those things which you get to do when your parents are not the fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around to stop youhim, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. They smoked pot, drank vodka Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and Tangs - and talked way into barked down at the strange noise of the night about anything and everythingbuckets as he filled them. Plays were put on, animations were perfected, but most importantly friendships were made '' How is that would last for years - for some it would be an opening? The style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a lifetimesixpence. Back in 1974And author Marco North, as Nixon left who has the White House under a particularly heavy cloud, 'The Interestings'most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as one of their number called them, knew that they could achieve anything they set their minds he means togo on. For three summers they returned to Spirit-in-the-Woods and then they faced the real world.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701188278</amazonuk>
}}
