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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!{{Frontpage|author=Jeremy Cooper|title=Discord|rating= 3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Discord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas) The principal example of discord within the novel, as with most instances of discord, is easily located. The two protagonists of the novel, Rebekah Rosen and Evie Bennet, are as different as they come. Rebekah is an uptight, traditional and no-- Remove -->nonsense composer close to retirement, while Evie is a force of nature, bounding onto the musical scene as a precocious saxophonist, oozing with talent and charm. The two, predictably, don't always 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.|isbn=1804272264}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lois WaldenPolly Barton|title=AfterworldWhat Am I, A Deer?
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The Duvalier family owe their wealth to sugar cane although their gratitude Polly Barton's debut novel is shown in varying degrees an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and various waysgoverning metaphor. From the patriarch William (who never recovered The narrator, newly relocated from being hit by a manhole cover) through his wife and children, down London to TheodoreBerlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the lad who gained comfort (and a certain amount process of secrecy) from travel and on localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to their black servant Rheta B, each has had a lifenew audience. Each also has Barton treats this as a story to tell andparadoxical act: arguably, whether alive or in Afterworldstriving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. From this, the novel opens out into a wider, they're going resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to tell it.be understood, accepted, or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908129859</amazonuk>1804272175
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kate ClanchyMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=Meeting the EnglishThe Disappearing Act|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Struan Robertson was just seventeenDespite her anonymisation of place names and people, but set to go to Aberdeen to study dentistry, when his English teacher passed him a Stepanova's message in this short advertisementwork of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for a literary giant needed festival she is to be a carerguest speaker at. Why not take Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, her journey slowly bends toward a gap year? Struan had never been traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, M eventually offers to ‘’England’’ before and he would be living step in Hampsteadfor a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. On the plus side he’d been working in The train functions as a care home to earn money motif of transience and he could do impermanence, while the work. Soon - almost too soon - Struan was circus embodies the main carer for Phillip Prys, rendered dumb reshaping of identity and paralysed by a massive stroke. His family couldn’t take care retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the very heart of him - the young (very young) third wife was too busy with her painting. His son, Jake, had other things - anything else - to do rather than be in his father’s presence. Juliet had never been her father’s favourite but she wasn’t ‘’exactly’’ stable when it came to helpingnovel form itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330535277</amazonuk>1804272329
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michele Forbes295967572X|title=Ghost MothPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Belfast 1949: Katherine Our unnamed narrator is about to become engaged to fireman George Bedford when she meets Tom McKinleybegin a train journey with his companion Django. HeWhere they's bright fun re going and makes her feel more alive than dependablewhat the purpose of this journey is, boring George ever couldis uncertain. The weight of Django found the tickets ''on the decision Katherine eventually makes will haunt her for a lifetimefloor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. We fast forward to Belfast 1969 and Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the troubles in Northern Ireland exacerbate, as do pair travel to the cracks in Katherine's marriage. In fact 20 years station by coach and four children later, they've become chasmsthe train is a steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297870440</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer JohnstonMakenna Goodman|title=A Sixpenny SongHelen of Nowhere|rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Annie's father It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is deadnot quite right. She's not particularly upset as it's The protagonist, a decade or so since they've had any contact. Dada (he preferred to be called 'Father') had wanted her to go into disgraced professor on the family businessbrink of losing both his career and his relationship, to make moneyembodies this feeling. She'd wanted to go to Trinity College in Dublin to read English LiteratureHowever, but instead she'd packed Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a suitcase force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and left for Londonthe protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he's considering, where she still is - working Helen represents a volta in a bookshophis life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. Her mother died when she was young - Dada had sent The realtor who shows the protagonist around the child off to boarding school house shares stories about Helen, and did his best to ensure describes her as ''an entity that her motheris pure consciousness, beyond form's name was never referred to again - and it wasn't too long before he remarried. His death brought Annie back to Ireland and Although she found that lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the money had been left to wife number two (as he was confident that she would know how to look after it) but reader gets the house now belonged to Anniesense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1472209222</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alex KovacsOlga Tokarczuk|title=The Currency House of Day, House of PaperNight|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Maximilian Sacheverell Hollingsworth was - as ''What's the name might suggest - good of aristocratic birth, but had broken off all contact with his family and in consequence found himself labouring for forty hours a week in a printing works in Dagenham. He came upon the idea of planning out his entire life and this he did in the course of a single afternoon whilst enjoying a little illicit sick leave in a pub in Bloomsbury. He would first become a counterfeiter - on a massive scale - and then a sculptor, filmmaker, collector of artefacts, sound artist and mystic. Circumstances would also turn him into a recluse, except world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on certain well-ordered occasions, most of which would occur - somewhat to his initial surprise - later calmly living in his life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1564788571</amazonuk>}}it?''
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Thea Lenarduzzi
|title=The Tower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= ''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Ice-Cold HeavenJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |authortitle=Mirko BonneVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=From a space of 25 years, our narrator looks back on what happened when he ''All was 12 years oldstrange''.. Twenty five years that had to elapse, because that was the promise that he made. He is now happy, happy to have kept This haunting phrase encapsulates the secret as he promised Sarma he wouldpervading 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 happier that he can now tell the story: he can tell us Eline, two of everything that happened in his childhood that year on the shores of the oldest lake protagonists caught in the world, Lake Baikalits melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0704373246</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Rabbit Back Literature SocietyClaire-Louise Bennett|authortitle=Pasi Ilmari JaaskelainenBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ella Milana Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is a language and literature supply teacher currently teaching steeped in her hometown of Rabbit Back anguish and dealing with challenging revelations in her lifedistortion. Ella is unexpectedly invited to join the hugely successful and influential Rabbit Back Literature SocietyEven a kiss, usually a group symbol of nine authors who were hand selected intimacy and mentored from childhood by Finland’s greatest author (Laura White) to become literary icons in their own rightcloseness, becomes evidence of love lost. There weere always intended to be ten members of When the society but Laura White has not selected a new member for decades narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and the appointment of Ella kiss me,'' it is less an invitation than a massive literary eventdesperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The ceremony in honour imagined recipient of Ella’s new membership this plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to the incredibly elite society is unfortunately overshadowed by Laura White’s disappearance at the ceremony itselftest her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908968982</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Angela YoungHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Speaking of LoveLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=For some people it's impossible to tell another person that they love them First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and both are damaged. Iris could not tell her daughter, Vivie, that she loved her sentences from their proper position on the page and Matthewpositions them elsewhere, Vivie's childhood frienddisjointed, neighbour and would-be lover could not tell her how he felttruncated. For all three the result was years of separation with Vivie feeling that she was fundamentally unloveable and Like the whole situation was further complicated by Iris's mental disintegration and her treatment removing most lives of her memories of Vivie's childhood. If that sounds depressing and soul-destroying then I am doing ''Speaking of Love'' an injustice because it's also a story of trustcharacters, reconciliation and learning to speak about your feelingsthey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00G4401G4</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Call of the UndertowJonathan Buckley|authortitle=Linda CracknellOne Boat|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you read ''One Boat'' is a lot deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of booksphilosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, then Teresa. Set against the fact evocative backdrop of your life is that you are always part-way through at least one a small coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the magic of themits setting and its power to provoke profound introspection. You read all Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the death of the timeboth her parents. Over breakfastPrompted by her mourning, in the bath, waiting for trains, on trains, between trains. You make a cup of tea in order to have an excuse to sit-her narrative voice is meditative anddeeply self-read for half an houraware, inviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. But even so, most of your reading It is done in stolen moments – often in moments when a nagging voice from the gremlin-centre book that not only requires but inspires depth of your brain thought, since its narrative structure is reminding you that you ''should'' be doing something elsefragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908754303</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Crow BlueEowyn Ivey|authortitle=Adriana LisboaBlack Woods Blue Sky
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Having lost her ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother at the age of thirteentoddler Emaleen, Evangelina embarks on who longs for a quest to not only find her biological father, but to delve into life beyond the past and discover things about her mother Alaskan lodge where she never knew. Set predominantly in North America and Brazilworks as a bar waitress, this novel explores Vanja's journeys, both physical a setting which enables her bad habits and emotional, as well as her relationships with key characters, in particular, that accidental neglect of her Mother's ex husband, FernandoEmaleen. Uprooting herself when barely Described as a teenager''wild card'', Vanja leaves she feels stuck in her home country of Brazil day-to-day life, and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live with Fernando in Colorado, on the only connection she has at her disposal North Fork to enable fulfil her to trace her roots and biological familydesires of a simple life surrounded by nature. Narrated beautifully in the first personWhen she meets Arthur Nielson, the reader is propelled into the thoughts and feelings of the young but courageousa strange, determined taciturn andsolitary man, at timeswho says he has a cabin over there, very wiseshe feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, adolescent girlthis calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408838303</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sally Rooney|title=Close Your EyesIntermezzo|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=Ewan MorrisonFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=White Nights
|rating=5
|genre=Literary FictionShort Stories|summary=1981: Emma remembers driving through a blizzardAs always in Dostoyevsky, the character work is sublime. That One is, her mother was driving, she was just never left wondering what a childcharacter is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity. She remembers her mother singing|isbn=0241619785}}{{Frontpage|author=James Baldwin|title=Giovanni's Room|rating=4. Throughout everything5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, what she remembersan American man living in Paris, what everyone remembersas he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is how her mother sang. Actuallyengaged to Hella, she remembers lots of other things about her mother. Snippets mostly. Then she remembers losing her… being dropped who is travelling in London at her Dad'sSpain, who didn't really seem like the dad she remembered… then ''real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the Socialdeeper conflict within himself. It is David'' taking her aways crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099565757</amazonuk>0141186356
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The CommitmentsAlba de Cespedes |authortitle=Roddy DoyleForbidden Notebook|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It's the mid to late 1980s, This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and Outspan, Derek and Ray have just formed a band. The trio is three days old, with 'Ray on tension from the Casio and his little sister's glockenspiel, Outspan on his brother's acoustic guitarmoment our protagonist, [and] Derek on nothing'Valeria Cossati, as he can't afford a bass. They already feel directionless. They don't mind Depeche Modepurchases her forbidden notebook, but Derek and Outspan draw learns about herself in the line at The Human League, 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'. Outspan, however, thinks Ray's an idiot, most intimate and tells him where to stick his second exclamation mark. But Outspan has a plan. They need to find Jimmy Rabbitte, for when it comes to music, Jimmy knowsrevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009958753X</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Madonna on the MoonOttessa Moshfegh|authortitle=Rolf BauerdickMy Year of Rest and Relaxation
|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Things are certainly strange in the small rural town of Baia Luna; all the stereotypes one would suspect in At best, this novel is a newly-Communist mountain village are turned on their head. People vocally feel free to dismiss the Soviet changes and technology, but secretly at the dead scathing critique of night enter the fields to try modern society and hear reveals the sounds fragility of Sputnik blipping its orbit overhead. Gypsy men willingly get baptised into human relationships; at worst, it is the ways cynical, predictable and religions slightly trite tale of their ''gajo'' neighboursan unlikeable protagonist. The most forceful character is This unlikely heroine, a teenager called Fritz, best friend of narrator Pavelslim, attractive and son to an ethnic German photographer. Part of Fritz's power seems to rest on him knowing a lot more than others about newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the village schoolteacher – enoughworld, perhapsbut resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, for her to disappear overnight?solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848875045</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Aimee BenderMatthew Tree|title=The Color MasterWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=Another parade of fascinatingTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, unusual personalities a drunk and oddevents from the author chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of [[Willful Creatures by Aimee Bender|WillfulCreatures]]. This time out [[:Category:Aimee Bender|Aimee]]introduces us to people like Hans the fake Nazi, young William to whomhis artistic passions all people look the same failed miserably and Janet who decides had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to spice up herlove-life with detrimental results. Among other things we alsowitness a less-his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than-altruistic anti-war demonstration his daydreams and an oddoccurrence in an orchard showing how odd an apple-only diet could makeusset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091953898</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David VannB0C47LV1PC|title=Goat MountainFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The eleven-year-old boy, his father, grandfather and Tom, Can you make a family friend''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, were on their annual hunting trip to is the family's 640-acre ranch in northern California. Strictly question should you make it? Or is the boy wasn't old enough to hunt but family lore said question if you did, would it land? The catch is that this time he would the answer for both could well be allowed to kill his first buck. On the way to their camp they spotted a poacher and the boy... no. ''Fragility''s father is set up his rifle and loaded it - hoping that shooting as the bolt would tell the poacher that he'd been spotted. The boy - we never know his name - was allowed city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to look through emerge from the rifle site, but he pulled restrictions imposed during the trigger. Nothing would ever be the same again. For any of them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434021989</amazonuk>covid pandemic
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Over My Dead BodyMosby Woods|authortitle=Hazel McHaffieA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The mother of a patient West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in dire need the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of a heartaction. Governments are flailing. A war here, and a pair of lungs, ceases to pray push for the survival of her son for the following uncomfortable reason: 'Feels like you're asking for somebody else to dieclimate action there.' Though merely an extra A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the main plot strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of McHaffie's ''Over My Dead Body''circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the situation of most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this mother quite successfully conveys just how complex the ethics of organ donation areability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0992623103</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Stjernstrom and Rod Bradbury (translator)0571379559|title=The Best Book in the WorldHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Titus Jensen may not have written many great novels for a while (if ever) but his festival readings of others' works are renowned. Why, his rendition of ''The Diseases House of the Swedish Monarchs from Gustavas Vasa to Gustav V'' has been compared favourably to his offerings from ''Handbook for Volvo 245Broken Bricks''is the story of four people. HoweverTess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, one drunken night he and romantic poet Eddie X agree that their fame but instead, she lives in the house on the festival circuit would be insignificant by comparison if they could write the best book in riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the world; a combination passage of all genrestime, storms and floods. Her husband, appealing Richard, struggles to all tastes grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and making all the best seller categoriesto bring in sufficient money. They start work on it the next day buthave twin boys - Sonny and Max, rather than collaborate, each wants the lone gloryrainbow twins. The race (or should Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that be battle?) to the publishing date they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is on!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843914808</amazonuk>out with his mother that she's his nanny.
}}
{{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=Adriaan van DisKay Chronister|title=BetrayalDesert 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 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= Dutchman Mulder renews his acquaintance with his old friend Donald as he returns ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to South Africabe a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, a land he knew well in young woman unravels the days of apartheidyear-long relationship that once defined her. 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 youthOverlaid with later wisdom, they have one more chance the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to struggle its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for someoneSalt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's freedom against deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all odds -consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and a violent societyfamilial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051849</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=Her Privates WeJennifer Saint|authortitle=Frederic ManningAtalanta|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ernest Hemingway called Frederic Manning's ''Her Privates We'' 'The finest and noblest book I was as worthy as any one of men in war' he had ever readthem. But Hemingway wasn't a very trustworthy manI would get on board that ship, so we tend to defer judgementI vowed. He isI would take my place, however, useful for contrast. Hemingway's tales of war (such as ''A Farewell to Arms'' and ''For Whom not just in the Bell Tolls'') usually involve macho misfits and trite love stories, feats name of derring-do and filmic dialogue; all the things, in fact, that have no place in Manning's First World War novelgoddess. Why is this? Well, by the time Hemingway started driving a Red Cross ambulance on the Italian front (1918), Manning's service It was already over. Nevertheless, unlike for the illustrious (and self-mythologising) Hemingway, Manning spent his war deep in the trenches sake of the Sommemy name, mixing it with the proletarian soldierytoo. As such, Atalanta''Her Privates We'' is a brutal novel concerning the 'subterranean, furtive, twilight life' of the average Tommy, a work of startling power, and one that completely eclipses the war novels of the romantic Hemingway.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668787X</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tash AwAmanthi Harris|title=Five Star BillionaireBeautiful Place|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=China Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a booming economy for people in place she spent her formative years. It is not a position place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to take advantage; people like Gary be at the pop star who once won a talent showVilla, how it became her home, Yinghui and the lingerie magnate or machinations that have flowed through her childhood friend and property developer Justin who feels life ever since she first arrived there provide the weight of his family's expectations'score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Then there Padma's Phoebe, moving present fails to Shanghai from escape her past and much like the country on musical score of a promise and a belief film, that strand weaves its way through everything that to attract success one must act as if one already has it. Life will bring them into each other's orbit but it won't leave any of them happens at the same as when they startedVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007494157</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jhumpa Lahiri178563335X|title=The LowlandSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Subhash When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and Udayan Mitra are brothers growing wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up in an India growing into its post. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-independence statusold Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Subhash goes along with UdayanThelma's ideas but itdaughter-in-law won's Udayan who's t let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the radicalNorfolk coast, fighting against is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the injustices parish - and she's in awe of an elitism that remains once the British have left India. Eventually they go their separate waysvicar, Gail, one studying abroad to avoid conflict and but then she's been doing the other becoming job for more deeply embroiledthan thirty years. Life can't go Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on like this forever and the beach would do them some good - it doesn't was stormy but the reverberations seem to, affecting generation after generation as Subhash realises that the search for peace isn't always an external thingit was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408828111</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Colum McCann1398515388|title=TransAtlanticThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=In 1845 ex-slaveFirst of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, black American Frederick Douglass visits Ireland for a lecture tour about freedom which created the tsunami and emancipation only to discover he's not preaching to this, in turn, caused the converted after allnuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. In 1919 Alcock The deaths were uncountable, and Brown climb into the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a rickety aircraft to fly the Atlantic and land in Limerickconvenience store. In 1994 Senator George Mitchell also travels to Ireland watched by He wasn't a world thatdog person but the convenience store owner's about comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to see a miracle of negotiation. Meanwhile through it all Lily open his car door and her descendants are also there, not only watching history but living it on both sides of Tamon the Atlanticdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408829371</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=The LuminariesPapa on the Moon|author=Eleanor CattonMarco North|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Eleanor Catton's 'Some frogs had gotten into the well.''The Luminaries '' is set Walter stood waist-deep in the New Zealand gold rush of the late 1860sfragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. It's a story about greed, power, gold, dreams, opium, secrets, betrayal and identity, but most Long strands of alltheir eggs wove around him, it's a celebration sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the art of story telling, both in terms dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of Catton's book and the stories her characters have to tellbuckets as he filled them. It's ' How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the kind form of book that is perfect escapism interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and which wraps you up in its worldmusing, turning on a sixpence. If you like bigAnd author Marco North, chunky books that you can get lost in for hourswho has the most wonderful turn of phrase, then this is one for youstarts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847084311</amazonuk>
}}