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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=Orfeo295967572X|author=Richard Powers|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='No one thinks twice about the quiet, older bohemian in the American Craftsman at 806 South Linden…people take up all kinds of hobbies in retirement.' Seventy-year-old Peter Els is an out-of-work composer in Pennsylvania. He teaches music appreciation at a senior centre, but much of his spare time is devoted to chemistry experiments. As a college student he agonised over the choice between chemistry and music, in fact, and these days he wonders if he got it wrong. His avant-garde compositions, such as a three-hour opera based on medieval German history, were infrequent and never very well received. Should he have gone into biochemistry after all? Thus, thanks to a few thousand dollars' worth of semi-professional equipment purchased off the Internet, Els is now engaged in a new kind of composition – with bacterial DNA taking the place of musical notes.|amazonuktitle=<amazonuk>1782391614</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewPale Pieces|author=Ron Butlin|title=Ghost MoonG M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Maggie sits in an elderly personsOur unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they' care home tgryig to exist through re going and what the ever tightening grip purpose of dementiathis journey is, is uncertain. Her son, Tom, visits trying to jog her memory but she doesnDjango found the tickets ''t even recognise him. To Maggie, Tom is on the floor somewhere'Michael' a name that means nothing and has persuaded our narrator to a son getting more desperate to break through to his mother once againaccompany him. However there was once a Michael, 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 life that bubbles with secrets that even Tom doesn't know; for once, long ago, Maggie was youngsteam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773770</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The One I WasMakenna Goodman|authortitle=Eliza GrahamHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In 1939, before It could be argued that the outbreak pervading theme of the Second World War, this book is malaise - a boy arrived at Harwich dockshard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. He was The protagonist, a Kindertransport refugee fleeing disgraced professor on the anti-Semitism in Nazi Germanybrink of losing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. Benjamin Goldman would change However, Goodman counteracts his name to Benny Gault when his idea that the war wouldn't happen and he could go home to Germany came to nothingdiscomfort with a force which is seductive, but in the meantime he was adopted by Lord radical and Lady Dornerunnerving: Helen. Six boys were to live at their country home - Fairfleet - The connection between Helen and be educated by a private tutorthe protagonist is indirect yet intimate. On As the face former owner of it Bennythe countryside house he's luck could not have worked out betterconsidering, but he was hiding Helen represents a secretvolta in his life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and 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 sense are not altogether innocuous. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910229016</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{newreview|title=Indecent ActsFrontpage|author=Nick BrooksOlga Tokarczuk|ratingtitle=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Meet Grace. She's in her fortiesHouse of Day, living with a hit-and-miss family in a Glasgow council flat, and in the middle of a whole host House of issues. She has issues about her parents, and their moving on or death; she has issues about her sister who might or might not have had a much superior life pattern than Grace; she has issues about her children – Francis who has left Grace with her own daughter to spend time with drink or drugs instead, and son Vincent, who will like as not create an issue by joining the army and moving on himself. Grace also has issues with the fact that she is nearly as blind as a bat, and can neither read nor write. She's started the novel where she shouldn't be – at home in Glasgow, struggling, as she was due to fly to meet her sister at last, yet packed her glasses in the case that must be the other end, and completely missed her flight.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908754451</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=A Well-Tempered Heart|author=Jan-Philipp SendkerNight
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ten years on from ''What's the previous episode, Julia Win, successful corporate lawyer specialising in intellectual property rights is exhausted, unhappy and alone. Somewhat distant in all senses good of the word, if not exactly estranged, from her mother and brother, she has recently left a relationship world that should have worked but just didn't and her only real connection is with her artist friend Amy Lee.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184697285X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Something Like Happy|author=John Burnside|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=keeps changing like that? How do you pick a name for a short story collectioncan one go on calmly living in it? It seems to me the ''...and other stories'' add-on is like picking a favourite child, a promotion of one portion of the content above the rest. [[:Category:John Burnside|John Burnside]] has got a title story here, but such is the mood of the book that he seems to have nailed the matter, and picked the most apposite name. ''Something Like Happy'' could in a way be the title for practically every piece here.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099575590</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Prajwal ParajulyThea Lenarduzzi|title=Land Where I FleeThe Tower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Chitralekha Guraamaa is preparing for her 84th birthday celebrations - her Chaurasi - and her grandchildren (or rather grandadults as they ''How unctuous are now) arrive from around the world. They went away in search fats of a better another's life but better comes at a cost. Baghwati married beneath her caste, Manasa is resentful of an apparently helpless disabled father-how dizzying their sugars in-law and Agastaya hides a man-sized secretour bloodstream''. All have one thing in common: the dread of facing their manipulative, powerful grandmother and their inability to get on with each other. Worlds may collide but let the festivities commence!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780872984</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Last Boat HomeJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |authortitle=Dea BrovigVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Then: On the farm above a remote Norwegian hamlet, in 1976, schoolgirl Else is waiting for her mother to return through the wind and the snow''All was strange''. She is also clutching at the kitchen table as the contractions worsen. Now: fast forward to 2009. Else now lives in This haunting phrase encapsulates the town the hamlet has grown into, on the back pervading sense of oil money. Her daughter has a daughter of her ownotherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, but still spends many a night fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not coming home. ''She must have met someone'' the eleven-year-old granddaughter says matter-of-factly. Else has made a life feel more real for herself, running a spa, looking after her daughter Jatgeir and her granddaughter. A quiet lifeEline, but not such a bad onetwo of the protagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091954290</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Beggar and the HareClaire-Louise Bennett|authortitle=Tuomas KyroBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Our heroEverything in this book, Vatanescuhowever sweet or seemingly innocent, is a fish out of watersteeped in anguish and distortion. He's Even a father without his familykiss, usually a man without a homesymbol of intimacy and closeness, a possibility without a chancebecomes evidence of love lost. HeWhen the narrator cries out internally, ''s being transported across Europe by a criminal people-smugglercome over here and kiss me, who is also packing Vatanescu's sister off to the cosmetic surgeon then the prostitute trade. Our hero ' it is destined less an invitation than a desperate attempt to sit in discomfort, sleet and in hateful gazes of others as a beggar on the streets of Helsinkiconfirm her emotional numbness. But at the same time impossibilities are amassing – one The imagined recipient of which splits Vatanescu from his minder/mentorthis plea is Xavier, and leaves him on the run with a fistful of useless currency. A further impossibility gifts him a friendlyher ex-partner, warm companion – a rabbit being chased by local youths jumps into the sanctuary of his arms, and becomes a welcome source of focusghost she conjures to test her detachment. From then on many more jumps will be made from one impossibility to another, as the life of this illegal immigrant begins to resonate across his adopted homeland…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780721641</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Blazing WorldHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|authortitle=Siri HustvedtLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='All intellectual and artistic endeavours…fare better First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the mind hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the crowd when the crowd knows that somewhere behind the great work or the great spoof it can locate a cock page and a pair of balls.' Thus we are introduced to the unforgettable Harriet Burden – larger-than-lifepositions them elsewhere, six-foot-tall amazon artist – and to some of the novel's essential elements: musing on what makes intellectual products successful in a postmodern marketplacedisjointed, feminist resentment of truncated. Like the overvaluing lives of male achievementher characters, and an unapologetic, playful boldness with languagethey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444779648</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Clever GirlJonathan Buckley|authortitle=Tessa HadleyOne Boat
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Stella grows up with her single mother in Bristol in ''One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the 1960s; her father left when she was reader into a babycontemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, but her mother has cultivated the convenient myth that he diedTeresa. In Set against the stand-alone first chapterevocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, Stella recounts a disturbing incident this work masterfully captures the magic of domestic violence that affected her Aunt Andyits setting and its power to provoke profound introspection. Sordid snippets from Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the ensuing court case stay with Stella over reason she has visited it after the years; 'Innocentdeath of both her parents. Prompted by her mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-seeming fragments would get in past my defences…then stick to my imagination like tar.' Even soaware, inviting the novel that follows reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is about the way in which we engage with memory – facts a book that linger versus those wenot only requires but inspires depth of thought, deliberately or subconsciously, choose not to tellsince its narrative structure is fragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099570521</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=All That is Solid Melts into AirEowyn Ivey|authortitle=Darragh McKeonBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=43.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Moscow''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, 1986the young mother of toddler Emaleen, and who longs for a nine-year old piano prodigy is trapped in life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a subway station by bulliesbar waitress, who carefully break one a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of his little fingersEmaleen. Rehearsal cancelledDescribed as a ''wild card'', the boy finds his favourite auntshe feels stuck in her day-to-day life, who takes him and yearns to treatment only cross the Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to discover fulfil her ex-husband the doctor involveddesires of a simple life surrounded by nature. Many miles away When she meets Arthur Nielson, a slightly older young strange, taciturn and solitary man is off on his first hunting trip with the men of the village, only who says he has a cabin over there, she feels called to find diseased cows, go - and the grouse they seek sickly and weirdly uncoordinatedbring Emaleen with her. What has affected themWithout realising it, this calling will transform hers and will of course affect all the characters in the book, is the nuclear disaster in the plant at ChernobylEmaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670922706</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Black SnowSally Rooney|authortitle=Paul LynchIntermezzo|rating=34.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Barnabas Kane returned to his birthplace in Ireland with his family with Sally Rooney has studied the goal chessboard of setting up his own farm life and raising his son in is something of a better setting than New Yorkgrandmaster at putting it into words. With his farm of a decent size 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 good herd of cattle all seems well socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with Kane until out ploughing one day he and his farm hand Matthew Peoples spot smoke older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in the sky from the direction of his byreDublin. The fire marks the start of Following their father's passing after a sometimes bleak downward spiral and Kane is forced to rely on long battle with cancer, the kindness of his neighbours who still see him as an outsiderbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782062041</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Truman CapoteFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=Breakfast at Tiffany's White Nights
|rating=5
|genre=Literary FictionShort Stories|summary=Holly Golightly. Who doesn't know her? Whether As always in the pages of ''Breakfast at Tiffany's''Dostoyevsky, the short novel by Truman Capote or capture on film by Audrey Hepburn, she's an American iconcharacter work is sublime. A young country girl becomes One is never left wondering what a New York socialite, trading on amusement value to make a life paid for by rich men who are titillated by her outrageous opinions character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and anecdotes. We ''want'' to know her. And the narrator ''wants'' to know her as much, if not more, than we dotemperaments with remarkable clarity. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00HX9UTSE</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Patrick NessJames Baldwin|title=The Crane WifeGiovanni'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=''The Crane Wife'' ticks all my boxes. It's by Patrick Ness who is one This Italian work of my favourite writers feminist fiction holds an air of Young Adult fiction. It has a basis in myth suspense and legend tension from the moment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, purchases her forbidden notebook, and still better learns about herself in an ancient story new to me. It doesn't go on and on and Ariston for half a billion pages. Best of all, the author includes a shout-out for the brilliant Decemberists. I agree with Ness: this is a band you should look up. A heavy reading schedule meant I didn't get to it last year when it was first published but now it's out in paperback most intimate and here I am. I wasn't disappointedrevealing ways. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857868748</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jill DawsonOttessa Moshfegh|title=The Tell-Tale HeartMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=4.53
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Being told that you have six months to live concentrates the mind most wonderfully: fifty At best, this novel is no age to die, even if you have lived life to the full. Patrick's heart was giving up on him a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the Professor fragility of American Studieshuman relationships; at worst, philanderer it is the cynical, predictable and heavy drinker was at the head slightly trite tale of the list for a heart transplantan unlikeable protagonist. His other problems - entirely of his own making - faded into insignificance. Sixteen-year-old Drew Beamish died in This unlikely heroine, a motorcycle accident slim, attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the village where he lived world, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in rural Cambridgeshire and it will be his (still beating) heart which is transplanted into Patrick. The twofact, who had never met, would be permanently joinedher solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444731068</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The People in the PhotoMatthew Tree|authortitle=Helene GesternWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Hélène Hivert works at the Museum of the History of the Postcard. It is a job she loves, as she finds delving into other people's lives 'most exciting'. Luckily, she is 'regularly sent collections Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to catalogue'be different from his father, a drunk and each time the 'moment chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of discovery' gives her a thrill. It may be 'addictive', but 'There is something very moving about the thought that just two or three sources can be enough to build a picture his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of an entire life'self confidence. But what happens when the sources are a bit too close So Tim applied himself to home, when Hélène must play Holmes among the artefacts of her own family's past, pondering 'the silence of surfaces'? Well, the professional detachment goes straight out the windowhis studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and what had been a genuine pleasure, tinged by wonder, now becomes an uncomfortable obsessionset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908313544</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|titleauthor=The Three MusketeersMosby Woods|authortitle=Alexandre Dumas and Will Hobson (translator)A Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=Leaving his home The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to try and join mend this or even if mending it is the famous musketeers best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in Parisactual charge. Imagine then, young Gascon d'Artagnan encounters troubles on the way but quickly falls in there was a man with title characters Athos, Aramis and Porthosprecognition. Soon, Imagine the quartet are caught up strategic advantage in this asset; a diabolical plot man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the wicked Cardinal Richelieu and his accomplice Milady de Winter - can they save the Queen's honourmost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849907498</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Eric Lundgren0571379559|title=The FacadesHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Sven and Molly Norberg live ''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 the American mid-western town house on the riverbank, built of Trudebroken bricks. At least Sven still does; Molly has gone missingInsubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Night after night Sven leaves KyleHer husband, Richard, struggles to grow his teenage sonvegetables, home alone while he scours to complete the streets, revisiting places that he delivery rounds - and Molly wandered through together to bring in order to find hersufficient money. Meanwhile Trude has problems of its own They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the librarians are armed rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and ready!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715647679</amazonuk>there's an assumption when Max is 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}}{{Frontpage|author= Kay Chronister|title= Desert Creatures|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|isbn=1803364998}}{{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''.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Romy AshMadelaine Lucas|title=FlounderingThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Loretta collects her boys Jordy ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and Tom from school as if it's the most normal thing in the worldweightless feeling, but itI had always longed for gravity''s not; not for them anyway Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Jordy and Tom have been living Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with their grandparents a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after being abandoned by this woman who refuses finishing university – to be called its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town 'Mum'. As they get further from their eastern Australian home it remains an adventure Thirst for Tom but JordySalt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's more sullen. Once they arrive at their ultimate destination deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all- a ramshackle caravan park - Tom begins to understand why but not before consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both lads realise that their worries are just beginningromantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1921922087</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=Audrey MageeJennifer Saint|title=The UndertakingAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Peter Faber has decided to become part ''I was as worthy as any one of the new Nazi initiativethem. He will marry Katharina SpinellI would get on board that ship, a woman he won't even meet till their honeymoonI vowed. In return he'll receive honeymoon leave from the Russian front while she will secure a widow's pension should anything happen to himI would take my place, hopefully providing the Reich with one or two more Aryan babies on the way. Peter may not be the son-just in-law Katharina's parents envisaged but their disappointment is blunted by their luxurious lifestyle under the patronage name of the sinister Dr Weinartgoddess. HoweverIt was for the sake of my name, this is still wartime and Peter must eventually return to Russia and whatever fate awaits himtoo.Atalanta''|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782391029</amazonuk>}}Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=CrumbsAmanthi Harris|authortitle=Miha MazziniBeautiful Place|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We are in Padma, a hell young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of man's own making – a town that her home country. This is basically one huge foundry, whose men go from working there to a bar then to (someone's) bed in three eight hour shifts, or so it seemsplace she spent her formative years. Egon isn't one of those menIt is not a place she was born into, or isn't any more, for he works at other things than but the foundry – namely churning out trashy low-brow fiction, and a lot one she thinks of wheeling and a lot more dealingas home. He still keeps his shift in How she came to be at the bar and in people's bedsVilla, thoughhow it became her home, all and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the while looking out ''score'' for number one. He has several friendships on the go, this gentle and several sexual partners at the same time, yet drinks so much itsubtly violent novel. Padma's hard present fails to say he exactly cherishes himself above all – if anything he doesn't care that escape her past and much about anyone. He certainly cares for something however – his beloved stash like the musical score of Cartier cologne has run outa film, and he'll as like as not do anything for more…that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908754397</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Amy Grace Loyd178563335X|title=The Affairs of OthersSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Five years ago Celia CassillWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband died leaving , Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her the owner of the Brooklyn apartment block in which she liveselder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. SheThelma's fastidious as to whom she lets and is understandably hesitant when George (one of her longstanding tenants) wants to temporarily subdaughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a friend while he goes abroad. Celia eventually agrees real bond with the parish - and so she's in moves Hopeawe of the vicar, a lady who has just left her husband and for whom life is as complicated as Gail, but then she makes Celia'sbeen doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297871188</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Donal Ryan1398515388|title=The Thing About DecemberBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Johnsey Cunliffe First of all, it was always a nice boythe earthquake, but a little slow - deep in the one that ocean floor, which created the other kids picked on tsunami and it's much this, in turn, caused the same in adult lifenuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. If you The deaths were to ask Johnsey he'd say that he uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was a gomwidespread. Even if you've never met The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the word before you know what it meanstsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. It He wasn't too bad whilst Daddy was there - a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he was a man with a certain presence and even when it was just Johnsey and would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his mother he had some support. But after her death Johnsey was dependant on small kindnesses from other people car door and at Tamon the mercy of those for whom he was an easy target. His life might have continued dog jumped in this rather unsatisfactory way for some time but for the collision of two events.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781620091</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James McBride0989715337|title=The Good Lord BirdPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=Henry 'The Onion' Shackleford lives as Henrietta (or just plain Onion) until he's 17 due to a misunderstanding that may prove too dangerous for him to correct. The reason is that Some frogs had gotten into the person under this misapprehension is the fiercely well.'' ''Walter stood waist-meaning slavery abolitionist (with deep in the emphasis on the 'fiercely') John Brownfragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. As Onion accompanies Long strands of their eggs wove around him on his quest to free every slave they encounter, he discovers that Brown's philanthropy only stretches so farsticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Meanwhile it's that time Two of the 19th century when a shadow spreads dogs leaned over America, one that will cause a historic scar almost the opening and barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as great as that of slavery but Brown is oblivious to thishe filled them. He doesn't; want to start a civil war, just an armed slave revolt.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1594486344</amazonuk>}}'
}}
