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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Chang Ying-Tai and Darryl Sterk (translator)Jeremy Cooper|title= The Bear Whispers To Me: The Story of a Bear and a BoyDiscord|rating= 43.5|genre= Literary Fiction |summary=Award winning Taiwanese writer Chang Ying-Tai's emotive, elegiac fable is Discord: a meditation on the art lack of storytelling. Its immersive detail and enchanting musical cadences give it a magicalagreement or harmony (as between persons, things, dream like quality. It is a special work as it is one of the few examples of Taiwanese fiction available in English. The blind Paiwan poet Monaneng said of aboriginal Taiwanese culture:or ideas)

"With tender care let us set in motion our blood that The principal example of discord within the novel, as with most instances of discord, is once again warmeasily located.<br>Let us recall our songsThe two protagonists of the novel, our dancesRebekah Rosen and Evie Bennet, our sacred ritualsare as different as they come.<br> And Rebekah is an uptight, traditional and no-nonsense composer close to retirement, while Evie is a force of nature, bounding onto the tradition of unselfish mutual coexistence between us musical scene as a precocious saxophonist, oozing with talent and the earthcharm. This is exactly what "The Bear Whispers two, predictably, don't always see eye to Me" effortlessly doeseye, 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>0993215408</amazonuk>1804272264

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Fred UhlmanPolly Barton|title=ReunionWhat Am I, A Deer?|rating=54

|summary=Hans Schwarz was a jew Polly Barton's debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and attended the Karl Alexander Gymnasiumgoverning metaphor. The narrator, the most famous grammar school in Wurttemberg. At sixteen he didn't really have a friend and was slightly apart newly relocated from the other cliques in his classLondon to Berlin, until works translating video games into Japanese through the arrival process of Konradin von Hohenfelslocalisation, the elegantly-dressed son of the aristocracy. For some reason Hans and Konradin became the best of friends, spending a glorious summer walking in the Swabian hills, comparing their coin collections and talking about everything. Only slowly does rewriting language until it occur to Hans that whilst Konradin is made welcome in his home, Hans can only visit Konradin's home when his parents are absent. This was February 1932 and in the closing years of the Weimar Republic.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1860463657</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Ivan Vladislavic|title=101 Detectives|rating=3.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=101 Detectives had me baffled. The book comprises of a collection of stories which explore multiple themes from the perspective of one person. The stories are as varied as the characters presenting the tale feels comfortably familiar to you. This exquisitely written book leaves you asking many questions and pondering many ideas. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276568</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Jan-Philipp Sendker|title= Whispering Shadows|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Paul Leibovitz was a journalistnew audience. That was before. Before he had a small child, who did not survive as long Barton treats this as he should have. Before the end of the marriage that did not survive the loss of a child. Now Leibovitz himselfparadoxical act: arguably, merely survives. He lives in a kind of self-imposed exile on Lammastriving for universality, third largest of the Hong Kong islandslanguage is endlessly repackaged, a place its originality at risk of greenery and solitudedisappearing altogether.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846973309</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Jo Walton|title= The Just City|rating= 3.5|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary=Urged on by her brother ApolloFrom this, goddess Pallas Athene founds the Just City of Atlantis – a city based on Plato’s republic. Filling it with an assortments of adults collected from throughout time, as well as ten thousand ten year olds, (one of whom is novel opens out into a disguised Apollo). Whilst the city flourisheswider, the arrival of Socrates may prove resonant question: to be a fly what extent do we translate ourselves in the ointment…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472150767</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= David Finkle|title= The Man With The Overcoat|rating= 3.5|genre= General Fiction|summary=''Why would anyone - he was soon order to ask himself innumerable times - take a coat from a complete stranger only because it had been offeredbe understood, accepted, or loved?'' Skip Gerber steps off the elevator after a long day at work; the foyer of his office building is busy and buzzy and he does not notice the man holding the overcoat until the man hands it to Skip telling him to ''take very good care of it''. Skip unthinkingly grasps the coat and before he has the chance to realise what he is doing - and that he is now holding an overcoat of unknown providence - the man disappears out of the exit door to the building.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0992618525</amazonuk>1804272175

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rebecca DinersteinMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=The Sunlit NightDisappearing Act

|summary=Frances comes Despite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for a literary festival she is to be a 'desperately artistic family'guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, her father journey slowly bends toward a medical illustrator and her mother an interior designertraveling circus. Along with her younger sister Sarah, she grew Swept up in a tiny one-bedroom apartment this series of events, M eventually offers to step in Manhattan: bunk beds for the girls and a fold-out sofa bed for circus performer who has unexpectedly left the parentsshow. The claustrophobic atmosphere has gotten to everyone train functions as a motif of transience and nowimpermanence, with Frances graduating from college, it looks like while the circus embodies the family might fall apart. Her parents argue constantly reshaping of identity and disapprove of Sarah's fiancé (not ''just'' because he isn't Jewish). Frances has her own romantic crisis: after a pregnancy scareretreat into fantasy, Robert breaks up with her. A high-flyer with a future in politics, he tells her an impulse that her art has no purpose; it isn't helping anyone. 'What does it matter if you do what you love, if what you love doesn't matter?' she asks her father. Still, she has no other prospects, so agrees to take up a painting apprenticeship in lies at the furthest reaches very heart of Norway; 'All I had was a direction, norththe novel form itself.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408863049</amazonuk>1804272329

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Claire Fullerton295967572X|title=Dancing to an Irish ReelPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=45

|summary=Hailey was on Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a sabbatical from her job in the music business in Los Angeles train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and taking what the holiday purpose of a lifetime to Irelandthis journey is, when she walked into the Galway Music Centre and found a job which she simply couldn't turn downis uncertain. She also Django found a home in a local village, a liking for the rural life and a man whom she could love. Liam Hennessy was a talented accordion player: music was his life and whilst he was more attracted to Hailey than he had ever been to another woman it wasntickets 't entirely clear whether 'love' could ever be on the cards for floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0990304256</amazonuk>Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jessie Greengrass Makenna Goodman|title=An Account Helen of the Decline of the Great Auk, According to One Who Saw It Nowhere|rating=34.5|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=The title story, which appears first, is exactly what it says on It could be argued that the tin: one hunter's story pervading theme of travelling to remote islands to take part in massive culls of great auks, until they were simply gone. It's always this book is malaise - a hard -to believe that species -place feeling that once numbered something in their millionsyour life is not quite right. The protagonist, such as a disgraced professor on the passenger pigeonbrink of losing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, could go extinct so quicklyGoodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, but when you read about the brutal slaughter tactics here – swinging clubs radical and boiling birds alive – you can see how a flightless bird was a sitting targetunnerving: Helen. The narrator makes no real attempt to defend himself: connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the birds were there for former owner of the taking; that was that. Still, countryside house he regrets their extinction's considering, because 'Helen represents a volta in any loss you can see a shadow of the way that you will be lost yourselfhis life, her past tied to his potential fresh start.' (Those interested in The realtor who shows the great auk's extinction may also want to read protagonist around the 2013 novel house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''The Collector of Lost Thingsan entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form'' by Jeremy Page.)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>1473610850</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Patricia ParkOlga Tokarczuk|title=Re JaneHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=3.5

|summary= Growing up in Flushing, New York –Jane Re has long been hoping to escape her whole life. A half-Korean, half-American Orphan, Jane struggles to find her place as a spirited and intelligent young woman growing up in a strict and mirthless family, observing ''What's the traditional Korean principle of “Nunchi” (a combination of good manners, obligation and hierarchy). Desperate to escape, Jane is thrilled when she becomes the au pair for a rich couple – two Brooklyn based professors of English, who have adopted a young Chinese girl into their family. Jane soon falls for the man of the family, but their blossoming affair is soon curtailed by a family death, prompting Jane’s return to Korea. As she learns more about herself, her history and her culture, Jane must make huge decisions about her life, her future, and her man…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0525427406</amazonuk>world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?''}}{{newreview|author=Patricia Duncker|The title=Sophie and the Sibyl: A Victorian Romance|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=''Sophie and the Sibyl''of this spellbinding work, consciously modelled on John Fowles's ''The French Lieutenant's Woman''House of Day, is a postmodern blending House of history, fiction, and metafictional commentary. Brothers Max and Wolfgang Duncker really were George EliotNight''s German publishers, but the accident somewhat reflects this notion of their surname matching the author's makes them her clever standshifting realities -in. As the novel opens in 1872small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the venerable English author is exploring Homburg and Berlin in the company of her 'husband' while ushering her latest novelshift from day to night, ''Middlemarch''however quotidian, into German translationcausing chaos. MaxBut, a young cad fond of casinos and brothels, has two tasks: ensuring Eliot's loyalty to their publishing the constant in that image is the house, and securing Countess Sophie von Hahn's hand in marriagestoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>140886052X</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sara BaumeThea Lenarduzzi|title=Spill Simmer Falter WitherThe Tower

|summary=Every Tuesday he goes into town''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. This particular Tuesday he sees an advert for a rescue dog that In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's been badly treated by its previous owner. Somewhere story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the ad strikes daughter of a resonance and he adopts wealthy family in the dog19th century, calling it Oneeye (yeswho died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, one wordcaptures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, above all, just like that)an enticing story to T. Gradually over shared meals It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a friendship grows quest for truth and knowledge, and develops over the seasons as the spill in service of spring turns to summer's simmermyth, through the falter of autumn fable and on to withering winterfantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0992817064</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael LaubJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Diary of the FallVaim

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Diary of the Fall is a story about regret, guilt and resentment. It's told from the point of view of an unnamed narrator, who reflects on not just his own life but also the lives of his father and grandfather'All was strange''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099581795</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Antoine Laurain, Emily Boyce (translator) and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=The Red Notebook|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Meet Laure. She's a widow in her 40s, who is entering her Parisian apartment building one night when she's mugged, and her handbag stolen. Meet Laurent, a middle-aged bookseller, who happens upon This haunting phrase encapsulates the handbag the following morning pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in the street, just before the binmen take it awayVaim, never to be seen again. More or less snubbed when trying to hand it to the police as lost property, he decides to take it upon himself to reunite the bag with its rightful owner. He has no idea their names are so intimately linked, and despite a lot of things being fictional fishing village in the bag (including the titular notebook) there is no cash, no phone and no ID documentation at all. What's Norway which paradoxically could not feel more – real for Jatgeir and what looks like making the idea even more fruitless – he has no idea that Laure has fallen into a coma as a result Eline, two of the mugging…protagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908313862</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Edward Parnell Claire-Louise Bennett|title= The Listeners |rating= 4 |genre= Literary Fiction |summary=May 1940. William Abrehart has not spoken since the mysterious death of his father, choosing instead to spend his days in the woods that surround his home. A promise he made to his dying father means that he is responsible for the wellbeing of his two sisters, and their withdrawn mother. Over the course of a weekend, ghosts of the past cause buried secretsBig Kiss, lies and promises to come spilling out Bye- culminating in a series of shocking events. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781331065</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Nadia Hashimi|title=The Pearl a That Broke Its ShellBye

|summary=Kabul 2007: Rahima Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and her sisters are followed home from school one day by distortion. Even a boy on his bike. He taunts them innocently enough as little boys dokiss, but with no sibling brotherusually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, the girls are unchaperoned in this land that is ruled by the laws becomes evidence of menlove lost. And as daughters in a household without sonsWhen the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me, in '' it is less an invitation than a country that desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this plea is governed by fearXavier, her ex-partner, the consequences will weigh heavily for them alla ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0062244760</amazonuk>1804271934

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Norah VincentHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Adeline: A Novel of Virginia WoolfLili is Crying|rating=4.5

|summary=Back First published in 1953 in 1999French, when ''The Hours'' won the Pulitzer Prize, Michael Cunningham set a precedent for depicting Woolf's later life and suicide. Nicole Kidman won this novel is a Best Actress Oscar for her role as Woolf in timeless text which wrenches the film version hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the novel; she is best remembered for wearing a prosthetic nose. Fast forward 15 years. In 2014–2015 alonepage and positions them elsewhere, disjointed, three major novels about Virginia Woolf have been publishedtruncated. That confluence, especially in a year that does not mark a significant anniversaryLike the lives of her characters, speaks to a continuing interest in Woolf's life and writingsthey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0349005648</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ivan Repila and Sophie Hughes (translator)Jonathan Buckley|title=The Boy Who Stole Attila's HorseOne Boat

|summary=If you pick up ''One Boat'' is a copy deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of this book you realise how small it isphilosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. You'll know, Set against the evocative backdrop of course, that pockets hardly exist that are normally big enough to hold what we used to call a pocket booksmall coastal Greek town, but here is this work masterfully captures the exception magic of its setting and its power to prove provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the rule. It's wee. The story is on a hundred pages. The concision is partly down to reason she has visited it starting after the beginningdeath of both her parents. Prompted by her mourning, for we first meet Big her narrative voice is meditative and Smalldeeply self-aware, two brothers, once they're stuck down a large well in inviting the middle of a forestreader into her labyrinthine cogitations. Tasked with It is a family errand, they're trapped at the bottom book that not only requires but inspires depth of a natural Erlenmeyer flaskthought, and even a desperate move cannot get either out. This since its narrative structure is the story of the next three months in their existence, as they brave hunger, delirium, loss of language, fragmentary and the brute and unstinting human selfishness needed ironically relies on analepsis for existenceits propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782271015</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jamie KornegayEowyn Ivey|title=SoilBlack Woods Blue Sky

|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=Jay Mize is ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a scientific man with bar waitress, a particular interest in soil setting which enables her bad habits and agricultureher accidental neglect of Emaleen. He decides he is the one to pioneer Described as a revolution ''wild card'', she feels stuck in farming techniques her day-to-day life, and uproots his wife yearns to cross the Wolverine river and son live on the North Fork to set up an experimental farm on fulfil her desires of a plot of land in the countrysimple life surrounded by nature. Jay is also an obsessive When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man and his plans take , who says he has a cabin overthere, becoming his only focus she feels called to go - and causing his family to leave himbring Emaleen with her. Then flooding ruins his crops Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and he is left at the end of his tether; things only get worse when Jay finds a dead body on his land and his tenuous grip on his sanity is releasedEmaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473607035</amazonuk>1472279042

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Karen CampbellSally Rooney|title=RiseIntermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Justine Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is running for gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her lifecharacters never quite say exactly what they feel. She's had enough of being someone else's propertyAmong the many relationships woven into this story, of being subjected the central one for readers to unravel is the kind of love that has seen her tattooed fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and owned and beaten and rented out to others to earn her keepPeter Koubek. So she's taken what isn't hersIvan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, but then was never actually contrasts sharply with his eitherolder brother Peter, and shea successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's packed passing after a baglong battle with cancer, waited until he is drunk-enough asleep not to hear her say goodbye to the dog, and has leftbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408857928</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dorthe NorsFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=Karate Chop, and Minna Needs Rehearsal SpaceWhite Nights|rating=3.5

|summary=The reviewer picks up As always in Dostoyevsky, the bookcharacter work is sublime.<br>The book One is called ''Minna Needs Rehearsal Space''.<br>The book never left wondering what a character is entirely made out of one-sentence paragraphs.<br>The one-sentence paragraphs are very seldom poetic, but normally are grammatically correct sentences.<br>The one-sentence paragraphs on the whole have just one verb, unless regarding that from reported thinking or unreported speech.<br>The book concerns a middle-aged musician feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and composer who does indeed need rehearsal space.<br>The book concerns a woman who suddenly gets more space than she wants when her boyfriend leaves her.<br>The boyfriend's departure causes a lot of people crowding around Minna, which causes a problem.<br>The problem might be resolved by a trip away from her city flat.<br>The title of the book might be ironictemperaments with remarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782271198</amazonuk>0241619785

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chigozie ObiomaJames Baldwin|title=The FishermenGiovanni'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

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=This book is essentially a cautionary family tale Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of four brothers suspense and tension from the way they react to a prophecy moment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, purchases her forbidden notebook, and learns about them by herself in the local madmanmost intimate and revealing ways. It |isbn=1782278222}}{{Frontpage|author=Ottessa Moshfegh|title=My Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=At best, this novel is also, in a sense, a coming-scathing critique of-age story where Ben, modern society and reveals the young narratorfragility of human relationships; at worst, it is plunged into premature adulthood under the most brutal cynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of circumstancesan unlikeable protagonist. And it is about brotherly love. None of these descriptionsThis unlikely heroine, howevera slim, convey attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the world, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact that this book is written by an exciting new voice , her solution lies in African literary fictionher hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0957548850</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer ClementMatthew Tree|title=Prayers for the StolenWe'll Never Know|rating=34.5

|summary=Ladydi Garcia Martínez lives in rural Chilpancingo, Mexico, with her motherTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, Rita, who works as a cleaning lady for a rich family. Like many drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of the men in their town his artistic passions all failed miserably and who left to find work, Ladydi's father crossed the river into America, where he is rumoured to have another family. As a result, this is very much a matriarchal community. Rita describes the situation for Ladydi's teacher: 'You men don't get it, yet, do you? This is a land had endless crises of womenself confidence. Mexico belongs So Tim applied himself to womenhis studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099587599</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David GrossmanB0C47LV1PC|title=Falling Out of TimeFragility|author=Mosby Woods

|summary=Like the central characters in Can you make a ''Falling Out of TimeYo birthing person''joke? And if you could, Israeli author David Grossman lost his son, a soldier named Uri, during is the question should you make it? Or is the Middle East conflict. In this multifaceted examination of bereavementquestion if you did, would it seems land? The catch is that everyone has lost a childthe answer for both could well be.... no. The genre-bending mixture  ''Fragility'' is set as the city of poetryPortland, absurdist dialogueOregon, and an inverted fairy tale reflects cautiously begins to emerge from the difficulty of ever capturing grief in language. Each story and each strategy is like a new way of approaching restrictions imposed during the unspeakable.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099583720</amazonuk>covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Samantha EllisMosby Woods|title=How To Be A Heroine: Or, what I've learned from reading too muchWhirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=The West isn''How t the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to be mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a Heroine'' push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a pleasant and addictive readman with precognition. Playwright Samantha Ellis looks back at her childhood as Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a voracious reader and remembers man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the characters that influenced hermost valuable asset in history. These are as diverse as Sylvia PlathImagine then, ''Little Women'' and Scheherazadethat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099575566</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ian Walthew0571379559|title=The Complex Chemistry House of LossBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Deep ''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 rural France James Kerr was admitted to a psychiatric clinicthe house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. His mental problems were deep Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and intractablefloods. Superficially he seemed never Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have got over twin boys - Sonny and Max, the sudden death of 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 sister there's an assumption when he was 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 child and few months after their death his relationship where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with his father had deteriorated because his father refused delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to speak war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of their lossthe Western Isles. There were additional factors too: Kerr had spent some time in Afghanistan in Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a secret capacityfragile peace. In fact much One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his life since he went to university had involved putting up a frontsister Elektra, but doing something else in the backgroundseeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00OLMHCW2</amazonuk>0356516075

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael ChristieKay Chronister|title=If I Fall, If I DieDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=It probably tells you With a lot about the atmosphere of this book world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for the whole time I was reading humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether itis a robotic takeover, I thought the title was ''If I Falla world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, I Die''this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. That missing second ''IfDesert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is probably at the crux a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the whole talefears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>043402306X</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Virginia BurgesEric LaRocca|title=The VirtuosoTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=3.5|genre=General FictionHorror|summary=The title character of 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 ''The VirtuosoBig Bad'' , whether that is Isabelle Bryanta home invader, a professional violinist who has earned monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the affectionate nickname end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''BeethovenThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There's Babe'is not like that. She was the youngest-ever winner It is a collection of short stories more interested in the BBC Young Musician horrors of the Year competition illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and gave her first solo performance, of Beethovenare harder to defeat than any 's violin concerto, at Royal Albert Hall. 'Her violin represented another limb to her, it was that precious. It felt so natural, like an extension of her body.Big Bad' It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the violin is Isabelle's life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00R07U0B0</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adam FouldsMadelaine Lucas|title=In The Wolf's MouthThirst for Salt|rating=45

|summary=In Sicily''Love, bandits steal the sheep of I'd read, was supposed to be a young shepherd. Distraughtlight and weightless feeling, he seeks out his local Mafioso but I had always longed for helpgravity'' Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Sixteen years Overlaid with laterwisdom, two men are traveling the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to Sicily its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24- oneyear-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, a young English officerdepicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and the other an American infantryman. They are all soon thrust into a war that is greater and more terrible than anything they could have dreamed, familial relationships and they all must find different ways to survive its terrorshow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009958686X</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eliza RobertsonMichael Grothaus|title=WallflowersBeautiful Shining People

|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=Eliza Robertson won the Man Booker Scholarship ''But fearing something and Curtis Brown Prize while completing her MA in Creative Writing at the University having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of East Angliawhat we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it. ''Wallflowers '' is already a bestseller in RobertsonBeautiful Shining People''s native Canadarevolves around the question of identity and acceptance. There Of what it means to be human. Of what is quite some variety across real and what is artificial, and whether the seventeen storiesdevelopment of technology is exciting or frightening. Broadly speaking|isbn=191458564X}}{{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Saint|title=Atalanta|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, thoughI vowed. I would take my place, there are not just in the name of the goddess. It was for the sake of my name, too. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a few themes: moving on from lossson, finding love in Atalanta is raised under the midst protective eye of gentle madnessthe goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, and interactions with one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the natural worldArgonauts, often on a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the edge chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of Canadachallenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis's British Columbia wildernessfatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408856794</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Edith PearlmanAmanthi Harris|title=HoneydewBeautiful Place|rating=45|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=American short story writer [[:Category:Edith Pearlman|Edith Pearlman]] brings us Padma, a compilation young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of stories that have only been seen separately in magazines over the her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. This follows on from It is not a place she was born into, but the huge success one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''Binocular Visionscore'' (in 2013)for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, the short story collection that led to Ms Pearlman being presented with strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the National Critics' Circle AwardVilla. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444797018</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Schneider178563335X|title=Brother of SleepSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=3.5

|summary=When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they'Brother of Sleep'' tells re held when you need to pick the story of Elias Johannes Alderchildren up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a child born into a god forsaken village high sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in the Austrian Vorarlberg-law won't let her see her grandson. He came into Holthorpe, on the world as Norfolk coast, is a silent childlovely place, while his mother was screaming but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the midwife wasnvicar, Gail, but then she't really paying attentions been doing the job for more than thirty years. It took Rachel and Christopher hoped that a couple of loud intonations of walk on the Te Deum from the neglectful nurse before he finally uttered a soundbeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715649205</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Edwidge Danticat1398515388|title=Claire of The Boy and the Sea LightDog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|summary=Claire Limye Lamne (Claire ''Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of the Sea Light) buckets as he filled them.'' How is born that for an opening? The style of this novel in the fishing village form of Ville Roseinterconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, Haiti as her mother diesturning on a sixpence. Her father NoziasAnd author Marco North, a poor fishermanwho has the most wonderful turn of phrase, spends his life trying to make a better life for his baby to such an extent that starts as he eventually encourages a local fabric seller means to take Claire. This happens go on the night of Claire's 7th birthday; the night that little Claire goes missing before the fabric seller can take her.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782068511</amazonuk>