Changes

[[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=Nicola BarkerPolly Barton|title=The Cauliflower®What Am I, A Deer?

|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Nicola Barker teasingly refers to herself as this bookPolly Barton's 'collagist'debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, piecing together diverse documents newly relocated from London to create a picture Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the process of Sri Ramakrishna (1836–1886)localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a new audience. Barton treats this as a largely illiterate guru who attracted followers to his intense worship paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. From this, the goddess Kali. His life story is novel opens out into a sticky mass of contradictionswider, resonant question:to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, accepted, or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785150669</amazonuk>1804272175

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Toni Morrison Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title= God Help the ChildThe Disappearing Act|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=A truly complex Despite her anonymisation of place names and emotionally raw portrayalpeople, that seeks Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to cover issues the town of raceF for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, genderher journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. The train functions as a motif of transience and paedophilia. A slim volumeimpermanence, yeswhile the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and a retreat into fantasy, but one an impulse that is powerful in its punchlies at the very heart of the novel form itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099555921</amazonuk>1804272329

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jesus Carrasco and Margaret Jull Costa (translator)295967572X|title=Out in the OpenPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=35

|summary=Meet Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the boy. We never learn his name – in fact we learn very little in purpose of this bookjourney is, such as where or when we are, and why. What we do know is that he has left homeuncertain. We get Django found the feeling his father is too handy with punishment, but that cantickets ''t be on the only reason for floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him first hiding out . Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in an olive grove overnight, then fleeing across the plains surrounding his family's village. Especially past as he's chosen one of the most awkward, attritional times pair travel to cross said plains – the land station by coach and the train is in the middle of a horrendous droughtsteam locomotive. When he tries to steal his first provisions from an aged goatherd, however, he finds some light and liquid, but is this substitute father figure ever going to be enough to help the boy flee what he needs to?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009958218X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philip DentMakenna Goodman|title=Mutable Passions: Charlotte Bronte: A Disquieting AffairHelen of Nowhere|rating=34.5|genre=Historical Literary Fiction |summary=As It could be argued that the 200th anniversary pervading theme of Charlotte Brontë's birth approaches, it this book is malaise - a perfect time for reading about herhard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. Philip Dent's second novel chooses The protagonist, a lesser known period disgraced professor on the brink of her life to dramatizelosing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. All her siblings are now dead; during However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a hard winter when she force which is unable to visit her best friendseductive, Ellen Nusseyradical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he's considering, Charlotte spends her time finishing ''Villette''Helen represents a volta in his life, her final novelpast tied to his potential fresh start. The family servant, Tabbyrealtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, ribs Charlotte about and describes her romantic prospects – including Patrick Brontëas 's curate'an entity that is pure consciousness, Arthur Bell Nicholls. Charlotte responds with indignation: beyond form'I could no more kiss the lips of a man with a beard as big as rooks' nests than I could yours. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, TabbyHelen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178589093X</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Miroslav PenkovOlga Tokarczuk|title=Stork MountainHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=45|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=A young man, his grandfather and a stork with a broken wing are the ''company of rebels'What' at s the heart good of this lively tale set in Bulgaria's Strandja Mountains. The storks a world that return to the mountains each spring are migrants, keeps changing like so many of the people that have passed through the region over the centuries. The young narrator is also ? How can one go on calmly living in transit, born in Bulgaria, but raised and educated in America. The story opens with his return to Bulgaria in search of his grandfather who has broken off contact with his family in America. But the young manit?''s motives are not as clear cut as first appears.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473622182</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Elisa Albert|The title= After Birth|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= This book is definitely not for anyone who has a rosy picture of new motherhood. In factthis spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of Night'', I would probably avoid it if you are contemplating giving birth in somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the near future. For any woman who has ever struggled through small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the first few months of motherhoodshift from day to night, howeverquotidian, or a partner of somebody who causing chaos. But, the constant in that image is going through itthe house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is an astounding and revelatory read. Never before have I read a more searing, honest and open discussion of the emotional upheaval a woman often goes through after giving birthperceived.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009959014X</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Ayelet Gundar-Goshen|title= Waking Lions|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= If the point of ''literature'' - as opposed to the less exalted though just-as-worthwhile forms of writing - is to force you to think about the real world, the political world, the painful life-as-we-know-it world, whilst catching you up in a story about something that never really happened, but, you know, might well have done so…and if you think that matters, then you must read this book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782271562</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Yan LiankeThea Lenarduzzi|title=The Four BooksTower

|summary=''The Four BooksHow unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream'' is a difficult. In this compelling novel, challenging novel and not for Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the feint heartedidentity of T, or for someone looking for a page-turnerthe protagonist of this tale. It really challenges the readerJust as T's perceptions and opens up story is being told, the story of a gateway to an era that second protagonist is difficult to imagine for anyone brought up in unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a western culture. Set wealthy family in Maoist China it tells the story of four protagonists and a memorable antagonist. The four19th century, found guilty who died of anti-revolutionary crimes are undergoing re-education tuberculosis after being locked in a work camp governed by the child. With an Orwellian feeltower, captures T's imagination. Annie'The Four Books'' will come s fate is, above all, an enticing story to be regarded as an undoubted masterpieceT. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099569493</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yann MartelJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=The High Mountains of PortugalVaim

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Tomas is being thrust into the twentieth Century, and he doesn't like it'All was strange''. He has given himself .. This haunting phrase encapsulates the job pervading sense of seeking something out otherworldliness which permeates this story set in the High Mountains of PortugalVaim, based on an ancient religious diary he found working a fictional fishing village in an archive, Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and to do so he needs the use of his uncle's brand new car to get him there and back in time. His jaw drops when he learns he will have to do the driving himselfEline, for he cannot make head nor tail two of what anything on the infernal machine does and why. It is of course a certain kind of progress, a looking forward, which has become quite anathema to him – for ever since he lost his beloved wife, beloved child and father, all protagonists caught in the space of a week, he has walked everywhere backwards – shielding himself from what really is ahead with a padded behind, and never letting sight of what he has lostits melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782114696</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Antonio Moresco and Richard Dixon (translator)Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Distant LightBig Kiss, Bye-Bye

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Our unnamed narrator might as well be the only person alive. He knows he's not – he still goes down to the nearest inhabited village to buy things to eat and other necessitiesEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and he sees planes spreading their contrails over the remote area he lives in – but he might as well bedistortion. A lot Even a kiss, usually a symbol of his thoughts are about lifeintimacy and closeness, however, for he has little to do except notice becomes evidence of love lost. When the nature around himnarrator cries out internally, from the smell of lilies burgeoning with nobody else to see them in this deserted village''come over here and kiss me, '' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to the swallows darting across the ravines of the countrysideconfirm her emotional numbness. Life – and the nature The imagined recipient of a light that he sees spring into activity every night at what he thought was a totally lifelessthis plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, empty forest area on land separated from his lookout post in his back garden by a deep, wooded gorge…ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0914671421</amazonuk>1804271934

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tania JamesHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=The Tusk That Did the DamageLili is Crying|rating=34.5

|summary=Tania James was a Fulbright Fellow First published in New Delhi 1953 in 2011–12. For French, this, her second novel after ''Atlas is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of Unknowns'' (shortlisted for its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the DSC Prize for South Asian literature) page and the story collection ''Aerogrammes''positions them elsewhere, she clearly draws on her personal knowledge of India in all its contradictionsdisjointed, especially when it comes to environmental policytruncated. The novel alternates between three perspectives: a third-person account Like the lives of an elephant named the Gravedigger and first-person narratives from a poacher and a documentary filmmakerher characters, they are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784700584</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Anakana SchofieldJonathan Buckley|title= Martin JohnOne Boat|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I had heard much about ''One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. Set against the evocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, this novel before I read work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and its power to provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it for review, after the death of both her parents. Prompted by which I mean I had heard it was profaneher mourning, strange her narrative voice is meditative and had deeply self-aware, inviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a daring subject matter accompanied by elements book that not only requires but inspires depth of humour. I have to say that whilst I agree it thought, since its narrative structure is certainly profane fragmentary and strange and incredibly innovative, I didn't find much humour in it at allironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908276665</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jon Kalman Stefansson and Philip Roughton (translator)Eowyn Ivey|title=The Heart of ManBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5

|summary=What could be better than an existentialist book from rural Iceland''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, full the young mother of gnomic comments about how close toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and death are, that has her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Described as its core a journey taken by''wild card'', amongst othersshe feels stuck in her day-to-day life, a naïve and hormonal teenaged lad yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a full coffin? Whystrange, I hear you crytaciturn and solitary man, who says he has a trilogy concerning the samecabin over there, she feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with her. YesWithout realising it, itthis calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|isbn=1472279042}} {{Frontpage|author=Sally Rooney|title=Intermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction |summary=Sally Rooney has studied the obvious answer, really – why else would we come to this third part, where the survivors chessboard of life and is something of the expedition rest upa grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, note as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the women giving them helpmany relationships woven into this story, and see how eminently close the circle of life central one for readers to unravel is to the figure of fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a snake swallowing its tail throughsocially awkward chess prodigy, among other thingscontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, dogs rutting a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a church below long battle with cancer, the coffinbrothers's bier?already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184866236X</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Joanna WalshFyodor Dostoyevsky|title= VertigoWhite Nights|rating= 45|genre= Literary FictionShort Stories|summary= The short stories As always in Joanna Walsh's collection have the overall effect of disparate streams of consciousness of a woman laying bear her very soulDostoyevsky, whilst often going about seemingly mundane activities of the ordinary and every day. The narrative voice appeared to me to be the same woman speaking throughout, playing different roles, though I'm not sure this was meant to be the casecharacter work is sublime. The style of the stories One is that of short vignettes, mostly written in never left wondering what a modernist, stream of consciousness style. Sometimes, the prose appears almost poeticcharacter is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908276800</amazonuk>0241619785

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kristopher JansmaJames Baldwin|title=Why We Came to the CityGiovanni's Room

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='We came to 'Giovanni's Room'' follows the city because we wished to live haphazardlynarrator 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 reach for only the least realistic of our desiresHella, and to see if we could not learn what our failures had to teachwho is travelling in Spain, and the real tension in the novel arises not, when we came to live, discover that we had never diedfrom his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. We wanted to dig deep It is David's crippling shame and suck out all the marrow denial of life, to be overworked and reduced to our last withis sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0525426604</amazonuk>0141186356

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ernst Haffner and Michael Hofmann (translator)Alba de Cespedes |title=Blood BrothersForbidden Notebook

|summary=It's Berlin, This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the Nazis are on their way to powermoment our protagonist, even if they will never cross these pages themselves. The city – hugeValeria Cossati, glamorouspurchases her forbidden notebook, bustling, vicious and learns about herself in the way it can swallow people – is home to a countless hoard of teenagers, but we focus on just a few, most of whom have been in some corrective institution or other before now. They call themselves the Blood Brothers, even if all they share is the most unglamorous drudgery of going from one doss-house to another, balancing the cost of a few cigarettes with that of a warm room for a few hours or some stale rolls to eatintimate and revealing ways. But en route to them is another 'Borstal' escapee, Willi. Surely his fate is going to be nothing if not more of the same?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099594048</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sara TaylorOttessa Moshfegh|title=The ShoreMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=4.53|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=The first story we hear from the ShoreAt best, this novel is a group scathing critique of isolated islands off modern society and reveals the coast fragility of Virginiahuman relationships; at worst, it is from Chloe, who's telling her sister about what she overheard in the store. She'd been there buying chicken necks so that they could go crabbing. Normally they used bacon rindscynical, but they'd already eaten those. Cabel Bloxom had been murdered predictable and ''they done cut his thang clean off''slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. The girls are motherless This unlikely heroine, a slim, attractive and Chloe newly orphaned girl in her twenties is fiercely protective of her little sister Renee. She's disillusioned with the first of the strong women we'll encounter world, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in these storiesfact, which interlink to give a greater pictureher solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009959188X</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adam BaronMatthew Tree|title=BlackheathWe'll Never Know

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Househusband James is happy in Blackheath. He's started doing stand-up again so that he too has an achievement in Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his life to balance wife Alice's award winning poetry. Children Ida father, a drunk and Dominic are doing well so chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all is great. Elsewhere in the area Amelia is equally happy with her actor husband Richard, her own career failed miserably and children Niamh and teenage Michaelwho had endless crises of self confidence. Sometimes happiness isn't enough though and, as the worlds of the two families start So Tim applied himself to minglehis studies, things start changing for each of themcultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908434902</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Julian BarnesB0C47LV1PC|title=The Noise of TimeFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=3.54

|summary=Julian BarnesCan you make a ''Yo birthing person''s first novel since he won joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the Booker Prize for [[question if you did, would it land? The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes]] catch is a fictionalised biography of Russian composer Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (1906–75). Knowing Barnes's penchant that the answer for stylistic experimentation, though, this was never going to both could well be a straightforward, chronological life story. Instead, as Barnes so often does, he sets up a tripartite structure, focussing on three moments in Shostakovich... no. ''Fragility's life when he has a reckoning with Power (always capitalised here). The title phrase helpfully spells out what the book is all about: 'Art is set as the whisper city of historyPortland, heard above Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the noise of time.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910702609</amazonuk>restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Danielle McLaughlinMosby Woods|title=Dinosaurs on Other PlanetsA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories Literary Fiction|summary=Seeing as this book is clearly a talented author hitting The West isn't the ground running, I will dispense with any major preambledominant force it once was. We start with a tale of a daughter affected by Nobody in the emotions of her parents as they separate – and West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the influence best course of a certain school-teacher – from the mother's point of viewaction. An ancient input shows how alien, and the modern day domesticity how regular, the isolation of a woman can feel, as events Governments are peppered by minor acts of destructionflailing. But men can be alienated too – especially oneA war here, a reluctant guest at a party push for children hosted by someone he once had an affair with – he feels the new form of this influence in the light of another one he has had to try and abandonclimate action there. 'All About Alice' – A feeling that's what the title character wants to say but has nobody to speak it to, but is it her – mid-40s and single, living with her father – that is most removed from her dreams or her old friend and now child factoryin actual charge. Imagine then, Marian? And we complete there was a lap of the calendar man with precognition. Imagine the wintry tale of strategic advantage in this asset; a man unable to who can tell his work superiors you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the problems he faces at home – a new homemost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, recently built like so many one sees while driving round Irelandthat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473613701</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anne Enright0571379559|title=The Green RoadHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5

|summary=''The Green RoadHouse of Broken Bricks'' is the story of a familyfour people. If the author was anyone other than Anne Enright it would be stereotypically Irish, with all the appropriate characters Tess Hembry's roots are in placeJamaica: the boy who goes off to temperamentally she might be a priesthappier there, but instead, she lives in the daughter who likes house on the bottle far too muchriverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the son who does good works passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the woman who stays back where she was born delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and marries a local manMax, the dead husband who was perhaps just a little bit beneath the wife who plays the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother'grande dames Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they' re related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is perfect at being needy, whilst all the while maintaining out with his mother that she needs nothing. But, of course, it ''is'' Anne Enrights his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099539799</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kate AtkinsonClaire North|title=A God 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 Ruinsthe 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

|summary=Teddy Todd never really expected ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to survive be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the waryear-long relationship that once defined her. As Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a bomber pilot it wasn't something which you could rely on and he certainly knew man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the statisticssummer after. But - Set against all the odds, he came through it, albeit backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with some time spent as a prisoner of war. On balance he had a good warher older lover, but time will see him married to Nancydepicting its all-consuming nature, father to Viola how it changed her perspective on both romantic and grandfather to Sunny and Bertie - familial relationships and left with the feeling that how it's more difficult to have a good peace than a good waraltered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552776645</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chuck PalahniukMichael Grothaus|title=Beautiful YouShining People

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Meet Penny Harrigan''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And letI's hope your introduction m willing to her is more gentle than that bet most of what we have on the first page of this book, where she is being raped in front of a full court house, who – male to the bone – sit back and say nothing, if not whip out their camera phone. Once people take her out on a gurney and recognise herfear will never happen, or we can start from the beginning, where she is a lowly underling at a law firm, having failed too many exams take steps to progress satisfactorilychange it. The company is where the world's richest man is in legal negotiations having left ' ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the world's best question of identity and most beautiful actress, and lo and behold he just happens acceptance. Of what it means to pick Penny to replace her with, even if she doesn't think of herself as the most beautiful girl aroundbe human. But Of what exactly is it she real and what is wanted forartificial, and can her apolitical style whether the development of feminism and aspirations be met?technology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009958767X</amazonuk>191458564X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Helle Helle and Martin Aitken (translator)Jennifer Saint|title=This Should be Written in the Present TenseAtalanta

|summary= This is the first novel ''I was as worthy as any one of Helle Helle'sthem. I would get on board that ship, an award winning Danish authorI vowed. I would take my place, to be translated into Englishnot just in the name of the goddess. It is easy to see from this novel why she is gaining accolades in her Danish homelandwas for the sake of my name, too. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. The rhythmic Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, natural flow Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the narrative is mesmerising goddess Athemis and appears fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to lull you through join the book. It has some lovelyArgonauts, spare sentences a fierce band of description: warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis''There were run-down cottages with open doors name and news on the radio. Gulls flocked around an early harvester carve out her own legendary place in the late sun''history. But mostly, it What follows is written in a modernistwhirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, almost stream of consciousness styleAtalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, which I found refreshingit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099587475</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alice ThompsonAmanthi Harris|title=The Book CollectorBeautiful Place|rating=45|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Meet VioletPadma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. Swept off her feet by This is a disarming encounter with a landed gentleman and bookshop owner at a coffee shop, place she immediately falls in love with him, and is quickly married, and almost as quickly with childspent her formative years. When the boy It is not a place she was borninto, however, fairly understandable doubts creep inbut the one she thinks of as home. Is her husband hiding anything behind his assuredness – especially when How she wakes in came to be at the middle of the night alone? What ghost is left by the fact he lost his first wife and baby in childbirth? What should she understand from her own opinions about Villa, how it became her new lifehome, and the machinations that have flowed through her new lifeever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's life, present fails to escape her past and much like the idea musical score of a nanny looking after it? Just what is going on in her new country pile?film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784630438</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sasa Stanisic and Anthea Bell (translator)178563335X|title=Before the FeastSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=2.5

|summary= Deep When 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 heart of Germany sits the village of Furstenfeldechildren up. It lies on a spit of land thatHer husband, legend has itChristopher, a giant createdcollects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, between two lakes – the Great LakeJamie, and the Deep Lakewhilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. All around is forestThelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. The village is enjoying summerHolthorpe, and we can see the inhabitants as they go about their lazy life on the last hot day and night before the seasons changeNorfolk coast, from the teenage lads fishing and crashing cars or preparing for is a bell-ringing exam, to the girl who wants outlovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the middleparish -aged man who made a pub out and she's in awe of a garage and some curtainsthe vicar, to the older man (a retired soldier) who is watching his last piece of titillating TV before going out to either fetch cigarettes or shoot himselfGail, to but then she's been doing the older still lady painting job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a portrait of walk on the town ready to auction beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it off on the morrowwas probably what they needed. For the morrow is the annual fete, and all those people are, one way or another, reacting to its imminent arrivalAnd then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782271295</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andre Alexis1398515388|title=Fifteen DogsThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|summary=Gods (and brothers) Hermes and Apollo were arguing in a bar about what would happen if animals ''Some frogs had human intelligence and eventually a wager was agreedgotten into the well. Human intelligence would be granted to fifteen dogs staying overnight '' ''Walter stood waist-deep in a veterinary clinic and the wagerfragrant water, suggested by Apollonaked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, was that Hermes would be his servant for a year if the dogs were not more unhappy than they would have been originallysticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. But - if even one Two of the dogs was happy leaned over the opening and barked down at the end strange noise of its life Hermes would winthe buckets as he filled them.''|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178125558X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Marina Warner|title=Fly Away Home|rating=3|genre=Short Stories|summary=How would you subvert a fairy tale? You know enough of them and enough about them to do it, so think on it. Would you give a mermaid a smartphone? Would you pepper them with pop stars, and perhaps let them be witness to the Schadenfreude caused by a cave is that's sacred to native Canadiansfor an opening? Would you, in the light The style of their characters usually being routine, interchangeable tropes, give them a closely-observed personality – as seen here this novel in a teacher's interior thoughts when faced with a piece of East Anglian lore? Would you take the exoticism form of the east, interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and Egypt in particularmusing, and see it in the light of a musical teacher turning on a zero-hours contract sixpence. And author Marco North, who ends up muttering to himself, directing traffic in has the middle most wonderful turn of the roadphrase, or from the remove of an elderly man with ''swollen feet in orthopaedic sandals'' with a message from the past? Certainly these two are not the standard Arabian Nights-styled pieces…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784630381</amazonuk>starts as he means to go on.