Difference between revisions of "Newest Literary Fiction Reviews"

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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
 
[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]
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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Matthew Tree
{{newreview
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|title=We'll Never Know
|author=Roland Watson-Grant
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|rating=4.5
|title=Sketcher
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Nine-year-old Skid Beaumont lives with his three brothers, father Alrick and mother Valerie in the swamps beyond the New Orleans city limits.  Life is hard and home is a rundown shack with no running water but they're only there temporarily; a 'temporarily' that is rather long-term. Alrick moved them from their nice home in New Orleans because the land was cheap and soon the city would build out to envelop them.  Years later they're still waiting for that to happen.  Life isn’t exactly mundane though; there are rumours that when Skid's brother Frico draws left-handed, strange things seem to happen.
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|summary= Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846882427</amazonuk>
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|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8
 
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=B0C47LV1PC
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|title=Fragility
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|author=Mosby Woods
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|rating=4
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|genre=Literary Fiction
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|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.
  
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''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic
|author=Francesco Pacifico
 
|title=The Story of My Purity
 
|rating=2.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=In Francesco Pacifico's translated Italian novel 'The Story of My Purity', Piero Rosini is a 30 year old, ultraconservative Catholic working for a radical Catholic publishing house. His marriage is devoid of physical contact, and he yearns for his virginal sister-in-law. Largely to escape these longings, he heads for Paris, never the first choice of one seeking to preserve their purity, where he is further tempted by a slightly unlikely group of girls, and one in particular, which is further complicated for him by the fact that she is Jewish. Almost living a separate life in his head, he cannot escape either the intellectual or physical constraints of his old life in Rome.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241145058</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Mosby Woods
|author=Philip Sington
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|title=A Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|title=The Valley of Unknowing
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In the mid-to-late eighties the German Democratic Republic looked like enduring. Bolstered by a system of ''Mitarbeiter'' (''fellow workers'' is a much more amenable term than ''informers'') the Stasi kept their populace in check. Western media was easy to censor in those days. Border controls were brutal. People were shot on a regular basis trying to cross the no-man's-land into West Berlin and along the other inner German borders.
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|summary= The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535823</amazonuk>
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|isbn=B0C9SNG8R1
 
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=0571379559
|author=Robert Walser
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|title=The House of Broken Bricks
|title=The Walk and other stories
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|author=Fiona Williams
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The publication of this collection of around forty short stories affords the English speaking public a unique opportunity; that of reading Walser, possibly the leading modernist writer of Swiss German in the last century. He has received high praise in 'A Place in the Country', W G Sebald's recently published posthumous collection and he is well-known as being a significant influence on Franz Kafka. His work here dates from 1907 to 1929 and along with his poetry won him recognition with Berlin's avant garde. He combines lyrical delicacy with detailed observation; reflective melancholy with criticism of brash commercialism. The fine writing in this volume strives to achieve a hard won integrity together with an experimental capacity for reflection. It challenges the reader and provokes him to new insights.
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|summary=''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 house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks.  Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and floods.  Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money.  They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the 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 there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846689589</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Claire North
|author=Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya
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|title=House of Odysseus
|title=The Watch
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
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|genre= Literary Fiction  
|summary= Nizam pushes a barrow up to a fortified US army base in Afghanistan.  What is she doing there? How will the soldiers react?  What do they believe: their experience, their training, their gut reaction or a young girl amputee in the middle of the desert who may be the last thing they ever see?
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|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099565773</amazonuk>
 
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{{newreview
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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.
|author=Anthony Cartwright
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|isbn=0356516075
|title=How I Killed Margaret Thatcher
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=What motivates someone to become a killer?
 
 
 
When the reader first meets Sean Bull, he is nine years old, living a seemingly carefree and happy existence surrounded by his family and friends in a close-knit community in Dudley, West Midlands. He loves Star Wars and playing football with his school friends and adores his teenage uncle Johnny, who tells him stories and creates the most wonderful pieces of art.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781251576</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author= Kay Chronister
|author=Jenni Fagan
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|title= Desert Creatures
|title=The Panopticon
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|rating= 4
|rating=5
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|genre= Dystopian Fiction
|genre=Literary Fiction
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|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.
|summary=Imagine reading a book set in a Scottish children’s care home. It’s about a violent and a deeply disturbed fifteen year old drug addict who, when she was eleven, found her prostitute foster mother murdered in the bathtub. That’s the set-up of Jenni Fagan’s ''The Panopticon'', and that’s what it’s about – but the funny thing is that whatever you’re picturing in your head right now, and what I was imagining before I sat down to read it, bears absolutely no resemblance to the book Fagan has actually written.
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|isbn=1803364998
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099558645</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{frontpage
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|isbn=1803363002
|author=Jess Richards
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|author= Eric LaRocca
|title=Cooking with Bones
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|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There
|rating=4.5
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|rating= 5
|genre=Literary Fiction
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|genre= Horror
|summary= Sisters Amber and Maya run away from home, the city of Paradon, and arrive in a small village.  Finding an old cottage, the girls settle in comfortably, hidden from the locals' sight while joining in with their customs as Amber backs honey cakes each night from the ingredients left daily outside the cottage and the instructions of the former occupant's cookery books.  Now they've moved away from their old life Amber tries to encourage Maya to stand on her own two feet which isn't easy. For Maya is a formwanderer, engineered to reflect other's wants; a role in which it's difficult to exist normally, let alone while trying to adjust to change… and, indeed, unexpected death.
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|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''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444738038</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Madelaine Lucas
|author=Kate Atkinson
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|title=Thirst for Salt
|title=Life After Life
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Spanning the period from just before World War One to the end of World War Two, Kate Atkinson's ''Life After Life'' tells the story of Ursula Todd. Or more accurately, it tells the potential stories of Ursula Todd. If you've seen the movie ''Sliding Doors'' then you will have some idea of the concept Atkinson explores; that of small changes in life leading to different outcomes, many of which lead to tragic endings but strangely the book manages to be a celebration of the spirit of Ursula and is often quite uplifting. It's a book that sounds like it is going to be much more confusing than it is though and the result is a very special book indeed. It's that rare thing of a book that has a strong literary style but which is also very readable.
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|summary= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385618670</amazonuk>
 
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{{newreview
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Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.
|author=Emily Perkins
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|isbn=0861546490
|title=The Forrests
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary= This is the chronicle of the Forrest family during the life of daughter Dorothy.  They move ('they' being Dorothy, father Frank, mother Lee and siblings Michael, Evelyn and little Ruthie) from New York to New Zealand at the age of seven years old. Frank hopes the migration will signal a change in his luck as well as a new life for his family.  He's right in that changes follow but there are as many to shake their stability as to still it and the past remains with each of them as well as the ''de'' ''facto'' adoptee Daniel.  Indeed, Dorothy grows to realise that the past is a garment that's worn in some form throughout an entire lifetime.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140883149X</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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|author= Michael Grothaus
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|title=Beautiful Shining People
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|rating=4
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|genre= Literary Fiction
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|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.''
  
{{newreview
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''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.
|author=Elif Shafak
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|isbn=191458564X
|title=Honour
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=Jamila and Pembe are twins who, growing up among the Kurdish in Turkey, are as wrapped in the customs of their Muslim faith and heritage as they are in the love of their family. Jamila develops a talent that will make her the hub of her community.  Pembe's destiny lies over the sea as she migrates to England with her husband Adem in search of a better life. However, the destiny they travel towards is oh so different from the destiny of which they dream.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670921165</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Jennifer Saint
|author=Therese Anne Fowler
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|title=Atalanta
|title=Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As Therese Anne Fowler points out in her acknowledgements, views on the relationship between F Scott Fitzgerald and his wife and muse, Zelda, tend to split into 'Team Scott' and 'Team Zelda'. The former believe that it was Zelda's instability and possessiveness that limited Scott's creative output while the latter argue that it was Scott's debauched behaviour that led to Zelda's mental problems. ''Z'' takes a more balanced view - the truth of the matter is that they needed each other but were tragically, mutually destructive. Getting the fact-based fiction tone right is always a challenge, and this is exacerbated when the author gives a writer the narrative voice, and Zelda was a talented writer in her own right as well as a dancer, artist and general social phenomenon. However Fowler pulls it off with aplomb in what is a sensitive and engrossing story of Zelda - 'the First Flapper'.
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|summary=''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the name of the goddess. It was for the sake of my name, too. Atalanta''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444761404</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
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Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero.
|author=Sheila Heti
 
|title=How Should A Person Be?
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=Much has been made in the media about the similarity in approach of Sheila Heti's fictionalised autobiographical ''How Should A Person Be?'' and Lena Dunham's HBO television series ''Girls''. They certainly share a similarly bleak and introspective view of life, both are apparently based on the writer's own experience, both have a somewhat knowingly shock factor particularly when it comes to sex and both leave me somewhat depressed and sad. And both have been critical successes in the US. Indeed, ''How Should A Person Be?'' also features on the 2013 long list for the [[Women's Prize for Fiction 2013|Women's Prize for Fiction]], although it's not easy to assess where the fiction starts and the reality stops. In fact, the conceit is also somewhat similar to the scripted reality shows that dominate certain television channels. The effect is something that is interesting as a concept and exercise but less than enjoyable to read.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846557542</amazonuk>
 
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{{newreview
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Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing.
|author=Barbara Kingsolver
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|isbn=1472292154
|title=Flight Behaviour
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=Set in rural Tennessee, Dellarobia Turnbow is a young mother, trapped in the result of a shotgun wedding in a largely loveless marriage on her husband's failing family farm dominated by the disapproval of her God-fearing mother in law. She dreams of escape with equally unsuitable younger men until one day on her way to acting on this impulse for the first time, she encounters an act of nature that will change her life for good. Barbara Kingsolver perfectly captures in the opening paragraphs the sense of entrapment and dissatisfaction of Dellarobia and doesn't let up for a moment.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571290779</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Amanthi Harris
|author=Nikolai Leskov, Richard Pevear (translator) and Larissa Volokhonsky (translator)
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|title=Beautiful Place
|title=The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories
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|rating=5
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=This is a collection of 17 Nikolai Leskov stories as mixed in subject matter as they are in length.  From the very short ''Spirit of Madame de Genlis'', warning of the dire consequences of selecting literature for a mollycoddled princess, to the novella-length ''The Enchanted Wanderer'' telling the tale of the apparently immortal monk who prayed for suicide victims, Leskov (aided greatly by the talented translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky) unlocks the mores, traditions, religion and superstitions of 19th century Russia for a modern readership.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099577356</amazonuk>
 
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{{newreview
 
|author=Taiye Selasi
 
|title=Ghana Must Go
 
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Kweku Sai, father, husband and doctor, awakes early one morning and wanders outside into his Ghanaian gardenAs he gazes back at his house, he suffers a fatal heart attack and, during his last moments reflects on his life and a family fragmentedOn hearing of his death, his children and first wife Folasade look back on what they were before and, thanks in part to Folasade's and Kweku's actions, what they've become.
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|summary= Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home countryThis is a place she spent her formative yearsIt is not a place she was born into, but the 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 ''score'' 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, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919861</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1784631930
 
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=178563335X
|author=Michele Roberts
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|title=Sea Defences
|title=Ignorance
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|author=Hilary Taylor
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=
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|summary=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 children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-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 real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she's been 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.
Michèle Roberts's ''Ignorance'' is a beautifully written, lyrical story about life in wartime France. Narrated mainly by two characters, Jeanne and Marie-Angèle, it jumps back and forward in time and is an enthralling mixture of guilt, faith, and survival. The two girls could not be more different. Marie-Angèle is the grocer's daughter while Jeanne is the daughter of a Jewish mother who washes clothes for a living. The two girls together go to the village convent for their education but come from different ends of the social spectrum. When the German occupation arrives, the two girls' experiences are very different but both are 'ignorant' of each others plight and their judgements are repeatedly shown to be wide of the mark. In fact the book could just as well have been titled 'Judgement'. Just when you think you know one through the eyes of the other, you get the opposite view of things.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408831155</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1398515388
|author=Carrie Tiffany
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|title=The Boy and the Dog
|title=Mateship with Birds
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|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=In the early nineteen fifties a lonely, middle-aged farmer observed the birds on his land and recorded what he saw in the blank pages of his milk ledger.  His animals and the birds were his family and his land - difficult though it could be - a part of him.  Whilst Harry watched and recorded, his neighbour, Betty, watched Harry and recorded the childhood illnesses and accidents of her two children.  By day she worked in a nursing home where she was a lunchtime 'wife', sitting at the bedside of some of the old men in her care.  Her daughter, Hazel, kept a nature notebook which was completely factual and accepting of birth and death in a way that can only be achieved by those who live with livestock - and deadstock - on a daily basis.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447219864</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Anouk Markovits
 
|title=I Am Forbidden
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=The date is 1939 and the place is what we know as Romania and Hungary.  Young Zalman Stern is stopped by soldiers and for a moment he feels this is his last moment on Earth.  Meanwhile, not too far away, one moment 5 year old Josef Lichtenstein is playing with his baby sister, the next his childhood is deleted by the same bigotry and blood that deletes her.  One day their paths will meet.  This is the story of Zalman, Josef, their descendants; their struggles, their beliefs; the cost of escape and the cost of remaining.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099571943</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jami Attenberg
 
|title=The Middlesteins
 
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Edie Middlestein almost has the American dream within her graspShe trained as a lawyer, has a husband, a daughter who followed her professional footsteps and a son married to an ambitious wife who provided him with two high-achieving childrenThere are just two flies in the ointment preventing the dream's arrival: 1. Edie is so morbidly obese that she has to undergo surgery; and 2. this is the moment her husband chooses to leave her. Apart from that…
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|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdownThe result was complete and utter devastation.  The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread.  The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience storeHe wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846689325</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author= Mikhail Shishkin and Andrew Bromfield (translator)
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|isbn=0989715337
|title=The Light and the Dark
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|title=Papa on the Moon
|rating=4.5
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|author=Marco North
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|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Two lovers write letters to each other about their love, their dreams and their separate lives; lives that they hope will one day merge once again to become one.  For Sasha life is the everyday grind with work and demanding loved ones along with the challenges they engender. For Volodenka, it's life in the Russian army and his eventual posting to China.  However their love is more complicated than most as more than geography and circumstance stands between them: they're also separated by the decades… many, many decades.
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|summary=''Some frogs had gotten into the well.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780871058</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
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''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 buckets as he filled them.''
|author=Maggie O'Farrell
 
|title=Instructions for a Heatwave
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=In London, in July 1976 it hadn't rained for months.  Gardens - if you could call them that any longer - were thick with aphids and what water there was, which was to be consumed or used for washing, came from a standpipe.  Robert Riordan told his wife, Gretta, that he was going round the corner to buy a newspaper. This was what he did every morning, but this time he didn't come back. The police weren't interested as the closer they looked the more it was obvious that there was an intention to disappear. Gretta turned to her three adult children for help.  But how much help would they - could they - be?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755358783</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
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How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, who has the most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to go on.
|author=Jude Cook
 
|title=Byron Easy
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=Byron Easy is a 30-year-old poet and product of a failed marriage who, in turn, has a failed marriage of his own.  He works in a shop whilst waiting to be discovered as a poet.  How did his depression-tinted life reach this point?  Once there was hope, love and many good times and, as he sits on a train travelling to his mother's for Christmas with a bag full of money, he reflects and ponders while trying to escape something more tangible and dangerous than the past.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434021938</amazonuk>
 
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Daisy Hildyard
|author=Andrea Eames
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|title=Emergency
|title=The White Shadow
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|rating=4
|rating=5
 
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=
 
|summary=
As a general principle I am a little tired of books that start at the end. I want to argue for a return to good old fashioned narrative where stories start at the beginning, go on until the end, and then stop.  
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The summary of this book doesn't come close to explaining what is done with the premise.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099565420</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1913097811
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{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=I J Kay
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|author=Sally Oliver
|title=Mountains of the Moon
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|title=The Weight of Loss
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|rating=4
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|genre=Literary Fiction
 +
|summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself.
 +
|isbn= 086154112X
 +
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|author=Natalia Garcia Freire
 +
|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The story starts harshly, with a release from prison, a bail hostel, a refuge for people with mental health problems as a better-than-nothing-lied-to-be-obtained kind of a sanctuary and a slow easing back into society. If you can call a housing association flat, with a decorating voucher and no furniture, only occasional power and annoying neighbours ''society''.
+
|summary= Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight.   I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the expression in a way I'm not familiar with. I have to confess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here.  From the little I have read (in translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554739</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0861541901
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jennie Rooney
 
|title=Red Joan
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=It is very obvious where Jennie Rooney has taken the idea for her novel ''Red Joan'' from. As she acknowledges fully, it has its origin in the 1999 story of Melita Norwood whose espionage for the Russians wasn't discovered until she was in her late 80s, but while Norwood was a dyed in the wool communist, Rooney offers a more complex back story to her character, Joan. The result is a very different type of spy novel than normal. Joan, a widowed grandmother, is going about her day to day life when MI5 come knocking on her door to ask about her past. The narrative switches between their questions to her and her recollections of her time at Cambridge in the late 1930s where communist feelings were, by some, given a more sympathetic ear. When Joan falls for Leo, the cousin of her Russian born friend Sonya, she gets dragged into a world that is dangerous and morally complex.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701187573</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Jennifer Saint
|author=Jason Hinojosa
+
|title=Elektra
|title=The Conception of Zachary Muse
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Evangeline Muse gives birth to Zachary alone in her special lagoon… but that's starting at the end. In the beginning, Thomas Greene is a tutor and Will Archer a talented wood carver who both accept employment from Michael Muse. What they don't realise at that moment is, once they meet his beautiful daughter, Evangeline, nothing will ever be the same again for any of them.
+
|summary='Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and the most extreme furies.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>9380905440</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1472273915
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=8409290103
|author=Andrew Cowan
+
|title=If Only
|title=Worthless Men
+
|author=Matthew Tree
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you read a lot of fiction about World War One, it's tempting to imagine pre-war England as an idyl of peace and innocence. Andrew Cowan's ''Worthless Men'' depicts a much more gritty and earthy England. Set in 1916 in an industrial and market town, it weaves together several narratives that combine to depict a hard life even before the outbreak of war. In fact, its easier to imagine the lure of adventure that the war initially offered as a change from the harsh realities of life at home, although by the time Cowan's novel begins, the grim reality of what is involved has dampened much of this enthusiasm.
+
|summary=Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the young man got on board the boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance.  Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick.   It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, it was that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and other children.  The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the young man on his way.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144475940X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Antoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)
|author=Meike Ziervogel
+
|title=Red is My Heart
|title=Magda
+
|rating=3.5
|rating=4
+
|genre=Literary Fiction
 +
|summary=[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in my house. And so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, and is, black and white and red. Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and I think it's possible to say not one page lacks the influence of some striking visual ideas.
 +
|isbn=1913547183
 +
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|isbn=B098FFFBH9
 +
|title=Snowcub
 +
|author=Graham Fulbright
 +
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet a woman who, despite praying to remain virginal, had seven children.  Meet a woman whose mother thought her ''hoity-toity'', and spoilt, and who thought she should go to work in a factory at school age to know her place better. Meet a woman of whom her oldest daughter would write 'I don't care what Mother says.  Mother isn't always right.  No, she definitely isn't.'  All three women are, of course, one and the same, and they're Magda Goebbels, the woman who epitomised more than anyone the Nazi wife.
+
|summary=Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, Nick.  Kate runs the family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773401</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Yancey Williams
|author=Shani Boianjiu
+
|title=Crosshairs of the Devil
|title=The People of Forever are not Afraid
+
|rating=4.5
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Yael, Lea and Avishag go through their final years at high school in a little Israeli town on the Lebanese border and then on to the inevitable: the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).  Gender is immaterial, all Israeli citizens must serve at least two years and for these girls the moment arrives after graduation.  Yael's posting seems futile as she guards a training base against marauding lads, sneaking across the border to pinch perfume from pockets rather than pose any real security threat.  Lea's assignment on a border checkpoint searching the daily line of immigrant workers is riddled with routine. Avishag joins up with her own demons, her brother Dan having died after his national service.  She knows how it happened but continues to struggle with why; something she must handle alone.  
+
|summary=Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's point of view - in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's work.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781090092</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0986031658
}}
+
}}  
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=0008421714
|author=Barbara Pym
+
|title=Mrs March
|title=A Glass of Blessings
+
|author=Virginia Feito
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Wilmet Forsyth is a married woman, childless and living a life of leisureShe and her friend Rowena met their husbands - both Majors - in Italy, where they served as Wrens during the war.  Rowena now has three children and her husband David might just be developing a wandering eyeWilmet's husband, Rodney, is still ''Noddy'' to his mother with whom they live.  Unburdened by children or domestic responsibility Wilmet lunches or shops and becomes involved in the social life of the local church, St Luke's.  But it's her relationship with Piers, Rowena's somewhat wayward brother, which might pose the biggest threat to her comfortable, if rather boring existence.
+
|summary=The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to dateEveryone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done soEvery day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, ''but isn't this the first time he's based a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'her mannerisms''.  Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844085805</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Toni Jordan
 
|title=Nine Days
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=Christopher 'Kip' Westaway lives in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia with mother Jean, sister Connie and his twin, FrancisKip's mother considers him a layabout who doesn't deserve the special privileges of his educationally elite brother and so he works at the big house next door for the Hustings, caring for their horses.  One day Mr Husting presents Kip with a shilling; their little secret.  As its 1939, that's a fair amount of money so Kip hides it away, not realising how special that coin will become as the decades pass.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444763555</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]
|author=Sarah Butler
 
|title=Ten Things I've Learnt About Love
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=Alice returns home to spend time with her dying father.  She's been travelling in Mongolia, finding temporary escape from the issues that had haunted her life in London but now, on her return, events bring the pain she thought was behind her into sharp focus.  Meanwhile Daniel is an elderly vagrant who calls the streets of London home.  He seeks his lost child, leaving a trail of random items across the city in the hope of reunion like someone occupying a verse of ''Eleanor Rigby''.  Disparate lives, seeking love and acceptance in a world that seems to exclude it.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447222490</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Revision as of 09:09, 19 February 2024

B0CVFXPGP8.jpg

Review of

We'll Never Know by Matthew Tree

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions. Full Review

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Review of

Fragility by Mosby Woods

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

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.

Fragility is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic Full Review

B0C9SNG8R1.jpg

Review of

A Whirly Man Loses His Turn by Mosby Woods

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back? Full Review

0571379559.jpg

Review of

The House of Broken Bricks by Fiona Williams

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

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 house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the 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 there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny. Full Review

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Review of

House of Odysseus by Claire North

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

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. Full Review

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Review of

Desert Creatures by Kay Chronister

4star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

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. Full Review

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Review of

The Trees Grew Because I Bled There by Eric LaRocca

5star.jpg Horror

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. Full Review

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Review of

Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity

Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town Thirst for Salt details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably. Full Review

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Review of

Beautiful Shining People by Michael Grothaus

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

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. Full Review

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Review of

Atalanta by Jennifer Saint

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, 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 son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing. Full Review

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Review of

Beautiful Place by Amanthi Harris

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, but the 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 score 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, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa. Full Review

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Review of

Sea Defences by Hilary Taylor

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

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 children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-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 real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she's been 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. Full Review

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Review of

The Boy and the Dog by Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in. Full Review

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Review of

Papa on the Moon by Marco North

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

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 buckets as he filled them.

How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, who has the most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to go on. Full Review

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Review of

Emergency by Daisy Hildyard

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

The summary of this book doesn't come close to explaining what is done with the premise. Full Review

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Review of

The Weight of Loss by Sally Oliver

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself. Full Review

0861541901.jpg

Review of

This World Does Not Belong To Us by Natalia Garcia Freire

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the expression in a way I'm not familiar with. I have to confess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. From the little I have read (in translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism. Full Review

1472273915.jpg

Review of

Elektra by Jennifer Saint

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and the most extreme furies. Full Review

8409290103.jpg

Review of

If Only by Matthew Tree

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the young man got on board the boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, it was that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the young man on his way. Full Review

1913547183.jpg

Review of

Red is My Heart by Antoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)

3.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Antoine Laurain books have always been black and white and read in my house. And so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, and is, black and white and red. Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and I think it's possible to say not one page lacks the influence of some striking visual ideas. Full Review

B098FFFBH9.jpg

Review of

Snowcub by Graham Fulbright

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, Nick. Kate runs the family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys. Full Review

0986031658.jpg

Review of

Crosshairs of the Devil by Yancey Williams

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's point of view - in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's work. Full Review

0008421714.jpg

Review of

Mrs March by Virginia Feito

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, but isn't this the first time he's based a character on you? She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'her mannerisms. Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch. Full Review

Move on to Newest Paranormal Reviews