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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eleanor ThomMatthew Tree|title=The Tin-KinWe'll Never Know

|summary=Dawn is Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a single mother drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who has been avoiding a lot had endless crises of things for a long time. When her aunt, who raised Dawn as a daughter, dies, Dawn finds the key to a cupboard which she was forbidden to look into as a childself confidence. Inside she finds clues So Tim applied himself to her family historyhis studies, links to a Traveller Community, unearthing a journey that sees her finding her roots. We also witness her struggle to renew her complicated relationship with her family cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and her efforts to escape the ever-present memory of her abusive husbandset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715639013</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Patricia DunckerB0C47LV1PC|title=The Strange Case of the Composer and His JudgeFragility|author=Mosby Woods

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=ItCan you make a ''Yo birthing person''s rural Francejoke? And if you could, and 2000 is barely begun, when hunters come across a spread of human corpses in the mountains. Several families, all in question should you make it? Or is the same cultquestion if you did, seem to have killed themselves on their path to wherever. If so, this would it land? The catch is a problem, that the answer for the last time it happened, in Switzerland a few years previous, nobody both could work out why – and who was there to dispose of some of the evidencewell be... This isn't a problem for the policeman involved, as he fell desperately in love with the investigative judge in collaborating on the initial case. Combining again, they see a link with everybody involved in both cases, a famous conductor /composerno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408807041</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Marilyn Chin|title=Revenge of ''Fragility'' is set as the Mooncake Vixen: A Manifesto in 41 Tales |rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Revenge city of the Mooncake Vixen (ohPortland, Oregon, how I love that title!) will almost certainly not be cautiously begins to everyone's taste, but I confess that I loved its originality, boldness, sassy style and emerge from the restrictions imposed during the humour of it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144612</amazonuk>covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paolo GiordanoMosby Woods|title=The Solitude of Prime NumbersA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=''The Solitude of Prime NumbersWest isn'' follows 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 lives best course of Alice and Mattia from childhood to middle ageaction. Governments are flailing. Alice is a wilful anorexicA war here, scarred by a childhood skiing accident and an overbearing fatherpush for climate action there. Mattia A feeling that nobody is an reclusive self-harmer trying to live in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the guilt strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of having been responsible for his disabled twin sister's deathcircumstances. Their paths cross at a school friend's party during a painful adolescence and their lives are destined to intertwine throughout That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the coming yearsmost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, despite the chronic awkwardness of their courtshipthat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552775983</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Juli Zeh0571379559|title=Dark MatterThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5

|summary=''Dark MatterThe House of Broken Bricks'' is translated from German and nothing has been the story of four people. Tess Hembry'lost s roots are in translation' here. The Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of two very bright academics are interwoven throughoutbroken bricks. Students Sebastian and Oskar are the very best of friends; Insubstantial as it might look, it's almost as if they share stood the same heartbeatpassage of time, storms and floods. HoweverHer husband, as they Richard, struggles to grow into adulthood real life comes along his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and tends to get bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the wayrainbow twins. Sebastian settles for domestic blissSonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Their friendship cools offPeople don't believe that they're related, becomes a little tense much less twins and strainedthere's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846552087</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Margaret Forster|title=Isa and May|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Isamay is a wouldThe follow-be academic and sheup to the excellent ''Ithaca''s writing picks up a thesis about grandmothers in historyfew months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, inspired, one suspects, by with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her own grandmothershusband, Isa who sailed to war at Troy and Maythen by divine intervention never returned home. Her efforts are constantly diverted As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the present needs throne of her grandmothers the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the secrets about their pasts which rise chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to the surface when she least expects them. ThereIthaca's another complication too. Isamay shores, Queen Penelope is in her thirties and has never wanted on the brink of a child, but reconsiders, despite fragile peace. One that shatters however with the fact that her partnerreturn of Orestes, IanKing of Mycenae, is adamant that he doesn't want children. The more Isamay delvesand his sister Elektra, the more she realises that there are secrets in Ian's past tooseeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184663</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kathryn StockettKay Chronister|title=The HelpDesert Creatures|rating=54|genre=General Dystopian Fiction|summary=JacksonWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, Mississippi: 1960post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. The talk at the bridge club and the tennis club Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of what Jackie Kennedy water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is wearinga way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. They're white women, of course and they're free to play because a coloured woman will be looking after the children, doing the shopping and cleaning the house. TheyDesert Creatures're trusted to bring the children up, but they're not trusted to be honest about by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the silverfears that exist for humanity today. Aibileen It is raising her seventeenth white child but something hardened in her heart when her son died whilst the white bosses looked the other way. They took his body a shocking novel that still manages to the coloureds' hospital and rolled it off the back of the truck and leftfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141039280</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Olga GrushinEric LaRocca|title=The Concert TicketTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionHorror|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 ''The Concert TicketBig Bad'' follows , whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the lives end of a family in Soviet Russia who have grown desperately distant from one another. Sergei, the fatherstory, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a frustrated musician who longs to play the pre-revolutionary masterpieces collection of composers like Igor Selinsky but is forced to play short stories more interested in the kind horrors of patriotic ditties he despises. His schoolteacher wifeillness, Anna, longs for his love, but is never quite able to get his attention with her shy gesturesgrief and humiliation. Their shiftless son, Alexander, has quietly given up going Horrors that linger and are harder to school and spends his days hanging around the park, consorting with undesirables. Also living in their house is Annadefeat than any ''Big Bad''s silent, elderly mother.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918482</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Aatish TaseerMadelaine Lucas|title=The Temple-GoersThirst for Salt|rating=35

|summary=Aatish Taseer is probably best known for his journalism''Love, publishing regularly in the Indian press, in ProspectI'd read, was supposed to be a light and perhaps most prolifically in Time magazine. He has won acclaim for his memoir: Stranger to History in which heweightless feeling, raised by his Indian Sikh mother, traces his absent Muslim father across the border in Pakistan – and also but I had always longed for his translations of the short stories of Saadat Hasan Manto.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918504</amazonuk>}}gravity''

{{newreview|author=Tom Connolly|title=The Spider Truces|rating=4Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The title of this debut novel by Tom Connolly is enigmaticOverlaid with later wisdom, mysterious. It draws the reader in - just like narrator relives the affair with a fly man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to a spiderits sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''s web. And in fairness Thirst for Salt'The Spider Truces' does exactly what it say on details the tin as the main character24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, Ellisdepicting its all-consuming nature, is obsessed how it changed her perspective on both romantic and terrified in equal measure, of spiders. ... familial relationships and when you live in an old house, as the O'Rourke family does, there are plenty of spiders and other creepy crawlies abouthow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956251528</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreview|author=Mary Yukari Waters|title=The Favorites|rating=4''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=This story is set in Kyoto, Japan, starting in June 1978. Fourteen year old Sarah Rexford and her Japanese mother, Yoko, have come back from the US Of what it means to stay with family for a few weeksbe human. Sarah was born Of what is real and brought up in Japan but has lived in the US with her mother and white American father for five years. She what is very conscious of the differences between life in Kyoto and in Fielder's Butte, California. Here in Kyoto, the women, including Sarah and her mum, go shopping every day for foodartificial, and whether the food is very different – in an opening scene, Sarah development of technology is trying to explain to her grandfather what she normally has for breakfast in the US, and becoming aware of the gulf between her life in Japan and in Californiaexciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847392334</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rose TremainJennifer Saint|title=TrespassAtalanta|rating=45

|summary=Set in the hills ''I was as worthy as any one of Southern France, Trespass is a novel about sibling love and rivalrythem. I would get on board that ship, disputed territory and ultimately revengeI vowed. In the French corner are Aramon Lunel, resident of the Mas LunelI would take my place, and his sister Audrun who lives in a cottage not just in the grounds. In name of the English corner are Victoria Verey, a garden designer, and her partner, an untalented watercolourist, Kittygoddess. The catalyst that brings these together is It was for the arrival in France sake of Anthony Vereymy name, Victoria's sister whose exclusive antiques business in London is failing and who decides to follow his sister in finding a new life in Francetoo. Aramon is tempted to sell his family Mas by the lure of Atalanta'foreign' money even if that means that his sister's house has to be destroyed to secure the deal.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701177942</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Castle Freeman|title=All That I Have|rating=4Princess.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Castle Freeman may sound like two thirds of a firm of provincial solicitors but thankfully this Castle Freeman is a man very skilled in writing about the law rather than practicing itWarrior. In his latest novel Freeman tells an intriguing tale involving local Sheriff Lucian Wing and his practical yet low-key approach to maintaining order in rural VermontLover. Not for Wing the gung ho approach to fighting crimeHero. He doesn't wear a uniform, he drives a battered old car rather than the standard issue sheriff's wagon and his gun, so ubiquitous in US law enforcement, is safely tucked away in his bottom drawer. Everyone in the area knows the sheriff and by and large they respect him and his slightly unorthodox way of doing business.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715639021</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Dan Rhodes|title=Little Hands Clapping|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=The first character to mention in this book is Abandoned at birth for being born a moth. It's daughter rather than a human mothson, drawn to Atalanta is raised under the flame that is a museum protective eye of suicide - the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a supposedly cautionaryformidable huntress, life-affirming, memento mori, somewhere in Germanyone who longs for adventure. Its curator is an old hand at lonelyWhen the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, unloved museumsa fierce band of warriors, fresh descendent from an art gallery in an airport - it didn't take off - who notices the noise of Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the latest suicide chance to happen fight in the museum, Artemis' name and goes right back to sleepcarve out her own legendary place in history. A spider crawls into his mouth What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and gets eatenthrough it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847675298</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Delphine de ViganAmanthi Harris|title=No and MeBeautiful Place

|genre=TeensLiterary Fiction|summary=Lou is Padma, a cleveryoung Sri Lankan, clever child with an IQ approaching 160has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. She's thirteen, but This is a place she's been moved up two spent her formative years at school and . It is not a place she compares her flat chestedwas born into, nervous self somewhat unfavourably with her fifteen-year-old peer groupbut the one she thinks of as home. Funnily enough How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her only real friend at school is Lucashome, who's seventeen and such a rebel the machinations that hehave flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score's been moved down two years. Things at home aren't great for Lou. Her baby sister died a few years ago this gentle and her mother has been severely depressed ever sinceyet subtly violent novel. She barely talks, seldom gets dressed. Her father is worn down Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the bone with worry and Lou doesn't get musical score of a great deal of attention from him eitherfilm, so distracted is hethat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408807513</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joshua Ferris 178563335X|title=The UnnamedSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor

|summary=Tim Farnsworth seemed 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 have it allpick the children up. He loved his wife Jane Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter Becka and his job as a partner -in prestigious -law firm was enjoyable, fulfilling and financially rewardingwon't let her see her grandson. The fly in Holthorpe, on the ointment was that sometimes he was overtaken by Norfolk coast, is a compulsion lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to walk. The time develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of daythe vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the weather or the occasion did not matter – when the compulsion came he had to walk until he was physically exhausted and fell asleep immediately after calling his wife to come and collect himjob for more than thirty years. There seemed to be no medical explanation for what Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was happening – and Tim and Jane had tried every source they could find – stormy but Tim it was still reluctant to accept that this was a mental rather than a physical illnessprobably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917702</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joe Treasure1398515388|title=BesottedThe Boy and the Dog|rating=4|genreauthor=Literary Fiction|summary=It is late August 1982, the day when O level results come out. Michael Cartwright already knows he has failed his exams Seishu Hase and is dreading his parents finding out. He, his twin brother Kieran Alison Watts (who has done very welltranslator) and their younger sisters are on the family holiday, staying with their mother's parents in Kilross, County Cork. To escape boredom and his parents' anger, he wanders round the village, where he meets Fergal Noonan, training to be a priest, and lively Peggy O'Connor. He has his first kiss and a bit more with Peggy. The family soon goes home to Cheltenham, but their brief visit to Ireland will have far reaching significance.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330511726</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Laila Lalami |title=Secret Son|rating=34.5

|summary=''Secret Son'' is the story First of Youssef El-Mekkiall, it was the slum-dwelling teenage son of single mother Rachida. Youssef has always been told that his father is deadearthquake, so when he finds out his mother has lied to conceal deep in the fact that he was born out of wedlockocean floor, he plunges headlong into an identity crisis. He tracks down his real father, a wealthy businessman called Nabil Amrani who is surprisingly enthusiastic about his illegitimate son's arrival. Nabil has recently fallen out with his daughter which created the tsunami and he seizes this opportunity to mould Youssef into , in turn, caused the obedient son he has always wantednuclear meltdown.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918296</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Aravind Adiga|title= The White Tiger|rating=4result was complete and utter devastation.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Balram Halwai The deaths were uncountable, a Bangalore entrepreneur (of sorts) and a natural philosopher, hears that there is a planned visit from the Chinese leader to India to learn the source loss of Indian entrepreneurial talentlivelihoods was widespread. Balram knows The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the story he will be told by list of priorities but - six months after the Indian leader will be tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a long way from dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the true story of modern Indian life, and so resolves, over the course of seven nights, to write convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to the Chinese premier with the story of open his life car door and his own journey from a poor son of a rickshaw driver to Tamon the head of his own businessdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843547228</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Matthew Condon0989715337|title=The Trout OperaPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North

|summary=Judges Carrington and Thorpe recline in leather armchairs on the verandah of Buckley's Crossing hotel and watch in silence as a giant trout shuffles across 'Some frogs had gotten into the bridgewell. ''

The Judges, despite their initial prominence and convincing back''Walter stood waist-story giving them a valid reason for being deep in Buckley's Crossingthe fragrant water, will not really concern usnaked except for his beaten leather hat. They are there to represent a type: a visitor to small town AustraliaLong strands of their eggs wove around him, a fisherman from sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the city, a seeker after something in strange noise of the Snowy that probably isnbuckets as he filled them.''t fish.

We shallHow 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, howeverturning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, be concerned with who has the giant troutmost wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>038561506X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Clare MorrallDaisy Hildyard|title=The Man Who DisappearedEmergency

|summary=I was drawn to The summary of this book straight away. Firstly, the jacket cover is lovely. The subliminal message is read me, please read me. We are introduced to the Kendall family; mother, father and three children. All leading unremarkable, rather ordinary lives. The father, Felix, works hard doesn't come close to provide for his family. He loves them all dearly. They all love him back. It explaining what is a secure family unit. Until - completely out of the blue - he simply disappears. His family is distraught and mystified. We all know that a person cannot simply disappear. But Felix Kendall has taken himself off done with the radarpremise. Why?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340994274</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Christopher IsherwoodSally Oliver |title=A Single ManThe Weight of Loss |rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=If you've ever wanted Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, she awakes to know what goes on inside someone's mind you'll love this short novelfind strange, first published back thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in 1964size and volume. We join George Falconer just at Her GP, diagnosing the moment he awakes from sleep and witness his innermost thoughts odd phenomenon as he goes about a typical dayphysical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. It all sounds pretty dull Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and monotonous but what makes this exciting is that George isn't just any old professor living the American Dream, oh no, heother patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As Marianne's so detached memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from the banal normality this cycle of the world that he's almost outside of his own body memory and pain—but only at times.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548828</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Angelica Garnett|title=The Unspoken Truth|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I would not normally start a review with the biography terrible price: that of the author, but The Unspoken Truth is presented as autobiographical fiction by a child of the Bloomsbury Group – in fact the subtitle is 'A Quartet of Bloomsbury Stories'. The blurb on the inside cover even identifies which character is based on the author in each of the four stories, just in case we are not sureidentity itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184353</amazonuk>086154112X }} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amos OzNatalia Garcia Freire|title=Rhyming Life and DeathThis World Does Not Belong To Us

|summary=Rhyming Love and Death 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 kind way I'm not familiar with. I have to confess my ignorance of philosophical love letter to literature, or perhaps more the Spanish-language literary tradition so to fictionforgive my generalisation here. It is a book about how to write From the little I have read (in translation, about the compulsion I don't read Spanish) there does seem to write, and about be a tendency towards the strange world that fantastical – the writer of fiction must live inmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099521024</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreview|author=Paul Murray|title=Skippy Dies|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Life in Seabrook College is a mess. Some of the staff are young enough to remember their own school days there, but many are certainly too old for that. A lot of the boys are victims of ragging and bullying for being too chunky, or too smart - but some are so chunky and smart there's a certain kudos to them. The female of the species is a thing only spied from their own school next door, and only met by selling them ritalin as a weight-control pill, or meeting them at the very rare combined school disco.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241141826</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Tom Wolfe|title=The Bonfire of the Vanities|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=In his own mind, bond trader Sherman McCoy is a 'Master of the Universe'. He has a pleasant wife, a beautiful mistress, and a sweet six year old daughter. Henry Lamb is a black student from the projects. Under normal circumstances, it's clear that McCoy's world and Lamb's world would never overlap. But when McCoy and his mistress Maria Ruskin end up lost in the Bronx, and an accident leads to Lamb being hit by McCoy's Mercedes, a chain of events start which will lead to his downfall.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548798</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kate Cole-Adams|title=Walking to the Moon|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=We meet the main character Jessica, or Jess as she is usually called, deep in an emotional black hole. She can see no light at the end of the tunnel. And right from the start, right from page one, we have a sense of the beautiful and poetic language of Cole-Adams. 'Time and I have a new arrangement. We leave each other alone.' And indeed time is not important in this novel. We have all the time in the world would probably be the motto of the medical staff - if they had one. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849161348</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ru Freeman|title=A Disobedient Girl|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=''A Disobedient Girl'' follows two women struggling to retain control of their lives in the face of servitude. Latha is a servant girl to the affluent Vithanage family, whose daughter, Thara, is Latha's age. As children, the girls are the best of friends, but they are destined to be separated by class, which is made painfully obvious when boys come into the picture. Meanwhile, Biso serves a cruel and drunken husband who beats her and terrorises her children, one of whom is another man's love child. Biso's husband murdered her lover in a hateful rage when he uncovered her affair and she realises that she must escape his house if she and her children are to live. Latha too seeks escape, but she finds it in the arms of Thara's boyfriend and this sets off a chain of events that will echo far into her future.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917958</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Simon RobsonJennifer Saint|title=CatchElektra

|summary=Catharine's husband Tom is away on business in Birmingham, and so Catharine awakes alone for Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the first time story of three women who live in their little cottage at the end heavily male dominated world of their laneAncient Greece. They moved there a few months previouslyCassandra, Clytemnestra, and since then Catharine has spent her days quietly awaiting her husband's return from work. She is sure that she will figure out, some day, what her purpose Elektra are all bit players in life is. She thought it might be to have a baby, but they have been trying for some time and it hasn't happened as yet. Meanwhile she waits, and thinks, and waits. In the lounge stands her piano, a stark reminder story of the life she didn't manage to realise because although she studied music she found, quite quickly, Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that in spite of being passionate she lacked any kind of talent for it whatsoever. So, on this day, alone at home, Catharine finds herself tormented by often the piano's presence and over-thinking every second of silent women have the day. She worries away at who she is, and what her life is, as her loneliness most compelling stories and the day itself unravel around hermost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224090232</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joe Meno8409290103|title=The Great PerhapsIf Only|author=Matthew Tree

|summary=Jonathan Casper faints when Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he sees clouds. His wife Madeline worries about everythingasked his accountant, Mr Patrick, not least to ensure that the way young man got on board the pigeons that she is studying are murdering each otherboat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. Their seventeen year old daughter Amelia wants to overthrow Patrick sent the evil empire money regularly and a correspondence - of capitalism and is making her own bomb, while fourteen year old Thisbe is looking for God and praying sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to himsay than Patrick. Jonathan It wasn't that Lowry senior didn's fathert care for his son, seventy six year old Henry, is planning it was that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his disappearancewife and other children. Jonathan and Madeline may be on the verge of splitting up, The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the dismay of both daughtersyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330512471</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elizabeth KostovaAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=The Swan ThievesRed is My Heart|rating=23.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=1999 [[: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 – A renowned painter, Robert Oliver, goes mad, attacking a painting with a knife. He's arrestedthis one was, and sent to a psychiatrist who is also an artist. The psychiatrist, Andrew Marlowe, can't get his patient to talk to him, but tries to investigate what drove him to this by talking to his wife black and his girlfriend, white and reading some letters Oliver seems obsessed withred. 1879 – Beatrice de ClervalYes, aspiring artist, corresponds with her uncle-by-marriage Olivier Vignot, a more experienced painter. Their letters will be found by Robert Oliver, 120 years laterhe has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and will lead I think it's possible to his loss say not one page lacks the influence of sanitysome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847442404</amazonuk>1913547183

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Atiq RahimiB098FFFBH9|title=The Patience Stone|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Set in Afghanistan, ''The Patience Stone'' is a partly allegorical tale of a Muslim wife tending to her comatose soldier husband who has been shot in the neck. As she cares for him, for the first time ever she is able to speak to him without fear of censorship and he becomes, for her, like the mythical Patience Stone to which you tell your troubles and when the stone finally bursts, you are free from your torments. But also this might mean the Apocalypse.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184167</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSnowcub|author=Joyce Carol Oates|title=A Fair MaidenGraham Fulbright

|summary=IFourteen-year-old Rachel is her school've recently read the terrific short story collection ''The Female Of The Species'' also by Oates s animal rights project leader and she and couldn't wait her friend are producing a competition entry to start her latest bookhighlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. I felt sure that I was in for She gets a literary treat - and I was. Firstly, the book itselfgreat deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a hardback with a beautifully nostalgic cover is a book lover's delight.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847248586</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Dai Sijie |title=Once on a Moonless Night|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=A French female scholarlecturer at Imperial College, studying in ChinaLondon, finds herself caught up in the search for a lostmother Kate and her twin, sacred text that was inscribed on an ancient scrollNick. The scroll was torn in two by Emperor Puyi years agoKate runs the family business, and was lost. After falling in love with a young grocer toy shop called Tumchooq the young woman becomes caught up Cornucopia in tales within talesPutney, as she finds that Tumchooqwhich is where we'll meet Rachel's father found and translated half main (if unsuspected) source of the missing scroll and became obsessed with finding the other half, and soon Tumchooq too becomes embroiled in the searchinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099521326</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Thomas Trofimuk Yancey Williams|title=Waiting for ColumbusCrosshairs of the Devil

|summary=I was hooked instantly by the title. Original, thoughtAward-provokingwinning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, quirky. The book revolves around a youngish man who has been admitted to an insane asylum (these two words alone make me want to shiver) in modern-day Spain. The staff have their work cut out. He doesn't remember despite his name or anything at all about his past. He's sporadically violent - strenuous objections and he says he is Christopher Columbus! As the Americans would say, go figure. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330518844</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Su Tong|title=The Boat thanks to Redemption|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ku Dongliang and his fatherdaughter, Ku Wenxuanfinds himself living - or imprisoned, are forced to live on a barge on the river following Ku Wenxuanfrom Eddie's fall from grace. Originally believed to be the son point of a revolutionary martyr, it is eventually proved that Mr Ku was not so view - as a result, his position in society takes a nose-dive. Dongliang suffers as a result room 315 of this, finding it hard to make friends within the barge community and on shore. Then an orphaned girl moves onto the barges and finds a place in Dongliang's apparently cold heart. Will she be able to take him out Garden of himself? Or will sheEden nursing home, too, turn her back on him?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>038561344X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Iain Banks|title=The Steep Approach to Garbadale|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It took me with only a while to realise that Iain Banks istrusty nursing aide, most of allJenkins, a teller of tales - I would call him a story-teller had this term not became a compliment-cum-invective usually reserved for the Jeffrey Archers and Dan Browns of the modern publishing worldpalatable company. This ability Nothing is going to tell stories keep Eddie from his stock- not to plot as much as to weave a yarn in- combines with a penchant trade of writing though, so here, for creating appealing contexts for Banks' narratives to unfold in (this gets magnificently realised in the world building of his [[:Category:Iain M Banks|Iain M. Banks]] alter-ego) and populating them with memorablereaders, larger than are his wanderings through his life but usually short of caricature, characters's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0349119287</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mary McCarthy 0008421714|title=The GroupMrs March|author=Virginia Feito

|summary='Given The problem began just after the attention paid to relations between the sexes, it would be tempting to call The Group a forerunner publication of todayGeorge March's chick lit. It's not.' So writes Candace Bushnell, the writer behind the TV series Sex and the City, in the introduction most successful novel to this new Virago Modern Classics edition of The Group by Mary McCarthydate. First published in 1963, this novel is about Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the lives of a group of young women after leaving college in 1933, including careers, relationships, sex, babies, parents, and money. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844085937</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Janice Galloway|title=Collected Stories|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=In this collection, stories are taken from two previous volumes, Blood and Where You Find It. The forty-two snap shots of life are mainly of women and young girls, struggling with emotions, sometimes realized and sometimes not. In all, there seems last page) seemed to either be an underlying link of isolation and truthreading it or had already done so. The settings are varied, from a visit Every day Mrs March went to the dentist local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the place known as homebread, to a walk in ''but isn't this the evening. We have first time he's based a peek into character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, the deepest darkest corners of everyday relationships, with lovers, partners and most of all ourselves.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540398</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Herta Muller|title=The Passport|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Meet Windischprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''. A miller in a small village, he trudges through there, and through his neighbours, and through his life, counting his days and hoursPerhaps this would not have mattered, except for reasons the fact that are not initially clear. But he does want something - he Johanna is waiting for a passport so he can leave for other climes. The perks of his job are the bags whore of flour he leaves by the mayorNantes - ''s house with regularitya weak, plain, as an open bribedetestable, but there might be a bigger sacrifice to have to make.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1852421398</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jennifer Johnston|title=Truth or Fiction|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Caroline Wallace is not a happy woman. She has waited ten years for her lover to propose to herpathetic, and now just as he finally doesunloved, she has to go to Dublin to interview faded literary star Desmond Fitzmauriceunloveable wretch. Desmond promises his tale will be brimful of 'sex and violence', but Caroline has no idea of the mystery that lies at the heart of his story.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755330544</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Julian Barnes|title=Staring at the Sun|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Jean's first Incident involved Uncle Leslie, hyacinths and golf tees. It's perhaps best forgotten, but Jean doesn't forget. Uncle Leslie figures large in her life - mostly Move on the golf course - until the War comes and he runs away to America. He's replaced by Tommy Prosser, a grounded pilot who once saw the sun rise twice in one day and excites as many questions in Jean as he ever answers. Tommy is replaced by Michael, a policeman, whom Jean eventually marries. He doesn't know why minks are excessively tenacious of life and he doesn't much care. But Jean does. She cares much less for the Dutch cap that Michael sent her off to obtain before the wedding and much less again for their rather disastrous adventures in the bedroom. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540096</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Russell Celyn Jones|title=The Ninth Wave (New Stories from the Mabinogion) |rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Pwyll rules a medieval-style fiefdom in a post-climate change Wales. Life is different in many ways - there's a new-but-old social order built on feudalism and horsepower is the main means of transport. But in many ways it's much the same - people still fight one another, towns still have sink estates, rich boys still have too much time on their hands and precious little meaning in their lives. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115146</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]