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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Matthew YorkeTree|title=Pictures of LilyWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5

|summary=As soon as Georgia Myers turns eighteenTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, she is going to find her biological parents. And she has lots a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of questions for them too; like where else might she have lived if she had not been given up and does she have being exceptional at any brothers of his artistic passions all failed miserably and sisters? Mostlywho had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, however, Georgia just wants to ask ''why?''cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions. Why was she given up for adoption? Why her?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849014124</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joseph O'ConnorB0C47LV1PC|title=Ghost LightFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=54

|summary=An unknown voice introduces the reader to actress Molly. She doesnCan you make a 't know it but she will be dead fairly soon. It's almost as if sheYo birthing person's talking to herself throughout the introduction pages. The language is Irish vernacular so there's lots of good old Irish put-downsjoke? And if you could, classic descriptions and call-a-spade-a-shovel language. This richness and unmistakable lilt gives the reader a sense of place. Albeit, old Molly is almost living by her wits (which are varied and considerable) in the poorer areas of London. Her conversations with the local people, whether question should you make it's the inn-keeper or the local bobby on the beat are absolutely wonderful. She is one fine actress. I could not keep the smile from my face when reading these conversational gems. For example, Molly ? Or is trying to have a polite conversation with the inn-keeper Mr Ballantine when they are rudely interrupted 'Men barrel in and out with their swearing and gruffness ... Why can they never sit easyquestion if you did, must they always emit noises, and must the noises be deafening vowelswould it land?' Brilliant. The sheer beauty in all of this catch is that Molly, in her own private thoughts, in her own head, is giving off the most foul language of the lot of themanswer for both could well be.. These conversations are also bitter-sweet. O'Connor's descriptions - especially of people are superlative. He doesn't try too hard (which is a gift in itself) but gets his message over to the readerno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0436205718</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Jane Bowles|title=Two Serious Ladies|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=First published in 1943, this is the story of Christina Goering and Frieda Copperfield who are two strained and constrained women who want to break free, although it is not entirely clear what it is they want to break free from. Society? The conventions of heterosexuality? The boredom of their female lives? Anyway, Christina is a wealthy spinster who takes a companion, Miss Gamelon, into her home where they settle into a routine of being catty to each other. Soon Christina's male friend, Arnold, moves in with them too, and later when they all move to a falling-down house on an island they are joined there by Arnold's father who has walked out on his wife. Christina leaves the house, trying to improve herself in some manner perhaps, but becoming a sort of prostitute, falling into relationships as a Fragility'kept woman'. Mrs Copperfield, meanwhile, takes a trip to Panama with her husband. The couple drift apart is set as Frieda finds herself attracted to the seedy underworld city of prostitutionPortland, drinking in bars and brothelsOregon, falling for a prostitute named Pacifica and leaving her husband cautiously begins to move in with her.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956003850</amazonuk>emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joanna KavennaMosby Woods|title=The Birth of LoveA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=The Birth 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 Love has four interwoven storylines about characters action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in different timesactual charge. Imagine then, pastthere 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, present and futureright? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. The common theme is birthImagine then, that this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>057124517X</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tishani Doshi0571379559|title=The Pleasure Seekers|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Essentially this is a love story between two people - Babo from Madras and Sian from small-town Wales. You could argue that two more disparate cultures would be hard to imagine. Factor in that the novel opens in the heady, free love days House of the 1960s and a very entertaining story starts to unfold. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0747590923</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewBroken Bricks|author=Yasmina Khadra|title=What the Day Owes the NightFiona Williams

|summary=Nine year old Algerian Muslim Younes is devastated when his father's farm 'The House of Broken Bricks'' is destroyed and his family have to move to the slum story of Jenane Jatofour people. However Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, while but instead, she lives in the house on the rest riverbank, built of his family strugglebroken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, this turns out to be something it's stood the passage of a blessing in disguise for Younestime,who is rescued by his wealthy unclestorms and floods. Her husband, a pharmacist. Renamed JonasRichard, he moves struggles to live with grow his uncle vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and aunt to bring in the vibrant European district of Rio Saladosufficient money. There, he meets new friends Jean They have twin boys -ChristopheSonny and Max, Simonthe 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 Fabrice. But what seems to be there's an unbreakable friendship assumption when Max is tested to its limits by the return to the area of the beautiful Emilie, and the boysout with his mother that she' problems increase as Algeria fights for its independence from France. The book is narrated by Jonas at a much older age, lookingback at s his life, although the epilogue brings us to the present day as he visits a gravenanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434019933</amazonuk>

 {{newreview|author=Barbara Trapido|title=Sex and Stravinsky|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Josh and Caroline and their daughter Zoe live on an old red bus in Oxford, even though both have quite well paid jobs as an academic and headteacher. Caroline has spent her adult life deferring her plans for the future in order to support her widowed mother who lives in a house nearby. Josh’s job in the drama department of Bristol University does offer him some opportunities to escape abroad though, this time to a conference in his native South Africa.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408802325</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Samantha HuntClaire North|title=The Seas|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''The Seas'' follows the story of a nameless nineteen-year old girl who is lonely and adrift in a cruel coastal town so far to the north House of the USA that the roads only run south. She misses her father, an absent alcoholic sailor, while her silence-loving mother, who grew up on an isolated island with deaf parents, worries deeply about her. Early on in the story we get the distinct impression that our narrator is not deemed 'normal' by her peers, who call her all sorts of unflattering things. With nothing to do in her small town, and no one to do it with, she spends her time pining for a local alcoholic called Jude who is fifteen years her senior, and who refuses her amorous advances on the grounds that it would be wrong. As the story unfolds, Jude and the girl's relationship grows and changes, sometimes in unexpected ways.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849013934</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lionel Shriver|title=We Need To Talk About KevinOdysseus

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Politicians continue to argue that the solution to social issues lies with the family, so it is timely that at the heart of Lionel Shriver's 2005 Orange Prize winning novel is the issue of nature vs nurture - what makes a person like he or she is'What could matter more than love? Is the eponymous Kevin born evil or is he influenced by his mother's coldness towards him. There are no clear answers and that's what gives this brave book, which tackles the taboos that some mothers don't bond with their children, such power.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687349</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Ben Okri|title=Tales of Freedom|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Tales of Freedom is The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a book few months after where we left off. In the palace of two halvesOdysseus, with a short story entitled Comic Destiny taking up 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 majority throne of the bookWestern Isles. Comic Destiny Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is made up on the brink of a series fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of short pieces that follow on from each other Orestes, King of Mycenae, and are probably best described as being closer to prose poetry than anything elsehis sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846041597</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Fernando PessoaKay Chronister|title=The Book of DisquietDesert Creatures|rating=54|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=If you try to read 'The Book of Disquiet' from cover to coverWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is almost oppressively melancholic. Nothing much happensa robotic takeover, and what we have is a collection world devoid of reveries and thoughts - almost water or a diarynuclear holocaust, but not quite - of existential musings about life, loneliness and the human condition. It's so introspective that after this genre is a while the monotony of the writer's mundane existence starts way for humans to wear on the readercathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'But''' I would urge you not to read this book like that. Rather, dip into it at random and you will find by Kay Chronister is a new work of undeniable geniuspost-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It's quite simply is a masterpiece of modernist writingshocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687357</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Jeanne PetersonEric LaRocca|title=Falling to HeavenThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Emma 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 Gerald Kittredge are either very brave or very naiveprocess them. TheyMost horror fiction feature a 've made 'Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the long journey from America to Tibetend of the story, beatable. Hardly on the tourist trail and theyEric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There''re is not missionaries, so why are they there? This novel like that. It is a serious collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and sweeping narrative trying to answer humiliation. Horrors that very question - linger and many moreare harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>185168736X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Carsten JensenMadelaine Lucas|title=We, the DrownedThirst for Salt

|summary=In 1848''Love, Laurids Madsen and other men of the smalltown of Marstal go I'd read, was supposed to war to fight the Germans, be a light and an explosionflings him up to heavenweightless feeling, as far as anyone can tell. But Lauridsreturns, claiming his sea boots were too heavy but I had always longed for him to stay upthere – only to be lost to Marstal anyway, as he abandons his familyto sail the high seas.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846550963</amazonuk>}}gravity''

{{newreview|author=Matthew Hooton|title=Deloume Road|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=A tinyTold from a retrospective view, rural community a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a handful of characters is at man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the heart of this novelsummer after. And Set against the thing that binds them all together is Deloume Road. Hooton gives over every chapter (and some are very short) to one backdrop of his characters an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24- Ireneyear-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, Andydepicting its all-consuming nature, the butcher. Each is very different from the otherhow it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224087657</amazonuk>0861546490

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Trevor ByrneMichael Grothaus|title=Ghosts and LightningBeautiful Shining People

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Denny comes home to Dublin from Wales after his mum dies suddenly, ''But fearing something and hangs around drinking and taking drugs with his sister, her girlfriend and some of their mates, while he wonders what having it come to do with himself. There pass are some practical matters to sort out too, such as the nasty older brother who owns their house and wants his siblings out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847673309</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Helen Dunmore|title=The Betrayal|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Andrei is a perceptive and deeply conscientious doctor, a young rheumatologist and paediatrician working in a Leningrad hospital just after the terrible siege, during the last days of Stalin’s dictatorship. He is as quick to notice symptoms in his colleagues as in his young patients. When he is approached by Russov, a fellow physician, he registers his confrere’s pervading smell of fear. This is all part of the pathology of the times; life as it is lived under a tyrannical dictatorship. A dictatorship determined to pursue a purge – a vendetta directed against doctors, particularly Jewish doctors. The sweating Russov manages to inveigle Andrei Aleksayev into treating a very sick child, Gorya, the son of Volkhov, who is a tyrannical and high ranking secret police officer. Therapeutic failure, in all probability, could result in vengeance, arrest and devastating effects on Andrei’s loving wife Anna and her young adolescent brother, Kolya.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905490593</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mari Strachan|title=The Earth Hums in B Flat|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Choosing a child as the viewpoint character of a novel requires confidence and imagination. To succeed is to convince the reader of events at two levels – the child's world within the adult world surrounding herdifferent things. The very best novels about childhood, like say Harper Lee's classic, 'To Kill a Mockingbird', also reflect a wider cultural truth. In 'The Earth Hums in B FlatAnd I', a claustrophobic Welsh village is both protection and straitjacket as the characters struggle m willing to cope with their family secrets. If that sounds a bit tacky, bet most of what we fear not, because the viewpoint character, Gwenniwill never happen, is all whippet and sharp corners.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847673058</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Philip Sington|title=The Einstein Girl|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The two central characters are (and or we've come across can take steps to change it many times before) a psychiatrist (in this case Kirsch) and his patient (known as the Einstein Girl) and hence the novel's title. The case of this girl is intriguing, not least because both doctor and patient had accidentally met prior to her admission to hospital. Kirsch appears immediately smitten - which may be a problem. He's already spoken for. In a nutshell, the Einstein Girl has lost her memory. Kirsch finds more and more of his professional time given over to her recovery, back to mental well-being. It becomes a long and complicated journey, for both of them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535793</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Mitchell|title=The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='The belly craves food, the tongue craves water, the heart craves love, and the mind craves stories.'

This is ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the book to satisfy that last craving. It is rich in stories from the graphic opening chapter to the poignant closing lines. Everyone has a tale to tell question of identity and even minor characters are fleshed out with histories that amuse, horrify or enthralacceptance. Their stories made me think about how sometimes Of what at the time seems it means to be an insignificant choice can define the course of a lifehuman. Here Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the characters’ choices unleash a cascade development of consequencestechnology is exciting or frightening. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340921560</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michelle LovricJennifer Saint|title=The Book of Human SkinAtalanta

|summary=This is a sixth novel from best-selling Turkish author''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, Elif ShafakI vowed. Set in twelfth century AnatoliaI would take my place, two famous characters from Islamic history meet not just in a gorgeously real worldthe name of the goddess. A delicate contemporary US love story is wrapped around It was for the richsake of my name, meaty historical fictiontoo. DonAtalanta''t be misled by the dodgy-sounding title!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918733</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Rebecca Goldstein|title=36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction |rating=2|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='Atheist with a Soul' Cass Seltzer has achieved sudden celebrity thanks to his new bestselling bookPrincess. This has led to a job offer from Harvard, and he waits for his girlfriend to return, while thinking back on past experiencesWarrior. Most of these experiences involved his old mentor Professor Klapper, an ex-lover, Roz Margolis, and a six year old genius mathematician AzaryaLover. The characters frustrate and amuse in roughly equal measure, while the plot meanders towards a sort-of-conclusion as Cass debates the existence of God with Nobel laureate Felix FidleyHero.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848871538</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Lorrie Moore|title=A Gate At The Stairs|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Bass-playingAbandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, 20 year-old Tassie Keltjin Atalanta is studying an eclectic range raised under the protective eye of subjects (Geologythe goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, British Literatureone who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, Sufisma fierce band of warriors, Soundtracks descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to War Movies fight in Artemis' name and Wine Tasting) carve out her own legendary place in post 9/11 USA when she lands a job as a child minder for chef, Sarah Bink who is adopting an African-American babyhistory. A Gate at the Stairs What follows is at times a very funny whirlwind of challenges and at others a sad reflection of growing up in modern Americadiscovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>057119530X</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eleanor CattonAmanthi Harris|title=The RehearsalBeautiful Place

|summary=If you are Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the type southern coast of person who wants their novels 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 start be at the beginningVilla, how it became her home, build character and plot before coming to a satisfying the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'they all lived happily ever after' ending, then avoid for this book at all costs. You will hate it. But I cannot remember when I last enjoyed a first time gentle and yet subtly violent novel as much as this one. It is ambitious, daring Padma's present fails to escape her past and complexmuch like the musical score of a film, and yet it works beautifullythat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847081398</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Barbara Kingsolver178563335X|title=The LacunaSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor

|summary=Ten years ago, Barbara KingsolverWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's [[The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver|Poisonwood Bible]] revealed the grim politics a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the Congochildren up. The Lacuna has Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a similarly political themesobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, this time turning her focus on Mexico 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 USA in vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the 1940s job for more than thirty years. Rachel and 1950sChristopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057125263X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Eagleman1398515388|title=Sum: Tales from The Boy and the AfterlivesDog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=For some reason I find myself unable to start First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this review, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. So I'll mention this book starts with the end, The result was complete and see where we go from thereutter devastation. Of courseThe deaths were uncountable, that's and the key – this book does just loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that – starts with many pets were separated from their owners came far down the end of our human life here on Earth (or wherever you happen to be reading this) and posits forty possibilities list of what happens thereafter, in priorities but - six months after the hereaftertsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. ItHe wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's not so much 'Five People You Meet comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in Heaven' as 'Forty Heavens you Might Meet People In'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847674283</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=M J Hyland0989715337|title=This Is HowPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North

|summary=Things weren't going too badly for Patrick Oxtoby. He's intelligent and did Some frogs had gotten into the well at school. Then his Gran died. He started getting pains in his shoulder and things rapidly went downhill from there. He drops out of university to become a mechanic. By the time we meet him as a 23-year-old, he's become a loner who cannot communicate his feelings and who cannot seem to fit himself into society. Now his fiancee has left him (and you can see her point) and he finds himself in a seaside boarding house in an unnamed English town, hoping to start a new life. Then, one night he commits an act of violence (you can see it coming) and his life goes from bad to awful.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184767383X</amazonuk>}}'

{{newreview|author=John Buchan|title=Sick Heart River|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=This was a surprise ''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, naked except for mehis beaten leather hat. It’s rare for a book to come to my attention from the reviewing gods that’s a rerelease Long strands of a 1930s noveltheir eggs wove around him, and one that surfaced a couple sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of years ago now. But when it strikes me as startlingly Conradian, updated for the times, dogs leaned over the opening and perfectly able to stand alongside one barked down at the strange noise of literature’s greats, then it’s just a sign those reviewing gods are on the ballbuckets as he filled them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184697030X</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=Jim Crace|title=All That Follows|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Leonard Lessing How is a sofa socialist. He avoids corporate brands both in food and that for an opening? The style of this novel in clothes. He abides by all the right-on boycotts. He signs petitions. He does free gigs at benefit concerts. He gives donations - you know the kind form of thing. Onceinterconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, eighteen long years ago in Texas in 2006, he came very close to some real direct action. But he bottled itturning on a sixpence. And nowauthor Marco North, who has the frozen-shouldered jazzman-on-sabbatical finds his less-than-glorious radical past catching up with him right there in his living room, on the TV. Maxie Lermonmost wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he of Austin 2006 and no stranger means to violent agitprop, is in the UK, just up the road from Leonard, and he's taken a family hostage as a protest against the upcoming Reconciliation Summitgo on. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330445642</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ed HillyerDaisy Hildyard|title=The Clay DreamingEmergency|rating=4.5

|summary=Hillyer has taken several historical facts and seamlessly blended in a big dollop The summary of fiction this book doesn't come close to create a complex and riveting story. The title explaining what is suitably enigmatic, as is King Cole (or Brippoki). He and his fellow cricketers (who also have been given rather unkind nicknames) have sailed from the bottom of the world, to the bustling metropolis of London. Talk about extremes. And although they have all been diligently 'schooled' in all things English, nevertheless, they are the talk of the town. The novel has barely started and already done with the mind bogglespremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956251501</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Wendy Law-YoneSally Oliver |title=The Road to WantingWeight of Loss |rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=We first meet Na Ga in her hotel room in Wanting, on Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the Chinese side death of the border with Na Ga's native Burma (or Myanmar for the more geographically pedanticher sister, although Burma is used throughout this book). She is attempting she awakes to commit suicidefind strange, but is interrupted by news thick black hairs sprouting from the hotel receptionist who tells bones of her that her guide across the borderspine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, Mr Jiang, has just committed suicide himself. You might by now have diagnosing the impression that this is not odd phenomenon as a cheery kind of bookphysical reaction to her grief, and you'd be right up recommends she go to a pointstay at Nede, although it's certainly not without its light touches. In fact it's often quite beautiful, which makes the exposure of the seedier side so much more shocking.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184086</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Roddy Doyle|title=The Dead Republic|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Henry left an experimental new treatment centre in 1922, after the Irish Civil War. It is now 1951Wales. After his long exile, nothing Yet something strange is as he expected. He revisits an old home happening to find no trace that a house ever stood there. The project that has brought him back is not as he expected. The Quiet Man will be a hugely successful film for John Ford, but the life portrayed in it is not Henry Smart's life, and the portrait of Irish politics Marianne and everyday life in the film is not one he recognises. In his late 40s, he feels he is an old man already, alone with his memories of the wife and family he lost.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224090097</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=James Kelman|title=If it is Your Life|rating=3|genre=Short Stories|summary=''If This Is Your Life'' is not so much other patients at Nede: a collection metamorphosis of short stories as a collection of pieces of creative writingkind. Kelman doesnAs Marianne't really do 'stories'. In nineteen pieces of writing of varying length from just a single page s memories threaten to more lengthy piecesoverwhelm her, such as the story that gives its title to Nede offers her release from this collection, Kelman writes (mostly) about people on the edge cycle of society. He addresses issues such as class, politics, gender, age memory and ill healthpain—but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241142423</amazonuk>086154112X }} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yoko OgawaNatalia Garcia Freire|title=The Housekeeper and the Professor This World Does Not Belong To Us

|summary=I never really got Early comments on with maths at school. Or sport. So a book that seems to deal with both baseball and mathematics ought to fly to the bottom of my 'to read' pile. However, this slim little Japanese debut novel slipped into my hands and into my heart as soon as I saw it. The premise is very simple - from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a young housekeeper is assigned to a job working for an elderly, brain damaged professor of mathematicsdelight. He has only eighty minutes of short-term memory, so he doesn't remember her from one day to the next, but his memory pre-1975 remains intact and somehow he continues to function, living through his obsession I will agree with numbers. Each morning he greets her at the door asking for her birth date and her telephone number. He finds puzzles and equations in everything, including shoe sizes and baseball, and the housekeeper becomes fascinated as she and her son also begin to see the beauty and the poetry in numbers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099521342</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Glen Duncan|title=A Day and a Night and a Day|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Augustus Rose was brought up in New York, first – tremendous is no understatement – but not in 'a des res, in an altogether grittier part of the city. delight' ... his childhood in East Harlem, darkness framing the blistered stoop, the blinding asphalt, the smell of garbage cans and urine.' He's had an unfortunate start in life. Mother, white, father (unknown) black so that makes is perhaps using the young Augustus an expression in-between, a way I'm not-sure, a neither-one-colour-nor-the-otherfamiliar with. Today, in I have to confess my ignorance of the 21st century, no one would raise an eyebrow, bat an eyelidSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. But this novel is set in From the 1960s where racial tensions abound. Yes, even little I have read (in cosmopolitan cities such as New York.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847394175</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Eleanor Thom|title=The Tin-Kin|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Dawn is a single mother who has been avoiding a lot of things for a long time. When her aunttranslation, who raised Dawn as I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a daughter, dies, Dawn finds tendency towards the key to a cupboard which she was forbidden to look into as a child. Inside she finds clues to her family history, 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 and her efforts to escape fantastical – the ever-present memory of her abusive husbandmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715639013</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreview|author=Patricia Duncker|title=The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=It's rural France, and 2000 is barely begun, when hunters come across a spread of human corpses in the mountains. Several families, all in the same cult, seem to have killed themselves on their path to wherever. If so, this is a problem, for the last time it happened, in Switzerland a few years previous, nobody could work out why – and who was there to dispose of some of the evidence. 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 /composer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408807041</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Marilyn Chin|title=Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen: A Manifesto in 41 Tales |rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen (oh, how I love that title!) will almost certainly not be to everyone's taste, but I confess that I loved its originality, boldness, sassy style and the humour of it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144612</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paolo GiordanoJennifer Saint|title=The Solitude of Prime NumbersElektra

|summary='Elektra'The Solitude by Jennifer Saint tells the story of Prime Numbers'' follows three women who live in the lives heavily male dominated world of Alice and Mattia from childhood to middle ageAncient Greece. Alice is a wilful anorexicCassandra, Clytemnestra, scarred by a childhood skiing accident and an overbearing father. Mattia is an reclusive self-harmer trying to live with Elektra are all bit players in the guilt story of having been responsible for his disabled twin sister's deaththe Trojan War. Their paths cross at a school friend's party during a painful adolescence Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and their lives are destined to intertwine throughout the coming years, despite the chronic awkwardness of their courtshipmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552775983</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Juli Zeh8409290103|title=Dark MatterIf Only|author=Matthew Tree

|summary=''Dark Matter'' is translated from German 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 nothing has been 'lost in translation' herethereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. The lives Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the two very bright academics are interwoven throughoutalthough we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. Students Sebastian and Oskar are the very best of friends; It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, itwas that he didn's almost as if they share the same heartbeatt care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and other children. However, as they grow into adulthood real life comes along and tends The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get in the young man on his way. Sebastian settles for domestic bliss. Their friendship cools off, becomes a little tense and strained.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846552087</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Margaret ForsterAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Isa and MayRed is My Heart|rating=43.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Isamay is a would-be academic [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and she's writing a thesis about grandmothers read in history, inspiredmy house. And so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one suspectswas, by her own grandmothersand is, Isa black and May. Her efforts are constantly diverted by the present needs of her grandmothers white and the secrets about their pasts which rise to the surface when she least expects them. There's another complication toored. Isamay is in her thirties and has never wanted a childYes, but reconsiders, despite the fact that her partner, Ian, is adamant that he doesn't want children. The more Isamay delveshas an artistic collaborator on this piece, the more she realises that there are secrets in Ianand I think it's past too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184663</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kathryn Stockett|title=The Help|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Jackson, Mississippi: 1960. The talk at the bridge club and the tennis club is of what Jackie Kennedy is wearing. 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. They're trusted possible to bring the children up, but they're say not trusted to be honest about the silver. Aibileen 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 to the coloureds' hospital and rolled it off one page lacks the back influence of the truck and leftsome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141039280</amazonuk>1913547183

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Olga GrushinB098FFFBH9|title=The Concert TicketSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright

|summary=Aatish Taseer Fourteen-year-old Rachel is probably best known for his journalism, publishing regularly 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 Indian pressanimal world. She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, in Prospecta lecturer at Imperial College, and perhaps most prolifically in Time magazine. He has won acclaim for his memoir: Stranger to History in which heLondon, raised by his Indian Sikh motherKate and her twin, traces his absent Muslim father across Nick. Kate runs the border family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Pakistan – and also for his translations Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of the short stories of Saadat Hasan Mantoinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918504</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom ConnollyYancey Williams|title=The Spider TrucesCrosshairs of the Devil

|summary=The title of this debut novel by Tom Connolly Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is enigmaticgetting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, mysterious. It draws the reader in finds himself living - just like a fly to a spideror imprisoned, from Eddie's web. And point of view - in fairness 'The Spider Truces' does exactly what it say on room 315 of the tin as the main characterGarden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, EllisJenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is obsessed and terrified going to keep Eddie from his stock-in equal measure-trade of writing though, of spiders. ... and when you live in an old houseso here, as the O'Rourke family doesfor his readers, there are plenty of spiders and other creepy crawlies abouthis wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956251528</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mary Yukari Waters0008421714|title=The FavoritesMrs March|author=Virginia Feito

|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 problem began just after the US publication of George March's most successful novel to stay with family for a few weeksdate. Sarah was born and brought up in Japan Everyone but has lived in the US with Mrs March (we know her mother and white American father for five years. She is very conscious of first name only on the differences between life in Kyoto and in Fielder's Butte, Californialast page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Here in Kyoto, Every day Mrs March went to the womenlocal patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, including Sarah and her mumPatricia asked, go shopping every day for food, and as she was wrapping the food is very different – in an opening scenebread, Sarah is trying to explain to her grandfather what she normally has for breakfast in ''but isn't this the USfirst time he's based a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, and becoming aware of the gulf between principal character had 'her life in Japan and in Californiamannerisms''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847392334</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Rose Tremain|title=Trespass|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Set in Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the hills of Southern France, Trespass fact that Johanna is a novel about sibling love and rivalry, disputed territory and ultimately revenge. In the French corner are Aramon Lunel, resident whore of the Mas Lunel, and his sister Audrun who lives in Nantes - ''a cottage in the grounds. In the English corner are Victoria Vereyweak, a garden designerplain, and her partnerdetestable, an untalented watercolouristpathetic, Kitty. The catalyst that brings these together is the arrival in France of Anthony Vereyunloved, Victoria's sister whose exclusive antiques business in London is failing and who decides to follow his sister in finding a new life in Franceunloveable wretch. Aramon is tempted to sell his family Mas by the lure of '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=4.5|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 it. In his latest novel Freeman tells an intriguing tale involving local Sheriff Lucian Wing and his practical yet low-key approach Move on to maintaining order in rural Vermont. Not for Wing the gung ho approach to fighting crime. 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>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]