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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The LuminariesMatthew Tree|authortitle=Eleanor CattonWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Eleanor Catton's ''The Luminaries'' is set in the New Zealand gold rush of the late 1860s. It's Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a story about greed, power, gold, drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams, opium, secrets, betrayal and identity, but most of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all, it's a celebration of the art of story telling, both in terms of Catton's book failed miserably and the stories her characters have to tell. It's the kind who had endless crises of book that is perfect escapism and which wraps you up in its worldself confidence. If you like bigSo Tim applied himself to his studies, chunky books that you can get lost in for hours, then this is one for youcultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847084311</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0C47LV1PC
|title=Fragility
|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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.
''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic}}{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Four New Words for LoveMosby Woods|authortitle=Michael CannonA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=34
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Christopher meets Gina on Waterloo Bridge. He is newly widowed, she is newly homeless; he's an elderly Londoner, sheThe West isn's a young Glaswegian. It is a defining event in both their lives, but that only becomes clear in t the futuredominant force it once was. Of pressing concern Nobody in the present West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the rather rude policeman looking to move Gina onbest course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. The situation A feeling that nobody is nearing crisisin actual charge. Sensing her desperationImagine then, Christopher impulsively asks her to come home there was a man with him, a proposal she tentatively acceptsprecognition. Yet it is Imagine the strategic advantage in this one benevolent act that gives birth to an odd and platonic friendship, asset; a relationship based on silences and lacunasman who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, and one which Michael Cannon's fourth novelright? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, ''Four New Words for Love'', looks that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to delicately unravel.get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908754249</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Eve Harris0571379559|title=The Marrying House of Chani KaufmanBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=After waiting till all her elder sisters' weddings were done and dusted in true ultra-orthodox Jewish style, it's now 19-year-old ChaniThe House of Broken Bricks''s turnis the story of four people. SheTess Hembry's only met Baruchroots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, her fiancébuilt of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, four times and he hasnit't even seen her elbows but s stood the match is made passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the day eventually arrivesdelivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. Baruch secretly studies forbidden gentile literature They have twin boys - Sonny and Chani has an inquisitive streak often perceived as rebellious so God knows what Max, the future holdsrainbow twins. Perhaps Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they should take the Rabbi're related, much less twins and there's marriage as an example? Or perhaps not…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908737433</amazonuk>assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{Frontpage|author= Kay Chronister|title= Desert Creatures|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|isbn=1803364998}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Eric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alison MacLeodMadelaine Lucas|title=UnexplodedThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It's 1940 'Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and Britain lives in fear of weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, a Nazi invasion young woman unravels the year-long relationship that could happen any dayonce defined her. In case Overlaid with later wisdom, the worst happens, Evelyn's husband Geoffrey has buried narrator relives the affair with a little something for man twenty years her and their young son Philip in senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the gardensummer after. He tells her Set against the tin contains a bit backdrop of money and his favourite photo of them. As she digs it up from impulse rather than necessity, she discovers that therean isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt''s no photo but what there is instead makes Evelyn doubt that she knows details the man she married. The events that follow make Evelyn realise that indeed she doesn24-year-old narrator't. Meanwhile the war continues s deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and a German does invade their lives, but not in the way that either of them could envisagehow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241142636</amazonuk>0861546490
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Michael Grothaus
|title=Beautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre= Literary Fiction
|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.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=HarvestJennifer Saint|authortitle=Jim CraceAtalanta|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As harvest comes in''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, a village finds itself under threatI vowed. Invaded by a series of unfamiliar visitorsI would take my place, it will find itself utterly transformed over a short but apocalyptic seven days. We watch through not just in the eyes name of Walter Thirsk as three vagabonds escaping the enclosure of their fields are blamed goddess. It was for the trangressions sake of others, as the chartmaker Mr Quill enumerates the common land, and as Master Kent's benevolent rule is overtaken by a new owner, who comes with enforcers in the my name of ''profit, progress and enterprisetoo. Atalanta'' - or sheep farming as Walter quickly realises.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330445669</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=1Q84: The Complete TrilogyAmanthi Harris|authortitle=Haruki MurakamiBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The ''1Q84'' trilogy isPadma, without doubta young Sri Lankan, an impressive book. In many ways, the trilogy almost has returned to be read in this way as the three component books make little sense Villa Hibiscus on their ownthe southern coast of her home country. The first book in the series in particular This is almost completely baffling if taken in isolationa place she spent her formative years. It does, though, demand a degree of dedication, and if the prospect of a 1300 page novel in which is not a huge amount happens in terms of plot and in which there is a significant level of repetition leaves you coldplace she was born into, then this might not be the best entry point into but the wonderful world one she thinks of Haruki Murakamias home. As often with Murakami though, it's possible How she came to read this book be at a number of levels. On the surface Villa, how it's a love story set in a slightly fantastical setting with a little bit of crime thrown in. At a deeper levelbecame her home, he explores and the thin lines between imagination and reality, machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and death and what you might call yin and yangyet subtly violent novel. It Padma's a novel where balance present fails to escape her past and vacuums play a big part. It seems counter-intuitive to call much like the musical score of a book of this magnitude 'delicate'film, but that's just how strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the story appearsVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099578077</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=A Kind of Eden Sea Defences|author=Amanda SmythHilary Taylor|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Martin Rawlinson has escaped from the cold dreary English weather 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 exotic heat and exotic women of Trinidadchildren up. He might have a wife Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter back home-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but home Rachel is struggling to develop a long way away and here is real bond with the young parish - and beautiful Safiya. Sheshe's a journalist and could easily have just dismissed him as some sad old white guyin awe of the vicar, Gail, but somehow then she didn'ts been doing the job for more than thirty years. Somehow they talked, Rachel and walked, and she showed him Christopher hoped that a walk on the real Trinidad and he fell in love with her, and with her homebeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846688132</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexander Maksik1398515388|title=A Marker to Measure Drift|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=Jacqueline roams the beaches of the Greek islands offering massages for money to ward off starvation. It helps but hunger is always with her, lurking alongside the memory of a former life in Liberia The Boy and the mind's ear voice of her mother. Jacqueline is at least alive and existing, but at what cost?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848548052</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=FamiliarDog|author=J Robert LennonSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Is there a greater change First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the life of a middle-aged woman than ocean floor, which created the death of her teenage son? Elisa might have thought nottsunami and this, having been forced to bury fifteen year old Silasin turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and try and move on with her husband Derek and the year-older son, Samutter devastation. But a greater change occurs on the way back from her annualThe deaths were uncountable, solo pilgrimage to his grave – something very weird happens to and the universeloss of livelihoods was widespread. She pops The fact that many pets were separated from one car to another, from under their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a cloudless sky to dog outside a slightly greyer one – and from her self as Elisa to convenience store. He wasn't a world where people dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call her Lisa, where she is plumper, in a different job, stiil married Public Health prompted Kazumasa to Derek open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in the same home – but still the mother of two young men…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846689473</amazonuk>.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=The Sorrow of AngelsPapa on the Moon|author=Jon Kalman StefanssonMarco North|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Our decidedly unheroic main character has been at the café for three weeks now, so we are following on very closely from [[Heaven and Hell by Jon Kalman Stefansson|Heaven and Hell]]. After the tragedy and soul-searching of that first book, he seems settled in the ridiculous family that has formed around him there, finding employment, enjoying the literature, yet being very intrigued by the female body. The man who is still young enough to be known only as ''Some frogs had gotten into the boywell.'' might have latched on to stability for once, and replaced the family and best friend he had lost. But everything is restless in this environment, and once again he might just be tempted to go on a journey, with another male companion, despite the harshness of the surrounds.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051652</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Donal RyanDaisy Hildyard|title=The Spinning HeartEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The summary of this book doesn'My father still lives back the road past the weir in the cottage I was reared in. I go there every day t come close to see explaining what is he dead and every day he lets me down. He hasn't yet missed a day of letting me downdone with the premise.'|isbn=1913097811}}
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=On her thirtieth birthday Juliet Montague went out to buy Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a fridge for the princely sum of twenty-one guineasdelight. She'd saved hard for it - and her parents had given her I will agree with the final few pounds - first – tremendous is no understatement – but then Juliet did something impulsive. Instead of buying 'a fridge she commissioned delight' is perhaps using the expression in a portrait of herself and so began her involvement in the post-war art sceneway I'm not familiar with. Juliet wasn't - by any stretch I have to confess my ignorance of the imagination Spanish- an artist, but she had a startling ability to spot a ''good'' picturelanguage literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. It was simply something which she ''knew''From the little I have read (in translation, much as she had known for certain that her husband had left for good on the day he didnI don't return home as expected.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444736345</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Indiscretion|author=Charles Dubow|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Charles Dubow's debut novel promises read Spanish) there does seem to be a modern day Great Gatsby. It too is set amongst tendency towards the rich and famous outside New York, it too is narrated by a character seemingly on fantastical – the outside, Maddy's childhood friend Waltermystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007501307</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreview|title=Unfaithfully YoursFrontpage|author=Nigel Williams|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=When Nigel Williams first really burst on to the best-seller list, a couple of decades ago, it was with a book set in Wimbledon that really quite tickled a younger me – and my mother. But then he produced two more in the same series, and we soon decided he was a bit of a one-trick pony, and could never be sure how much of the trilogy we'd read, or be too eager to read more. Flash forward, and Williams has certainly branched out – his setting this time is Putney. Wimbledon Common is now Putney Heath, and so on. But here he provides an epistolatory novel – and if there's one kind of novel to make me prick up my ears it is one built from letters. It is the blatant two-and-fro timing of the narrative, and the succinctness that characters are formed with, that strike me as obvious benefits of such a book – and Unfaithfully Yours has those and many more.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472106741</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewJennifer Saint|title=Russian Stories|author=Francesc Seres|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=This brilliant and varied collection of short stories is the product of a current academic interest in cross-cultural translation. Francisco Guillen Serés is a Catalan professor of Art History from Aragon. A Russophile, he has travelled widely to collect stories from those writing during the past hundred years of Russian history. These have been translated into Catalan and then into English. These unusual and delightful stories, some twenty one of them written by five writers read fluently and engagingly. They form an informative tapestry of Soviet and post-Soviet life, moving back in time with the older, earlier writers like Bergchenko, who died in the siege of Stalingrad, at the end. Ranging over mythic and symbolic tales to realistic portrayals of personal relationships; love trysts in St Petersburg, ferocious bears in the deep heart of the Taiga to the perils of becoming lost in continuous orbit in space. All aspects are impressively recounted.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>085705158X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=The Parrots|author=Filippo BolognaElektra
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When confronted with 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the topic story of parrots, most people would describe them as tamed tropical birds that are taught to repeat simple phrases, having no particular intelligence to engender an originality of their own. Filippo Bologna has not in fact written a book about birds, but about writers - three women who live in fact, three writers. Just as the Neo-Pagans have a liking of the Triple Goddesses heavily male dominated world of The Maiden, The Mother and The Crone, our three writers are similarly split into The BeginnerAncient Greece. Cassandra, The WriterClytemnestra, and The Master. All three of these novelists Elektra are battling it out for The Prize, a prestigious award that would revitalise all bit players in the career story of The Master, legitimize the efforts of The Beginner and assure The Writer a place in the annals of historyTrojan War. The setting of Rome is utilised to provide both a stunning backdrop and one Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that is sympathetic to often the silent women have the mood of our characters. The most compelling stories of our three protagonists are interwoven in a delightfully clear fashion; Bologna's prose is delicate and descriptive, but not at the sacrifice of pacing. The stage is set; the characters have learned their lines. There is just one problem... out of the three writers, none of them deserves to win The Prizemost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908968192</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=8409290103|title=In The Dutch MountainsIf Only|author=Cees NooteboomMatthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=OftenTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, when cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked if what I’m reading is a good book I hesitate before answeringhis accountant, Mr Patrick, trying to decide what ensure that the young man got on board the asker really meansboat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. Do they mean is it exciting? Funny? Full Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of interesting characters? Recentlysorts - 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, someone asked me it was that and when I hesitated they gave me he didn't care to have him in this as country where he might be a clarifier: “Are you better off for having read it?”danger to his wife and other children. In this instance, yes. I think I am. However, despite coming away from this book with a strong positive feeling about it, it’s also left me a little befuddled The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the young man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782067191</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview|title=Every PromiseFrontpage|author=Andrea Bajani|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Italian writer, Andrea Bajani's ''Every Promise'' is narrated by Pietro. His partnerAntoine Laurain, Sara, has left him due to their inability to have a baby, but soon she finds herself pregnant after a one night stand Le Sonneur and reliant on Pietro's mother for advice. Meanwhile Pietro meets Olmo, an elderly man who lives in their old family apartment, who reminds Pietro of his own Grandfather, Mario, who, like Olmo, served in Mussolini's ill-fated Russian campaign. Olmo persuades Pietro to go to Russia to visit the scenes of some of the photographs he has to try to come to terms with the past. It's a story about the past, the present and the future and the struggle for one man to make sense of this. It's packed with surpassingly detailed imagery and Bajani is at times breathtakingly unflinching in exposing the vulnerability of his narrator. However, it is very much a slow burn of a book and it's not always an easy book to read.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051466</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Andrew PorterJane Aitken (translator)|title=In Between DaysRed is My Heart
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=After Chloe Harding [[: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 forced to leave her East Coast college, for reasons she refuses to explain to her recently divorced parents or older brother Richardblack and white and red. Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, her familyand I think it's lives start possible to unravel. Will say not one page lacks the rest influence of them ever find out what caused her fall from grace, and can they solve their own problems?some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224089838</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ivy PochodaB098FFFBH9|title=Visitation StreetSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Red Hook, Brooklyn and it is blisteringly hot. Two fifteen Fourteen-year -old girls decide the best Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and most exciting way to cool off is to take her friend are producing a small inflatable raft on competition entry to highlight the river. The next morning one of the girls is found unconscious and washed ashore with no memory of what happened way in which human beings exploit the river and the other girl is nowhere to be foundanimal world. This becomes She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a big local story lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, Nick. Kate runs the survivorfamily business, saviour and community have to deal with the loss a toy shop called Cornucopia in their different waysPutney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444778242</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Marlen HaushoferYancey Williams|title=Nowhere Ending SkyCrosshairs of the Devil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Little Meta Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is growing up getting on in a childhood paradise with two parents who love her years and a younger brother to tease , despite his strenuous objections and train to do all the things that Meta wants him thanks to. However the world outside Metahis daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's paradise will soon change beyond all recognition as point of view - in room 315 of the Austria and Germany Garden of the 1920s makes way Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for the Austria and Germany palatable company. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of the 1930swriting though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0704373130</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lea Carpenter0008421714|title=Eleven DaysMrs March|author=Virginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Sara raised Jason alone; even when she was with his father 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 felt 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 if she was wrapping the bread, ''but isn't this the first time he's based a lone parent. character on you?'' JasonShe mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 's father always seemed to be away doing something indefinable abroad; then he disappeared leaving her completely. Two years later Jasonmannerisms''s father was dead. However Jason Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is a lad to be proud the whore of, never giving Sara a momentNantes - ''s trouble and now a member of the elite US Navy SEALSweak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch. Now he's missing in action… Now she has to hang on and hope.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444776231</amazonuk>'
}}
