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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Peter Stjernstrom and Rob Bradbury (translator)Matthew Tree|title=The Best Book in the World|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Titus Jensen may not have written many great novels for a while (if ever) but his festival readings of others' works are renowned. Why, his rendition of ''The Diseases of the Swedish Monarchs from Gustavas Vasa to Gustav V'' has been compared favourably to his offerings from ''Handbook for Volvo 245'We'. However, one drunken night he and romantic poet Eddie X agree that their fame on the festival circuit would be insignificant by comparison if they could write the best book in the world; a combination of all genres, appealing to all tastes and making all the best seller categories. They start work on it the next day but, rather than collaborate, each wants the lone glory. The race (or should that be battle?) to the publishing date is on!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843914808</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Adriaan van Dis|title=Betrayalll Never Know

|summary= Dutchman Mulder renews his acquaintance with Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his old friend Donald as he returns to South Africafather, a land he knew well in the days drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of apartheid. Life may have moved on being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and apartheid ceased but some things have worsenedwho had endless crises of self confidence. Have Mulder and Donald made any difference at all? As they recall their shadier youthSo Tim applied himself to his studies, they have one more chance to struggle for someone's freedom against all odds cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and a violent societyset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051849</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=Her Privates WeB0C47LV1PC|author=Frederic Manning|ratingtitle=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ernest Hemingway called Frederic Manning's ''Her Privates We'' 'The finest and noblest book of men in war' he had ever read. But Hemingway wasn't a very trustworthy man, so we tend to defer judgement. He is, however, useful for contrast. Hemingway's tales of war (such as ''A Farewell to Arms'' and ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'') usually involve macho misfits and trite love stories, feats of derring-do and filmic dialogue; all the things, in fact, that have no place in Manning's First World War novel. Why is this? Well, by the time Hemingway started driving a Red Cross ambulance on the Italian front (1918), Manning's service was already over. Nevertheless, unlike the illustrious (and self-mythologising) Hemingway, Manning spent his war deep in the trenches of the Somme, mixing it with the proletarian soldiery. As such, ''Her Privates We'' is a brutal novel concerning the 'subterranean, furtive, twilight life' of the average Tommy, a work of startling power, and one that completely eclipses the war novels of the romantic Hemingway.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668787X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFragility|author=Ruth Ozeki|title=A Tale for the Time BeingMosby Woods|rating=4.5

|summary= Ruth finds Can you make a 'Hello Kitty' bag washed up on the shore of WhaletownYo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the small Canadian island that she and her husband Oliver call home. As Ruth opens question should you make it and begins reading ? Or is the diary safely protected insidequestion if you did, she learns about Nao, a teenager in Japan. Through her writing Nao becomes real and would it land? The catch is that the tales of her varied life, struggles at school and fascinating relatives compels Ruth to search answer for her, or at least to discover her fateboth could well be.... no.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857867970</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Sebastian Faulks|title=A Possible Life|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Geoffrey swaps a career ''Fragility'' is set as a public school master for an existence as an English officer behind German lines during WWII, an experience that will take a lifetime to expunge. Billy is a child sent to the workhouse to give his family a chance city of survival. Elena has Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to come to terms with an adopted brother, Jeanne emerge from the French nursemaid lives in restrictions imposed during the shadow of a one-off encounter and Jack? He bears the indelible heart print of a girl who travels with a guitar. Five lives, five stories, one human, emotional thread.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099549220</amazonuk>covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tash AwMosby Woods|title=Five Star BillionaireA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=China The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a booming economy push for people climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a position to take man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantagein this asset; people like Gary the pop star who once won a talent show, Yinghui the lingerie magnate or her childhood friend and property developer Justin man who feels the weight can tell you what will happen given any set of his family's expectationscircumstances. Then there's PhoebeThat man would be valuable, moving to Shanghai from right? Perhaps the country on a promise and a belief most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to attract success one must act as if one already has it. Life will bring them into each other's orbit but get it won't leave any of them the same as when they started.back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007494157</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jhumpa Lahiri0571379559|title=The LowlandHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5

|summary=Subhash and Udayan Mitra are brothers growing up in an India growing into its post-independence status''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Subhash goes along with UdayanTess Hembry's ideas roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's Udayan who's stood the radicalpassage of time, fighting against the injustices of an elitism that remains once the British have left Indiastorms and floods. Eventually they go their separate waysHer husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, one studying abroad to avoid conflict complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the other becoming more deeply embroiledrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Life canPeople don't go on like this forever believe that they're related, much less twins and it doesnthere't but the reverberations seem to, affecting generation after generation as Subhash realises s an assumption when Max is out with his mother that the search for peace isnshe't always an external things his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408828111</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Colum McCann|title=TransAtlantic|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=In 1845 exThe follow-slave, black American Frederick Douglass visits Ireland for a lecture tour about freedom and emancipation only up to discover hethe excellent ''Ithaca''s not preaching to the converted picks up a few months after allwhere we left off. In 1919 Alcock and Brown climb into a rickety aircraft the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to fly the Atlantic war at Troy and land in Limerickthen by divine intervention never returned home. In 1994 Senator George Mitchell also travels to Ireland watched As ever she remains surrounded by a world suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm thatClytemnestra brought to Ithaca's about to see shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a miracle fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of negotiation. Meanwhile through it all Lily Mycenae, and her descendants are also therehis sister Elektra, not only watching history but living it on both sides of the Atlanticseeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408829371</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The LuminariesKay Chronister|authortitle=Eleanor CattonDesert Creatures|rating=54|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Eleanor Catton's ''The Luminaries'' With a world that is set in the New Zealand gold rush of the late 1860sbecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. It's Whether it is a story about greedrobotic takeover, powera world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, gold, dreams, opium, secrets, betrayal and identity, but this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most of all, itexistential fears. ''Desert Creatures''s by Kay Chronister is a celebration new work of the art of story telling, both in terms post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of Catton's book and the stories her characters have to tellfears that exist for humanity today. It's the kind of book that is perfect escapism and which wraps you up in its world. If you like big, chunky books a shocking novel that you can get lost in for hours, then this is one for youstill manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847084311</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|titleisbn=Four New Words for Love1803363002|author=Michael CannonEric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=35|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Christopher meets Gina on Waterloo BridgeHorror taps into something primeval within us. He is newly widowed, she It is newly homeless; he's an elderly Londoner, she's used as a young Glaswegianway to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. It is Most horror fiction feature a defining event in both their lives''Big Bad'', but whether that only becomes clear in the future. Of pressing concern in the present is the rather rude policeman looking to move Gina on. The situation is nearing crisis. Sensing her desperation, Christopher impulsively asks her to come a home with himinvader, a proposal she tentatively accepts. Yet monster or a ghost, it is this one benevolent act that gives birth to an odd usually something tangible and platonic friendship, a relationship based on silences and lacunasby the end of the story, and one which Michael Cannonbeatable. Eric LaRocca's fourth novel, ''Four New Words for LoveThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There''is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, looks grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to delicately unraveldefeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908754249</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eve HarrisMadelaine Lucas|title=The Marrying of Chani KaufmanThirst for Salt

|summary=After waiting till all her elder sisters' weddings were done and dusted in true ultra-orthodox Jewish style'Love, itI's now 19-year-old Chani's turn. She's only met Baruchd read, her fiancéwas supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, four times and he hasnbut I had always longed for gravity't even seen her elbows but the match is made and the day eventually arrives. Baruch secretly studies forbidden gentile literature and Chani has an inquisitive streak often perceived as rebellious so God knows what the future holds. Perhaps they should take the Rabbi's marriage as an example? Or perhaps not…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908737433</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Alison MacLeod|title=Unexploded|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It's 1940 and Britain lives in fear of 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 narrator relives the worst happens, Evelyn's husband Geoffrey has buried 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

{{newreview|author=Hannah Kent|title=Burial Rites|rating=4.5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=Fridrik, Agnes and Sigridur are accused of murdering two men one Icelandic night in 1829 before setting fire to their home. Now Agnes awaits execution, imprisoned in the farm of a lowly local family who, rumour has it, wouldn't be too great a loss if the prisoner becomes dangerous. Margrit Jonsdottir (the farmer's wife) doesnBeautiful Shining People''t feel threatened and sets revolves around the shocked, malnourished Agnes to work. Gradually Agnes reveals the events question of that night to Margrit identity and Toti, a young priestacceptance. Her version seems Of what it means to be a little different from human. Of what everyone else concludedis real and what is artificial, predictably… Or perhaps not so predictablyand whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447233166</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=HarvestJennifer Saint|authortitle=Jim CraceAtalanta|rating=4.5

|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>}}

{{newreview|author=Meg Wolitzer|title=The Interestings|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Back in 1974 six teenagers met at summer camp and did all those things which you get to do when your parents are not around to stop youPrincess. They smoked pot, drank vodka and Tangs - and talked way into the night about anything and everythingWarrior. Plays were put on, animations were perfected, but most importantly friendships were made that would last for years - for some it would be a lifetimeLover. Back in 1974, as Nixon left the White House under a particularly heavy cloud, 'The Interestings', as one of their number called them, knew that they could achieve anything they set their minds toHero. For three summers they returned to Spirit-in-the-Woods and then they faced the real world.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701188278</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Charlotte Mendelson|title=Almost English|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=In Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the late nineteen eighties sixteen year old Marina is goddess Athemis and fashioned into a border at Combe schoolformidable huntress, destined - as she and all about her know - one who longs for Cambridge and adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the medical profession. After her first term she's wonders if she's made a mistake as it's definitely not like it was at Ealing Girls. ThereArgonauts, a girl whose mother is emotionally fragile doesn't stand outfierce band of warriors, even if descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the mother gets chance to sleep on the sofa in her fight in-lawsArtemis' flat because their son - her husband - upped name and left carve out her and their daughterown legendary place in history. You would still fit in even if the family you're living with What follows is Hungarian a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and hasnthrough it, Atalanta must remember Artemis't entirely left the ways of the old country behind. At Combe there's too much about Marina fatal warning: that if she could marries, it will be mocked for - or could get her a cruel nickname. Marina simply doesn't fit in, but the family have sacrificed everything so that she can go thereundoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>144721997X</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=1Q84: The Complete TrilogyAmanthi Harris|authortitle=Haruki MurakamiBeautiful Place

|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

|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)

|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

|summary=Our decidedly unheroic main character has been at ''Some frogs had gotten into the café for three weeks now, so we are following on very closely from [[Heaven and Hell by Jon Kalman Stefansson|Heaven and Hell]]well. After the tragedy and soul'' ''Walter stood waist-searching of that first book, he seems settled deep in the ridiculous family that has formed fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him there, finding employment, enjoying sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the literature, yet being very intrigued by dogs leaned over the female body. The man who is still young enough to be known only as ''opening and barked down at the boy'' might have latched on to stability for once, and replaced strange noise of the family and best friend buckets as he had lostfilled them. But everything '' How is restless that for an opening? The style of this novel in this environment, the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and once again he might just be tempted laconic to go wistful and musing, turning on a journeysixpence. And author Marco North, with another male companion, despite who has the harshness most wonderful turn of the surroundsphrase, starts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051652</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Heaven and HellDaisy Hildyard|authortitle=Jon Kalman StefanssonEmergency

|summary=Iceland, a hundred years ago. From a place that is the very definition of rural and remote, a small fishing boat leaves for four hours' hard row to a profitable bank. It carries six men on the way out, and five on the way back. The deceased is the best friend – or perhaps only friend – summary of the main character, who is still young enough to merely be known as this book doesn''boy''. When he returns t come close to port he enters an almost Camus-like semi-existence, wondering just how much life explaining what is an answer, and for what, after done with the tragedy he has witnessedpremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849164061</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Sally Oliver |title=The SonWeight of Loss |rating=4 |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself.|isbn= 086154112X }} {{Frontpage|author=Philipp MeyerNatalia Garcia Freire|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us|rating=4.5

|summary=Philipp Meyer's second Early comments on this debut novelfrom Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight'The Son,is perhaps using the expression in a way I'' is an epic, multi-generational saga of Texas lifem not familiar with. Tracing the McCullough family from the middle I have to confess my ignorance of the nineteenth century to Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. From the present daylittle I have read (in translation, Meyer joins those writing todayI don's masterpieces of American 'dirty realism': Ron Rash, [[:Category:David Vann|David Vann]], Richard Ford and especially Cormac McCarthy. Like McCarthy's ''Blood Meridian,'' ''The Son'' is t read Spanish) there does seem to be a gory Western that transcends a simplistic cowboys-versus-Indians dichotomy to draw broader conclusions about tendency towards the fantastical – the universality of violence in a nihilistic worldmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857209426</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Donal RyanJennifer Saint|title=The Spinning HeartElektra

|summary='My father still lives back Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the road past the weir story of three women who live in the cottage I was reared in. I go there every day to see is he dead and every day he lets me down. He hasn't yet missed a day heavily male dominated world of letting me downAncient Greece.' This is how we meet Bobby - Bobby MahonCassandra, Clytemnestra, as we'll learn - and he's brutally honest about his feelings for his father, who has deliberately drunk away Elektra are all bit players in the story of the farm he inherited from ''his'' fatherTrojan War. But Frank Mahon isn't Bobby's only, or even main, problem. He's been earning big money as Pokey Burke's foreman but Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the financial crash has hit and Pokey has done a runner. An investment in a fake island off Dubai finished him and now he's disappeared. On silent women have the estate of forty houses he was building, just two are occupied most compelling stories and the rutted roads are nothing more than a racetrack for the joyridersmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781620067</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Natasha Solomons8409290103|title=The Gallery of Vanished HusbandsIf Only|author=Matthew Tree|rating=4.5

|summary=On her thirtieth birthday Juliet Montague went out to buy a fridge for the princely sum of twentyTwenty-one guineas. She'd saved hard for it - and her parents year-old Malcolm Lowry had given her been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the final few pounds - but then Juliet did something impulsiveyoung man got on board the boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. Instead of buying Patrick sent the money regularly and a fridge she commissioned a portrait correspondence - of herself and so began her involvement in the post-war art scene. Juliet wasn't sorts - by any stretch of sprang up between the imagination - an artist, but she had a startling ability two although we hear more about what Lowry has to spot a ''good'' picturesay than Patrick. It was simply something which she ''knewwasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, much as she had known for certain it was that her husband had left for good on the day he didn't return home as expectedcare to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the young man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444736345</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=IndiscretionAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|authortitle=Charles DubowRed is My Heart

|summary=Charles DubowFourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's debut novel promises animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to be highlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. She gets a modern day Great Gatsbygreat deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, Nick. It too is set amongst Kate runs the rich and famous outside New Yorkfamily business, it too is narrated by a character seemingly on the outsidetoy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, Maddywhich is where we'll meet Rachel's childhood friend Waltermain (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007501307</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Unfaithfully YoursYancey Williams|authortitle=Nigel WilliamsCrosshairs of the Devil|rating=4.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=When Nigel Williams first really burst Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to the besthis daughter, finds himself living -seller listor imprisoned, a couple from Eddie's point of view - in room 315 of the Garden of decades agoEden nursing home, it was with only a book set in Wimbledon that really quite tickled a younger me – and my mothertrusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. But then he produced two more Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in the same series, and we soon decided he was a bit -trade of a one-trick ponywriting though, and could never be sure how much of the trilogy we'd readso here, or be too eager to read more. Flash forwardfor his readers, and Williams has certainly branched out – are his wanderings through his setting this time is Putneylife's work. Wimbledon Common is now Putney Heath, and so on|isbn=0986031658}} {{Frontpage|isbn=0008421714|title=Mrs March|author=Virginia Feito|rating=4. But here he provides an epistolatory novel – and if there5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The problem began just after the publication of George March's one kind of most successful novel to make me prick up my ears date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it is one built from lettersor had already done so. It is Every day Mrs March went to the blatant two-and-fro timing of local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the narrativebread, and ''but isn't this the succinctness first time he's based a character on you?'' She mentioned that characters are formed withJohanna, the principal character had 'her mannerisms''. Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that strike me as obvious benefits Johanna is the whore of such Nantes - ''a book – and Unfaithfully Yours has those and many moreweak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472106741</amazonuk>''

{{newreview|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 Move on 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 Bologna|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=When confronted with the topic 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 - in fact, three writers. Just as the Neo-Pagans have a liking of the Triple Goddesses of The Maiden, The Mother and The Crone, our three writers are similarly split into The Beginner, The Writer, and The Master. All three of these novelists are battling it out for The Prize, a prestigious award that would revitalise the career of The Master, legitimize the efforts of The Beginner and assure The Writer a place in the annals of history. The setting of Rome is utilised to provide both a stunning backdrop and one that is sympathetic to the mood of our characters. The 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 Prize.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908968192</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]