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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael ChristieMatthew Tree|title=If I Fall, If I DieWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It probably tells you Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a lot about the atmosphere drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of this book that for the whole time I was reading it, I thought the title was ''If I Fall, I Die''. That missing second ''If'' is probably being exceptional at the crux any of the whole talehis artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>043402306X</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
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{{newreview|author=Virginia Burges|title=The Virtuoso|rating=3.5Frontpage|genreisbn=General FictionB0C47LV1PC|summary=The title character of ''The Virtuoso'' is Isabelle Bryant, a professional violinist who has earned the affectionate nickname of 'Beethoven's Babe'. She was the youngest-ever winner of the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition and gave her first solo performance, of Beethoven's violin concerto, at Royal Albert Hall. 'Her violin represented another limb to her, it was that precious. It felt so natural, like an extension of her body.' It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the violin is Isabelle's life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00R07U0B0</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFragility|author=Adam Foulds|title=In The Wolf's MouthMosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In SicilyCan you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, bandits steal is the question should you make it? Or is the sheep of a young shepherd. Distraughtquestion if you did, he seeks out his local Mafioso would it land? The catch is that the answer for helpboth could well be... Sixteen years later, two men are traveling to Sicily - one, a young English officer, and the other an American infantryman. They are all soon thrust into a war that is greater and more terrible than anything they could have dreamed, and they all must find different ways to survive its terrorsno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009958686X</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Edith PearlmanMosby Woods|title=HoneydewA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=American short story writer [[:Category:Edith Pearlman|Edith Pearlman]] brings us 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 compilation of stories push for climate action there. A feeling that have only been seen separately nobody is in magazines over actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the yearsstrategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. This follows on from That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the huge success of ''Binocular Vision'' (most valuable asset in 2013)history. Imagine then, the short story collection that led this man loses this ability. What would governments do to Ms Pearlman being presented with the National Critics' Circle Award. get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444797018</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Schneider0571379559|title=Brother The House of SleepBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Brother The House of SleepBroken Bricks'' tells is the story of Elias Johannes Alderfour people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, a child born into a god forsaken village high but instead, she lives in the Austrian Vorarlberghouse on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. He came into Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the world as a silent childpassage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, while struggles to grow his mother was screaming vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the midwife wasnrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother't really paying attentions Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. It took a couple of loud intonations of the Te Deum from the neglectful nurse before he finally uttered a soundPeople don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715649205</amazonuk>
}}
{{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}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Edwidge DanticatKay Chronister|title=Claire of the Sea LightDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Claire Limye Lamne (Claire of the Sea Light) With a world that is born in the fishing village of Ville Rosebecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, Haiti as her mother diespost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Her father NoziasWhether it is a robotic takeover, a poor fishermanworld devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, spends his life trying to make this genre is a better life way for his baby humans to such an extent cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that he eventually encourages a local fabric seller to take Claire. This happens on the night aligns many of Claire's 7th birthday; the night fears that little Claire goes missing before the fabric seller can take herexist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782068511</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Rebecca LeeEric LaRocca|title=Bobcat and Other StoriesThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=3.5|genre=Short StoriesHorror|summary=The first story in 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 ''BobcatBig Bad'' , whether that is the title storya home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and this alone is worth , by the price end of admission. Plaster it with prizes, put it in anthologies; it deserves every accolade it can get. However, the last story echoes the first, and 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 five tales in between are strangely repetitivehorrors of illness, most with Midwestern North American narrators grief and 1980s university settingshumiliation. Moreover, all seven Horrors that linger and are in the first-person; I would have appreciated more variety of perspectiveharder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1922182311</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Madelaine Lucas
|title=Thirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
}}
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Here But fearing something and having it come to pass are the Young Men'two different things. And I' surges forward, oozing edginess, from the very first sentence. Is that a bad thing? Probably not. It just means that readers may at times slip out m willing to bet most of the storywhat we fear will never happen, feel themselves taking a step back and admiring the spare coolness of the novel before easing back into the narrativeor we can take steps to change it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408863731</amazonuk>}}''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Takashi HiraideJennifer Saint|title=The Guest CatAtalanta|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The Guest Cat'' had me at the coverI was as worthy as any one of them. The reflective green material makes the cat's eyes glow and glint eerily in the light. There is something ethereal and otherworldly about this novella and I would get on board that is before ship, I've even read a single wordvowed. This simple story about a Japanese couple and the cat that decides to adopt them has become an international best-seller and I was keen to find out why.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447279409</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Susan Hill|title=Black Sheep|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Mount of Zeal is a mining villagewould take my place, and no mistake. Three concentric semi-circular streets align across not just in the side name of a hill, like the rows of seats in an amphitheatre, with little thought at all allowed goddess. It was for the life above the crest sake of the hillmy name, and a lot of effort and dreams focused on the coal mine at the villagetoo. Atalanta's core. The Howker family (and how evocative that name is, so akin to the noise of hawking coal dust from one's lungs), and Ted and Rose, the youngest of the clan, in particular, will face the destiny the environment they grow up in gives them – with only the merest glimmers of hope and the faintest of sparks to latch on to as regards a likeable future. But if that is a faint spark, then how safe is it so close to the tinderbox of a coal mine?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009953956X</amazonuk>}}
Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Favel ParrettAmanthi Harris|title=When the Night ComesBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Little Isla Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has moved returned to Hobart, Tasmania from the Australian mainland with Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her mother and younger brotherhome country. Bo This is a chef on the Nella Dan, a Danish ship supplying the Antarctic expeditionsplace she spent her formative years. Their meeting It is just not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her lifeever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's little moments present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that carry a greater effect than anyone realises happens at the time, whether for the better or the worstVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848548540</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=By Night The Mountain BurnsSea Defences|author=Juan Tomas Avila LaurelHilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Sometimes When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a novel will startle because it tackles trainee vicar, sitting in on a topic totally unknown PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to us or tells us of lives previously unpick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-imaginedlaw won't let her see her grandson. This is Holthorpe, on the case with By Night the Mountain Burns. HoweverNorfolk coast, what is most remarkable about Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel’s novel is how easy it a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to slip into develop a real bond with the story parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a child growing up walk on an isolated island the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in Equatorial Guineathe ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. We are not reading about mysterious 'others' The result was complete and utter devastation. We’re reading about people like ourselves The deaths were uncountable, who live in and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a different place which has its own constraints – namely poverty dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and isolationTamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276401</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=AsunderPapa on the Moon|author=Chloe AridjisMarco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Marie, the narrator of Chloe Aridjis's second novel, ''Asunder'', is a guard at the National Gallery in London. It is a simple, subdued life she leads in this 'tiny kingdom', but it suits her: 'I Some frogs had always sought quiet in gotten into the world and there were few movements quieter, I realised, than paint cracking over timewell.' Most would find her work tedious, but over her nine years at the museum she has adjusted to the routine; 'unlike some of the new guards, I do not suffer from boredom or listlessness.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099572753</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Clara's DaughterDaisy Hildyard|authortitle=Meike ZiervogelEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The summary of this book doesn''Clara’s Daughter'', in the short space of 144 pages, paints the portrait of the relationships threatening t come close to destroy a family unit. The intensity explaining what is conveyed done with sharp stabs from Ziervogel’s spare sentencesthe premise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907773797</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Ali SmithSally Oliver |title=How to be BothThe Weight 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=Natalia Garcia Freire|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There's something which you need to know about Early comments on this book: if you decide to read itdebut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I will agree with the book you read might not be first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the same as the one which expression in a way I've read and am about to reviewm not familiar with. There are, you see, two stories in each copy and half the books published will I have the story to confess my ignorance of Francescho Del Cossa who worked in and around Ferrara in the fifteenth century, followed by the story of George Spanish- really Georgia - a teenager who lives with her father and younger brother in twentieth century Cambridgelanguage literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. The other books will From the little I have the stories read (in reverse order. The stories are the sametranslation, but I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the experiences of fantastical – the readers will be quite differentmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>024114521X</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=WreakingJennifer Saint|authortitle=James ScudamoreElektra
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A derelict mental hospital'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, gloomy railway archesClytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in the bleak countryside story of the English coastTrojan War. It all comes at Yet Jennifer Saint shows us in grey flashes. If ''Wreaking'' was a film, it would saturated with cool tones. It’s an easy novel to visualise: Scudamore’s spare, elegant style creates an almost palpable atmospherethat often the silent women have the most compelling stories and the most extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009952385X</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=J8409290103|author=Howard Jacobson|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''J'' marks an unusual turn for Howard Jacobson. Though it seems at times like a skewed folk tale, it also bears the subtle signs of a future dystopia. It has some of Jacobson's trademark elements – odd names, humorous metaphors, and Semitic references – but felt to me like a strange departure after [[The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson|The Finkler Question]] and ''Zoo Time''.|amazonuktitle=<amazonuk>0224102052</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewIf Only|author=David Mitchell|title=The Bone ClocksMatthew Tree|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Holly Sykes is 15 and has found true love with an older man in Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his twenties father, cotton- until she finds him in bed with her best mate. Upset and disorientatedbroker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, she runs away from home. This may enable her to escape from ensure that the unfaithful Vinny young man got on board the boat and her overbearing family but not the weirdnessthereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. She's not Patrick sent the only one though: Hugo the student, conman money regularly and lothario thought he was only doing someone a good turn when correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the weirdness started two although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, it was that he didn't care to have him. There is in this country where he might be a point danger to it though: eventually battle lines will be drawn his wife and it's anyone's guess as other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to who will win, despite what get the Anchorites may sayyoung man on his way. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340921609</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Karen Joy Fowler|title=We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Rosemary's childhood is blighted by the disappearance of her sister, Fern. Rosemary went to stay with her grandparents and, on her return Fern was no longer there. Curiously enoughAntoine Laurain, her mother Le Sonneur and father don't speak of it. The knock on effect was the angry departure of Rosemary's older brother Lowell whom she also misses. As she grows to adulthood, Rosemary remembers trying to come to terms with this, the damage that being a daughter of a psychologist has wrought and the revealed secrets that will finally make sense of it all.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668966X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewJane Aitken (translator)|title=The City Son|author=Samrat UpadhyayRed is My Heart
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Didi lives [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in a remote Nepali villagemy house. Her husbandAnd so was this one, always referred to by what although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, and is presumably a title rather than a name , black and white and red. Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and I think it''the Masterji'' teaches in s possible to say not one page lacks the city. He rarely comes home to see his wife and sonsinfluence of some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1616953810</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alison MooreB098FFFBH9|title=He WantsSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Lewis Sullivan Fourteen-year-old Rachel is close to retirement, but elderly beyond his years and widowed. Edieher school's death seems animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to have had practical implications - he's not getting highlight the food he used to enjoy - but beyond that it's difficult to see quite what they had way in common other than which human beings exploit the libraryanimal world. He used it and she worked there - but they didn't even enjoy the same books. Lewis is an RE teacher She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at the same school where his fatherImperial College, London, Lawrencemother Kate and her twin, used to teach - when they were both there at the same time it often confused the paperworkNick. Lewis is beginning to wonder if he chose Kate runs the wrong careerfamily business, if he lives in the wrong place. He used to be able to see the house he grew up a toy shop called Cornucopia in from the bedroom window before it was demolished and replaced by a supermarket carparkPutney, but hewhich is where we'll meet Rachel's always dreamed main (if unsuspected) source of living by the sea. His adult daughter, Ruth visits him every day and brings him soup. He doesn't want soupinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773819</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Narrow Road to the Deep NorthYancey Williams|authortitle=Richard FlanaganCrosshairs of the Devil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The Narrow Road Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to the Deep Northhis daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie'' is the title s point of both Flanagan's Booker Prizeview -longlisted sixth novel and a book by seventeenth-century Japanese poet Basho. Poetry irradiates this often bleak story in room 315 of Australian POWs building the Burma Death Railway during the Second World WarGarden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, presenting beauty and love as counterpoints for palatable company. Nothing is going to gory descriptions keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of suffering and inhumanitywriting though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701189053</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0008421714|title=The Country of Ice Cream StarMrs March|author=Sandra NewmanVirginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The problem began just after the publication of George March'My s most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be Ice Cream Fifteen Star and this be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the tale of how I bring the cure local patisserie to all the Nighted Statesbuy olive bread but on that particular morning, save every poory childrenPatricia asked, short for life. Is how a city die for selfish loveas she was wrapping the bread, and rise from ''but isn't this same smallness. Be how the new America begin, in wars against all hope - first time he's based a country with no power in a world character on you?'' She mentioned that hate its lifeJohanna, the principal character had 'her mannerisms''. So been Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the faith I sworn, and it ain't evils in no world nor cruelties in no red hell can change fact that Johanna is the vally heart whore of Ice Cream StarNantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186429</amazonuk>'
}}