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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author= David SzalayMatthew Tree|title= All That Man IsWe'll Never Know|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Two teenage boys on an Inter Rail trip around Europe find themselves staying with Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a frustrated housewife on the outskirts drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of Prague, a driftless young Frenchman discovers sexual fulfilment on a package holiday in Cyprus, a lovestruck Hungarian minder is embroiled in a prostitution racket being exceptional at an upmarket London hotelany of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, a Belgian academic is forced to confront cultivated his egotism when abilities rather than his partner becomes pregnant, a Danish tabloid journalist exposes a daydreams and set himself high-ranking politician's love affair, a property developer inspects a new project in the French alps, a Scot living in Croatia fails in love and business, a Russian millionaire confronts divorce, an elderly English politician survives a road accident in Italybut achievable ambitions. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099593696</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Elizabeth HayB0C47LV1PC|title= His Whole LifeFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating= 54|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= If Can you think that make a ''un-put-down-ableYo 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 greatest accolade answer for a book, think againboth could well be.... no. ''Put-down-able'' can be stronger praise:  ''His Whole LifeFragility'' is put-down-able. It encourages you to put it down, to wrap yourself in set as the slow-moving storycity of Portland, the exquisite writingOregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the subtleties of restrictions imposed during the characters, and just walk around for a while with them slowly sinking in; it encourages you to come back to it again and again; mostly it encourages you to put it down, to read it slowly, because you don't want it to end.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857055445</amazonuk>covid pandemic
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Phillip LewisMosby Woods|title= The BarrowfieldsA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Just before Henry AsterThe West isn's birth, his father, a frustrated novelist and lawyer, reluctantly returns to t the remote North Carolina mountains in which he dominant force it once was improbably raised and installs his young family in a gothic mansion - nicknamed 'the vulture house' - worthy of his hero Edgar Allan Poe. There, Henry grows up under the desk of this fierce and brilliant man. But when a death Nobody in the family tips his father toward a fearsome unravelling, what was once a young son's reverence West is poisoned, and Henry flees, not quite sure how to return until years later when he, too, must go home again.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473636825</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Paula Cocozza|title= How to Be Human|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= When Mary arrives home from work one day to find a magnificent fox on her lawn - his ears spiked in attention and every hair bristling with his power to surprise - mend this or even if mending it is only the beginningbest course of action. He brings gifts (at least, Mary imagines they Governments are gifts), and gradually makes himself at homeflailing. And as he listens to MaryA war here, Mary listens backa push for climate action there. She begins to hear herself for the first time A feeling that nobody is in yearsactual charge. Her bullish ex-boyfriendImagine then, still lurking on there was a man with precognition. Imagine the fringes strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of her life, circumstances. That man would be appalled. So would valuable, right? Perhaps the neighbours with a new babymost valuable asset in history. They only like wildlife Imagine then, that fits with the decor. But inside Mary a wildness is growing that will not be tamedthis man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786330334</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Helen Dunmore0571379559|title=Birdcage WalkThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Bristol 1792: Lizzie married well. John Diner Tredevant is a property developer who has reached the zenith of his life's work: building a terrace of prestigious houses overlooking the Avon Gorge. In a time of turbulence as France reaches the dawn of revolution, Britain, including Diner, fears it may spread. This puts Lizzie in a difficult position since her mother and step-father both believe in propagating pamphlets and ideas of egalitarianism for and to all, including women. In other words, they think nothing of spreading ideas of the sort that fanned the French flames. However, that's not Lizzie's only problem… there is a darkness in her husband's past of which she's unaware.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091959403</amazonuk>
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{{newreview
|author= Emma Henderson
|title= The Valentine House
|rating= 4
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= In June 1914, Sir Anthony Valentine, a keen mountaineer, arrives with his family to spend the summer in their chalet, high in the French Alps. There, for the first time, fourteen-year-old foundling Mathilde starts work as one of the 'uglies' - village girls employed as servants and picked, it is believed, to ensure they don't catch Sir Anthony's roving eye. For Mathilde it is the start of a life-long entanglement with les anglais - strange, exciting people, far removed from the hard grind of farming. Except she soon finds the Valentines are less carefree than they appear, with a curiously absent daughter no one talks about. It will be decades - disrupted by war, accidents and a cruel betrayal - before Mathilde discovers the key to the mystery. And in 1976, the year Sir Anthony's great-great grandson comes to visit, she must decide whether to use it.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444704028</amazonuk>
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{{newreview
|author=Hannah Tinti
|title=The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she turns twelvemight be happier there, Samuel Hawley teaches his daughterbut instead, Loo (short for Louise)she lives in the house on the riverbank, how to use her grandfather's rifle. Shooting a gun and hotwiring a car prove to be useful skills for this daughter built of a fugitivebroken bricks. Hawley is a lawless modern cowboy who Insubstantial as it might look, it's had many close shaves over his years on stood the run for committing robberies passage of time, storms and making dodgy dealsfloods. He and Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his young daughter form a cosy unit of their own; they live off of Chinese food vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and vending machine snacks to bring in motel rooms sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and move on every six months or so to avoid Max, the consequences of rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his criminal activitiesfather. But when People don't believe that they get to Olympus're related, Massachusetts, Hawley decides itmuch less twins and there's time to settle down. He buys a house by the water – an assumption when Max is out with cash – and becomes a clean-living fishermanhis mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472234367</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Nicole Dennis-Benn Claire North|title= Here Comes the Sun House of Odysseus|rating= 45
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= You have ''What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to assume the team behind excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the cover sleeve 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 Nicole Dennis-Benn's debut novel Here Comethe 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 Sun have brink of a keen sense of ironyfragile peace. Either One that or none shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of them read beyond the first pageMycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178607124X</amazonuk>0356516075
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Polly ClarkKay Chronister|title= LarchfieldDesert Creatures|rating= 54|genre= Literary Dystopian Fiction |summary=I It's early summer when With a young poetworld that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, Dora Fielding, moves to Helensburgh on the west coast of Scotland and her hopes are first challengedpost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Newly married, pregnant, she's excited by the prospect of a life that combines family and creativity. She thinks she knows what being Whether it is a personrobotic takeover, a wife, world devoid of water or a mothernuclear holocaust, means. She this genre is soon shown that she is wrong. As the battle begins for her very sense of self, Dora comes to find the realities of small town life suffocating, and, eventually, terrifying; until she finds a way for humans to escape reality altogethercathartically experience their most existential fears. Another poet, she discovers, lived in Helensburgh once. Wystan H. Auden, brilliant and awkward at 24, with his first book ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of poetry published, should be embarking on success and society in London. Instead, in 1930, fleeing a broken engagement, he takes a teaching post at Larchfield School for boys where he is mocked for his Englishness and suspected - rightly - apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of homosexuality. Yet in this repressed limbo Wystan will fall in love for the first time, even as he fights his deepest fearsthat exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786481928</amazonuk>1803364998
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{{newreviewfrontpage|author=Otto de Kat and Laura Watkinson (translator)|title=The Longest Night|ratingisbn=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Emma has a philosophy – ''let the dead rest, and love the living''. The problem with that, as a 96-year-old, is that there are too few living left, and so while the love remains she will go through her memories, taking a woozy, diaphanous path through all the major events of her life. Starting in wartime Berlin with one husband, who gets snatched from her at work, fleeing to another place to wait for peace, and wait for him in vain, moving to Holland and finding new love, and so on – this wispy journey will show all the impacts of war, from rationing right up to exile, death and survival. The memories are coming strongly here and now, as Emma is waiting for at least one of her two sons to visit, and then she will die…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857056085</amazonuk>}}{{newreview1803363002|author= Marisa SilverEric LaRocca|title= Little NothingThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There
|rating= 5
|genre= Literary Fiction Horror|summary=In an unnamed country at the beginning of the last centuryHorror 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 peasant couple longs for monster or a child. In despair they turn to gypsy tonics and archaic prescriptionsghost, it usually something tangible and one cold wintery night, by the end of the couplestory, beatable. Eric LaRocca's wish comes true''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. But the silence that follows the birth forewarns It is a collection of darker days to come. Strangers look on askance and fall speechless short stories more interested in the child's presencehorrors of illness, grief and villagers protectively hush their children as they pass on narrow market laneshumiliation. Pavla is no ordinary child, but then this is no ordinary taleHorrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786071274</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jeroen Blokhuis and Asja Novak (translator)Madelaine Lucas|title=The Yellow HouseThirst for Salt|rating=35
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you were the needy kind''Love, I'd read, would you really join in the drumming-out of town of two people accused of murder purely because of their nationality? Would you get was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling of belonging just because you were there when someone carried , but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a dead dog down off retrospective view, a mountain? The main character in this novel doesyoung woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. But he has something that will really get him notedOverlaid with later wisdom, well-thought-of, includedthe narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. He has come to Set against the south backdrop of France to set up an artistsisolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' collective, where he can live and work alongside his counterparts, who can inspire each other and best each other to create wonderful art. In fact a muchdetails the 24-year-respected guest is on his way now, so surely he can find kinship? The guestold narrator's name isdeepening relationship with her older lover, after depicting its all-consuming nature, Gauguinhow it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably. The main character is, of course, Vincent van Gogh…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907320563</amazonuk>0861546490
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer DownMichael Grothaus|title=Our Magic HourBeautiful Shining People|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=There had always been Katy, Audrey and Adam. They've been friends since school and now, along with Audrey's partner Nick, they remain inseparable as young professionals. Then, one day, Katy kills herself. No warning, no reason just no Katy. The four are suddenly three trying to make sense of a moment that leaves so many questions in a world that refuses to pause while they figure it out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1925240835</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Ayobami Adebayo|title= Stay With Me|rating= 5|genre= General Fiction|summary= I have a ''thing'' about blurbs which give away far too much of the stories. Not this time. This time…''There are things even love can't do…if the burden is too much and stays too long even love bends, cracks, comes close to breaking, and sometimes does break.'' ''But even when it's in a thousand pieces around your feet, that doesn't mean it's no longer love…'' That is the most heart-breakingly beautiful truth I've read in a long time – and it sums up this story. This is a story about love not being enough…but still being love. I hope this becomes a classic, not just in its native Nigeria but around the world. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782119469</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Michael Farris Smith|title= Desperation Road|rating= 5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= Maben is on the run. For a long while it's not clear whether she's running from something or towards But fearing somethingand having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or simply back we can take steps to where change it all started. She's got her small daughter with her, and they've been walking for a very long time. It ''s hard on the child, but itBeautiful Shining People's also clear that if it wasn't for revolves around the child Maben would stop running, question of identity and acceptance. Of what it's clear that that would not means to be a good thinghuman. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1843449870</amazonuk>191458564X
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Samanta Schweblin and Megan McDowell (translator)Jennifer Saint|title=Fever DreamAtalanta|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet Carla''I was as worthy as any one of them. She's a glamorous older womanI would get on board that ship, with poise and beautyI vowed. I would take my place, and someone who still looks a treat not just in a golden bikinithe name of the goddess. But insideIt was for the sake of my name, shetoo. Atalanta''s different Princess. The biggest issue she seems to bear relates to an event Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a few years agoson, when her horse breeder husband had Atalanta is raised under the drama protective eye of both the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a hiredformidable huntress, valuable stallion, and their son, being poisonedone who longs for adventure. Away from When the opportunity comes – to join the right medical treatmentArgonauts, Carla took David to a woman who said fierce band of warriors, descendent from the only hope was a 'migration' Gods themselves basically, Atalanta seizes the chance to farm fight in Artemis' name and carve out part her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of David's spirit challenges and discovery and swap through it with someone else, Atalanta must remember Artemis's, to dilute the toxin. This was a success, as David seems to have survivedfatal warning: that if she marries, although Carla is sure it was the wrong decision – she now sees David as at least part monster. But another odd thing about this tale is that it isn't being narrated by Carla, but by will be her neighbour, another mother called Amanda, who is renting a holiday home nearbyundoing. And the further odd thing is to whom she is narrating this story – it's to David…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786070901</amazonuk>1472292154
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shanthi SekaranAmanthi Harris|title=Lucky BoyBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Solimar wants more from Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her life than her Mexican home can offer and now she's 18, she can go find itcountry. Her target This is to get to the USA, a target so blinding that place she doesn't realise what reaching out for it will costspent her formative years. Meanwhile Kavya It is living not a place she was born into, but the American dreamone she thinks of as home. She's rich in friendship How she came to be at the Villa, familyhow it became her home, a loving husband and the machinations that have flowed through her life prospects ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet Kavya has a baby-shaped hole in her worldsubtly violent novel. The problem is that there Padma's only one baby for both present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of them… Lucky boy!a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0735212279</amazonuk>1784631930
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Rick Bass178563335X|title= For a Little While|rating= 4|genre= Short Stories|summary=''For a Little While'' is a collection of twenty-five short stories from Rick Bass. As someone previously unacquainted with Bass' work this new collection was a wonderful introduction to his quirky, unusual style which focuses on stripped back, simple fables featuring often mundane situations, mysterious characters and magical experiences. The characters in each tale are beautifully crafted and the stories are dreamy, loose narratives covering everything from love to death to choices made and chances taken.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782273042</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewSea Defences|author=Dorthe Nors|title=Mirror, Shoulder, SignalHilary Taylor|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Danish author Dorthe Nors has published four novelsWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a novella PCC meeting and a story collectionwondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. The protagonist of Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her latest novelelder brother, forty-something SonjaJamie, has whilst Rachel holds a problem with balance – literallysobbing parishioner. Due to an inner ear condition, if she bends over she Thelma's crippled by dizziness. It's inconvenient given that Sonja is currently taking lessons at Folke Driving School. She's already doing poorly – her angry, sweary instructor Jytte doesndaughter-in-law won't trust let her enough to change gears so does it all for see her – and so can't have them finding out that she gets dizzygrandson. Eventually Sonja switches so Folke himself is her instructor Holthorpe, but he's an odious lecher. She really can't win.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782273123</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Alice Hoffman|title= Faithful|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction |summary= Growing up on Long Islandthe Norfolk coast, Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl until one night an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate. Her best friend's future is destroyed in an accidenta lovely place, while Shelby walks away with the burden of guilt. What happens when a life but Rachel is turned inside out? When love is something so distant it may as well be a star in the sky? Moving from a life in her parents basement struggling to develop a life in New York City, Shelby remains damaged by real bond with the loss of her best friend, stumbling through life blindly and fighting desperately to become connected to anything at all. But, as she grows, she discovers emotion, survival parish - and happiness, bundled up with dogs, food, books and men she's probably best avoiding… Deep in New York City she find a circle awe of lost and found soulsthe vicar, Gail, and the angel whobut then she's been watching over her since that fateful night all those doing the job for more than thirty years ago…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1471157717</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)|title=Octavio's Journey|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Meet Octavio. He's a large lunk, a gentle giant, living alone in a lowly Venezuelan town – a town which once, fleetingly, had fame, fashion Rachel and success through Christopher hoped that a minor miracle, but has none any longer. Octavio, it seems, has walk on the beach would do them some unusual habits – here he is, marching off to the chemist's with a table across his back, for good - it was all the doctor had at the time to write a prescription on. Now we never learn exactly what the cause of the prescription stormy but it was, but we soon find out probably what the cause of the table is – Octavio cannot read, and has learned nothing beyond cutting into his palm to allow the wound to let him escape the need to writethey needed. Until, that is, a woman seems to suggest a way for him to learn to read and write, and to love – but that experience also proves to Octavio that there is a whole host of other things he can put his mind to, both for good, and for bad…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910477311</amazonuk>And then Hannah went missing.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Boy and the Dog|author=Tomoka Shibasaki Seishu Hase and Polly Barton Alison Watts (translator)|title=Spring Garden
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction |summary=MurakamiFirst of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and (long before this, in turn, caused the film) Endo's ''Silence''nuclear meltdown. That's my limit as regards contemporary Japanese writing. But now there's Tomoka Shibasaki, The result was complete and her noted work ''Spring Garden''utter devastation. Which, make no mistake, is definitely Japanese. For instance, if I told you it starts with a man looking up to watch his female neighbour on her balconyThe deaths were uncountable, and concerns obsession, you could well think it the loss of livelihoods was his about herwidespread. But no – perhaps only in The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the west is list of priorities but - six months after the gaze so male. The obsession is very much hers here, and it – and the novel – concern tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a singular houseconvenience store. And He wasn't a dog person but the very singular country it lives in, convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the changes it is going through…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782272704</amazonuk>dog jumped in.
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Laura Kaye0989715337|title= English AnimalsPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating= 54|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= When Mirka gets a job ''Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in a country house in rural Englandthe fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, she has no idea sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the struggle she faces to make sense of a very English couple, dogs leaned over the opening and a way barked down at the strange noise of life the buckets as he filled them.'' How is that is entirely alien to her. Richard for an opening? The style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and Sophie are chaotic, drunken, frequently outrageous but also warm, generous and kind laconic to Mirka, despite their argumentative wistful and turbulent marriage. Mirka is swiftly commandeered by Richard for his latest money-making enterprise, taxidermymusing, and soon surpasses him in skill. After turning on a traumatic break two years ago with her family in Slovakia, Mirka finds to her surprise that she is happy at Fairmont Hallsixpence. But when she tells Sophie that she is gayAnd author Marco North, everything she values is put in danger and she must learn who has the hard way what she really believes inmost wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140870823X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Charles D BlanchardDaisy Hildyard|title=Kingdom's EndEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The rats made their massive colony inside summary of this book doesn't come close to explaining what is done with the ruins premise.|isbn=1913097811}}  {{Frontpage |author=Sally Oliver |title=The Weight of an abandoned motion picture palaceLoss |rating=4 |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, where for thirty long dark yearsshe awakes to find strange, an aged blind leader ruled over them. A beloved figure held thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in high regard, he rules with patience, understanding, justice size and lovevolume. When Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a young upstart challenges all he has builtphysical reaction to her grief, ruling with harsh punishments and rash decisionsrecommends she go to stay at Nede, the rats must decide how best to protect their colony an experimental new treatment centre in order Wales. Yet something strange is happening to preserve all that they have built togetherMarianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As the rats clash amongst themselvesMarianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, some fail to notice the ever growing threats Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and dangers pain—but only at a terrible price: that the outside world provides - who will come out on top in this very literal rat race?of identity itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>148344936X</amazonuk>086154112X }}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sebastian BarryNatalia Garcia Freire|title=Days Without EndThis World Does Not Belong To Us
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It's the mid nineteenth century and Thomas McNulty has left his home in Sligo, his family dead Early comments on this debut novel from famineEcuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, to make a new life in a new nationdelight. He teams up I will agree with prairie fairy - the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a dancer delight' is perhaps using the expression in drag - John Cole and together they sign up for the US Armya way I'm not familiar with. Their journey will take them through the American Indian wars and eventually I have to confess my ignorance of the Civil WarSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. Along From the waylittle I have read (in translation, the two soldiers form I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a lasting bond with a young Sioux girl called Winona and their travels take them from Missouri to Wyoming and Tennessee. It's tendency towards the story of perhaps fantastical – the most violent birth of a nation in history but it's also a convention-defying love storymystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0571277004</amazonuk>0861541901
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rose TremainJennifer Saint|title=The Gustav SonataElektra|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Gustav Perle grew up in a small town in neutral Switzerland: the horrors of the Second World War seemed distant, but neutrality was maintained partly at 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the expense story of those three women who would seek refuge live in the countryheavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Gustav's father died in mysterious circumstances and whilst Gustav adored his motherCassandra, EmilieClytemnestra, she was cold and indifferent to himElektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. Until he met Anton Zwiebel he was a lonely child with just one toy, a tin train, but he and Anton met at kindergarten where it fell to Gustav to look after Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the nervous boy. Anton is Jewish most compelling stories and he's a talented pianist, but he lacks the confidence to perform in public. Throughout much of his life he relies on Gustav's support, but fails to appreciate just how important, how necessary it is to his wellbeingmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784700207</amazonuk>1472273915
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tom Tomaszewski8409290103|title=The Eleventh LetterIf Only|author=Matthew Tree|rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=At the end of the working dayTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, Christopher is looking over to ensure that the ghosts of his occupancy of some rooms young man got on Harley Street, before moving up board the road boat and thereafter Patrick was to different chambers, and pastures newsend him a monthly allowance. He's half impelled Patrick sent the money regularly and half reluctant to revisit a pair correspondence - of audio cassettessorts - 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, on which are interviews by it was that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and someone else of a woman called Louise, who other children. The alcohol problem was arrested in Italy in obvious even before Patrick managed to get the 1980s for the double murder of two close friendsyoung man on his way.}}{{Frontpage|author=Antoine Laurain, Kate Le Sonneur and JohnJane Aitken (translator)|title=Red is My Heart|rating=3. Hardly aware he's being snowed 5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in by a London blizzard and the usual British response to any bad weathermy house. And so was this one, he spontaneously provides shelter to a flame-haired beautyalthough I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, Kayand is, who provokes him into playing the tapesblack and white and red. It's Yes, he has an occurrence which changes him much more profoundly than he does others at the therapistartistic collaborator on this piece, and I think it's couch. Indeed, the closer he gets to Kay, the closer he gets possible to say not one page lacks the voice influence of the victim from decades agosome striking visual ideas. What on earth could be the connection?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>099357582X</amazonuk>1913547183
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Steinunn Sigurdardottir and Philip Roughton (translator)B098FFFBH9|title=The Good LoverSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright|rating=24.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Karl is a global example of the Icelandic species, with more than one home abroad and an amanuensisFourteen-cumyear-assistant to do his scheduling and arrange housework while heold Rachel is her school's going here animal rights project leader and she and there being her friend are producing a businessmancompetition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. He has She gets a string great deal of lovers that has stretched into three figuressupport from her family: father Pip Harrison, partly because with one exception three is the limit of liaisons he'll have with each. But he's also got a heart devoted to Unalecturer at Imperial College, his teenaged love whom he adoresLondon, despite mother Kate and her splitting with him decades ago. On a whim he leaves a beach holiday to go back to one of the icy limbs of Icelandtwin, witnesses the changes wrought by fifteen years on her – and then ends up staying the night with the woman next doorNick. This is purely platonic, but what with his host knowing everything about Kate runs the situationfamily business, an ever-present taxi driver, and an ex on the line a toy shop called Cornucopia in AmericaPutney, which is there a way he can snatch his love from her marriage and find happiness?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>9462380139</amazonuk>where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eric Beck RubinYancey Williams|title=School Crosshairs of Velocitythe Devil|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's point of view - in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's work.|isbn=0986031658}} {{Frontpage|isbn=0008421714|title=Mrs March|author=Virginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=JanThe problem began just after the publication of George March's head is dropping him in most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading itor had already done so. He's a trained concert pianist, Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but is having difficulty performing, with a horrendous problem, in on that he can hear any discordant musicparticular morning, or just in fact horrid noisePatricia asked, when in as she was wrapping the wings waiting to performbread, and never ''but isn't this the score first time he is due to follow. The devil's tinnitusbased a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, you might call itthe principal character had 'her mannerisms''. With another failure behind himPerhaps this would not have mattered, but dignity somewhat intact, Jan decides he has to work back through his life to tell us except for the fact that Johanna is the cause – and wewhore of Nantes - ''re likewise dropped into an extended flashbacka weak, to his formative years at art schoolplain, detestable, with a pretentious drama studentpathetic, Dirk. The book is a fast-moving exploration of what Jan finds of note (pun intended) through his lifeunloved, and all that might have caused his mental problemunloveable wretch. But is cognisance of what might lie behind it going to help?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0993506275</amazonuk>''
}}
 
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