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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul MurrayMatthew Tree|title=Skippy DiesWe'll Never Know|rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Life in Seabrook College is a mess. Some of the staff are young enough Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to remember their own school days therebe different from his father, but many are certainly too old for that. A lot a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of the boys are victims being exceptional at any of ragging his artistic passions all failed miserably and bullying for being too chunky, or too smart - but some are so chunky and smart there's a certain kudos who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to them. The female of the species is a thing only spied from their own school next doorhis studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and only met by selling them ritalin as a weight-control pill, or meeting them at the very rare combined school discoset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241141826</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tom WolfeB0C47LV1PC|title=The Bonfire of the Vanities|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=In his own mind, bond trader Sherman McCoy is a 'Master of the Universe'. He has a pleasant wife, a beautiful mistress, and a sweet six year old daughter. Henry Lamb is a black student from the projects. Under normal circumstances, it's clear that McCoy's world and Lamb's world would never overlap. But when McCoy and his mistress Maria Ruskin end up lost in the Bronx, and an accident leads to Lamb being hit by McCoy's Mercedes, a chain of events start which will lead to his downfall.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548798</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFragility|author=Kate Cole-Adams|title=Walking to the MoonMosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We meet the main character JessicaCan you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, or Jess as she is usually called, deep in an emotional black hole. She can see no light at the end of question should you make it? Or is the tunnel. And right from the startquestion if you did, right from page one, we have a sense of would it land? The catch is that the beautiful and poetic language of Cole-Adamsanswer for both could well be. 'Time and I have a new arrangement. We leave each other alone.' And indeed time is not important in this novel. We have all the time in the world would probably be the motto of the medical staff - if they had oneno. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849161348</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Simon RobsonMosby Woods|title=CatchA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=CatharineThe West isn's husband Tom is away on business t the dominant force it once was. Nobody in Birmingham, and so Catharine awakes alone for the first time in their little cottage at West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the end best course of their laneaction. They moved there a few months previously, and since then Catharine has spent her days quietly awaiting her husband's return from workGovernments are flailing. She is sure that she will figure outA war here, some day, what her purpose in life is. She thought it might be to have a baby, but they have been trying push for some time and it hasn't happened as yetclimate action there. Meanwhile she waits, and thinks, and waitsA feeling that nobody is in actual charge. In the lounge stands her pianoImagine then, there was a stark reminder of man with precognition. Imagine the life she didn't manage to realise because although she studied music she found, quite quickly, that strategic advantage in spite of being passionate she lacked this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any kind set of talent for it whatsoevercircumstances. SoThat man would be valuable, on this day, alone at home, Catharine finds herself tormented by right? Perhaps the piano's presence and over-thinking every second of the daymost valuable asset in history. She worries away at who she isImagine then, and what her life is, as her loneliness and the day itself unravel around herthat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224090232</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joe Meno0571379559|title=The Great PerhapsHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jonathan Casper faints when he sees clouds''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. His wife Madeline worries about everything Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, not least but instead, she lives in the way house on the pigeons that she is studying are murdering each otherriverbank, built of broken bricks. Their seventeen year old daughter Amelia wants to overthrow Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the evil empire passage of capitalism time, storms and is making her own bombfloods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, while fourteen year old Thisbe is looking for God to complete the delivery rounds - and praying to himbring in sufficient money. Jonathan They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, seventy six year old Henry, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is planning out with his disappearance. Jonathan and Madeline may be on the verge of splitting up, to the dismay of both daughtersmother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330512471</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Atiq RahimiKay Chronister|title=The Patience StoneDesert Creatures|rating=54|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Set in AfghanistanWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''The Patience StoneDesert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a partly allegorical tale new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of a Muslim wife tending to her comatose soldier husband who has been shot in the neckfears that exist for humanity today. As she cares for him, for the first time ever she It is able to speak to him without fear of censorship and he becomes, for her, like the mythical Patience Stone a shocking novel that still manages to which you tell your troubles and when the stone finally bursts, you are free from your torments. But also this might mean the Apocalypsefind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184167</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Joyce Carol OatesEric LaRocca|title=A Fair MaidenThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=IHorror 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''ve recently read , whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the terrific short story collection , beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Female Of The SpeciesTrees Grew Because I Bled There'' also by Oates is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and couldn't wait to start her latest bookhumiliation. I felt sure Horrors that I was in for a literary treat - linger and I was. Firstly, the book itself, a hardback with a beautifully nostalgic cover is a book loverare harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''s delight.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847248586</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dai Sijie Madelaine Lucas|title=Once on a Moonless NightThirst for Salt|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A French female scholar''Love, studying in ChinaI'd read, finds herself caught up in the search for was supposed to be a lost, sacred text that was inscribed on an ancient scroll. The scroll was torn in two by Emperor Puyi years ago, light and was lost. After falling in love with a young grocer called Tumchooq the young woman becomes caught up in tales within talesweightless feeling, as she finds that Tumchooqbut I had always longed for gravity''s father found and translated half of the missing scroll and became obsessed with finding the other half, and soon Tumchooq too becomes embroiled in the search.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099521326</amazonuk>}}
}}
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It took me a while ''But fearing something and having it come to realise that Iain Banks is, most of all, a teller of tales - pass are two different things. And I would call him a story-teller had this term not became a compliment-cum-invective usually reserved for the Jeffrey Archers and Dan Browns of the modern publishing world. This ability to tell stories - not to plot as much as to weave a yarn - combines with a penchant for creating appealing contexts for Banks' narratives m willing to unfold in (this gets magnificently realised in the world building bet most of his [[:Category:Iain M Banks|Iain M. Banks]] alter-ego) and populating them with memorablewhat we fear will never happen, larger than life but usually short of caricature, characters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349119287</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mary McCarthy |title=The Group|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='Given the attention paid or we can take steps to relations between the sexes, change it would be tempting to call The Group a forerunner of today's chick lit. It's not.'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Janice GallowayJennifer Saint|title=Collected StoriesAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet Windisch''I was as worthy as any one of them. A miller in a small villageI would get on board that ship, he trudges through there, and through his neighbours, and through his life, counting his days and hoursI vowed. I would take my place, for reasons that are not initially clearjust in the name of the goddess. But he does want something - he is waiting It was for a passport so he can leave for other climes. The perks of his job are the bags sake of flour he leaves by the mayor's house with regularity, as an open bribemy name, but there might be a bigger sacrifice to have to maketoo.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1852421398</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Russell Celyn JonesAmanthi Harris|title=The Ninth Wave (New Stories from the Mabinogion) Beautiful Place|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Pwyll rules Padma, a medieval-style fiefdom in young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a post-climate change Walesplace she spent her formative years. Life It is different in many ways - there's not a new-place she was born into, but-old social order built on feudalism and horsepower is the main means one she thinks of transportas home. But in many ways How she came to be at the Villa, how itbecame her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the same - people still fight one anothermusical score of a film, towns still have sink estates, rich boys still have too much time on their hands and precious little meaning in their livesthat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1854115146</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Owen Sheers178563335X|title=White Ravens (New Stories from the Mabinogion)Sea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In 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 children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old taleHannah and her elder brother, Jamie, Branwen is the sister of Bendigeidfran whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in- the giant King of Britain. She marries the King of Ireland, who doesnlaw won't treat let her see her wellgrandson. She manages Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to send Bendigeidfran develop a message via a tamed starling real bond with the parish - and war and killings ensue. In this new tale, a young girl has just walked away from her brothers who, she's in the wake awe of the devastating foot and mouth outbreakvicar, Gail, are despoiling their heritage by rustling but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and illegally slaughtering sheep. She meets an old man who tells her Christopher hoped that a story involving walk on the superstitions about the ravens in the Tower of London, propaganda work during World War II, and an equally doomed love affairbeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115030</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shirley Jackson1398515388|title=We Have Always Lived In The CastleBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Mary Katherine BlackwoodFirst of all, also known as Merricatit was the earthquake, is eighteendeep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and lives with her older sister Constance this, in turn, caused the family home where 'Blackwoods had always lived'nuclear meltdown. Merricat quickly draws the reader into her world by a series of matter of fact but bizarre statements – her likes include her sister The result was complete and death cap mushroomsutter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and everyone else in her family is deadthe loss of livelihoods was widespread. The wealthy Blackwood family has always kept fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the house 'steady against list of priorities but - six months after the world', shutting out other people, and they live near tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a villageconvenience store. Merricat believes that He wasn'The people of t a dog person but the village have always hated usconvenience store owner', s comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and tells us that she hates them tooTamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141191457</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Deborah Gregory|title=Dancing With The Dead|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I wanted to read ''Dancing with the Dead'', because I'm interested in family history. The blurb on the back of the book also mentioned Gill – our heroine of the piece – was moving from Bristol (my current home) to Lincolnshire (where I was born and brought up). I felt with all these links, the novel could not fail to interest me – but this was not the case.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529305</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|authorisbn=Elizabeth Baines0989715337|title=Too Many Magpies|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Becoming a mother brings a whole new world of fear into your life. Suddenly you see the danger in every situation, and fear and trepidation can be become your constant companions. In this novella, we meet a young mother who is married to a logical scientist. They attempt to control their children's futures Papa on a scientific basis, growing their own fruit and vegetables, giving their children nothing sugary, eating no eggs for a whole year until any adverse affects from them were disproved. But after meeting with an enigmatic stranger our young mother begins to struggle as he introduces ideas of freedom into her world. She begins an affair with him, begins to let things slip at home and with the children, yet finds she is still continuously haunted by the sense of an ever-present danger.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844717216</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMoon|author=Katherine May|title=Burning OutMarco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Violet has it all – a ''Some frogs had gotten into the well-paid job, and a luxurious apartment all to herself. Everything is catered for; her meals, her clothes, and her health are all how she would like them to be. But the life she is leading is beginning to take its toll. On the verge of snapping, a drained and somewhat out-of-sorts Violet, withdraws back to her home town. There, she meets someone familiar, a ghost reminding her of how she used to be ten years earlier – a young carefree girl, full of life. Only this isn't a ghost, but a girl living the life Violet once lived – exactly the same. Haunted by the past Violet realizes history is repeating itself and is convinced events will happen again. Events that will in turn haunt the girl.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906727392</amazonuk>}}'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hilary DixonDaisy Hildyard|title=When Rooks Speak of LoveEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Arthur Transcombe The summary of this book doesn't come close to explaining what is a middle-aged, grey-haired, self-effacing poet. Unremarkable really - on the outside. He has, however, managed to achieve some success done with his poems. (Being a guest speaker at the Cheltenham Literary Festival is no mean feat)premise. He is also a babe magnet!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904529429</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=David Malouf Sally Oliver |title=RansomThe 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=Taking his theme Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a small part of Homerdelight's Iliad, Malouf tells is perhaps using the story of the king of Troy, Priamexpression in a way I's grief-stricken voyage into the Greek camp m not familiar with. I have to ransom Troy's wealth for the body confess my ignorance of his fallen son, Hector, killed by the equally griefSpanish-stricken Achilles whose great friend Hector had killed in battle before Achilles took his cruel revengelanguage literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. Malouf tells From the story little I have read (in sparsetranslation, yet lyrical and poetic fashion suggesting the personal stories behind the epic themes that Homer related. It is an exquisitely written piece managing I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be both deeply moving as well as a great piece of story tellingtendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184159</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David Vann Jennifer Saint|title=Legend of a SuicideElektra|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Some books defy categorisation and that's Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the case with ''Legend story of three women who live in the heavily male dominated world of a Suicide''Ancient Greece. Is it Literary Fiction? Is it a series of short stories linked by a common themeCassandra, Clytemnestra, or a novella with supporting pieces? Is it fiction with a strong autobiographical thread running through it? The simple answer to and Elektra are all these questions is ''yes'' – for bit players in the story of the book is all Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that and more. It's also a often the silent women have the most compelling page-turner – I began reading at ten o'clock last night stories and finished it at three thirty this morning, resenting every moment away from the bookmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141043784</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Milan Kundera8409290103|title=The Book of Laughter and ForgettingIf Only|author=Matthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It's with Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the young man got on board the boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a somehow guilty feeling that I admit that I have never been particularly fond of Milan Kunderamonthly allowance. He's certainly a very good writer Patrick sent the money regularly and undoubtedly a very intelligent man capable correspondence - of interesting philosophical insightssorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. All those qualities contributed It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, it was that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a cult status accorded danger to Kundera, compounded by the frisson of political subversion – never a harmful thing for a writer from what used to be known as Eastern Europe (but which returned his wife and other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to its status as Middle (or Central) Europe with get the fall of the Iron Curtain)young man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057117437X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andrew Miller Antoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=One Morning Like A BirdRed is My Heart|rating=43.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Tokyo [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in 1940 is a place that we British tend not to give a great deal of thought tomy house. Japan entered the warAnd so was this one, we sayalthough I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, with the attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941and is, completely forgetting that Japanblack and white and red. Yes, like most of the rest of the worldhe has an artistic collaborator on this piece, was already a country at war. She had been fighting in China since 1937 and was making in-roads into European colonial territory in I think it's possible to say not one page lacks the area as wellinfluence of some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340825154</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sadie Jones B098FFFBH9|title=Small WarsSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A complex class society Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the way in which evolved into human beings exploit the animal world. She gets a highly sophisticated culture is invariably great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a fertile ground for development of social satirelecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and British literature would have been hugely depleted if all novels that can be regarded as such were suddenly to disappearher twin, Nick. Evelyn Waugh made Kate runs the genre his ownfamily business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, and which is where we'll meet Rachel'A Handful of Dust'' is a sublime example of his mastery s main (if unsuspected) source of itinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141183969</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=William Trevor Yancey Williams|title=Love and SummerCrosshairs of the Devil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Love and Summer'' Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is set in the small town of Rathmoye getting on in a rural Ireland 'some years after the middle of the last century'. The novel charts the doomed love affair between Ellie, a young farmer's wifeand, despite his strenuous objections and Florianthanks to his daughter, the Irishfinds himself living -Italian son or imprisoned, from Eddie's point of two artists, but it as much about the place and time in which it is set.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918245</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Bryony Doran |title=The China Bird|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Edward is a sad and solitary figure. Late middle-aged, twisted-spined and humpview -backed, a loner who works in room 315 of the archive basement Garden of the libraryEden nursing home, lodges with Mrs Ingrams who makes his tea and ruins his laundry, and hoards letters from his mother. Like many an unmarried man with an agingonly a trusty nursing aide, widowed motherJenkins, Edward finds his relationship with her somewhat strainedfor palatable company. Unlike many of those men, his relationship was always that way. She Nothing is rude and demanding, and he either doesn't have the strength or the inclination going to force the issue with her. Apart keep Eddie from an occasion halfhis stock-hearted reprimandin-trade of writing though, he stands backso here, ignoresfor his readers, makes excusesare his wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>095556302X</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jude Morgan 0008421714|title=The Taste of SorrowMrs March|author=Virginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The children were born in Thornton, a suburb problem began just after the publication of Bradford, and compared with where they were George March's most successful novel to go it was a soft livingdate. Howarth was high up Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the Yorkshire Moors, industrialised and with weather which chilled last page) seemed to the boneeither be reading it or had already done so. The parsonage Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was four-square wrapping the bread, ''but draughty and not exactly welcoming. isn't this the first time he's based a character on you?'' TheyShe mentioned that Johanna, of course, were the Brontë familyprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''. The father was Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the impoverished curate and his six children had somehow to be cared for after his wifewhore of Nantes - ''s death from cancera weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755338898</amazonuk>''
}}