Difference between revisions of "Newest Literary Fiction Reviews"

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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
 
[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]
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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__
==Literary fiction==
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{{Frontpage
__NOTOC__
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|author=Matthew Tree
{{newreview
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|title=We'll Never Know
|author=Eleanor Thom
 
|title=The Tin-Kin
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Dawn is a single mother who has been avoiding a lot of things for a long time. When her aunt, who raised Dawn as a daughter, dies, Dawn finds the key to a cupboard which she was forbidden to look into as a child. Inside she finds clues to her family history, links to a Traveller Community, unearthing a journey that sees her finding her roots. We also witness her struggle to renew her complicated relationship with her family and her efforts to escape the ever-present memory of her abusive husband.
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|summary= Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his 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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715639013</amazonuk>
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|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=B0C47LV1PC
|author=Patricia Duncker
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|title=Fragility
|title=The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge
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|author=Mosby Woods
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
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|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It's rural France, and 2000 is barely begun, when hunters come across a spread of human corpses in the mountains.  Several families, all in the same cult, seem to have killed themselves on their path to wherever.  If so, this is a problem, for the last time it happened, in Switzerland a few years previous, nobody could work out why – and who was there to dispose of some of the evidence. This isn't a problem for the policeman involved, as he fell desperately in love with the investigative judge in collaborating on the initial case. Combining again, they see a link with everybody involved in both cases, a famous conductor /composer.
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|summary= Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408807041</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
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''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic
|author=Marilyn Chin
 
|title=Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen: A Manifesto in 41 Tales
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen (oh, how I love that title!) will almost certainly not be to everyone's taste, but I confess that I loved its originality, boldness, sassy style and the humour of it.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144612</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Mosby Woods
|author=Paolo Giordano
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|title=A Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|title=The Solitude of Prime Numbers
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The Solitude of Prime Numbers'' follows the lives of Alice and Mattia from childhood to middle age. Alice is a wilful anorexic, scarred by a childhood skiing accident and an overbearing father. Mattia is an reclusive self-harmer trying to live with the guilt of having been responsible for his disabled twin sister's death. Their paths cross at a school friend's party during a painful adolescence and their lives are destined to intertwine throughout the coming years, despite the chronic awkwardness of their courtship.
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|summary= 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 push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552775983</amazonuk>
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|isbn=B0C9SNG8R1
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0571379559
|author=Juli Zeh
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|title=The House of Broken Bricks
|title=Dark Matter
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|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=4.5
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|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Dark Matter'' is translated from German and nothing has been 'lost in translation' here.  The lives of two very bright academics are interwoven throughoutStudents Sebastian and Oskar are the very best of friends; it's almost as if they share the same heartbeatHowever, as they grow into adulthood real life comes along and tends to get in the waySebastian settles for domestic blissTheir friendship cools off, becomes a little tense and strained.
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|summary=''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people.  Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricksInsubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and floodsHer husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money.  They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twinsSonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his fatherPeople 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>1846552087</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
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{{Frontpage
 +
|author=Claire North
 +
|title=House of Odysseus
 +
|rating=5
 +
|genre= Literary Fiction
 +
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
  
{{newreview
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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.
|author=Margaret Forster
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|isbn=0356516075
|title=Isa and May
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=Isamay is a would-be academic and she's writing a thesis about grandmothers in history, inspired, one suspects, by her own grandmothers, Isa and May. Her efforts are constantly diverted by the present needs of her grandmothers and the secrets about their pasts which rise to the surface when she least expects them.  There's another complication too.  Isamay is in her thirties and has never wanted a child, but reconsiders, despite the fact that her partner, Ian, is adamant that he doesn't want children.  The more Isamay delves, the more she realises that there are secrets in Ian's past too.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184663</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author= Kay Chronister
|author=Kathryn Stockett
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|title= Desert Creatures
|title=The Help
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|rating= 4
|rating=5
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|genre= Dystopian Fiction
|genre=General Fiction
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|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.
|summary=Jackson, Mississippi: 1960. The talk at the bridge club and the tennis club is of what Jackie Kennedy is wearing. They're white women, of course and they're free to play because a coloured woman will be looking after the children, doing the shopping and cleaning the house.  They're trusted to bring the children up, but they're not trusted to be honest about the silver. Aibileen is raising her seventeenth white child but something hardened in her heart when her son died whilst the white bosses looked the other way.  They took his body to the coloureds' hospital and rolled it off the back of the truck and left.
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|isbn=1803364998
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141039280</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1803363002
|author=Olga Grushin
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|author= Eric LaRocca
|title=The Concert Ticket
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|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There
|rating=4.5
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|rating= 5
|genre=General Fiction
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|genre= Horror
|summary=''The Concert Ticket'' follows the lives of a family in Soviet Russia who have grown desperately distant from one another. Sergei, the father, is a frustrated musician who longs to play the pre-revolutionary masterpieces of composers like Igor Selinsky but is forced to play the kind of patriotic ditties he despises. His schoolteacher wife, Anna, longs for his love, but is never quite able to get his attention with her shy gestures. Their shiftless son, Alexander, has quietly given up going to school and spends his days hanging around the park, consorting with undesirables. Also living in their house is Anna's silent, elderly mother.
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|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918482</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Madelaine Lucas
|author=Aatish Taseer
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|title=Thirst for Salt
|title=The Temple-Goers
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|rating=5
|rating=3
 
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Aatish Taseer is probably best known for his journalism, publishing regularly in the Indian press, in Prospect, and perhaps most prolifically in Time magazine.  He has won acclaim for his memoir: Stranger to History in which he, raised by his Indian Sikh mother, traces his absent Muslim father across the border in Pakistan – and also for his translations of the short stories of Saadat Hasan Manto.
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|summary= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918504</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
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Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the 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. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.
|author=Tom Connolly
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|isbn=0861546490
|title=The Spider Truces
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=The title of this debut novel by Tom Connolly is enigmatic, mysterious.  It draws the reader in - just like a fly to a spider's web.  And in fairness 'The Spider Truces' does exactly what it say on the tin as the main character, Ellis, is obsessed and terrified in equal measure, of spiders.
 
 
... and when you live in an old house, as the O'Rourke family does, there are plenty of spiders and other creepy crawlies about.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956251528</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author= Michael Grothaus
 +
|title=Beautiful Shining People
 +
|rating=4
 +
|genre= Literary Fiction
 +
|summary= ''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.''
  
{{newreview
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''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.
|author=Mary Yukari Waters
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|isbn=191458564X
|title=The Favorites
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=This story is set in Kyoto, Japan, starting in June 1978. Fourteen year old Sarah Rexford and her Japanese mother, Yoko, have come back from the US to stay with family for a few weeks. Sarah was born and brought up in Japan but has lived in the US with her mother and white American father for five years. She is very conscious of the differences between life in Kyoto and in Fielder's Butte, California. Here in Kyoto, the women, including Sarah and her mum, go shopping every day for food, and the food is very different – in an opening scene, Sarah is trying to explain to her grandfather what she normally has for breakfast in the US, and becoming aware of the gulf between her life in Japan and in California.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847392334</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Jennifer Saint
|author=Rose Tremain
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|title=Atalanta
|title=Trespass
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|rating=5
|rating=4
 
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Set in the hills of Southern France, Trespass is a novel about sibling love and rivalry, disputed territory and ultimately revenge. In the French corner are Aramon Lunel, resident of the Mas Lunel, and his sister Audrun who lives in a cottage in the grounds. In the English corner are Victoria Verey, a garden designer, and her partner, an untalented watercolourist, Kitty. The catalyst that brings these together is the arrival in France of Anthony Verey, Victoria's sister whose exclusive antiques business in London is failing and who decides to follow his sister in finding a new life in France. Aramon is tempted to sell his family Mas by the lure of 'foreign' money even if that means that his sister's house has to be destroyed to secure the deal.
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|summary=''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the name of the goddess. It was for the sake of my name, too. Atalanta''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701177942</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
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Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero.
|author=Castle Freeman
 
|title=All That I Have
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=Castle Freeman may sound like two thirds of a firm of provincial solicitors but thankfully this Castle Freeman is a man very skilled in writing about the law rather than practicing it. In his latest novel Freeman tells an intriguing tale involving local Sheriff Lucian Wing and his practical yet low-key approach to maintaining order in rural Vermont. Not for Wing the gung ho approach to fighting crime. He doesn't wear a uniform, he drives a battered old car rather than the standard issue sheriff's wagon and his gun, so ubiquitous in US law enforcement, is safely tucked away in his bottom drawer. Everyone in the area knows the sheriff and by and large they respect him and his slightly unorthodox way of doing business.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715639021</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
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Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing.
|author=Dan Rhodes
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|isbn=1472292154
|title=Little Hands Clapping
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=The first character to mention in this book is a moth.  It's a human moth, drawn to the flame that is a museum of suicide - a supposedly cautionary, life-affirming, memento mori, somewhere in Germany. Its curator is an old hand at lonely, unloved museums, fresh from an art gallery in an airport - it didn't take off - who notices the noise of the latest suicide to happen in the museum, and goes right back to sleep. A spider crawls into his mouth and gets eaten.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847675298</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Amanthi Harris
|author=Delphine de Vigan
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|title=Beautiful Place
|title=No and Me
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Teens
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|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Lou is a clever, clever child with an IQ approaching 160. She's thirteen, but she's been moved up two years at school and she compares her flat chested, nervous self somewhat unfavourably with her fifteen-year-old peer group. Funnily enough, her only real friend at school is Lucas, who's seventeen and such a rebel that he's been moved down  two years. Things at home aren't great for Lou. Her baby sister died a few years ago and her mother has been severely depressed ever since. She barely talks, seldom gets dressed. Her father is worn down to the bone with worry and Lou doesn't get a great deal of attention from him either, so distracted is he.  
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|summary= Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years.  It is 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 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 musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408807513</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1784631930
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=178563335X
|author=Joshua Ferris
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|title=Sea Defences
|title=The Unnamed
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|author=Hilary Taylor
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Tim Farnsworth seemed to have it allHe loved his wife Jane and daughter Becka and his job as a partner in prestigious law firm was enjoyable, fulfilling and financially rewardingThe fly in the ointment was that sometimes he was overtaken by a compulsion to walk.  The time of day, the weather or the occasion did not matter – when the compulsion came he had to walk until he was physically exhausted and fell asleep immediately after calling his wife to come and collect himThere seemed to be no medical explanation for what was happening – and Tim and Jane had tried every source they could find – but Tim was still reluctant to accept that this was a mental rather than a physical illness.
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|summary=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 upHer husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner.  Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandsonHolthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty yearsRachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed.  And then Hannah went missing.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917702</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1398515388
|author=Joe Treasure
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|title=The Boy and the Dog
|title=Besotted
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|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4
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|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=It is late August 1982, the day when O level results come out. Michael Cartwright already knows he has failed his exams and is dreading his parents finding out. He, his twin brother Kieran (who has done very well) and their younger sisters are on the family holiday, staying with their mother's parents in Kilross, County Cork. To escape boredom and his parents' anger, he wanders round the village, where he meets Fergal Noonan, training to be a priest, and lively Peggy O'Connor. He has his first kiss and a bit more with Peggy. The family soon goes home to Cheltenham, but their brief visit to Ireland will have far reaching significance.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330511726</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Laila Lalami
 
|title=Secret Son
 
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=''Secret Son'' is the story of Youssef El-Mekki, the slum-dwelling teenage son of single mother Rachida. Youssef has always been told that his father is dead, so when he finds out his mother has lied to conceal the fact that he was born out of wedlock, he plunges headlong into an identity crisis. He tracks down his real father, a wealthy businessman called Nabil Amrani who is surprisingly enthusiastic about his illegitimate son's arrival. Nabil has recently fallen out with his daughter and he seizes this opportunity to mould Youssef into the obedient son he has always wanted.
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|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, 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 dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918296</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Aravind Adiga
 
|title=The White Tiger
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=Balram Halwai, a Bangalore entrepreneur (of sorts) and a natural philosopher, hears that there is a planned visit from the Chinese leader to India to learn the source of Indian entrepreneurial talent. Balram knows that the story he will be told by the Indian leader will be a long way from the true story of modern Indian life, and so resolves, over the course of seven nights, to write to the Chinese premier with the story of his life and his own journey from a poor son of a rickshaw driver to the head of his own business.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843547228</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Matthew Condon
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|isbn=0989715337
|title=The Trout Opera
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|title=Papa on the Moon
 +
|author=Marco North
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Judges Carrington and Thorpe recline in leather armchairs on the verandah of Buckley's Crossing hotel and watch in silence as a giant trout shuffles across the bridge.  
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|summary=''Some frogs had gotten into the well.''
  
The Judges, despite their initial prominence and convincing back-story giving them a valid reason for being in Buckley's Crossing, will not really concern us. They are there to represent a type: a visitor to small town Australia, a fisherman from the city, a seeker after something in the Snowy that probably isn't fish.
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''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he filled them.''
  
We shall, however, be concerned with the giant trout.
+
How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, who has the most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to go on.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>038561506X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Daisy Hildyard
|author=Clare Morrall
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|title=Emergency
|title=The Man Who Disappeared
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I was drawn to this book straight away.  Firstly, the jacket cover is lovely.  The subliminal message is read me, please read me.  We are introduced to the Kendall family; mother, father and three children.  All leading unremarkable, rather ordinary lives.  The father, Felix, works hard to provide for his family.  He loves them all dearly.  They all love him back.  It is a secure family unit.  Until - completely out of the blue - he simply disappears.  His family is distraught and mystified.  We all know that a person cannot simply disappear.  But Felix Kendall has taken himself off the radar. Why?
+
|summary=
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340994274</amazonuk>
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The summary of this book doesn't come close to explaining what is done with the premise.
}}
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|isbn=1913097811
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}}  
  
{{newreview
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{{Frontpage
|author=Christopher Isherwood
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|author=Sally Oliver
|title=A Single Man
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|title=The Weight of Loss
|rating=4
+
|rating=4  
|genre=Literary Fiction
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|genre=Literary Fiction  
|summary=If you've ever wanted to know what goes on inside someone's mind you'll love this short novel, first published back in 1964. We join George Falconer just at the moment he awakes from sleep and witness his innermost thoughts as he goes about a typical day. It all sounds pretty dull and monotonous but what makes this exciting is that George isn't just any old professor living the American Dream, oh no, he's so detached from the banal normality of the world that he's almost outside of his own body at times.
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|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548828</amazonuk>
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|isbn= 086154112X
}}
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}}  
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Natalia Garcia Freire
|author=Angelica Garnett
+
|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us
|title=The Unspoken Truth
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=I would not normally start a review with the biography of the author, but The Unspoken Truth is presented as autobiographical fiction by a child of the Bloomsbury Group – in fact the subtitle is 'A Quartet of Bloomsbury Stories'. The blurb on the inside cover even identifies which character is based on the author in each of the four stories, just in case we are not sure.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184353</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Amos Oz
 
|title=Rhyming Life and Death
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Rhyming Love and Death is a kind of philosophical love letter to literature, or perhaps more so to fiction. It is a book about how to write, about the compulsion to write, and about the strange world that the writer of fiction must live in.
+
|summary= 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 delight' is perhaps using the expression in a way I'm not familiar with.  I have to confess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. From the little I have read (in translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099521024</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0861541901
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Jennifer Saint
|author=Paul Murray
+
|title=Elektra
|title=Skippy Dies
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=Life in Seabrook College is a mess.  Some of the staff are young enough to remember their own school days there, but many are certainly too old for that.  A lot of the boys are victims of ragging and bullying for being too chunky, or too smart - but some are so chunky and smart there's a certain kudos to them.  The female of the species is a thing only spied from their own school next door, and only met by selling them ritalin as a weight-control pill, or meeting them at the very rare combined school disco.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241141826</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Tom Wolfe
 
|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>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Kate Cole-Adams
 
|title=Walking to the Moon
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=We meet the main character Jessica, or Jess as she is usually called, deep in an emotional black hole.  She can see no light at the end of the tunnel.  And right from the start, right from page one, we have a sense of the beautiful and poetic language of Cole-Adams.  '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 one.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849161348</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Ru Freeman
 
|title=A Disobedient Girl
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary=
 
''A Disobedient Girl'' follows two women struggling to retain control of their lives in the face of servitude. Latha is a servant girl to the affluent Vithanage family, whose daughter, Thara, is Latha's age. As children, the girls are the best of friends, but they are destined to be separated by class, which is made painfully obvious when boys come into the picture. Meanwhile, Biso serves a cruel and drunken husband who beats her and terrorises her children, one of whom is another man's love child. Biso's husband murdered her lover in a hateful rage when he uncovered her affair and she realises that she must escape his house if she and her children are to live. Latha too seeks escape, but she finds it in the arms of Thara's boyfriend and this sets off a chain of events that will echo far into her future.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917958</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Simon Robson
 
|title=Catch
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Catharine's husband Tom is away on business in Birmingham, and so Catharine awakes alone for the first time in their little cottage at the end of their lane. They moved there a few months previously, and since then Catharine has spent her days quietly awaiting her husband's return from work.  She is sure that she will figure out, some day, what her purpose in life is.  She thought it might be to have a baby, but they have been trying for some time and it hasn't happened as yet.  Meanwhile she waits, and thinks, and waits.  In the lounge stands her piano, a stark reminder of the life she didn't manage to realise because although she studied music she found, quite quickly, that in spite of being passionate she lacked any kind of talent for it whatsoever.  So, on this day, alone at home, Catharine finds herself tormented by the piano's presence and over-thinking every second of the day.  She worries away at who she is, and what her life is, as her loneliness and the day itself unravel around her.
+
|summary='Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and the most extreme furies.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224090232</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1472273915
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=8409290103
|author=Joe Meno
+
|title=If Only
|title=The Great Perhaps
+
|author=Matthew Tree
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jonathan Casper faints when he sees clouds. His wife Madeline worries about everything, not least the way the pigeons that she is studying are murdering each other. Their seventeen year old daughter Amelia wants to overthrow the evil empire of capitalism and is making her own bomb, while fourteen year old Thisbe is looking for God and praying to him. Jonathan's father, seventy six year old Henry, is planning his disappearance. Jonathan and Madeline may be on the verge of splitting up, to the dismay of both daughters.
+
|summary=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 monthly allowance. Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - 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, it was that he didn't care 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>0330512471</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Antoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)
|author=Elizabeth Kostova
+
|title=Red is My Heart
|title=The Swan Thieves
+
|rating=3.5
|rating=2
+
|genre=Literary Fiction  
|genre=Literary Fiction
+
|summary=[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in my house. And so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately this one was, and is, black and white and red. Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and I think it's possible to say not one page lacks the influence of some striking visual ideas.
|summary=1999 A renowned painter, Robert Oliver, goes mad, attacking a painting with a knife. He's arrested, and sent to a psychiatrist who is also an artist. The psychiatrist, Andrew Marlowe, can't get his patient to talk to him, but tries to investigate what drove him to this by talking to his wife and his girlfriend, and reading some letters Oliver seems obsessed with.
+
|isbn=1913547183
 
 
1879 – Beatrice de Clerval, aspiring artist, corresponds with her uncle-by-marriage Olivier Vignot, a more experienced painter. Their letters will be found by Robert Oliver, 120 years later, and will lead to his loss of sanity.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847442404</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=B098FFFBH9
|author=Atiq Rahimi
+
|title=Snowcub
|title=The Patience Stone
+
|author=Graham Fulbright
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=Set in Afghanistan, ''The Patience Stone'' is a partly allegorical tale of a Muslim wife tending to her comatose soldier husband who has been shot in the neck. As she cares for him, for the first time ever she is able to speak to him without fear of censorship and he becomes, for her, like the mythical Patience Stone to which you tell your troubles and when the stone finally bursts, you are free from your torments. But also this might mean the Apocalypse.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184167</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Joyce Carol Oates
 
|title=A Fair Maiden
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I've recently read the terrific short story collection ''The Female Of The Species''  also by Oates and couldn't wait to start her latest bookI felt sure that I was in for a literary treat - and I was.  Firstly, the book itself, a hardback with a beautifully nostalgic cover is a book lover's delight.
+
|summary=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 human beings exploit the animal worldShe gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, NickKate runs the family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847248586</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Dai Sijie
 
|title=Once on a Moonless Night
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=A French female scholar, studying in China, finds herself caught up in the search for a lost, sacred text that was inscribed on an ancient scrollThe scroll was torn in two by Emperor Puyi years ago, and was lost.  After falling in love with a young grocer called Tumchooq the young woman becomes caught up in tales within tales, as she finds that Tumchooq'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>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Yancey Williams
|author=Thomas Trofimuk
+
|title=Crosshairs of the Devil
|title=Waiting for Columbus
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I was hooked instantly by the title.  Original, thought-provoking, quirky.  The book revolves around a youngish man who has been admitted to an insane asylum (these two words alone make me want to shiver) in modern-day Spain.  The staff have their work cut out.  He doesn't remember his name or anything at all about his past.  He's sporadically violent - and he says he is Christopher Columbus!  As the Americans would say, go figure.
+
|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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330518844</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0986031658
}}
+
}}  
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=0008421714
|author=Su Tong
+
|title=Mrs March
|title=The Boat to Redemption
+
|author=Virginia Feito
|rating=3
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=Ku Dongliang and his father, Ku Wenxuan, are forced to live on a barge on the river following Ku Wenxuan's fall from grace. Originally believed to be the son of a revolutionary martyr, it is eventually proved that Mr Ku was not so - as a result, his position in society takes a nose-dive. Dongliang suffers as a result of this, finding it hard to make friends within the barge community and on shore. Then an orphaned girl moves onto the barges and finds a place in Dongliang's apparently cold heart. Will she be able to take him out of himself? Or will she, too, turn her back on him?
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>038561344X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Iain Banks
 
|title=The Steep Approach to Garbadale
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=It took me a while to realise that Iain Banks is, most of all, a teller of tales - 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 to unfold in (this gets magnificently realised in the world building of his [[:Category:Iain M Banks|Iain M. Banks]] alter-ego) and populating them with memorable, larger than life but usually short of caricature, characters.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349119287</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Mary McCarthy
 
|title=The Group
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='Given the attention paid to relations between the sexes, it would be tempting to call The Group a forerunner of today's chick lit. It's not.'
+
|summary=The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, ''but isn't this the first time he's based a character on you?''  She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'her mannerisms''Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.''
 
 
So writes Candace Bushnell, the writer behind the TV series Sex and the City, in the introduction to this new Virago Modern Classics edition of The Group by Mary McCarthy. First published in 1963, this novel is about the lives of a group of young women after leaving college in 1933, including careers, relationships, sex, babies, parents, and money.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844085937</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Janice Galloway
 
|title=Collected Stories
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Short Stories
 
|summary=In this collection, stories are taken from two previous volumes, Blood and Where You Find It. The forty-two snap shots of life are mainly of women and young girls, struggling with emotions, sometimes realized and sometimes not. In all, there seems to be an underlying link of isolation and truth. The settings are varied, from a visit to the dentist to the place known as home, to a walk in the evening. We have a peek into the deepest darkest corners of everyday relationships, with lovers, partners and most of all ourselves.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540398</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Herta Muller
 
|title=The Passport
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=Meet WindischA miller in a small village, he trudges through there, and through his neighbours, and through his life, counting his days and hours, for reasons that are not initially clear.  But he does want something - he is waiting for a passport so he can leave for other climes.  The perks of his job are the bags of flour he leaves by the mayor's house with regularity, as an open bribe, but there might be a bigger sacrifice to have to make.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1852421398</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jennifer Johnston
 
|title=Truth or Fiction
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=Caroline Wallace is not a happy woman.  She has waited ten years for her lover to propose to her, and now just as he finally does, she has to go to Dublin to interview faded literary star Desmond Fitzmaurice. Desmond promises his tale will be brimful of 'sex and violence', but Caroline has no idea of the mystery that lies at the heart of his story.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755330544</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]
|author=Julian Barnes
 
|title=Staring at the Sun
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=Jean's first Incident involved Uncle Leslie, hyacinths and golf tees. It's perhaps best forgotten, but Jean doesn't forget. Uncle Leslie figures large in her life - mostly on the golf course - until the War comes and he runs away to America. He's replaced by Tommy Prosser, a grounded pilot who once saw the sun rise twice in one day and excites as many questions in Jean as he ever answers. Tommy is replaced by Michael, a policeman, whom Jean eventually marries. He doesn't know why minks are excessively tenacious of life and he doesn't much care. But Jean does. She cares much less for the Dutch cap that Michael sent her off to obtain before the wedding and much less again for their rather disastrous adventures in the bedroom.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540096</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Russell Celyn Jones
 
|title=The Ninth Wave (New Stories from the Mabinogion)
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=Pwyll rules a medieval-style fiefdom in a post-climate change Wales. Life is different in many ways - there's a new-but-old social order built on feudalism and horsepower is the main means of transport. But in many ways it's much the same - people still fight one another, towns still have sink estates, rich boys still have too much time on their hands and precious little meaning in their lives.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115146</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Revision as of 09:09, 19 February 2024

B0CVFXPGP8.jpg

Review of

We'll Never Know by Matthew Tree

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his 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. Full Review

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Review of

Fragility by Mosby Woods

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

Can you make a Yo birthing person joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.

Fragility is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic Full Review

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Review of

A Whirly Man Loses His Turn by Mosby Woods

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

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 push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back? Full Review

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Review of

The House of Broken Bricks by Fiona Williams

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

The House of Broken Bricks is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's 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 stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. 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, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny. Full Review

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Review of

House of Odysseus by Claire North

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

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. Full Review

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Review of

Desert Creatures by Kay Chronister

4star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. Desert Creatures by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope. Full Review

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Review of

The Trees Grew Because I Bled There by Eric LaRocca

5star.jpg Horror

Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a Big Bad, whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's The Trees Grew Because I Bled There is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any Big Bad. Full Review

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Review of

Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity

Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the 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. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town Thirst for Salt details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably. Full Review

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Review of

Beautiful Shining People by Michael Grothaus

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.

Beautiful Shining People revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening. Full Review

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Review of

Atalanta by Jennifer Saint

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the name of the goddess. It was for the sake of my name, too. Atalanta

Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero.

Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing. Full Review

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Review of

Beautiful Place by Amanthi Harris

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is 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 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 musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa. Full Review

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Review of

Sea Defences by Hilary Taylor

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

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 Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the 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 walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing. Full Review

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Review of

The Boy and the Dog by Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, 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 dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in. Full Review

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Review of

Papa on the Moon by Marco North

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

Some frogs had gotten into the well.

Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he filled them.

How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, who has the most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to go on. Full Review

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Review of

Emergency by Daisy Hildyard

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

The summary of this book doesn't come close to explaining what is done with the premise. Full Review

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Review of

The Weight of Loss by Sally Oliver

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

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. Full Review

0861541901.jpg

Review of

This World Does Not Belong To Us by Natalia Garcia Freire

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

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 delight' is perhaps using the expression in a way I'm not familiar with. I have to confess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. From the little I have read (in translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism. Full Review

1472273915.jpg

Review of

Elektra by Jennifer Saint

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and the most extreme furies. Full Review

8409290103.jpg

Review of

If Only by Matthew Tree

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

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 monthly allowance. Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - 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, it was that he didn't care 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. Full Review

1913547183.jpg

Review of

Red is My Heart by Antoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)

3.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Antoine Laurain books have always been black and white and read in my house. And so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, and is, black and white and red. Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and I think it's possible to say not one page lacks the influence of some striking visual ideas. Full Review

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Review of

Snowcub by Graham Fulbright

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

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 human beings exploit the animal world. She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, Nick. Kate runs the family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys. Full Review

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Review of

Crosshairs of the Devil by Yancey Williams

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

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. Full Review

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Review of

Mrs March by Virginia Feito

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, but isn't this the first time he's based a character on you? She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'her mannerisms. Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch. Full Review

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