Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=P G WodehouseMatthew Tree|title=The Crime Wave at BlandingsWe'll Never Know

|summary=There's Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a crime wave drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at Blandings Castle any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and bumbling Lord Emsworth is right at its centrewho had endless crises of self confidence. This is somewhat surprising as Emsworth (or 'Clarence!' So Tim applied himself to his sister Constance) is really only happy when he's reading studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his favourite book, Whiffle's 'The Care of the Pig'. It frequently soothes where other restoratives fail. The problem began with an air rifle daydreams and an unwanted tutor, set himself high but before the afternoon was out most of the inhabitants of Blandings Castle seemed to have shot, been shot at or left. If it hadn't been written by P G Wodehouse it would all be most confusingachievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141196289</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ian McEwanB0C47LV1PC|title=SolarFragility|author=Mosby Woods

|summary=Ian McEwanCan you make a 's Michael Beard is possibly the most ignoble Nobel prize winner there has ever been. He's gloriously obnoxious and hateful in almost every way. Since winning his Nobel prize he has rested on his Nobel laurels and has traded on his reputation rather than his achievements in his specialist area of physics. When this book starts, heYo birthing person's on his fifth wife having managed to wreck all previous marriages by his compulsive infidelity. He's shortjoke? And if you could, baldingis the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, ageing, obese, bigoted, and something of an opportunist, particularly if would it means he can land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be lazy and get away with something. In short, which he is, he's morally vacant. But what makes Beard an effective creation, and what carries us along with him despite his obnoxiousness, is that he knows all these things about himself. He's rather like Shakespeare's Richard III - he's honest with the reader and himself about what he is doing. Sure he would like to change, but talking about it isn't doing it, is it?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099549026</amazonuk>}}no.

{{newreview|author=Lisa Moore|title=February|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=When ''Fragility'' is set as the phone rings in the middle city of the nightPortland, Helen thinks it must be bad news again. Nearly 27 years ago her oil rig worker husband died at sea on 14 February 1982 (Valentine's Day)Oregon, leaving her with three children and a fourth on cautiously begins to emerge from the way. This time, no one has died – her son John is travelling round restrictions imposed during the world but a woman he had a brief fling with is pregnant with his baby. He was phoning from Singapore. What should he do?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546280</amazonuk>covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sebastian FaulksMosby Woods|title=Faulks on FictionA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=3.54

|summary=The West isn''Faulks on Fiction'' is effectively t the book of the TV show of the book. Even more confusingly, dominant force it's a book of reviews of works of British fiction so this is really a review of a book of reviewsonce was. The TV show has, at Nobody in the time of writing, yet West is quite sure how to air, but the concept mend this or even if mending it is to talk, not so much about the books themselves, but best course of the characters within themaction. Governments are flailing. A war here, separated into four distinct character types; heros, lovers, snobs and villains. Even ignoring the fact that characters often don't fit wholly into these descriptions and that the concept might prove a use push for those strange Venn diagrams you learnt about at school and have never found a use for, and the inevitable quibbles about which books and characters could also have been included climate action there. A feeling that nobody is the problem in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with lists, precognition. Imagine the result is strangely uneven. I was left wondering if strategic advantage in this might indeed work better as asset; a TV seriesman who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, but as a stand alone bookright? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it is more one to be dipped into than read cover to cover.back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846079594</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nathacha Appanah0571379559|title=The Last BrotherHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5

|summary=Raj and his two beloved brothers live on a Mauritian sugar plantation''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. World War II rages far away and close too Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but Raj is blissfully unaware instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of anything beyond his immediate surroundingsbroken bricks. Life is poor and hard and Raj Insubstantial as it might look, it's father takes out stood the privations passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his life on his sons vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and his wife to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - drunken beatings are a regular occurrenceSonny and Max, the rainbow twins. But Sonny's colouring reflects his mother is loving and kind, and skilled at healing'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 brothers are constant playmatesnanny. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849164010</amazonuk>

 {{newreview|author=Bernhard Schlink and Carol Brown Janeway|title=The Reader|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=It's West Germany, 1958. A 15-year-old schoolboy, Michael Berg, is suffering a long bout of hepatitis. When he recovers he returns to the flat of a tram conductor, 36-year-old Hanna Schmitz, to thank her for taking care of him the day he fell sick. The two of them begin a secret affair that becomes a routine for months: after school and work, Michael would read to her, and then they would make love and bathe each other. Both of them fall in love.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0753804700</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anthony QuinnClaire North|title=Half House of the Human RaceOdysseus

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=At heart, 'Half of the Human Race' is a 'will they, won't they' love story featuring an upper class, emerging county cricketer, Will Maitland, and a middle class strong, educated, cricket-loving woman, Constance Callaway. But this is so much What could matter more than a question of will the cricketer bowl a maiden overlove? It's a novel about friendship, love, fighting for what you believe in and, also, surprisingly, about celebrity.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224087290</amazonuk>}}'

{{newreview|author=William Styron|title=The Suicide Run|rating=4|genre=Short Stories|summary=A WW2 naval soldierfollow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, guarding a prison island for those found guilty at courtmartialswith delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, is forced who sailed to wonder if he is winning his own battles against those arriving war at Troy and leavingthen by divine intervention never returned home. A soldier remembers calming memories, As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and those causing tensionphysical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, as he rests up before actionQueen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. And for a highly-charged young manOne that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, there may be too much risk to be found in and his high-octane downtimesister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099532220</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alon HiluKay Chronister|title=The House of RajaniDesert Creatures|rating=3.54|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=''The House of Rajani'' With a world that is set in Jaffabecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, Palestine in 1895post-96apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. The narrative alternates between the two main charactersWhether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, both telling their stories in the first person. Luminsky and his wife travel from Europe to Jaffa to start this genre is a new life there. Luminsky has studied agronomy in preparation way for his new life, and he and his wife have both been involved in the Zionist movement promoting an ideal of the Jewish people returning humans to cathartically experience their homelandmost existential fears. He ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is looking forward to putting his studies to good use, but is soon disappointed when he arrives by both the quality of the land occupied by Jewish colonists and their a new work ethic. Far from the ideal of selfpost-sufficiency, they are buying fruit, grain and vegetables from apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the Palestiniansfears that exist for humanity today. He It is also frustrated by his wife’s lack of interest in having sex with hima shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099535998</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Jon McGregorEric LaRocca|title=Even the DogsThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=35|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=I loved Jon McGregorHorror 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 ''s previous two novels, Big Bad'If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things' , 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'So Many Ways to Begins '. They're both lyrical, poetically observed works so The Trees Grew Because I was really looking forward to reading his latest bookBled There'' is not like that. It is, unfortunately, quite a different sort collection of storyshort 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>1408809478</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Simon ThirskMadelaine Lucas|title=Not Quite WhiteThirst for Salt|rating=4.5

|summary=The story alternates between the two main characters: Welsh Gwalia (that's 'Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a shelight and weightless feeling, by the way) and English Jon Bull (and you get an idea of the fun Thirsk has with his names and also characters) as the two meet up for the first time. Lots of Welsh names such as Gwenfer and Gwenlais and also lots of (mainly) unpronounceable place names including the glorious - wait for it - Llanchwaraetegdanygelyn. Thirsk has also scattered Welsh vocabulary all over the place: but many of the words are easily understood (Anti I had always longed for Auntie and Yncl for Uncle etc) so you dongravity''t really have to keep referring to the comprehensive Appendix, unless you want to.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184851199X</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Nigel Farndale|title=The Blasphemer|rating=3Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Daniel Kennedy is Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a soon-man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to-be professor its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of zoology and a militant atheist. With a beautiful and successful dentist an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for a partner, and an intelligent, precocious nineSalt'' details the 24-year-old daughter, his life is what you might call gilded. Novels as they are, though, things soon begin to fall apart. On their way to a holiday in the Galapagos Islands, Daniel and Nancynarrator's plane crashes into the sea. Daniel swims for miles to get help anddeepening relationship with her older lover, just as depicting its all seems lost and he's -consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on the point of drowning, a mysterious figure appears both romantic and guides him to the shore familial relationships and rescuehow it altered her irrevocably. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552776173</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreview|author=F Scott Fitzgerald|title=The Great Gatsby|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='No — Gatsby turned out all right at 'Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the end; question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what preyed on Gatsbyis artificial, what foul dust floated in and whether the wake development of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of mentechnology is exciting or frightening.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0140620184</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreview|author=Faiza Guene and Sarah Ardizzone|title=Bar Balto|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Joel, 'The Rink', is the owner of the local bar in town and has been found murdered, stabbed and naked in a pool of blood. He's an opinionated, racist, lecherous busy-body, so there's no shortage of suspects. Faiza Guene creates an intriguing, interesting murder-mystery as we hear from each suspect in their own voice and follow the story through to its conclusion to discover who really murdered 'The Rink'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184221</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Salvatore ScibonaJennifer Saint|title=The EndAtalanta

|summary=Salvatore Scibona is ''I was as worthy as any one of a new breed them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the name of American authors who in his first book has decided to take on the great American literary novelgoddess. It was for the sake of my name, too. Has he succeeded?Atalanta''

The End is a novel that while being a part of a modern burgeoning literary movement very much looks back at the great American literature tradition of the last centuryPrincess. In Scibona's beautifully crafted prose we see glimpses of Saul Bellow, the vibrancy of Kerouac and the sensibilities of Updike, a heady mix to be sureWarrior. Lover. Hero.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224091492</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Santiago Roncagliolo and Edith Grossman|title=Red April|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The very first sentence concerns Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the sudden discovery protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a body. Judging by its dreadful stateformidable huntress, not only some form of foul play but also some form of torture has been used. No one locally knows anything at all. Looks like a tough investigation looms who longs for local Prosecutor by the name of Chacaltanaadventure. He is When the central character in opportunity comes – to join the novel. He comes across as a bit of a plodderArgonauts, a bit fierce band of a dullardwarriors, someone who is methodical descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to a ridiculous level fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in his line of workhistory. His line What follows is a whirlwind of work is also low-level. But, even sochallenges and discovery and through it, he is a man who takes pride in what he does. So when he becomes involved in this macabre body incidentAtalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, he gives it his full concentration. It becomes obvious he will leave no stone unturned to try and solve this crimebe her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1843548313</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Charles DickensAmanthi Harris|title=The Christmas BooksBeautiful Place

|summary=I'd just like to say at the outset that after reviewing mainly contemporary authorsPadma, it's a refreshing change young Sri Lankan, has returned to have the chance to review one Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of 'the classics'her home country. (I hope I do the great man justice)This is a place she spent her formative years. PersonallyIt is not a place she was born into, I love but the classics one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and Ithe machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the 've read a number of Dickens' - including score'Bleak House' for this gentle and 'Hard Times' but I haven't actually read 'A Christmas Carolyet subtly violent novel. Padma' I couldn't help but smile when Michael Morpurgo (who writes the short introduction s present fails to this book) says 'It is very difficult to sit escape her past and read Dickens' Christmas Books in much like the musical score of a Devon garden on a sunny day ...' Wellfilm, would you believe my luck when I say that, as I'm writing this review, it's snowing hard outside? Everything is, well, Christmassystrand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>095626686X</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Waguih Ghali178563335X|title=Beer in the Snooker HallSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor

|summary=Waguih GhaliWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's only novela trainee vicar, first published sitting in 1964, is set in 1950s Egypt where the English have just left on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the country is in great social and political change, and is under Army rulechildren up. Ram is an English educated Her husband, Copt Egyptian of aristocratic backgroundChristopher, but his side of the family are penniless collects six-year-old Hannah and dependent on the good will of manipulativeher elder brother, Jamie, rich auntswhilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Ram and his best friend Font (who works Thelma's daughter-in -law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the eponymous snooker club) struggle Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to come to terms develop a real bond with this emerging Egypt. These are the facts parish - and she's in awe of the plotvicar, such as it isGail, but in reality this book is as ambiguous as then she's been doing the situation in which Ram finds himselfjob for more than thirty years. The book is like Rachel and Christopher hoped that a delicate soufflé; it appears light walk on the surface beach would do them some good - it was stormy but is deeply measured and brings out a myriad of conflicting viewsit was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668756X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chester Himes1398515388|title=If He Hollers Let Him GoThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=If He Hollers Let Him GoFirst of all, it was the earthquake, first published deep in 1945the ocean floor, is written from which created the perspective of Robert Jonestsunami and this, an African-American working in turn, caused the defence shipyards in Californianuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The book is full of anger about racial inequalities deaths were uncountable, and Himes pulls no punches in his depiction the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the life list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a young black man in dog outside a white worldconvenience store. It must have been shocking at He wasn't a dog person but the time of publication, but how does it stand up in todayconvenience store owner's more racially integrated world?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687381</amazonuk>comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Charles Ellingworth0989715337|title=Silent Night|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The front cover describes this book as 'astonishing' and has 'the mark of a classic.' We're introduced to one of Papa on the two female characters, Mimi: a young, German woman. It's 1944 in Eastern Germany and if I say that things are grim, I'm sure you'll appreciate that it is an understatement. Mimi is obviously an intelligent and curious individual and she's certainly not happy to be living in the back-of-beyond. But then again, things could be ten times worse for her. She could be living in Berlin picking through the rubble. Out of the blue, she encounters a man - a French national, as it happens and things change dramatically. We learn that along with his fellow countrymen, Mimi's husband is absent, not at home. So when she acknowledges her attraction for another man - and someone who is not German at that, she seems exhilarated, shocked and perhaps just a little repelled, all at the same time.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704372126</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMoon|author=Elfriede Jelinek|title=The Piano TeacherMarco North

|summary=Erika is a single woman in her thirties, who, despite the best efforts of her mother, did not succeed as a concert musician, but instead works as a teacher at the Vienna Conservatory. I say best efforts, I mean outright pressure. Erika and her mother make for an unusual relationship - the older relying on the glory, company and complete obedience of the younger, the daughter sharing a bed with her mother even at this stage of her life. All this is until a young student at the school decides he will be a younger lover for Erika, and forces his will ''Some frogs had gotten into the householdwell. But who, should such a relationship actually form, is going to be the power-maker?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687373</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=Maria Angels Anglada|title=The Auschwitz Violin|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=In Poland ''Walter stood waist-deep in the early 1990sfragrant water, a violin singsnaked except for his beaten leather hat. The maestro who owns it produces such a music from itLong strands of their eggs wove around him, people are forced to take notesticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. They'd be even more amazed if she could bring herself to state exactly how Two of the dogs leaned over the instrument came to be. For this was opening and barked down at the work strange noise of Daniel, suffering in a subsidiary camp to Auschwitz-Birkenauthe buckets as he filled them. Stumbles, chances, half-lies, all conspire to allow Daniel to take time off his enforced labour and engage in his real-world career. But is there a price to pay in doing something you love, just for a man you can only hate?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849016437</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=Antonio Tabucchi|title=Pereira Maintains|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=How is that for an opening? The summer style of 1938 was particularly hot and oppressive this novel in Lisbon and Dr Pereira was suffering. He was overweight to start with and the situation wasn't helped by the amount of sugary lemonade which he drank. He was the cultural editor form of an undistinguished newspaper interconnected short stories goes from succinct and felt over-burdened by the amount of content he had laconic to produce but this was better than the political side of the paper as he was sure that he wanted nothing to do with European politics. Something of a recluse, his closest, indeed onlywistful and musing, confidante was turning on a picture of his dead wifesixpence. All that was about to change when he met Francesco Monteiro Rossi - a strangely charismatic young man And author Marco North, who would bring Pereira to has the point most wonderful turn of committing an act of reckless rebellionphrase, starts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847675719</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chloe AridjisDaisy Hildyard|title=Book of CloudsEmergency

|summary=We first meet the main character (she's mentioned on almost every page) Tatiana as a newish resident The summary of Berlin. Shethis book doesn's Mexican so quite a difference in cultures for her t come close to deal explaining what is done with, as well as the weather aspect. Many episodes in her life seem to take place in a Berlin which is bitterly cold. Aridjis chooses the first person for her novel, so we hear everything from Tatiana's perspectivepremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099539594</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Horace McCoySally Oliver |title=They Shoot Horses, Don't They?The Weight of Loss |rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Many of us will know of Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the release death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the film bones of the same title back her spine which steadily increase in the 1960s. I haven't seen the film so I started reading with no ready-made opinions about the booksize and volume. LikewiseHer GP, I had no idea how diagnosing the attention-grabbing title bore any relation to odd phenomenon as a book about dance. I was about physical reaction to find out. It's both arresting and simple. The book cover and also the inside front cover are littered with praise for this book. 'The first existentialist novel her grief, recommends she go to have appeared stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in America' says one writerWales. 'Takes Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the reader into one other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of Americaa kind. As Marianne's darkest corners ...' from another source. So, I was expecting a terrific read. But did I get it?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668739X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Vann|title=Caribou Island|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Irene and Gary went memories threaten to Alaska many years ago and somehow they stayed there, probably through inertia, and they raised two children. Rhoda loves animals and is keen that overwhelm her boyfriend, Jim the dentist, should marry Nede offers her. She half knows that he's not that reliable but it's what she's set on. Irene and Gary's son, Mark, lives with his girlfriend, Karen release from this cycle of memory and it seems that the pain—but only thing they're serious about is not taking life too seriously. It's probably understandable when you look at Gary. He's self-involved, selfish and dishonest with himself. Irene has her problems too. She's never really got over going home when she was ten years old and finding her mother hanging from the raftersa terrible price: that of identity itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>067091844X</amazonuk>086154112X }} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lloyd JonesNatalia Garcia Freire|title=Hand Me Down This WorldDoes Not Belong To Us

|summary=Ines Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I will agree with the first – although it's a little while before we know her by that name tremendous is no understatement – has quite a story to tell, but we don't hear it from her. We listen to the stories told by people who knew her. They might have worked with her at a hotel on delight' is perhaps using the Arabian Sea or expression in Tunisiaa way I'm not familiar with. They might I have known her name, but nothing quite to confess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so personal as her birthdayforgive my generalisation here. She was a good worker, used to anticipating what From the guests would need but otherwise being invisible. This might little I have gone on indefinitely, but she met Jermayne, black like Ines, who taught her to swim. He also gave her what she thought was love and a child, which he then abducted. Ines' story is her journey to Berlin to retrieve her son.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848544782</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Peter Carey|title=Parrot and Olivier read (in America|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Olivier de Garmont is a youngtranslation, French aristocrat who is drugged by the enigmatic Marquis de Tilbot, a close friend of OlivierI don's monarchist mother, and dispatched to the safety of the emerging United States to avoid the 1830 July Revolution, and the threat of the dreaded guillotine, in his native France. At least nominally his task while t read Spanish) there is does seem to prepare be a report on tendency towards the American penal system on behalf of fantastical – the French government, a task for which he has little interest or indeed talent. Tilbot also dispatches his servant, an older British man, John Larrit, known to everyone as Parrot, to act as Oliver's secretary, servant, translator and to spy on Olivier for both his mother and Tilbot. They are an ill-matched pair, from opposite sides of the social spectrum but in democratic America, this relationship develops in ways that neither of them would expect. The story is told in alternating voices of these two main charactersmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0571253296</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Emmanuel CarrereJennifer Saint|title=A Russian NovelElektra

|summary=We meet Carrere as part of a small film crew. One minute they're in France, Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the next they're story of three women who live in the midst heavily male dominated world of povertyAncient Greece. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, freezing temperatures and Elektra are all bit players in the utter desolation story of a Russian town, miles from anywherethe Trojan War. Carrere back-pedals for the sake of his readers, explaining Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that he has family connections with Russia. But, as an intelligent and educated man, he also wonders what often the hell he's doing here. He's relinquished silent women have the comforts of his life in France for what - grey sheets most compelling stories and terrible food. He must be madthe most extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846680859</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Margaret Atwood8409290103|title=The Handmaid's TaleIf Only|author=Matthew Tree

|summary=Every Twenty-one-year young Marco eagerly awaits -old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father's return, when cotton-broker AO Lowry: he can for asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the young man got on board the boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a few months spend precious time with him before he leaves againmonthly allowance. Marco's father Tullio is Patrick sent the money regularly and a migrant worker forced through poverty correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to work in Northern France doing hard manual worksay than Patrick. In this way It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, it was that he manages didn't care to earn enough to help his family have him in this country where he might be a decent living. The family, his eldest daughter Elise now at college, Marco his only son and a younger sister known only as 'la piccola' along with danger to his wife and elderly mother live in Calabria, an economically depressed area of southern Italyother children. They belong The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the minority Arberesh community, descended from Albanian immigrants settling small villages in the mountainous regions of La Sila. Just as the Calabrian people are looked down upon by other Italians the Arberesh people are even looked down upon by the Calabriansyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1933372834</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mark MacauleyAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=The House of Slamming DoorsRed is My Heart

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=My name is Justin Alexander Torquhil Edward Peregrine Montague, but [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in my father calls me 'you little bollocks', or ‘you bloody twit’ or when he is in a really good mood, 'old cock'house. With And so was this opening lineone, Mark Macauley clearly establishes his tone. Just entering his teensalthough I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, Justin and is the youngest of three children in a dysfunctional Anglo-Irish family. It is June 1963 and the US President, John F Kennedy, is visiting Ireland – his parents black and their servants are very excited, although Justin is wrapped up in his own preoccupations, including a growing sexual awareness white and his best friend Anniered.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843511673</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Padgett Powell|title=The Interrogative Mood|rating=2.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=SoYes, what is a novel? Does it need a plothe has an artistic collaborator on this piece, climax and resolution? Characters who grow? A setting? Themes which explore the human condition? And must I think it entertain? Padgett Powell challenges our perceptions of fiction with a book that explores what it is to be a novel, but without any preconditions. How far he succeeds is down 's possible to say not one page lacks the individual reader. But I thought I'd give it a goinfluence of some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846683661</amazonuk>1913547183

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Colm ToibinB098FFFBH9|title=The Empty FamilySnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright

|summary=JulyFourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's taleanimal 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, The Long SongLondon, opens with mother Kate and her mother Kitty's rape by Amity plantation's overseertwin, Tam DewarNick. Nine months later, we find him striking Kate runs the midwife who can't keep Kitty quiet during labour. And Kitty doesn't keep hold of her daughter for very long. Spotted by Carolinefamily business, the plantation owner's widowed sister on the side of the roada toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, July which is taken away from her mother to become a ladywhere we'll meet Rachel's maid. Deprived main (if unsuspected) source of both parent and name - Caroline renames her Marguerite - July learns how to avoid her mistress's needle stick punishments and finds a place among the other house servantsinformation: five soft toys. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755359402</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Howard JacobsonYancey Williams|title=The Finkler QuestionCrosshairs of the Devil|rating=4.5

|summary=Julian Treslove Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is a middle aged former BBC radio producer now working as a professional look alike but quite who he looks like varies. Although never marriedgetting on in years and, he has fathered two sons, neither of whom he sees regularly. Dismissed from the BBC for being too morbid on despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his late night Radio 3 programmedaughter, he is given to depressing levels of selffinds himself living -analysis in his small flat thator imprisoned, from Eddie's not quite point of view - in Hampsteadroom 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. What Treslove lacks Nothing is a sense of belonging and this, he notes going to keep Eddie from his Jewish friends have stock-in spades, particularly his old school friend and rival, the best-selling philosopher and TV personalitytrade of writing though, Sam Finkler. Tresloveso here, by contrastfor his readers, always feels on the outside of are his wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408808870</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alison Wong0008421714|title=As the Earth Turns SilverMrs March|author=Virginia Feito|rating=4.5

|summary=This lyrical The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel is set in Wellingtonto 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, New Zealand just over ''but isn't this the first time he's based a hundred years agocharacter on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'her mannerisms''. In Perhaps this country would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the whore of then recent immigrantsNantes - ''a weak, there was a racial hierarchyplain, detestable, pathetic, with those of British origin considering themselves superior to othersunloved, and an active Anti-Chinese Leagueunloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330465155</amazonuk>''

{{newreview|author=Irene Nemirovsky|title=The Dogs and the Wolves|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ada was part of the Sinner family. They lived in the sort of Ukrainian city which was rigorously divided by wealth and status. At the bottom of the hill lived the people who scratched a living; at the top were the wealthy whose businesses provided most of the livings and in between were those who struggled for a better existence. Ada's mother died when she was a child and her father did his best, but he was frequently hampered by having Move on to take Ada with him as he worked. The arrival of Ada's widowed aunt and two young children in the household meant three more mouths to feed, but there was at least some care for the motherless child.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099507781</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Tom McCarthy|title=C|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''C'' follows the life of Serge Carrefax. Set in the early part of the twentieth century, the reader encounters Serge at various key moments in his life and each of these is quite fascinating and engrossingly related. It's one of those books that is like Dr Who's Tardis - so much happens that when he recalls an earlier part of his life, I found myself thinking 'oh yes, that was in this book too, wasn't it?' The book has been described as post-structuralist but don't let that literary labelling put you off. Yes, it's a complex book that can be read at many levels, (and one which I know I'll come back to), but it's completely readable and not at all 'difficult'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224090208</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lorcan Roche|title=The Companion|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Closeted away in the opulence of his parents' Madison Avenue apartment, Ed, bound to a wheel-chair because muscular dystrophy has laid claim to his body, spends his days veiled from the outside world. Ed's sadness manifests itself in curious ways, though largely, via spectacular, spoiled-brattish outbursts designed to get the parental attention he craves but that is palpably absent from his confined life. Then he meets Trevor.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1933372842</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]