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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jacques ChessexMatthew Tree|title=The Tyrant|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Jean Calmet, teacher of Latin in a lycee of the 1960s in Switzerland, is confronting his father's death. He can hardly be said to be coming to terms with it, for Calmet pere was and remains a crushing force in JeanWe's life, and although the death would in many similar novels be a release, here his father's cremation serves to batter Jean into a beaten state. His relations with his work, his lover, his students are all suffused with not a sense of loss but a sense of continuing and growing dominance by the ghost of his father. The authoritian presence seems to grow as a spectre rather than diminish through his death.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>190473894X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kitty Aldridge|title=A Trick I Learned from Dead Menll Never Know

|summary=Kitty Aldridge's ''A Trick I Learned Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from Dead Men'' is a touchingly written, quirky story set in the world of funeral homes. The narrator is twenty-something Lee Hart. He's not the sharpest tool in the box, but his life has been tough. His father left when he was young and his mother has recently died of cancer leaving him, his step-father, a sofa-bound television make-over show addict drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his deaf artistic passions all failed miserably and wayward younger brother, Ned who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to fend for themselves. Lee lands a job as a trainee at the local funeral home helping Derek prepare the dead for burial or cremation. Far from being a dead end job thoughhis studies, it is here that he learns, ironically, about life cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and love, in the form of the delivery girl from the local floristsset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224096435</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roland VernonB0C47LV1PC|title=The Good Wife's Castle|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=We start with a father's suicide, a child watching as he steps of the chair in the milking room with the noose around his neck. A father who died for shame.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552775533</amazonuk>}}  {{newreviewFragility|author=Charlotte Rogan|title=The LifeboatMosby Woods|rating=4.5

|summary=Charlotte RoganCan you make a 's debut novel ''The LifeboatYo birthing person'' takes an unexpected look at life on a lifeboat of a sunken linerjoke? And if you could, midway between is the sinking of question should you make it? Or is the ''Titanic'' and question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the ''Lusitania''. In many ways, a lifeboat presents an ideal situation answer for a novelistboth could well be. You have a set number of characters and clear boundaries. But there's only so much interest in 'we were scared' and 'oh, look here comes another big wave'. Her solution is to take the story as one of moral and ethical choices rather than an out and out adventure. As her narrator, Grace Winter, concludes 'it was not the sea that was cruel, but the people'no.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844087522</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Zoya Pirzad|title=Things We Left Unsaid|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Life in Iran ''Fragility'' is good for Armenian Clarice Ayvazian. She lives comfortably in an oil company townset as the city of Portland, devoting her middle class life Oregon, cautiously begins to her engineer husband, teenage son and young twin daughters. Her mother and sister, Alice, drop in emerge from time to time the restrictions imposed during the course of the day, but are perfectly manageable for her (in small doses). However, when an elderly woman, her middle-aged son and his tween-age daughter move in across the road they bring turmoil in their wake and Clarice's perception of her happiness is torn apart.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851689257</amazonuk>covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mark HaddonMosby Woods|title=The Red HouseA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5

|summary=Richard and Angela - brother and sister - are reunited at their motherThe West isn's funeralt the dominant force it once was. Richard Nobody in the West is well-quite sure how to-do and recently remarried with a teenage stepdaughter. Angela mend this or even if mending it is the main breadwinner in her family as her husband scrapes best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a wage by working in Waterstones and somehow they and their three children get bypush for climate action there. Richard A feeling that nobody is aware that he hasn't much left in the way of family and tries to build some bridges actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with Angela by way of offering that precognition. Imagine the eight of them should have a week's holiday strategic advantage in this asset; a cottage on the Welsh bordersman who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. SoThat man would be valuable, there's four adults, four children and a lot of emotional baggageright? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. OhImagine then, and there's Karen - Angela's stillborn daughter who would have been eighteen that weekthis man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224096400</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Knud Romer and John Mason (translator)0571379559|title=Nothing But FearThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|summary=''The Danish writer/actor Knud Romer has a gallery House of fascinating relatives which collectively feature in Broken Bricks''Nothing But Fearis 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. This biographical novel is a collection of memories from his grandparents' eraHer husband, moving forwardRichard, struggles to that of grow his parentsvegetables, including World War II to complete the delivery rounds - and his own childhood to bring in 1960s sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and 70s small town DenmarkMax, the rainbow twins. The vignettes arenSonny't in chronological order but thats colouring reflects his mother's because memories normally arenJamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't. The stories are narrated almost as if believe that they're fresh from the mindrelated, ensuring a natural flow. The interesting thing much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that no matter how fascinating his other relatives are my mindshe's eye always seemed to return to one: his mother, Hildegardnanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687144</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Gwendoline Riley|title=Opposed Positions|rating=3The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=There is a reason why Gwendoline Riley has something In the palace of a cult followingOdysseus, 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. She is technically innovative and very good at what As ever she does, but remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the subject matter is invariably dark and downbeat which prevents mass market appeal. In that respect Opposed Positions is very much business as usual thenWestern Isles. The subject matter most evident here is misogyny Having survived – politically and physical – the damaging impact it has both directly and indirectly on people. Itchaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's painful to read at times; it feels as if the narrator, an occasional novelist, Aislinn Kellyshores, Queen Penelope is picking at on the scab brink of her life and her family in a way fragile peace. One that feels shocking shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, andhis sister Elektra, for all the wry observations, remains uncomfortable to readseeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224094238</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Evelyn EatonKay Chronister|title=Go Ask the RiverDesert Creatures|rating=54|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=In ninth century ChinaWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, Hung Tu was post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost unique as masochistic thrill. Whether it is a woman breaking into the restricted male preserve of educationrobotic takeover, particularly the fields a world devoid of poetry and calligraphywater or a nuclear holocaust, and becoming this genre is a highly respected and renowned writerway for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. Eaton constructs ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a fascinating narrative around her poems, imagining Hung Tu’s idyllic childhood which turns to potential chaos as she new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is sold into prostitution, followed by her rise a shocking novel that still manages to Official Hostess for the Governorfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848190921</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Bruno PortierEric LaRocca|title=This Flawless Place BetweenThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=45|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=If you fancy reading Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a bit different, writer way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and filmmaker Bruno Portier may have written just the bookprocess them. Americans Anne Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and her partner, Evanby the end of the story, leave Annebeatable. Eric LaRocca's small daughter with the grandparents so ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that . It is a collection of short stories more interested in the couple can go on a 3 week motorbike tour horrors of Tibetillness, grief and humiliation. Whilst away, things go awry for the two holidaymakers Horrors that linger and so are harder to defeat than any ''The Flawless Place BetweenBig Bad'' traces their respective onward journeys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851688501</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Naomi BenaronMadelaine Lucas|title=Running the RiftThirst for Salt

|summary=Jean Patrick Nkumba has a sheltered''Love, comparatively privileged upbringing in Rwanda. Although far from opulentI'd read, life in the school compound where his father is headmaster is safe and Jean Patrick is loved and encouraged by his family was supposed to aim high both at school and in his passion for running. Despite being of the Tutsi tribe, he has also been encouraged to think of himself as Rwandan first, be a nationality and ethos encompassing the rival Hutus. However not all feel the same light and a series of tragic events lead to world news and personal hell. For this is the land whereweightless feeling, in 1994, 800,000 people would be killed during a mere 100 days.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851689214</amazonuk>}}but I had always longed for gravity''

{{newreview|author=Alexandra Singer|title=Tea at the Grand Tazi|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Seeking solitude, peace to paint, and solace Told from a failed relationshipretrospective view, Maia finds a job assisting young woman unravels the Historianyear-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, a shadowy academic, in return for life in the centre of Marrakesh. And narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her duties light, she sets off senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to explore her surroundings, attempting to examine its sorrowful end the women in this culturesummer after. But as a European female she is treated as Set against the backdrop of an item of sexual prey by isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the men24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and ostracised by the women, so she finds herself isolated familial relationships and alonehow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908248238</amazonuk>0861546490

 {{newreview|author=M L Stedman|title=The Light Between Oceans|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Thomas Sherbourne returns to Australia after World War I. Internally scarred like many of his generation, he chooses the solitary life of a lighthouse keeper on remote Janus Rock to escape the world and its conflict. However, he soon learns that there is one part of the world he can't live without – the sassy, beautiful Izzy Graysmark, a local from the nearest port and country town of Partaguese. They have a happy marriage in all respects apart from one: they're haunted by their inability to have children. Therefore, one day, when a boat washes up onto Janus bearing a dead man and a crying baby, apparent salvation arrives too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857521004</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ali SmithMichael Grothaus|title=There but for theBeautiful Shining People

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=If you are the type of reader who thinks that the mark of a good book is a plot, then step away from this book: you'll hate it. Ali Smith's intricately clever But fearing something and often funny ''There but for the'' is very much at the literary end of the fiction spectrumhaving it come to pass are two different things. Not in terms of the language used though - Smith uses simple language, and a '''LOT''And I' m willing to bet most of punswhat we fear will never happen, and if anything, as the title suggests, she's more interested in the little words. It's playful and strangely affecting, while at the same time a little affected and often slightly irritatingly free flowing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241143403</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ros Barber|title=The Marlowe Papers|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Stop. Pay attentionor we can take steps to change it. Hear a dead man speak''

These are ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the attention grabbing words that Ros Barber addresses to the reader at the start question of this unique taleidentity and acceptance. Marlowe was a playwright with a reputation not only for his plays but also for his lifestyleOf what it means to be human. His gory death from a stab wound through Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the eye development of technology is one of the many contentious points in a brief but very lively lifeexciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444737384</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreview|author=Erin Kelly|title=The Sick Rose|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=Paul had the passion and academic grades to become a teacher. However, his plans started the slow slide away from his grasp after his father died and he and his mother were forced to move to the rough, Grays Reach Estate and an even rougher school. It seemed that his days as bully's target had ended when Daniel, illiterate and street-wise, stepped in as protector. All Paul had to do was cover for Daniel's disability in class... at least that was all he needed to do at first.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444703854</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer Egan|title=The Invisible Circus|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Set in 1978, 18-year old Phoebe is living with her mother in San Francisco. Her father died some years ago, before her elder sister, Faith, a charismatic idealist and true child of the 1960s left for Europe where she died in 1970. Faith was always her father's favourite, While Phoebe's older brother, Barry, is now a computer millionaire, on leaving high school Phoebe decides on a whim to follow her sister's path to Europe in the hope of finding what happened in Italy and to finally understand her beloved sister's actions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780331223</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lauren GroffSaint|title=ArcadiaAtalanta

|summary=Back in the seventies a group of idealists (well, hippies) founded a commune in the grounds of Arcadia House, a decaying mansion in western New York State. In the early days the renovation of the house and the funding of the commune was hopeful, ''energising'' - the American dream encapsulated in bricks, crops and hard work - but I was as worthy as with many, if not most, such enterprises it was not to last. Power corrupted, personalities changed and commitment waivered. We see the commune and the people who made it through the early, hard-working days to its precarious peak and into its inevitable decline.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434019623</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Francesca Kay|title=The Translation any one of the Bones|rating=4them.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''The Translation of the Bones'' revolves around four women, all connected with the Church of the Sacred HeartI would get on board that ship, BatterseaI vowed. Mary MargaretI would take my place, not just in the sharpest knife in name of the box, lives between two polesgoddess. When she isn't in church, she's caring It was for her flat-bound, morbidly obese mother, Fidelma. Alice Armitage, happily married to Larry, counts the days until their son will be home from a tour sake of duty in Afghanistan. The fourth womanmy name, Stella, lives in a loveless marriage to MP Rufus and spends her time wishing the days away till she can collect her 10 year old son from boarding schooltoo. Father Diamond ministers to these women and the church community in general, but whilst worrying about his own adequacy and faith. However, their problems thus far are nothing compared to the devastation to come.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297865080</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''

{{newreview|author=Noah Hawley|title=The Good Father|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=Dr Paul Allen is more than happy with his lifePrincess. His second wife, Fran, is efficient, a good manager, a good mother to their young twins and not overly emotional as Ellen (Wife NoWarrior. 1) wasLover. In fact you could say that his life runs like clockwork, which is just how he likes itHero. Paul hates chaos and the unexpected, but he's about to be visited by both. As the Allens sit in horror watching news footage of the charismatic presidential front-runner being gunned down, there's a knock at the door. Their real horror is beginning; the FBI believes the son he had with Ellen is the guy who pulled the trigger.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444730363</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Stephen May|title=Life! Death! Prizes!|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Billy's mum is dead. Billy is 19 years old when his mum resists Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a mugger; this son, Atalanta is raised under the last thing she ever doesprotective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, leaving Billy with 6 year old Oscar to face life togetherone who longs for adventure. They'll be fine. For a start, their life isn't as bad as When the 'Life! Death! Prizes!' type magazines at supermarket check-outs. Billy has a job at opportunity comes – to join the local history museumArgonauts, Oscar's doing ok at school, soa fierce band of warriors, despite their Aunt Toni, despite Oscar's recently reappearing father, despite descendent from the PTA mothers at Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the school gates... chance to fight in Artemis' name and social servicescarve out her own legendary place in history... and the fact that the mugger What follows is a local lad whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that Billy sees around... yepif she marries, they'll it will be fineher undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408819139</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Susan HillAmanthi Harris|title=In the Springtime of the YearBeautiful Place

|summary=Ben and Ruth had been married for just Padma, a year when he was killed in a tragic accident. One of young Sri Lankan, has returned to the other foresters came to tell Ruth about what had happened, but in truth she had known before he arrived. From feeling deliriously happy she had descended within moments into Villa Hibiscus on the depths southern coast of despair and felt so ill that she could barely moveher home country. The confirmation was just that - and Ruth was bereft. She couldn't share This is a place she spent her feelings with Ben's familyformative years. It's politic to say that they were dealing with their grief in their own way is not a place she was born into, but more truthful the one she thinks of as home. How she came to admit that they had never liked be at the Villa, how it became her home, and were disinclined to extend more than the socially-required gestures now machinations that Ben was dead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099570483</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Roopa Farooki|title=The Flying Man|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''The Flying Manscore'' opens with the now elderly Maqil Karam writing a letter in his budget hotel in the South of France for this gentle and facing deathyet subtly violent novel. His story takes in many locations, from his native Punjab, to New York, Cairo, London, Paris and Hong Kong. In each location, Maqil adopts a different name, including Mike Cram, Mehmet Kahn, Miguel Caram and Mikhail Lee. Often he acquires a different wife as well, Carine, Samira and Bernadette, although he doesn't go to the bother of divorcing them, he just simply walks away. He is a chancer and a gambler, avoiding attachment, responsibility and commitment throughout his life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755383389</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Cynthia Ozick|title=Foreign Bodies|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Bea Nightingale Padma's brother Marvin wants her - is haranguing her - to retrieve his errant son Julian from post-war Paris, to where he has decamped in an effort present fails to escape parental control. Bea, a New York high school teacher, is an unlikely candidate for the role of rescuer - she her past and her brother have been estranged for much like the best part musical score of twenty years. But she capitulates to his demands and sets off on a journey in which her presence will affect not only Julianfilm, but his sister who also runs off to Paris, his girlfriend, a displaced Eastern European Jew, his mother (also escaping Marvin, but this time in a psychiatric facility) and Bea's own ex-husband Leothat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848877366</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jane Harris178563335X|title=Gillespie and ISea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor

|summary=The 'IWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she' s a trainee vicar, sitting in the title of Jane Harris's ''Gillespie on a PCC meeting and Iwondering why they'' is Harriet Baxterre held when you need to pick the children up. Now elderly Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and residing her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in London in 1933, she is finally telling -law won't let her events of what happened in the early 1880s in Glasgow and see her relationship with the Gillespie familygrandson. At Holthorpe, on the timeNorfolk coast, is a spinster of independent meanslovely place, she arrived in Glasgow but Rachel is struggling to visit develop a real bond with the International Exhibition parish - and became a champion she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and friend to Christopher hoped that a young Scottish painter, Ned Gillespie and his young family. We know from early walk on that tragedy struck the Gillespie family leading to Ned destroying his career, beach would do them some good - it was stormy but Harriet wants to set the record straight with regard to her involvement in eventsit was probably what they needed. You may or may not believe her story And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571238300</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anna Stothard1398515388|title=The Pink HotelBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=The phone call came when she was 17. Her mother had died; the mother who had just been a flimsy memory First of a touchall, an impression and a faded photograph. Not satisfied with her father and grandma's biased recollections of 'it was the slut'earthquake, she steals her step-mother's credit card and catches a flight to the funeral deep in Los Angeles. Unfortunately she arrives too late for the funeralocean floor, but finding which created the pink hotel her mother ownedtsunami and this, she walks in on the wake. Rooms full of drunkenturn, drug-sodden eyes stare at her whilst she makes her way through caused the building to what must have been her mother's bedroomnuclear meltdown. It's then she decides, as her step-father lies, semi-consciousness, on the bed. She takes some of her mother's clothes, shoes The result was complete and lettersutter devastation. Once she has a chance to read themThe deaths were uncountable, she realises they're cards and love letters from men who may be able to build her a picture of the woman who gave her life but not a lot else.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846881757</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Karin Altenberg|title=Island loss of Wings|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Rev Neil MacKenzie has been assigned to the Hebridian island of St Kildalivelihoods was widespread. His mission is to bring the locals back to The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the Victorian idea list of God and propriety. He and his pregnant wife Lizzie not only have to fight the elements priorities but also centuries of superstition that have trickled into - six months after the islanders' Christian faith. Life is made harder for Neil by a secret guilt emanating from the death of tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a friend years ago. However, the going becomes harder still for Lizzie, isolated by an inability to speak the local language and the burgeoning fear engendered by Neil's behaviour and attitudes.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857382322</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Georgina Harding|title=Painter of Silence|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=A young, anonymous, vagrant collapses on the steps of dog outside a hospital in Romaniaconvenience store. He doesnwasn't speak and remains a mystery to dog person but the staff convenience store owner's comment that tries he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to treat open his obvious symptoms but can't seem to reach the silent person beneath. However, Safta, a nurse, suggests that he may be deaf car door and produces drawing materials. Coincidentally, Tamon the man is able to draw beautifully, but this is no coincidence to Safta. There are reasons why she can't disclose it, but she knows this man. They grew up together dog jumped in pre-war Romania, a whole world away when the country had a king, beautiful cities untouched by bombing and being able to read a foreign language wasn't punishable by imprisonment in work camps... or worse.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408821125</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Elanor Dymott0989715337|title=Every Contact Leaves a TracePapa on the Moon|author=Marco North

|summary=We learn from the prologue that the narrator, Oxford educated lawyer, Alex's wife has been murdered. We also know that Alex knew little of his wife, Rachel's past, particularly of Some frogs had gotten into the time that they spent together at Worcester College. This is critical in understanding who may have killed her, and why. What follows is Alex learning about this hidden pastwell. ''Every Contact Leaves a Trace'' is partly a thriller and partly a whodunnit although the structure adopted by Elanor Dymott is somewhat unusual.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224094033</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Andrew Motion|title=Silver: Return to Treasure Island|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Even if you have not read Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 classic ''Treasure Island'', or you have read it a long time ago, the chances are that you will be broadly familiar with the story and Walter stood waist-deep in particular some of the rich characters he created because they have entered into the culture of our image of piratesfragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Before Johnny Depp convinced us that pirates looked like Keith Richards, it was the terrifying image of Long John Silver and his parrot, squawking 'pieces strands of eight'their eggs wove around him, double dealing his way to buried treasure and the innocence of young narrator Jim Hawkins that conjures up what we think of in terms of pirate adventuresticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. But Stevenson left some tantalizing threads to his tale, not least the fact that Silver made off with only the majority Two of the treasure and left dogs leaned over the remaining silver behind together with three marooned pirates to fend for themselves. Setting the story 40 years after these events, Andrew Motion picks up the tale opening and has barked down at the offspring strange noise of Hawkins, in the form of his son also called Jim and Long John Silverbuckets as he filled them.'s daughter Natty returning to collect the remaining bounty. Of course, it's never going to be that simple.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224091190</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Sadie Jones|title=How is that for an opening? The Uninvited Guests|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=On a spring evening style of this novel in 1912 preparations were being made for a supper party to celebrate the twentieth birthday form of Emerald Torrington. It was taking place at Sterne, the much-loved home of the family, although finances were uncertain interconnected short stories goes from succinct and no one was quite sure how much longer they would be able laconic to stay in the house. Emerald's mother had hopes that she would be able to marry Emerald off to John Buchananwistful and musing, turning on a local entrepreneursixpence. And author Marco North, but Emerald was far from convinced. Her step-father was in Manchester trying to raise who has the funds most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to keep the house going but Emerald and her brother Clovis, Patience Sutton and her brother Ernest along with Buchanan and the household staff prepared for what they hoped would be a delightful eveninggo on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186712</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Etgar KeretDaisy Hildyard|title=Suddenly, a Knock on the Door Emergency

|summary=Harold and Maureen Fry were unremarkable: one long marriage, one adult offspring and a long retirement stretching out in front of them like a prison sentence. One morning everything changed. The catalyst was a letter from Queenie, an ex-colleague summary of Haroldthis book doesn's. He knew he needed t come close to respond and thought that posting a letter would suffice. However, a chat explaining what is done with a girl at the local petrol station made him realise that a letter couldn't be enough. He had to provide Queenie with hope... he had to walkpremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857520644</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=John LanchesterSally Oliver |title=CapitalThe Weight of Loss |rating=4 |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself.|isbn= 086154112X }} {{Frontpage|author=Natalia Garcia Freire|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us

|summary=With Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a gentle nod to delight. I will agree with the great commentator of London life of first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the past, John Lanchester sets his wonderfully entertaining state expression in a way I'm not familiar with. I have to confess my ignorance of the nation book around Pepys RoadSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. With a huge cast of characters From the little I have read (in translation, he looks as I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a cross section of London life and while in some ways not quite perfect, it comes pretty darn closetendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0571234607</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Russell BanksJennifer Saint|title=Lost Memory of SkinElektra

|summary=Some readers may understandably be deterred from reading Russell Banks's Elektra''Lost Memory by Jennifer Saint tells the story of Skin'' due to its controversial subject matter and there's no doubt that it's a morally complex read. The main character, known only to us at 'three women who live in the Kid' is a young man who is a convicted sex offenderheavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Set in south FloridaCassandra, he is forced to resideClytemnestra, with other offenders and his pet Iguana, under a causewayElektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. While living here, he encounters a huge and enigmatic man, known only as 'Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the Professor' from silent women have the local university who is apparently studying homelessness amongst sex offenders most compelling stories and the two form an uneasy friendshipmost extreme furies. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846685761</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anne Tyler8409290103|title=The Beginner's GoodbyeIf Only|author=Matthew Tree

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Aaron's wifeTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, DorothyMr Patrick, was killed in an accident. An oak tree fell to ensure that the young man got on their home, demolishing board the sun porch where Dorothy happened boat and thereafter Patrick was to be at the timesend him a monthly allowance. He worried that if he had done things differently (Patrick sent the money regularly and a matter correspondence - of some biscuits and a television set) Dorothy might not have been where she was and might still be alive and for a while he camped out in sorts - sprang up between the wrecked house until further damage forced him two although we hear more about what Lowry has to move in with his sistersay than Patrick. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, it was then that he realised that Dorothy wasndidn't really dead - well, not dead as we understand it - as she materialised care to have him in odd places, wearing the clothes she used this country where he might be a danger to wear his wife and eventually staying with Aaron for longer periods of timeother children. And gradually they began The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to bicker, just like a long-married couple..get the young man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701187190</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christopher BurnsAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=A Division of the LightRed is My Heart

|summary=Gregory Pharoah Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a professional photographer whose genre is sometimes photojournalism, but more commonly portraiture or nudes. Like his job, his nature is towards competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the superficialanimal world. One day She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, returning from photographing a bishop (for claritylecturer at Imperial College, London, this is a portrait assignment mother Kate and not a nude!) he is her twin, Nick. Kate runs the only witness to a street robbery where Alice Fell is the victim. Alice is family business, a fatalist who believes toy shop called Cornucopia in some kind of divine plan that means there Putney, which is a reason for everything. Shewhere we'll meet Rachel's enigmatic, by nature and by design as this is a quality that she enjoys cultivating. Thus these two different characters become part main (if unsuspected) source of the same story and what happens in the following six months is ultimately surprising and even shockinginformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857386352</amazonuk>

{{Frontpage|author=Yancey Williams|title=Crosshairs of the Devil|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's point of view - in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's work.|isbn=0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chochana Boukhobza0008421714|title=The Third DayMrs March|author=Virginia Feito

|summary=Set in Jerusalem in The problem began just after the late 1980s, an elderly, Jewish, celebrated cellist Elisheva is visiting Israel with publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her protégé, Rachel, ostensibly first name only on the last page) seemed to give a concert performanceeither be reading it or had already done so. It quickly becomes apparent Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that Elisheva survived the Nazi camps by playing her music for the feared camp commanderparticular morning, Patricia asked, known as she was wrapping the Butcher of Majdanekbread, and while ''but isn't this the first time he's based a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, the surface she survived principal character had 'her mannerisms''. Perhaps this ordeal wellwould not have mattered, it except for the fact that Johanna is clear that she has the whore of Nantes - ''a darker intent with her three day visit. Through an underground network of Nazi huntersweak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, she has managed to lure the Butcher from his home in Venezuela to visit Israelunloveable wretch. Will they meet and what will happen when they do? |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050966</amazonuk>''