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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Peter CareyMatthew Tree|title=The Chemistry of TearsWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5

|summary=As he has done before on several occasions, Peter Carey offers us two parallel stories in Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his intriguingly titled 'The Chemistry of Tears'. The two elements of the title reflect that this is a book about grieffather, but also about science. It's also a book about human's relationship with machines drunk and dependence that we have grown to have on them, and the ugliness of life and the beauty chronic underachiever whose dreams of, being exceptional at least some, machines. In one strand any of the story, Catherine is a modern day horologist working in a London museum whose world is shattered by the death his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of a married colleague with whom she was having an affairself confidence. Put So Tim applied himself to work on restoring a mysterious clockwork birdhis studies, she discovers the journals of Henry Brandling, the nineteenth century wealthy man who commissioned the construction of the toy for cultivated his abilities rather than his consumptive sondaydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>057127997X</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Laurent BinetB0C47LV1PC|title=HHhHFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=54

|summary=First, the title. Can you make a ''HHhHYo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is short for ''Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich'' - Himmler's brain was called Heydrich. In other words, the question should you make it's not a case of 'behind every great Nazi there's a greater woman', but behind Hitler's own deputy was a major strength to the party. Reinhard Heydrich was the ruler of what practically corresponds to the Czech Republic, led ? Or is the SS and morequestion if you did, and bossed the workings of the Final Solution. Any good biography of this compelling character in those interesting times - given too the subplot of those who would assassinate him - it land? The catch is bound to that the answer for both could well be an excellent history book. But, despite this getting a high rating, this isn't one. Why not? The author says so.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846554799</amazonuk>}}. no.

{{newreview|author=Anne Tyler|title=Breathing Lessons|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=This Pulitzer Prize winning novel revolves around 24 hours in ''Fragility'' is set as the lives city of Maggie and Ira Moran as they attend a friend's funeral and make a detour on the way home. As Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the couple spend restrictions imposed during the day together they share events from their past that put their present in context. I know this seems a somewhat sparse structure for a story but don't be put off. Somewhere between [[:Category:Anne Tyler|Anne Tyler's]] idea and its execution, something very good happens.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099201410</amazonuk>covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jacques ChessexMosby Woods|title=The TyrantA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=Jean Calmet, teacher of Latin The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in a lycee of the 1960s in Switzerland, West is confronting his father's death. He can hardly be said to be coming quite sure how to terms with mend this or even if mending itis the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for Calmet pere climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was and remains a crushing force man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in Jean's lifethis asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, and although right? Perhaps the death would most valuable asset in many similar novels be a release, here his father's cremation serves to batter Jean into a beaten statehistory. His relations with his work, his loverImagine then, his students are all suffused with not a sense of loss but a sense of continuing and growing dominance by the ghost of his fatherthat this man loses this ability. The authoritian presence seems What would governments do to grow as a spectre rather than diminish through his death.get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>190473894X</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kitty Aldridge0571379559|title=A Trick I Learned from Dead MenThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5

|summary=Kitty Aldridge's 'The House of Broken Bricks'A Trick I Learned from Dead Men'is the story of four people. Tess Hembry' is a touchingly writtens roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, quirky story set she lives in the world house on the riverbank, built of funeral homesbroken bricks. The narrator is twenty-something Lee Hart. He Insubstantial as it might look, it's not stood the sharpest tool in the boxpassage of time, but his life has been toughstorms and floods. His father left when he was young and his mother has recently died of cancer leaving him Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his step-fathervegetables, a sofato complete the delivery rounds -bound television makeand to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys -over show addict Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his deaf and wayward younger brother, Ned to fend for themselvesmother's Jamaican heritage. Lee lands a job as a trainee at the local funeral home helping Derek prepare the dead for burial or cremationMax takes after his father. Far from being a dead end job though People don't believe that they're related, it much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is here out with his mother that he learns, ironically, about life and love, in the form of the delivery girl from the local floristsshe's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224096435</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Roland VernonClaire North|title=The Good Wife's CastleHouse of Odysseus

|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction |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>}} 'What could matter more than love?''

{{newreview|author=Charlotte Rogan|title=The Lifeboat|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Charlotte Roganfollow-up to the excellent 's debut novel ''The LifeboatIthaca'' takes an unexpected look at life on picks up a lifeboat few months after where we left off. In the palace of a sunken linerOdysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, midway between who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the sinking throne of the ''Titanic'' Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the ''Lusitania''. In many ways, a lifeboat presents an ideal situation for a novelist. You have a set number of characters and clear boundaries. But therechaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's only so much interest in 'we were scared' and 'ohshores, look here comes another big wave'. Her solution Queen Penelope is to take on the story as one brink of moral and ethical choices rather than an out and out adventurea fragile peace. As her narratorOne that shatters however with the return of Orestes, Grace WinterKing of Mycenae, concludes 'it was not the sea that was crueland his sister Elektra, but the people'seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844087522</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Zoya PirzadKay Chronister|title=Things We Left UnsaidDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Life in Iran With a world that is good becoming increasingly inhospitable for Armenian Clarice Ayvazian. She lives comfortably in humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an oil company town, devoting her middle class life to her engineer husband, teenage son and young twin daughtersalmost masochistic thrill. Her mother and sisterWhether it is a robotic takeover, Alicea world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, drop in from time this genre is a way for humans to time during the course cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the day, but are perfectly manageable fears that exist for her (in small doses)humanity today. 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 It is torn aparta shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1851689257</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Mark HaddonEric LaRocca|title=The Red HouseTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Richard and Angela - brother and sister - are reunited at their mother's funeralHorror taps into something primeval within us. Richard It is well-used as a way to-do reflect our darkest emotions and recently remarried with how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a teenage stepdaughter. Angela ''Big Bad'', whether that is the main breadwinner in her family as her husband scrapes a wage by working in Waterstones home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and somehow they and their three children get , by. Richard is aware that he hasn't much left in the way end of family and tries to build some bridges with Angela by way of offering that the eight of them should have a weekstory, beatable. Eric LaRocca's holiday ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in a cottage on the Welsh borders. So, there's four adultshorrors of illness, four children grief and a lot of emotional baggagehumiliation. Oh, Horrors that linger and thereare harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad's Karen - Angela's stillborn daughter who would have been eighteen that week.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224096400</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Knud Romer and John Mason (translator)Madelaine Lucas|title=Nothing But FearThirst for Salt

|summary=The Danish writer/actor Knud Romer has a gallery of fascinating relatives which collectively feature in ''Nothing But Fear''. This biographical novel is a collection of memories from his grandparentsLove, I' era, moving forwardd read, was supposed to that of his parentsbe a light and weightless feeling, including World War II and his own childhood in 1960s and 70s small town Denmark. The vignettes aren't in chronological order but thatI had always longed for gravity's because memories normally aren't. The stories are narrated almost as if they're fresh from the mind, ensuring a natural flow. The interesting thing is that no matter how fascinating his other relatives are my mind's eye always seemed to return to one: his mother, Hildegard.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687144</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Gwendoline Riley|title=Opposed Positions|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=There is Told from a reason why Gwendoline Riley has something of retrospective view, a cult followingyoung woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. She is technically innovative and very good at what she doesOverlaid with later wisdom, but the subject matter is invariably dark and downbeat which prevents mass market appeal. In that respect Opposed Positions is very much business as usual thennarrator 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. The subject matter most evident here is misogyny and Set against the damaging impact it has both directly and indirectly on people. Itbackdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt''s painful to read at times; it feels as if details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, an occasional novelistdepicting its all-consuming nature, Aislinn Kelly, is picking at the scab of how it changed her life perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her family in a way that feels shocking and, for all the wry observations, remains uncomfortable to readirrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224094238</amazonuk>0861546490

 {{newreview|author=Evelyn Eaton|title=Go Ask the River|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=In ninth century China, Hung Tu was almost unique as a woman breaking into the restricted male preserve of education, particularly the fields of poetry and calligraphy, and becoming a highly respected and renowned writer. Eaton constructs a fascinating narrative around her poems, imagining Hung Tu’s idyllic childhood which turns to potential chaos as she is sold into prostitution, followed by her rise to Official Hostess for the Governor.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848190921</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bruno PortierMichael Grothaus|title=This Flawless Place BetweenBeautiful Shining People

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=If you fancy reading ''But fearing something a bit and having it come to pass are two differentthings. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, writer and filmmaker Bruno Portier may have written just the bookor we can take steps to change it.''

Americans Anne and her partner, Evan, leave Anne's small daughter with the grandparents so that 'Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the couple can go on a 3 week motorbike tour question of Tibetidentity and acceptance. Whilst awayOf what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, things go awry for and whether the two holidaymakers and so ''The Flawless Place Between'' traces their respective onward journeysdevelopment of technology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1851688501</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Naomi BenaronJennifer Saint|title=Running the RiftAtalanta

|summary=Jean Patrick Nkumba has a sheltered''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, comparatively privileged upbringing in RwandaI vowed. Although far from opulentI would take my place, life not just in the school compound where his father is headmaster is safe and Jean Patrick is loved and encouraged by his family 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 name of himself as Rwandan first, a nationality and ethos encompassing the rival Hutusgoddess. However not all feel It was for the same and a series sake of tragic events lead to world news and personal hell. For this is the land where, in 1994, 800my name,000 people would be killed during a mere 100 daystoo.Atalanta''|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851689214</amazonuk>}}Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero.

{{newreview|author=Alexandra Singer|title=Tea Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the Grand Tazi|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Seeking solitude, peace to paint, protective eye of the goddess Athemis and solace from fashioned into a failed relationshipformidable huntress, Maia finds a job assisting one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the HistorianArgonauts, a shadowy academicfierce band of warriors, in return for life in descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the centre of Marrakesh. And with her duties light, she sets off chance to explore fight in Artemis' name and carve out her surroundings, attempting to examine the women own legendary place in this culturehistory. But as What follows is a European female she is treated as an item whirlwind of sexual prey by the men, challenges and discovery and ostracised by the womenthrough it, so Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she finds herself isolated and alonemarries, it will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908248238</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=M L StedmanAmanthi Harris|title=The Light Between OceansBeautiful Place

|summary=Thomas Sherbourne returns Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to Australia after World War I. Internally scarred like many of his generation, he chooses the solitary life of a lighthouse keeper Villa Hibiscus on remote Janus Rock to escape the world and its conflict. However, he soon learns that there is one part southern coast of the world he can't live without – the sassy, beautiful Izzy Graysmark, a local from the nearest port and her home country town of Partaguese. They have This is a happy marriage in all respects apart from one: they're haunted by their inability to have childrenplace she spent her formative years. Therefore, one day, when It is not a boat washes up onto Janus bearing a dead man and a crying babyplace she was born into, apparent salvation arrives too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857521004</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ali Smith|title=There but for the|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=If you are the type of reader who one she thinks that the mark of a good book is a plot, then step away from this book: you'll hate itas home. Ali Smith's intricately clever and often funny ''There but for the'' is very much How she came to be at the literary end of the fiction spectrum. Not in terms of the language used though - Smith uses simple languageVilla, and a '''LOT''' of punshow it became her home, and if anything, as the title suggests, machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she's more interested in first arrived there provide 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='score'Stop. Pay attention. Hear a dead man speak''  These are the attention grabbing words that Ros Barber addresses to the reader at the start of for this unique tale. Marlowe was a playwright with a reputation not only for his plays but also for his lifestyle. His gory death from a stab wound through the eye is one of the many contentious points in a brief but very lively life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444737384</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Erin Kelly|title=The Sick Rose|rating=4.5|genre=Crime|summary=Paul had the passion gentle and academic grades to become a teacheryet subtly violent novel. 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 Padma's target had ended when Daniel, illiterate and street-wise, stepped in as protector. All Paul had present fails 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>}} {{newreview|author=Jennifer Egan|title=The Invisible Circus|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Set in 1978, 18-year old Phoebe is living with escape her mother in San Francisco. Her father died some years ago, before her elder sister, Faith, a charismatic idealist past and true child much like the musical score 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 millionairefilm, on leaving high school Phoebe decides on a whim to follow her sister's path to Europe in that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the hope of finding what happened in Italy and to finally understand her beloved sister's actionsVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780331223</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lauren Groff178563335X|title=ArcadiaSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor

|summary=Back in the seventies When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a group of idealists (welltrainee vicar, hippies) founded sitting in on a commune in PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the grounds of Arcadia Housechildren up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a decaying mansion sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in western New York State-law won't let her see her grandson. In Holthorpe, on the early days Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the renovation of the house parish - and the funding she's in awe of the commune was hopefulvicar, Gail, but then she''energising'' - s been doing the American dream encapsulated in bricks, crops job for more than thirty years. Rachel and hard work Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but as with many, if not most, such enterprises it was not to lastprobably what they needed. 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 declineAnd then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434019623</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Francesca Kay1398515388|title=The Translation of Boy and the BonesDog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=''The Translation First of all, it was the Bones'' revolves around four womenearthquake, all connected with deep in the Church of ocean floor, which created the Sacred Hearttsunami and this, Battersea. Mary Margaretin turn, not the sharpest knife in caused the box, lives between two polesnuclear meltdown. When she isn't in church, she's caring for her flat-bound, morbidly obese mother, FidelmaThe result was complete and utter devastation. Alice ArmitageThe deaths were uncountable, happily married to Larry, counts and the days until their son will be home from a tour loss of duty in Afghanistanlivelihoods was widespread. The fourth woman, Stella, lives in 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 loveless marriage to MP Rufus and spends her time wishing the days away till she can collect her 10 year old son from boarding schoolconvenience store. Father Diamond ministers He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to these women open his car door and Tamon the church community dog jumped 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>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Noah Hawley0989715337|title=The Good Father|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=Dr Paul Allen is more than happy with his life. His second wife, Fran, is efficient, a good manager, a good mother to their young twins and not overly emotional as Ellen (Wife No. 1) was. In fact you could say that his life runs like clockwork, which is just how he likes it. 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 Papa on the guy who pulled the trigger.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444730363</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMoon|author=Stephen May|title=Life! Death! Prizes!Marco North|rating=54

|summary=Billy's mum is dead. Billy is 19 years old when his mum resists a mugger; this is the last thing she ever does, leaving Billy with 6 year old Oscar to face life together. They'll be fine. For a start, their life isn't as bad as Some frogs had gotten into the 'Life! Death! Prizes!' type magazines at supermarket check-outswell. Billy has a job at the local history museum, Oscar's doing ok at school, so, despite their Aunt Toni, despite Oscar's recently reappearing father, despite the PTA mothers at the school gates... and social services... and the fact that the mugger is a local lad that Billy sees around... yep, they'll be fine.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408819139</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Susan Hill|title=In ''Walter stood waist-deep in the Springtime of the Year|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ben and Ruth had been married fragrant water, naked except for just a year when he was killed in a tragic accidenthis beaten leather hat. One Long strands of the other foresters came to tell Ruth about what had happenedtheir eggs wove around him, but in truth she had known before he arrivedsticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. From feeling deliriously happy she had descended within moments into Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the depths strange noise of despair and felt so ill that she could barely movethe buckets as he filled them. The confirmation was just that - and Ruth was bereft. She couldn't share her feelings with Ben's family. It's politic to say that they were dealing with their grief in their own way but more truthful to admit that they had never liked her and were disinclined to extend more than the socially-required gestures now that Ben was dead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099570483</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Roopa Farooki|title=How is that for an opening? The Flying Man|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''The Flying Man'' opens with the now elderly Maqil Karam writing a letter in his budget hotel style of this novel in the South form of France interconnected short stories goes from succinct and facing death. His story takes in many locations, from his native Punjab, laconic to New York, Cairo, London, Paris wistful and Hong Kong. In each locationmusing, Maqil adopts turning on a different name, including Mike Cram, Mehmet Kahn, Miguel Caram and Mikhail Leesixpence. Often he acquires a different wife as wellAnd author Marco North, Carine, Samira and Bernadette, although he doesn't go to who has the bother most wonderful turn of divorcing themphrase, starts as he just simply walks away. He is a chancer and a gambler, avoiding attachment, responsibility and commitment throughout his lifemeans to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755383389</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Cynthia OzickDaisy Hildyard|title=Foreign BodiesEmergency

|summary=Bea NightingaleThe summary of this book doesn'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 t come close to escape parental control. Bea, a New York high school teacher, explaining what is an unlikely candidate for done with the role of rescuer - she and her brother have been estranged for the best part of twenty years. But she capitulates to his demands and sets off on a journey in which her presence will affect not only Julian, 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 Leopremise. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848877366</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Jane HarrisSally Oliver |title=Gillespie The 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 Ithe 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=The 'I' in the title of Jane Harris's ''Gillespie and I'' is Harriet Baxter. Now elderly and residing in London in 1933, she is finally telling her events of what happened in the early 1880s in Glasgow and her relationship with the Gillespie family. At the time, a spinster of independent means, she arrived in Glasgow to visit the International Exhibition and became a champion of and friend to a young Scottish painter, Ned Gillespie and his young family. We know Early comments on this debut novel from early on that tragedy struck the Gillespie family leading to Ned destroying his career, but Harriet wants to set the record straight with regard to her involvement in events. You may or may not believe her story.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571238300</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Anna Stothard|title=The Pink Hotel|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The phone call came when she was 17. Her mother had died; the mother who had just been a flimsy memory of a touchEcuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, an impression and a faded photographdelight. Not satisfied I will agree with her father and grandma's biased recollections of 'the slutfirst – tremendous is no understatement – but ', she steals her step-mothera delight's credit card and catches a flight to is perhaps using the funeral expression in Los Angeles. Unfortunately she arrives too late for the funeral, but finding the pink hotel her mother owned, she walks in on the wake. Rooms full of drunken, drug-sodden eyes stare at her whilst she makes her a way through the building to what must have been her mother's bedroom. It's then she decides, as her step-father lies, semi-consciousness, on the bed. She takes some of her mother's clothes, shoes and letters. Once she has a chance to read them, she realises theyI're cards and love letters from men who may be able to build her a picture of the woman who gave her life but m not a lot else.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846881757</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Karin Altenberg|title=Island of Wings|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Rev Neil MacKenzie has been assigned to the Hebridian island of St Kildafamiliar with. His mission is to bring the locals back to the Victorian idea of God and propriety. He and his pregnant wife Lizzie not only I have to fight the elements but also centuries confess my ignorance of superstition that have trickled into the islanders' Christian faithSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. Life is made harder for Neil by a secret guilt emanating from From the death of a friend years ago. Howeverlittle I have read (in translation, the going becomes harder still for Lizzie, isolated by an inability I don't read Spanish) there does seem to speak be a tendency towards the local language and fantastical – the burgeoning fear engendered by Neil's behaviour and attitudesmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857382322</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreview|author=Georgina Harding|title=Painter of Silence|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=A young, anonymous, vagrant collapses on the steps of a hospital in Romania. He doesn't speak and remains a mystery to the staff that tries to treat his obvious symptoms but can't seem to reach the silent person beneath. However, Safta, a nurse, suggests that he may be deaf and produces drawing materials. Coincidentally, 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 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|author=Elanor DymottJennifer Saint|title=Every Contact Leaves a TraceElektra

|summary=We learn from 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the prologue that story of three women who live in the narrator, Oxford educated lawyer, Alex's wife has been murderedheavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. We also know that Alex knew little of his wifeCassandra, Rachel's pastClytemnestra, particularly and Elektra are all bit players in the story of the time Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that they spent together at Worcester College. This is critical in understanding who may often the silent women have killed her, and why. What follows is Alex learning about this hidden past. ''Every Contact Leaves a Trace'' is partly a thriller the most compelling stories and partly a whodunnit although the structure adopted by Elanor Dymott is somewhat unusualmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224094033</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrew Motion8409290103|title=Silver: Return to Treasure IslandIf Only|author=Matthew Tree

|summary=Even if you have not read Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 classic ''Treasure Island''Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, or you have read it a long time ago, the chances are that you will be broadly familiar with the story and in particular some of the rich characters cotton-broker AO Lowry: he created because they have entered into the culture of our image of pirates. Before Johnny Depp convinced us that pirates looked like Keith Richards, it was the terrifying image of Long John Silver and asked his parrotaccountant, squawking 'pieces of eight'Mr Patrick, double dealing his way to buried treasure and ensure that the innocence of young narrator Jim Hawkins that conjures up what we think of in terms of pirate adventure. But Stevenson left some tantalizing threads to his tale, not least the fact that Silver made off with only the majority of man got on board the treasure boat and left the remaining silver behind together with three marooned pirates thereafter Patrick was to fend for themselvessend him a monthly allowance. Setting Patrick sent the story 40 years after these events, Andrew Motion picks money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the tale and two although we hear more about what Lowry has the offspring of Hawkins, in the form of to say than Patrick. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son also called Jim and Long John Silver's daughter Natty returning to collect the remaining bounty. Of course, itwas that he didn's never going t care to have him in this country where he might be that simplea 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>0224091190</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sadie JonesAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=The Uninvited GuestsRed is My Heart|rating=43.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=On a spring evening [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in 1912 preparations were being made for a supper party to celebrate the twentieth birthday of Emerald Torringtonmy house. It And so was taking place at Sterne, the much-loved home of the familythis one, although finances were uncertain and no I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was quite sure how much longer they would be able to stay in the house. Emerald's mother had hopes that she would be able to marry Emerald off to John Buchanan, a local entrepreneurand is, but Emerald was far from convincedblack and white and red. Her step-father was in Manchester trying to raise the funds to keep the house going but Emerald and her brother ClovisYes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, Patience Sutton and her brother Ernest along with Buchanan and I think it's possible to say not one page lacks the household staff prepared for what they hoped would be a delightful eveninginfluence of some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701186712</amazonuk>1913547183

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Etgar KeretB098FFFBH9|title=Suddenly, a Knock on the Door |rating=4|genre=Short Stories|summary=In the opening, titular story, Keret is forced by several people to create, and alter, a short short story. It's a plain metaphor for the history of Israel, but it proves that this modern Scheherazade is not too far removed geographically from the original. And what follows are probably the sort of short, tantalising, open-ended, rough-round-the-edges and surreal results of being compelled to carry on telling tall tales on a nightly basis.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186674</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSnowcub|author=Rachel Joyce|title=The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold FryGraham Fulbright|rating=4.5

|summary=Harold Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and Maureen Fry were unremarkable: one long marriage, one adult offspring she and her friend are producing a long retirement stretching out competition entry to highlight the way in front of them like a prison sentencewhich human beings exploit the animal world. One morning everything changed. The catalyst was She gets a letter great deal of support from Queenieher family: father Pip Harrison, an ex-colleague of Harold's. He knew he needed to respond a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and thought that posting a letter would sufficeher twin, Nick. HoweverKate runs the family business, a chat with a girl at the local petrol station made him realise that a letter couldntoy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel't be enough. He had to provide Queenie with hope... he had to walks main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857520644</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=John LanchesterYancey Williams|title=CapitalCrosshairs of the Devil|rating=4.5

|summary=With a gentle nod Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to the great commentator of London life of the past, John Lanchester sets his wonderfully entertaining state of the nation book around Pepys Road. With a huge cast of charactersdaughter, he looks as a cross section of London life and while in some ways not quite perfectfinds himself living - or imprisoned, it comes pretty darn close.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571234607</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Russell Banks|title=Lost Memory of Skin|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Some readers may understandably be deterred from reading Russell BanksEddie's ''Lost Memory point of view - in room 315 of the Garden of Skin'' due to its controversial subject matter and there's no doubt that it's a morally complex read. The main characterEden nursing home, known with only to us at 'the Kid' is a young man who is a convicted sex offendertrusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. Set in south Florida, he Nothing is forced going to reside, with other offenders and keep Eddie from his pet Iguanastock-in-trade of writing though, under a causeway. While living so here, he encounters a huge and enigmatic manfor his readers, known only as are his wanderings through his life'the Professor' from the local university who is apparently studying homelessness amongst sex offenders and the two form an uneasy friendships work. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846685761</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anne Tyler0008421714|title=The Beginner's GoodbyeMrs March|author=Virginia Feito

|summary=Gregory Pharoah is a professional photographer whose genre is sometimes photojournalism, The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but more commonly portraiture Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or nudeshad already done so. Like his job Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, his nature is towards as she was wrapping the superficial. One daybread, returning from photographing ''but isn't this the first time he's based a bishop (for claritycharacter on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'her mannerisms''. Perhaps this is a portrait assignment and would not a nude!) he is have mattered, except for the only witness to a street robbery where Alice Fell fact that Johanna is the victim. Alice is a fatalist who believes in some kind whore of divine plan that means there is Nantes - ''a reason for everythingweak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch. She's enigmatic, by nature and by design as this is a quality that she enjoys cultivating. Thus these two different characters become part of the same story and what happens in the following six months is ultimately surprising and even shocking.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857386352</amazonuk>'

{{newreview|author=Chochana Boukhobza|title=The Third Day|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Set in Jerusalem in the late 1980s, an elderly, Jewish, celebrated cellist Elisheva is visiting Israel with her protégé, Rachel, ostensibly to give a concert performance. It quickly becomes apparent that Elisheva survived the Nazi camps by playing her music for the feared camp commander, known as the Butcher of Majdanek, and while Move on the surface she survived this ordeal well, it is clear that she has a darker intent with her three day visit. Through an underground network of Nazi hunters, she has managed to lure the Butcher from his home in Venezuela to visit Israel. Will they meet and what will happen when they do? |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050966</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]