132,625
edits
Changes
no edit summary
[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alissa Walser and Jamie Bulloch (translator)Matthew Tree|title=Mesmerized|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Celebrated scientist (at least in his own mind) Franz Anton Mesmer is called upon to cure the blindness of 18 year old piano virtuoso and courtier's daughter Marie Theresia Paradis. Despite the unease of her parents, Mesmer installs Marie into his 'magnetic hospital' where, alongside his other patients, she settles in to a regime of treatment, including free access to Mesmer's beloved piano. Mesmer is the ParadisWe' last resort and so they're happy to pay for success but they come to realise that the final cost may not be entirely financial and he realises that the result may not be beneficial to all parties.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051008</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Nikita Lalwani|title=The Villagell Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A BBC film crew is sent Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to India to make be different from his father, a documentary about an Indian prison with a difference. There are no walls, the prisoners hold down jobs drunk and their families live with them as a condition chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of acceptance. In fact, to his artistic passions all intents failed miserably and purposes, it seems like an ordinary village which is all the more unusual when you consider that they all share the same crime category; all the prisoners have been convicted who had endless crises of murderself confidence. The programme makers (20-something British-bornSo Tim applied himself to his studies, Indian director Ray, ruthless producer Serena cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and ex-convict-turned-presenter, Nathan) are expecting an eventful shoot and, in return, the inhabitants are expecting a film unit exhibiting the standards for which the BBC has become world famous. Both parties will be sorely disappointedset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670917087</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lionel ShriverB0C47LV1PC|title=The New RepublicFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=34
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Lionel Shriver adds Can you make a beard-shaped appendage to Southern Portugal in The New Republic and immediately has it fighting for independence''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, taking a wry look at terrorism as well as is the ethics of question should you make it? Or is the international press corps. After a series of international terrorism actsquestion if you did, would it land? The catch is that the Os Soldados Ousados De Barba, or the SOB answer for short, have gone quiet at the same time as charismatic journalist Barrington Sadler has vanished without a traceboth could well be. Insecure former lawyer Edgar Kellogg steps into Barrington's post: Kellogg on the hunt for serial killers, as it were. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007459807</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Anne Sward|title=Breathless|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=There are those who say that, on an individual level, books are like Marmite: you love it or you hate it. Oh, if only it were so easy. ''Breathless'' is one of those that I neither love nor hate, and yet am not totally uninspired by eitherno. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051032</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Martin KohanMosby Woods|title=School for PatriotsA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=ThereThe West isn's a fair chance that t the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if you pick up a South American novel, mending it's going to score quite highly on is the 'seriously odd' scalebest course of action. Governments are flailing. Martín Kohan's School A war here, a push for Patriots, translated by Nick Caistor, doesn't disappoint climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in that regardactual charge. The main characterImagine then, María Teresa, is an innocent, shy teaching assistant at there was a Buenos Aires school that is run on military academy style disciplineman with precognition. The running of Imagine the school is itself something of strategic advantage in this asset; a surprise but that's not man who can tell you what makes this strangewill happen given any set of circumstances. What ramps up That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the 'odd' factor here is that she spends vast amounts of this short novel hiding most valuable asset in the boys' loohistory. Imagine then, ostensibly to catch young boys smoking despite there being no evidence that any student has contravened this rule in man loses this locationability. One might say she has nothing What would governments do to go on. Then again, best not in the circumstances. get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687438</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alonso Cueto and Frank Wynne (translator)0571379559|title=The Blue HourHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Adrian Ormache''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, middle class Peruvian lawyerbut instead, has a beautiful wifeshe lives in the house on the riverbank, two daughters built of the sort to make any parent proud and a comfortable lifestylebroken bricks. His parents divorced when he was small so, Insubstantial as he lived with his motherit might look, he has fragmented memories it's stood the passage of a grufftime, distant dadstorms and floods. Despite Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his father's aloofvegetables, dictatorial manner, Adrian has always comforted himself with to complete the fact he played a useful role as a landdelivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys -bound naval officerSonny and Max, fighting Senderista terrorists for the good of Perurainbow twins. After the death of Sonny's colouring reflects his mother everything changes's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Adrian finds documents People don't believe that lead him away from they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his beliefs, towards a truth mother that will shatter more than his fathershe's imagehis nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434019410</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Fiona McGregorKay Chronister|title=Indelible InkDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Once wealthy, middle class Australian suburbanite Marie King never thought she'd be starting With a new life at 59 but here she world that isbecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, divorced and having to sell the marital homepost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Unfortunately, attached to the marital home Whether it is the marital garden into which Marie didn't only give life but also pour her own life. Howevera robotic takeover, Marie tries to be positive and decides that if she's going to be a new personworld devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, she may as well go the whole this genre is a wayfor humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. This means tattoos (much to her offsprings' horror) and an unlikely friendship with tattooist Rhys. With 'Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that comes aligns many of the realisation fears that the privileged suburb of Mossman isn't all there exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to Sydney. There's much more to the city, and indeed herself, than she first thoughtfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857894129</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Jude MorganEric LaRocca|title=The Secret Life of William ShakespeareTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Historical FictionHorror|summary=Books about Shakespeare vary hugely both in terms of approach Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and qualityprocess them. Some focus on historical factMost horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, while others play rather more loosely with by the romance end of his life. Fortunately for readersthe story, Jude Morgan's books are rather more reliably excellentbeatable. WhatEric LaRocca's more, he has a track record of fiction that concerns great writers, having previously tackled the Brontës (''The Taste of SorrowTrees Grew Because I Bled There'') is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and the romantic poets (''Passion'')humiliation. So my expectations were already quite high coming into his Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''The Secret Life of William ShakespeareBig Bad'' - expectations that he has again surpassed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755358228</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David VannMadelaine Lucas|title=DirtThirst for Salt|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We're back in the mid-nineteen-eighties in a suburb of Sacramento and Galen lives with his mother on the family walnut farm. The farm's not what it wasLove, largely having been left to its own devices since the death of GalenI's abusive grandfather some years before. Galen's ''father'' is something of an unknown quantity - his mother won't even discuss who he d read, was or tell Galen anything about himsupposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but then sheI had always longed for gravity's able to shut her mind to most things which she finds unpleasant. ''Her'' mother has been moved from the farm to a nursing home - she's still quite active but her memory is going. Suzie-Q's sister, Helen is determined to get her hands on the family money for the benefit of her seventeen-year-old daughter, Jennifer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434021962</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Michael Grothaus
|title=Beautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.''
}}
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Everyone ''I was as worthy as any one of a certain age will remember the American withdrawal from Vietnam them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in 1975. This was the answer to years name of student protests and the prayers of many US parents who saw sons like theirs drafted to war only to return in body bagsgoddess. As far as the west It was concerned, the suffering was over. However, for the Vietnamese peoplesake of my name, the suffering continued as the Khmer Rouge and then the invading Cambodians killed, tortured and destroyed people who were just trying to survivetoo. ''RuAtalanta'' is written by and about one such person.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685486</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kathleen MacMahonAmanthi Harris|title=This Is How It EndsBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This is an incredibly gentle (and gently funny) love story set in Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the winter southern coast of 2008 when the Irish economy was booming and the US were about to elect their first black presidenther home country. Hugh ( This is a deliciously grumpy surgeon) and his currently unemployed architect daughter Addie lived happily in an Irish seaside townplace she spent her formative years. Ok, he'd broken both his wrists tripping over Addie's dog and Addie found it hard It is not to cry sometimesa place she was born into, but they were alright. Then the one day, out she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the blueVilla, they receive a voicemail message from Brunohow it became her home, a distant American relative whoand the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the 's just popped over the ocean to say 'Hi!score' Remembering the last US relative who came to visit (it didn't go well), Addie for this gentle and Hugh decide yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to ignore the phone... and the front door... escape her past and much like the occupant musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the bench seat across the road... He's bound to go home eventuallyVilla. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847445462</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Carolyn Jess-Cooke178563335X|title=The Boy Who Could See DemonsSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=FantasyLiterary Fiction|summary=Alex can see demons. HeWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's been able a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to ever since his dad left when he was five years oldpick the children up. Some demons are hideous Her husband, some are frighteningChristopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and some just lurk her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in corners doing not much at all-law won't let her see her grandson. One Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is called Ruena lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and heshe's Alexin awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she's best friendbeen doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749953136</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jess Richards1398515388|title=Snake RopesThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=It's First of all, it was the time for earthquake, deep in the tall mainland men to come to ocean floor, which created the island to tradetsunami and this, in turn, so 16 year old Mary preparescaused the nuclear meltdown. She brings out her handmade 'broideries' The result was complete and hides Barneyutter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, her little brother, in a cupboardand the loss of livelihoods was widespread. This is a necessary preparation born The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of fear, for priorities but - six months after the island boys have been vanishing, taken by the traderstsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. On this particular day MaryHe wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's broideries go, but so does Barneycomment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144473783X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ginny Baily0989715337|title=Africa JunctionPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Adele has made a mess of her life and she knows it''Some frogs had gotten into the well. Working with '' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the stresses fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of being a teacher as well as a single mother and having shrugged off a disastrous relationshiptheir eggs wove around him, her life seems to be set on self-destructsticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Part Two of the problem is that dogs leaned over the past won't leave her alone. Adele is haunted by opening and barked down at the memory strange noise of Ellena, a friend from her childhood in Senegal, Africathe buckets as he filled them. With one unthinking, childish action, Adele inadvertently devastated Ellena's family so, in order to go forward, Adele must go back to the continent where it all began. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552728</amazonuk>}}'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Peter CareyDaisy Hildyard|title=The Chemistry of TearsEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As he has done before on several occasions, Peter Carey offers us two parallel stories in his intriguingly titled 'The Chemistry of Tears'. The two elements summary of the title reflect that this is a book about grief, but also about science. It's also a book about humandoesn's relationship with machines and dependence that we have grown t come close to have on them, and the ugliness of life and the beauty of, at least some, machines. In one strand of the story, Catherine explaining what is a modern day horologist working in a London museum whose world is shattered by the death of a married colleague done with whom she was having an affair. Put to work on restoring a mysterious clockwork bird, she discovers the journals of Henry Brandling, the nineteenth century wealthy man who commissioned the construction of the toy for his consumptive sonpremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>057127997X</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Laurent BinetSally Oliver |title=HHhHThe Weight of Loss |rating=4 |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself.|isbn= 086154112X }} {{Frontpage|author=Natalia Garcia Freire|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=FirstEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I will agree with the title. ''HHhH'' first – tremendous is short for no understatement – but ''Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich'' - Himmler's brain was called Heydrich. In other words, it's not a case of delight'behind every great Nazi there's is perhaps using the expression in a greater womanway I', but behind Hitler's own deputy was a major strength to the partym not familiar with. Reinhard Heydrich was the ruler of what practically corresponds I have to the Czech Republic, led the SS and more, and bossed the workings confess my ignorance of the Final SolutionSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. Any good biography of this compelling character From the little I have read (in those interesting times - given too the subplot of those who would assassinate him - is bound translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be an excellent history book. But, despite this getting a high rating, this isn't one. Why not? The author says sotendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846554799</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jean Calmet, teacher 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of Latin three women who live in a lycee the heavily male dominated world of the 1960s in Switzerland, is confronting his father's deathAncient Greece. He can hardly be said to be coming to terms with itCassandra, for Calmet pere was and remains a crushing force in Jean's lifeClytemnestra, 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 Elektra are all suffused with not a sense bit players in the story of loss but a sense of continuing the Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and growing dominance by the ghost of his father. The authoritian presence seems to grow as a spectre rather than diminish through his deathmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>190473894X</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kitty Aldridge8409290103|title=A Trick I Learned from Dead MenIf Only|author=Matthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Kitty Aldridge's ''A Trick I Learned from Dead Men'' is a touchingly written, quirky story set in the world of funeral homes. The narrator is twentyTwenty-one-year-something Lee Hart. He's not the sharpest tool in the box, but old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his life has been tough. His father left when , cotton-broker AO Lowry: he was asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the young man got on board the boat and his mother has recently died of cancer leaving thereafter Patrick was to send him, his step-father, a sofamonthly allowance. Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence -bound television makeof sorts -over show addict and his deaf and wayward younger brother, Ned sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to fend for themselvessay than Patrick. Lee lands a job as a trainee at the local funeral home helping Derek prepare the dead It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for burial or cremation. Far from being a dead end job thoughhis son, it is here was that he learns, ironically, about life didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and love, in other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the form of the delivery girl from the local floristsyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224096435</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Roland VernonAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=The Good Wife's CastleRed is My Heart|rating=3.5|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction |summary=We start with a father[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in my house. And so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, and is, black and white and red. Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and I think it's suicide, a child watching as he steps possible to say not one page lacks the influence of the chair in the milking room with the noose around his neck. A father who died for shamesome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552775533</amazonuk>1913547183}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Charlotte RoganB098FFFBH9|title=The LifeboatSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Charlotte RoganFourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's debut novel ''The Lifeboat'' takes an unexpected look at life on animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a lifeboat of a sunken liner, midway between competition entry to highlight the sinking of the ''Titanic'' and way in which human beings exploit the ''Lusitania''animal world. In many ways She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lifeboat presents an ideal situation for a novelist. You have a set number of characters lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and clear boundaries. But there's only so much interest in 'we were scared' and 'ohher twin, look here comes another big wave'Nick. Her solution is to take Kate runs the story as one of moral and ethical choices rather than an out and out adventure. As her narratorfamily business, Grace Wintera toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, concludes which is where we'it was not the sea that was cruel, but the peoplell meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844087522</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Zoya PirzadYancey Williams|title=Things We Left UnsaidCrosshairs of the Devil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Life in Iran Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is good for Armenian Clarice Ayvazian. She lives comfortably getting on in an oil company townyears and, devoting her middle class life despite his strenuous objections and thanks to her engineer husbandhis daughter, teenage son and young twin daughters. Her mother and sisterfinds himself living - or imprisoned, Alice, drop from Eddie's point of view - in from time to time during room 315 of the course Garden of the dayEden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, but are perfectly manageable for her (palatable company. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in small doses). However-trade of writing though, so here, when an elderly womanfor his readers, her middle-aged son and are his wanderings through his tween-age daughter move in across the road they bring turmoil in their wake and Claricelife's perception of her happiness is torn apartwork.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1851689257</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mark Haddon0008421714|title=The Red HouseMrs March|author=Virginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Richard and Angela - brother and sister - are reunited at their motherThe problem began just after the publication of George March's funeralmost successful novel to date. Richard is well-Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to-do and recently remarried with a teenage stepdaughtereither be reading it or had already done so. Angela is Every day Mrs March went to the main breadwinner in her family local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as her husband scrapes a wage by working in Waterstones and somehow they and their three children get by. Richard is aware that he hasnshe was wrapping the bread, ''but isn't much left in this the way of family and tries to build some bridges with Angela by way of offering that the eight of them should have a weekfirst time he's holiday in based a cottage character on the Welsh borders. you?'' SoShe mentioned that Johanna, therethe principal character had 'her mannerisms''s four adults, four children and a lot of emotional baggage. Oh, and there's Karen - Angela's stillborn daughter who Perhaps this would not have been eighteen mattered, except for the fact that week.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224096400</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Knud Romer and John Mason (translator)|title=Nothing But Fear|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The Danish writer/actor Knud Romer has a gallery Johanna is the whore of fascinating relatives which collectively feature in ''Nothing But FearNantes - ''. This biographical novel is a collection of memories from his grandparents' eraweak, plain, detestable, moving forwardpathetic, to that of his parentsunloved, including World War II and his own childhood in 1960s and 70s small town Denmarkunloveable wretch. The vignettes aren't in chronological order but that'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>
}}