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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__{{Frontpage|author=Matthew Tree|title=We'll Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=Literary fictionFiction|summary=Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn=B0CVFXPGP8__NOTOC__}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nikolai Leskov, Richard Pevear (translator) and Larissa Volokhonsky (translator)B0C47LV1PC|title=The Enchanted Wanderer and Other StoriesFragility|author=Mosby Woods

|summary=This is Can you make a collection of 17 Nikolai Leskov stories as mixed in subject matter as they are in length. From the very short ''Spirit of Madame de GenlisYo birthing person''joke? And if you could, warning of is the question should you make it? Or is the dire consequences of selecting literature for a mollycoddled princessquestion if you did, to would it land? The catch is that the novella-length answer for both could well be.... no. ''The Enchanted WandererFragility'' telling is set as the tale city of the apparently immortal monk who prayed for suicide victimsPortland, Oregon, Leskov (aided greatly by cautiously begins to emerge from the talented translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky) unlocks restrictions imposed during the mores, traditions, religion and superstitions of 19th century Russia for a modern readership.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099577356</amazonuk>covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Taiye SelasiMosby Woods|title=Ghana Must GoA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5

|summary=Kweku Sai, father, husband and doctor, awakes early one morning and wanders outside into his Ghanaian gardenThe West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. As he gazes back at his houseA war here, he suffers a fatal heart attack andpush for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, during his last moments reflects on his life and there was a family fragmentedman with precognition. On hearing Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of his deathcircumstances. That man would be valuable, his children and first wife Folasade look back on what they were before and, thanks right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in part to Folasade's and Kweku's actionshistory. Imagine then, what they've becomethat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670919861</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michele Roberts0571379559|title=IgnoranceThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|summary=Michèle Roberts's 'The House of Broken Bricks'Ignorance'is the story of four people. Tess Hembry' is a beautifully writtens roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, lyrical story about life she lives in wartime Francethe house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Narrated mainly by two characters, Jeanne and Marie-Angèle Insubstantial as it might look, it jumps back and forward in 's stood the passage of time , storms and is an enthralling mixture of guiltfloods. Her husband, Richard, faithstruggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and survivalto bring in sufficient money. The two girls could not be more different. Marie They have twin boys -Angèle is Sonny and Max, the grocerrainbow twins. Sonny's daughter while Jeanne is the daughter of a Jewish colouring reflects his mother who washes clothes for a living's Jamaican heritage. The two girls together go to the village convent for their education but come from different ends of the social spectrumMax takes after his father. When the German occupation arrives, the two girls' experiences are very different but both are People don'ignorantt believe that they' of each others plight re related, much less twins and their judgements are repeatedly shown to be wide of the mark. In fact the book could just as well have been titled there'Judgements an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny. Just when you think you know one through the eyes of the other, you get the opposite view of things. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408831155</amazonuk>

The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Carrie TiffanyKay Chronister|title=Mateship with BirdsDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=In the early nineteen fifties With a lonelyworld that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, middlepost-aged farmer observed the birds on his land and recorded what he saw in the blank pages apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of his milk ledgerwater or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. His animals and ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the birds were his family and his land - difficult though it could be - fears that exist for humanity today. It is a part of himshocking novel that still manages to find hope.|isbn=1803364998}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Eric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. Whilst Harry watched It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and recordedprocess them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', his neighbourwhether that is a home invader, Bettya monster or a ghost, watched Harry it usually something tangible and recorded , by the childhood illnesses and accidents end of her two childrenthe story, beatable. By day she worked in a nursing home where she was a lunchtime Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'wife', sitting at is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the bedside of some horrors of the old men in her care. Her daughter, Hazelillness, kept a nature notebook which was completely factual grief and accepting of birth and death in a way humiliation. Horrors that can only be achieved by those who live with livestock - linger and deadstock - on a daily basisare harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447219864</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anouk MarkovitsMadelaine Lucas|title=I Am ForbiddenThirst for Salt

|summary=The date is 1939 and the place is what we know as Romania and Hungary. Young Zalman Stern is stopped by soldiers and for a moment he feels this is his last moment on Earth. Meanwhile''Love, not too far awayI'd read, one moment 5 year old Josef Lichtenstein is playing with his baby sister, the next his childhood is deleted by the same bigotry was supposed to be a light and blood that deletes her. One day their paths will meet. This is the story of Zalmanweightless feeling, Josef, their descendants; their struggles, their beliefs; the cost of escape and the cost of remaining.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099571943</amazonuk>}}but I had always longed for gravity''

{{newreview|author=Jami Attenberg|title=The Middlesteins|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Edie Middlestein almost has Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the American dream within year-long relationship that once defined her grasp. She trained as a lawyerOverlaid with later wisdom, has the narrator relives the affair with a husband, a daughter who followed man twenty years her professional footsteps and a son married senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to an ambitious wife who provided him with two high-achieving childrenits sorrowful end the summer after. There are just two flies in Set against the ointment preventing backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the dream24-year-old narrator's arrival: 1. Edie is so morbidly obese that she has to undergo surgery; deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and 2. this is the moment her husband chooses to leave how it altered herirrevocably. Apart from that…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846689325</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreview|author= Mikhail Shishkin and Andrew Bromfield (translator)|title=The Light ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and the Dark|rating=4acceptance.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Two lovers write letters to each other about their love, their dreams and their separate lives; lives that they hope will one day merge once again Of what it means to become onebe human. For Sasha life Of what is the everyday grind with work real and demanding loved ones along with the challenges they engender. For Volodenkawhat is artificial, it's life in and whether the Russian army and his eventual posting to China. However their love development of technology is more complicated than most as more than geography and circumstance stands between them: they're also separated by the decades… many, many decadesexciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780871058</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Maggie O'FarrellJennifer Saint|title=Instructions for a HeatwaveAtalanta

|summary=In London, in July 1976 it hadn't rained for months'I was as worthy as any one of them. Gardens - if you could call them I would get on board that any longer - were thick with aphids and what water there was, which was to be consumed or used for washingship, came from a standpipeI vowed. Robert Riordan told his wifeI would take my place, Gretta, that he was going round not just in the name of the corner to buy a newspapergoddess. This It was what he did every morningfor the sake of my name, but this time he didntoo. Atalanta''t come back Princess. The police weren't interested as the closer they looked the more it was obvious that there was an intention to disappearWarrior. Lover. Gretta turned to her three adult children for helpHero. But how much help would they - could they - be?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755358783</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Jude Cook|title=Byron Easy|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Byron Easy Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is a 30-year-old poet raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and product of fashioned into a failed marriage formidable huntress, one wholongs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, in turn, has a failed marriage fierce band of his warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her ownlegendary place in history. He works in What follows is a shop whilst waiting to be discovered as a poet. How did his depression-tinted life reach this point? Once there was hope, love whirlwind of challenges and many good times discovery andthrough it, as he sits on a train travelling to his motherAtalanta must remember Artemis's for Christmas with a bag full of moneyfatal warning: that if she marries, he reflects and ponders while trying to escape something more tangible and dangerous than the pastit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434021938</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andrea EamesAmanthi Harris|title=The White ShadowBeautiful Place

|summary=As Padma, a general principle I am young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a little tired place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of books as home. How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that start at have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the end''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. I want Padma's present fails to argue for escape her past and much like the musical score of a return to good old fashioned narrative where stories start film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the beginning, go on until the end, and then stopVilla. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099565420</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=I J Kay178563335X|title=Mountains of the MoonSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor

|summary=The story starts harshlyWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, with sitting in on a release from prisonPCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, a bail hostelChristopher, a refuge for people with mental health problems as a bettercollects six-thanyear-nothingold Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-liedin-to-be-obtained kind of a sanctuary and a slow easing back into societylaw won't let her see her grandson. If you can call Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a housing association flatlovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with a decorating voucher the parish - and no furnitureshe's in awe of the vicar, Gail, only occasional power but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and annoying neighbours ''society''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>0099554739</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jennie Rooney1398515388|title=Red JoanThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=It is very obvious where Jennie Rooney has taken First of all, it was the idea for her novel ''Red Joan'' from. As she acknowledges fullyearthquake, it has its origin deep in the 1999 story of Melita Norwood whose espionage for ocean floor, which created the Russians wasn't discovered until she was tsunami and this, in her late 80sturn, but while Norwood was a dyed in caused the wool communist, Rooney offers a more complex back story to her character, Joannuclear meltdown. The result is a very different type of spy novel than normalwas complete and utter devastation. Joan The deaths were uncountable, a widowed grandmother, is going about her day to day life when MI5 come knocking on her door to ask about her pastand the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The narrative switches between fact that many pets were separated from their questions to her and her recollections owners came far down the list of her time at Cambridge in priorities but - six months after the late 1930s where communist feelings were, by some, given tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a more sympathetic earconvenience store. When Joan falls for Leo, He wasn't a dog person but the cousin of her Russian born friend Sonya, she gets dragged into a world convenience store owner's comment that is dangerous he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and morally complexTamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701187573</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jason Hinojosa0989715337|title=The Conception of Zachary MusePapa on the Moon|author=Marco North

|summary=Evangeline Muse gives birth to Zachary alone in her special lagoon… but that's starting at 'Some frogs had gotten into the endwell. In '' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the beginningfragrant water, Thomas Greene is a tutor naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and Will Archer a talented wood carver who both accept employment from Michael Musebarked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he filled them. What they don't realise at ' How is that moment isfor an opening? The style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, once they meet his beautiful daughterturning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, Evangeline, nothing will ever be who has the same again for any most wonderful turn of themphrase, starts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>9380905440</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andrew CowanDaisy Hildyard|title=Worthless MenEmergency|rating=4.5

|summary=If you read a lot The summary of fiction about World War One, it's tempting to imagine pre-war England as an idyl of peace and innocence. Andrew Cowan's ''Worthless Men'this book doesn' depicts a much more gritty and earthy England. Set in 1916 in an industrial and market town, it weaves together several narratives that combine t come close to depict a hard life even before the outbreak of war. In fact, its easier to imagine the lure of adventure that the war initially offered as a change from the harsh realities of life at home, although by the time Cowan's novel begins, the grim reality of explaining what is involved has dampened much of this enthusiasmdone with the premise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>144475940X</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Meike ZiervogelSally Oliver |title=MagdaThe 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

|summary=Meet Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a woman who, despite praying to remain virginal, had seven childrendelight. Meet I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a woman whose mother thought her delight''hoity-toity'', and spoilt, and who thought she should go to work is perhaps using the expression in a factory at school age to know her place better. Meet a woman of whom her oldest daughter would write 'way I don't care what Mother saysm not familiar with. Mother isn't always rightI have to confess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. NoFrom the little I have read (in translation, she definitely isnI don't.' All three women are, of course, one and the same, and they're Magda Goebbels, read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the woman who epitomised more than anyone fantastical – the Nazi wifemystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907773401</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shani BoianjiuJennifer Saint|title=The People of Forever are not AfraidElektra

|summary=Yael'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, Lea and Avishag go through their final years at high school Elektra are all bit players in a little Israeli town on the Lebanese border and then on to the inevitable: story of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF)Trojan War. Gender is immaterial, all Israeli citizens must serve at least two years and for these girls Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the moment arrives after graduation. Yael's posting seems futile as she guards a training base against marauding lads, sneaking across silent women have the border to pinch perfume from pockets rather than pose any real security threat. Lea's assignment on a border checkpoint searching most compelling stories and the daily line of immigrant workers is riddled with routine. Avishag joins up with her own demons, her brother Dan having died after his national service. She knows how it happened but continues to struggle with why; something she must handle alonemost extreme furies. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781090092</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Barbara Pym8409290103|title=A Glass of BlessingsIf Only|author=Matthew Tree

|summary=Wilmet Forsyth is a married womanTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, childless to ensure that the young man got on board the boat and living thereafter Patrick was to send him a life of leisuremonthly allowance. She Patrick sent the money regularly and her friend Rowena met their husbands a correspondence - both Majors of sorts - in Italy, where they served as Wrens during sprang up between the war. Rowena now two although we hear more about what Lowry has three children and her husband David might just be developing a wandering eyeto say than Patrick. Wilmet It wasn't that Lowry senior didn's husbandt care for his son, Rodney, is still ''Noddy'it was that he didn' t care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his mother with whom they live. Unburdened by wife and other children or domestic responsibility Wilmet lunches or shops and becomes involved in the social life of the local church, St Luke's. But it's her relationship with Piers, Rowena's somewhat wayward brother, which might pose The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the biggest threat to her comfortable, if rather boring existenceyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844085805</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Toni JordanAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Nine DaysRed is My Heart|rating=3.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Christopher 'Kip' Westaway lives in a suburb of Melbourne, Australia with mother Jean, sister Connie [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and his twin, Francis. Kip's mother considers him a layabout who doesn't deserve the special privileges of his educationally elite brother white and so he works at the big read in my house next door for the Hustings, caring for their horses. One day Mr Husting presents Kip with a shilling; their little secret. As its 1939, that's a fair amount of money And so Kip hides it awaywas this one, not realising how special that coin will become as the decades pass.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444763555</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sarah Butler|title=Ten Things although I've Learnt About Love|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Alice returns home to spend time with her dying father. She's been travelling in Mongolia, finding temporary escape from the issues could have spelled that had haunted her life in London but nowmore accurately – this one was, on her returnand is, events bring the pain she thought was behind her into sharp focusblack and white and red. Meanwhile Daniel is Yes, he has an elderly vagrant who calls the streets of London home. He seeks his lost childartistic collaborator on this piece, leaving a trail of random items across the city in and I think it's possible to say not one page lacks the hope of reunion like someone occupying a verse influence of ''Eleanor Rigby''. Disparate lives, seeking love and acceptance in a world that seems to exclude itsome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447222490</amazonuk>1913547183

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Yan LiankeB098FFFBH9|title=Lenin's KissesSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright

|summary=Yan LiankeFourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's 2004 novel, ''Lenin's Kisses'', newly animal rights project leader and she and beautifully translated by Carlos Rojas, is her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. She gets a rare and fascinating example, not just great deal of Chinese fiction support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a writer living lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and working in Chinaher twin, but also a book that has won literary awards (Nick. Kate runs the prestigious Chinese ''Lao She Literary Award'')family business, now available a toy shop called Cornucopia in English. In many respectsPutney, the fact that this book won such a literary prize which is somewhat surprising - not I hasten to add because of any lack of quality - but because Lianke, who has previously sailed too close to the political wind for Chinese censors, here presents a not altogether flattering view of Chinese politics. Itwhere we'll meet Rachel's a book that is literary with a capital L, and while the core main (if unsuspected) source of the plot is relatively simple, what makes this book so interesting is the structure and way the story is toldinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701188073</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jan-Philipp SendkerYancey Williams|title=The Art Crosshairs of Hearing Heartbeatsthe Devil

|summary=Sendker Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is German-born (Hamburg 1960) getting on in years and worked as American correspondent for ''Stern'' (1990 to 95) , despite his strenuous objections and then as its Asian correspondent from '95 thanks to '99. He now lives in Berlin. This probably gives him enough global insight to write about a UShis daughter, finds himself living -born high flyer with an Asian heritage heading off to Burma to find out the truth of her fatheror imprisoned, from Eddie's disappearance. It probably also gives him the language skills to do it point of view - in English without recourse to a translator.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184697240X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=George Bernard Shaw|title=Cashel Byron's Profession|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Cashel Byron’s Profession'' is the fourth of five 'Novels room 315 of My Nonage',written by George Bernard Shaw in 1882. In the preface Garden of the bookEden nursing home, Shaw heavily criticises these early workswith only a trusty nursing aide, which were rejected by the publishing houses of the timeJenkins, blaming for palatable company. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his immaturity and lack of experience stock-in life. He was clearly unhappy about the way he had written some -trade of writing though, so here, for his charactersreaders, stating that: '...he has not in are his nonage the satisfaction of knowing that wanderings through his guesses at life are true's work.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848547471</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chris Womersley0008421714|title=The Low Road|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Wild is a man on the run. In a slow, underhand and underwhelming way he is leaving behind danger, mistakes and unhappiness in his past, and has fetched up in a nondescript motel. However this is only the beginning, for he is quickly ordered to put his medical training to good use in the case of Lee, when the latter is dumped into his care with a gunshot wound. Lee, too, is a man on the run - from danger, mistakes and unhappiness in his future. But this pairing are not the only people running in this pitch black thriller.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780870574</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMrs March|author=Claudie Gallay|title=In the Gold of TimeVirginia Feito

|summary=A young father The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (I'm not sure we ever know his her first name) leaves his Montreuil apartment and takes his wife and their seven-year-old twin daughters only on the annual holiday last page) seemed to the coasteither be reading it or had already done so. They have a houseEvery day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, La TémérairePatricia asked, overlooking as she was wrapping the sea a few kilometres south of Dieppe. Theybread, ''d bought the house just after the girls were born and go there every summer, and maybe for a weekend or two in the Spring. Never in winter.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051261</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Philippe Claudel|title=The Investigation|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=And you think you had it bad. Our hero gets off a train at the right station, but doesnisn't get collected by those this the first time he's working based a character on behalf of, canyou?''t have his order at the bar fulfilled She mentioned that Johanna, cannot get to the place of work on time, then cannot find the hotel almost opposite without a major trek through a snowy, unsavoury but completely empty cityprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''. And when he gets to Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the hotel - well fact that and Johanna is the other people he meets there are a whole new category whore of odd. Is this how things are supposed to be Nantes - is this limbo''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, a nightmare or just a novel our hero is trapped in?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051547</amazonuk>unloveable wretch.''

{{newreview|author=Jenn Ashworth|title=The Friday Gospels|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=There are five in the Leeke family. Martin is the father and he works in the mail sorting office. There's not a lot of ''pleasure'' in Martin's life, but if you were making a list you'd put Bovril at the top of it. She's a labrador and Martin's obsessed with her training. Well, he's partly obsessed with the training and the training is partly an excuse for his other obsession. Nina owns two labradors and Martin sees them (he and Nina, that is - not he and the labs) as having a future together. It would be easy Move on to be critical, but Martin's wife is in a wheelchair. Pauline's been unwell since the birth of their youngest child. She's not quite doubly incontinent, but accidents are frequent and embarrassing. She's also got a penchant for spending on home improvements - despite the fact that there ''really'' isn't the money for them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444707728</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]