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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]{{adsense2}}__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Donal RyanMatthew Tree|title=The Spinning HeartWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='My father still lives back the road past the weir in the cottage I was reared in. I go there every day Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to see is he dead and every day he lets me down. He hasn't yet missed a day of letting me down.' This is how we meet Bobby - Bobby Mahon, as we'll learn - and he's brutally honest about his feelings for be different from his father, who has deliberately a drunk away the farm he inherited from ''and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his'' father. But Frank Mahon isn't Bobby's only, or even main, problem. He's been earning big money as Pokey Burke's foreman but the financial crash has hit artistic passions all failed miserably and Pokey has done a runnerwho had endless crises of self confidence. An investment in a fake island off Dubai finished him and now he's disappeared. On the estate of forty houses he was buildingSo Tim applied himself to his studies, just two are occupied cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and the rutted roads are nothing more than a racetrack for the joyridersset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781620067</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Natasha SolomonsB0C47LV1PC|title=The Gallery of Vanished HusbandsFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=On her thirtieth birthday Juliet Montague went out to buy Can you make a fridge for ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the princely sum of twenty-one guineas. She'd saved hard for question should you make it - and her parents had given her ? Or is the final few pounds - but then Juliet question if you did something impulsive, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.. Instead of buying a fridge she commissioned a portrait of herself and so began her involvement in the post-war art scene. Juliet wasn't - by any stretch of the imagination - an artist, but she had a startling ability to spot a ''good'' picture. It was simply something which she ''knew'', much as she had known for certain that her husband had left for good on the day he didn't return home as expectedno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444736345</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Unfaithfully YoursMosby Woods|authortitle=Nigel WilliamsA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=When Nigel Williams first really burst on to The West isn't the best-seller list, a couple of decades ago, dominant force it once was with a book set in Wimbledon that really quite tickled a younger me – and my mother. But then he produced two more Nobody in the same series, and we soon decided he was a bit of a one-trick pony, and could never be West is quite sure how much of the trilogy we'd read, or be too eager to read more. Flash forward, and Williams has certainly branched out – his setting mend this time or even if mending it is Putneythe best course of action. Wimbledon Common is now Putney Heath, and so onGovernments are flailing. But A war here he provides an epistolatory novel – and if , a push for climate action there's one kind of novel to make me prick up my ears it . A feeling that nobody is one built from lettersin actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. It is Imagine the blatant two-and-fro timing strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of the narrativecircumstances. That man would be valuable, and right? Perhaps the succinctness that characters are formed withmost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that strike me as obvious benefits of such a book – and Unfaithfully Yours has those and many morethis man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1472106741</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0571379559|title=Russian StoriesThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Francesc SeresFiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When confronted with ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the topic story of parrots, most four people would describe them as tamed tropical birds that . Tess Hembry's roots are taught to repeat simple phrases, having no particular intelligence to engender an originality of their own. Filippo Bologna has not in fact written a book about birdsJamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but about writers - instead, she lives in factthe house on the riverbank, three writersbuilt of broken bricks. Just Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the Neo-Pagans have a liking passage of the Triple Goddesses of The Maidentime, The Mother storms and The Cronefloods. Her husband, our three writers are similarly split into The BeginnerRichard, The Writerstruggles to grow his vegetables, and The Master. All three of these novelists are battling it out for The Prize, a prestigious award that would revitalise to complete the career of The Master, legitimize the efforts of The Beginner delivery rounds - and assure The Writer a place to bring in the annals of historysufficient money. The setting of Rome is utilised to provide both a stunning backdrop They have twin boys - Sonny and one that is sympathetic to Max, the mood of our charactersrainbow twins. The stories of our three protagonists are interwoven in a delightfully clear fashion; Bologna Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's prose is delicate and descriptive, but not at the sacrifice of pacingJamaican heritage. The stage is set; the characters have learned their linesMax takes after his father. There People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is just one problem... out of the three writers, none of them deserves to win The Prizewith his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908968192</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Every PromiseKay Chronister|authortitle=Andrea BajaniDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Italian writerWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, Andrea Bajani's ''Every Promise'' post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is narrated by Pietro. His partnera robotic takeover, Sara, has left him due to their inability to have a babyworld devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, but soon she finds herself pregnant after this genre is a one night stand and reliant on Pietro's mother way for advicehumans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. Meanwhile Pietro meets Olmo, an elderly man who lives in their old family apartment, who reminds Pietro ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of his own Grandfather, Mario, who, like Olmo, served in Mussolini's illpost-fated Russian campaign. Olmo persuades Pietro to go to Russia to visit the scenes apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of some of the photographs he has to try to come to terms with the past. It's a story about the past, the present and the future and the struggle fears that exist for one man to make sense of thishumanity today. It's packed with surpassingly detailed imagery and Bajani is at times breathtakingly unflinching in exposing the vulnerability of his narrator. However, it is very much a slow burn of a book and it's not always an easy book shocking novel that still manages to readfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051466</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Andrew PorterEric LaRocca|title=In Between DaysThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=3.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=After Chloe Harding Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is forced used as a way to leave her East Coast collegereflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, for reasons she refuses to explain to her recently divorced parents a monster or older brother Richarda ghost, her familyit usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's lives start to unravel''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. Will It is a collection of short stories more interested in the rest horrors of them ever find out what caused her fall from graceillness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and can they solve their own problems?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224089838</amazonuk>are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ivy PochodaMadelaine Lucas|title=Visitation StreetThirst for Salt|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Red Hook''Love, Brooklyn and it is blisteringly hot. Two fifteen year old girls decide the best and most exciting way to cool off is to take a small inflatable raft on to the river. The next morning one of the girls is found unconscious and washed ashore with no memory of what happened in the river and the other girl is nowhere I'd read, was supposed to be found. This becomes a big local story light and the survivorweightless feeling, saviour and community have to deal with the loss in their different ways.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444778242</amazonuk>}}but I had always longed for gravity''
}}
{{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.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lucy CruickshanksJennifer Saint|title=The Trader of SaigonAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=In the Saigon ''I was as worthy as any one of the 1980s the Vietnam War is over but the traces remainthem. Alexander has deserted from the US army and makes a comfortable living selling girls to local business men. Phuc used to be a business manI would get on board that ship, complete with mansion and the means to keep his wife and three children in affluence. Now his family live in a shanty hut, afraid of the ruling government that spies through the eyes of childrenI vowed. At last he finds a way outI would take my place, his luck not just needs to hold. Hanh also lives in poverty, desperately trying to help her sick mother with the pittance she earns from cleaning one name of the city's many open latrinesgoddess. Then one day she meets someone who offers so much more. His It was for the sake of my name is Alexander, too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782063218</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Suzanne RindellAmanthi Harris|title=The Other TypistBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The Other Typist is set in 1920s New York CityPadma, with Prohibition at its height and Rose Baker, an orphaned a young womanSri Lankan, working as has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a police typistplace she spent her formative years. While It is not a place she has no real friendswas born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she's good came to be at the Villa, how it became her job home, and seems to the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the respect of the Sergeant, whom she admires ''score'' for this gentle and the Lieutenant Detective, whom sheyet subtly violent novel. Padma's less keen on. Then a perfect storm comes into their lives, in present fails to escape her past and much like the shape musical score of the enchanting Odaliea film, and nothing will be that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the same againVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241002885</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ioanna Bourazopoulou and Yannis Panas (Translator)178563335X|title=What Lot's Wife Saw|rating=4|genre=Science Fiction|summary= It's been over 20 years since The Overflow came, flooding half of Europe. Around the same time Violet Salt, a new multi-functional mineral, appeared, its production now governed globally by the mysterious, all-powerful Consortium. Meanwhile back in Europe The Colony, a haven for those escaping floods and indeed justice, is ruled by Governor Bera and six officials, the 'Purple Stars'. All seems to be well in a despotic, lawless way until the six wake up to the realisation that the Governor has died mysteriously in the night. The Consortium needs answers so choose the greatest crossword compiler of the age, Phileas Book, to investigate, whether he wants to or not.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845025474</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSea Defences|author=Gabriel Weston|title=Dirty WorkHilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=#There are two women When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in an operating theatre on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when one starts bleeding heavily you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six- fatally year- the other freezesold Hannah and her elder brother, unableJamie, despite all whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her training and undoubted skills, to do anything at allsee her grandson. Whatever Holthorpe, on the outcome it cannot pass unnoticedNorfolk coast, is a lovely place, unreported and surgeon Nancy Mullion but Rachel is called struggling to appear before develop a tribunal appointed by real bond with the General Medical Council. Over a period parish - and she's in awe of weeks the vicar, Gail, but then she's forced to confront been doing the effect of being a doctor who has killed as well as curedjob for more than thirty years. You're probably making assumptions now Rachel and nodding wisely. Don't Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - because you are almost certainly going to be wrongit was stormy but it was probably what they needed. This will not be the story which you are expecting and it was certainly not the story which Nancy's hospital wanted to hearAnd then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022409128X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rachel Kushner1398515388|title=The FlamethrowersBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Set mainly First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in New York's art district the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the late 1970snuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, Rachel Kushner's ''and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The Flamethrowers'' tells fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the story list of a young girl, known only to the reader as Reno, priorities but - six months after the city she comes fromtsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. She He wasn's t a girl who loves motorbikes and photography, dog person but struggles the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to find her place in the New York art scene. When she falls for the estranged son, Sandro, of open his car door and Tamon the Italian motorbike manufacturer Valero, himself an artist in New York, Reno finds herself dog jumped in situations she cannot control.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846557917</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roland Watson-Grant0989715337|title=SketcherPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Nine-year-old Skid Beaumont lives with his three brothers, father Alrick and mother Valerie in the swamps beyond ''Some frogs had gotten into the New Orleans city limitswell. Life is hard and home is a rundown shack with no running water but they're only there temporarily; a 'temporarily '' that is rather longWalter stood waist-termdeep in the fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Alrick moved Long strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them from their nice home in New Orleans because . Two of the dogs leaned over the land was cheap opening and soon barked down at the city would build out to envelop strange noise of the buckets as he filled them. Years later they're still waiting for that to happen. Life isn’t exactly mundane though; there are rumours that when Skid's brother Frico draws left-handed, strange things seem to happen.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846882427</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philip SingtonDaisy Hildyard|title=The Valley of UnknowingEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In the mid-to-late eighties the German Democratic Republic looked like enduring. Bolstered by a system The summary of this book doesn''Mitarbeiter'' (''fellow workers'' t come close to explaining what is a much more amenable term than ''informers'') the Stasi kept their populace in check. Western media was easy to censor in those days. Border controls were brutal. People were shot on a regular basis trying to cross the no-man's-land into West Berlin and along done with the other inner German borderspremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099535823</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Robert WalserSally Oliver |title=The Walk 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 storiespatients 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=The publication of Early comments on this collection of around forty short stories affords the English speaking public debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a unique opportunity; that of reading Walser, possibly the leading modernist writer of Swiss German in the last centurydelight. He has received high praise in 'A Place in I will agree with the Countryfirst – tremendous is no understatement – but ', W G Sebalda delight's recently published posthumous collection and he is well-known as being perhaps using the expression in a significant influence on Franz Kafkaway I'm not familiar with. His work here dates from 1907 I have to 1929 and along with his poetry won him recognition with Berlin's avant garde. He combines lyrical delicacy with detailed observation; reflective melancholy with criticism confess my ignorance of brash commercialismthe Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. The fine writing From the little I have read (in this volume strives translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem to achieve be a hard won integrity together with an experimental capacity for reflection. It challenges tendency towards the fantastical – the reader and provokes him to new insightsmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846689589</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Saint|title=Elektra|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and the most extreme furies.|isbn=1472273915}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya8409290103|title=The WatchIf Only|author=Matthew Tree|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Nizam pushes a barrow up Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the young man got on board the boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a fortified US army base in Afghanistanmonthly allowance. What is she doing there? How will Patrick sent the soldiers react? What do they believe: their experience, their training, their gut reaction or money regularly and a young girl amputee in the middle correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the desert who may two although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, it was that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the last thing they ever see?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099565773</amazonuk>young man on his way.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anthony CartwrightAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=How I Killed Margaret ThatcherRed is My Heart
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=[[: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 possible to say not one page lacks the influence of some striking visual ideas.
|isbn=1913547183
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B098FFFBH9
|title=Snowcub
|author=Graham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=What motivates someone Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to become highlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. She gets a killer? When the reader first meets Sean Bullgreat deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, he is nine years oldLondon, living a seemingly carefree mother Kate and happy existence surrounded by his her twin, Nick. Kate runs the family and friends in business, a close-knit community toy shop called Cornucopia in DudleyPutney, West Midlands. He loves Star Wars and playing football with his school friends and adores his teenage uncle Johnny, who tells him stories and creates the most wonderful pieces which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of artinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781251576</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jenni FaganYancey Williams|title=The PanopticonCrosshairs of the Devil|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Imagine reading a book set Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in a Scottish children’s care home. It’s about a violent years and, despite his strenuous objections and a deeply disturbed fifteen year old drug addict whothanks to his daughter, when she was elevenfinds himself living - or imprisoned, found her prostitute foster mother murdered from Eddie's point of view - in room 315 of the bathtubGarden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. That’s the setNothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in-up trade of Jenni Fagan’s ''The Panopticon''writing though, and that’s what it’s about – but the funny thing is that whatever you’re picturing in your head right nowso here, and what I was imagining before I sat down to read itfor his readers, bears absolutely no resemblance to the book Fagan has actually writtenare his wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099558645</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jess Richards0008421714|title=Cooking with BonesMrs March|author=Virginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Sisters Amber and Maya run away from home, The problem began just after the city publication of Paradon, and arrive in a small villageGeorge March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Finding an old cottageEvery day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the girls settle in comfortablybread, hidden from the locals' sight while joining in with their customs as Amber backs honey cakes each night from the ingredients left daily outside the cottage and 'but isn't this the instructions of the former occupantfirst time he's cookery books. based a character on you?'' Now theyShe mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 've moved away from their old life Amber tries to encourage Maya to stand on her own two feet which isnmannerisms''t easy. For Maya Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - ''a formwandererweak, plain, engineered to reflect other's wants; a role in which it's difficult to exist normallydetestable, let alone while trying to adjust to change… andpathetic, indeedunloved, unexpected deathunloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444738038</amazonuk>''
}}