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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Country of Ice Cream StarMatthew Tree|authortitle=Sandra NewmanWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='My name Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be Ice Cream Fifteen Star different from his father, a drunk and this be the tale chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of how I bring the cure to his artistic passions all the Nighted States, save every poory children, short for life. Is how a city die for selfish love, failed miserably and rise from this same smallness. Be how the new America begin, in wars against all hope - a country with no power in a world that hate its lifewho had endless crises of self confidence. So been the faith I swornTim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and it ain't evils in no world nor cruelties in no red hell can change the vally heart of Ice Cream Starset himself high but achievable ambitions.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701186429</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0C47LV1PC
|title=Fragility
|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.
''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bilal TanweerMosby Woods|title=The Scatter Here is Too GreatA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When The West isn't the bomb exploded at dominant force it once was. Nobody in the Karachi railway station causing intended death and mayhem, an aging reactionary poet, his middle-aged sonWest is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a childpush for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a writer and man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a woman man who relates more to stories than realitycan tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, are right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in the midst of ithistory. Each experiences the blast as differently as their experiences of life are from each other but each ''will'' be affectedImagine then, that this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224099116</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Emily Mackie0571379559|title=In Search The House of SolaceBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jacob Little ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is many things to many the story of four people as he goes through life, reinventing his personae and name. Who exactly is he? Perhaps heTess Hembry's unsure roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the thing hehouse on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's certain stood the passage of is time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his love for a young woman he lived with for 2 yearsvegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. It took her leaving They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the next decade apart for him to realise he loves her but now he wants to make up for lost timerainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. She said her name was Solace so now hePeople don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's (all together now) in search of Solacean assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340992522</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
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}}{{Frontpage|author= Kay Chronister|title= Desert Creatures|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|isbn=1803364998}}{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Eric LaRocca|title=The Sixteenth Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= 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 process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of Juneillness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.}}{{Frontpage|author=Maya LangMadelaine Lucas|title=Thirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=On June 16th''Love, 1904I'd read, James Joyce was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had his first date with his future wife, Nora Barnacle – an occasion he commemorated by choosing it as the one-day setting always longed for his ''magnum opus'', gravity''Ulysses''; main character Leopold Bloom gives his name to the annual Joyce celebration that takes place around the world on June 16th.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1476745749</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=FireflyMichael Grothaus|authortitle=Janette JenkinsBeautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I read ''Firefly'' wanting But fearing something and having it come to be charmedpass are two different things. Sat at home, wishing And I was in Jamaica'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, idly humming or we can take steps to change it.'Mad Dogs and Englishmen'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099575043</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Karin AltenbergJennifer Saint|title=Breaking LightAtalanta|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Gabriel Askew retires to the village ''I was as worthy as any one of Mortfordthem. I would get on board that ship, the I vowed. I would take my place , not just in which he grew up and from where childhood ghosts haunt him to this daythe name of the goddess. It’s a conscious decision: Gabe, ostracised as a child due to his hair lipIt was for the sake of my name, returns to face these demons that have controlled his life and forced him to do the unthinkable but now he wants peace… if it's not too late.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780877153</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Beautiful FoolsAmanthi Harris|authortitle=R Clifton SpargoBeautiful Place|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Famous writers' wives have had something Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a literary revival in recent place she spent her formative years. Paula McLain's ''The Paris Wife'' and Naomi Wood's ''Mrs Hemingway'' imagine It is not a place she was born into, but the lives one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the various Hemingway womenVilla, how it became her home, while the vogue for flappers and [[The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald|The Great Gatsby]] has led to a spate of books about Zelda Fitzgerald. Fans of the Roaring Twenties machinations that have been spoiled for choice, what with [[Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler]], flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''Call Me Zeldascore'' by Erika Robuck, for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma''Guests on Earth'' by Lee Smiths present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1468308807</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roopa Farooki178563335X|title=The Good ChildrenSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=The Saddeq family are an example of success for their friends When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and neighbours in Lahorewondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Mr Saddeq is a doctor with his own practiceHer husband, Christopher, sons Sully collects six-year-old Hannah and Jakie are studying medicine in the US and UK respectively and daughters Mae and Lana have made good marriage matchesher elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. However the four Thelma'goods daughter-in-law won' children would view their success differentlyt let her see her grandson. Each reacts differently Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the futures that their caring father parish - and calculating mother have mapped out for them and plough their own furrows as far as theyshe're permitted but s in awe of the gravitational pull of home remains a constant through their lives and alsovicar, to some extentGail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the generation that followsbeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755383427</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dinaw Mengestu 1398515388|title=All Our DaysThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Isaac is a refugee from Ethiopia who finds a home First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in Uganda. At the university he's taken under ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the wing of a political activist also called Isaacnuclear meltdown. The 1970s is a dangerous time to be in Uganda as their world is about to exploderesult was complete and utter devastation. Years later Isaac the Ethiopian finds himself in America The deaths were uncountable, and lives under the care loss of social worker Helenlivelihoods was widespread. Slowly they form a less than professional relationship and Helen realises The fact that what little she knows many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of him may not be priorities but - six months after the truthtsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. Gradually his past is revealed as He wasn't a dog person but the guilt convenience store owner's comment that he carries comes would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the surfacedog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444793772</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=Never Any End to ParisPapa on the Moon|author=Enrique Vila-MatasMarco North|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There is never any end to Paris. The sentence pops up, hypnotic, through most of the book. At times ironic, thoughtful or questioning, it is a quote from Hemingway’s novel, ''A Moveable Feast'', in which Some frogs had gotten into the American author looked back at his days in Paris, where he was ‘very poor and very happywell.’ The narrator of ''Never Any End to Paris'' tells us that when he lived in Paris, he was ‘very poor and very unhappy.’|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846558042</amazonuk>}}
''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, 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 barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he filled them.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Frances and BernardDaisy Hildyard|authortitle=Carlene BauerEmergency|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There's something very special about an epistolary novel. The format might seem unnatural to readers in this day of abbreviated text messages and e-mails, but the conceit of a written exchange allows for fully developed first-person voices and a confessional tone. Provided the author can bypass the subtle difficulties of plot-building, letters are also a handy indicator of the passage of time, and ably convey period vocabulary.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099578603</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Adrian Harvey|title=Being Someone|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The relationship between a mahout and his elephant is close: some have said that it's rather like a marriage. On the surface it seems almost idyllic with an obvious affection between man and beast - "that their spirits were water of the same pool", but all is not quite as it seems. Iravatha was the magnificent elephant who, year in, year out, led the Maharajah's parade only this year there was a dreadful accident and Annayya, his mahout, slipped beneath the elephantbook doesn's foot - and was killed. They'd been together for more than half a century and beautiful, intelligent Iravatha knew t come close to explaining what this meantis done with the premise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1909273090</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=TaraShea NesbitSally Oliver |title=The Wives Weight of Los AlamosLoss |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=1943: In the US a group of men, women and children are uprooted Early comments on this debut novel from their homes with hardly any notice and after being sworn to total secrecy. Their destination is a hastily knocked upEcuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, unfinished small town in the New Mexico desert; a place where muddy water drips from delight. I will agree with the taps and their lives are turned upside down for nearly 3 years. This isnfirst – tremendous is no understatement – but 't mass abduction by a malevolent power but delight' is perhaps using the US governmentexpression in a way I's plan to end WWIIm not familiar with. The men (and some I have to confess my ignorance of the women) are scientists, Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. From the place is Los Alamos, the site of the project that will result little I have read (in Robert Oppenheimer stating ''Nowtranslation, I am become Death, don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the destroyer of worlds." His story has been well documented in the past; now the voices belong to fantastical – the Los Alamos Wivesmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408845997</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=OrfeoJennifer Saint|authortitle=Richard PowersElektra|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='No one thinks twice about Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the quiet, older bohemian story of three women who live in the American Craftsman at 806 South Linden…people take up all kinds heavily male dominated world of hobbies in retirementAncient Greece.' Seventy-year-old Peter Els is an out-of-work composer Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in Pennsylvania. He teaches music appreciation at a senior centre, but much the story of his spare time is devoted to chemistry experimentsthe Trojan War. As a college student he agonised over Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the choice between chemistry and music, in fact, and these days he wonders if he got it wrong. His avant-garde compositions, such as a three-hour opera based on medieval German history, were infrequent and never very well received. Should he silent women have gone into biochemistry after all? Thus, thanks to a few thousand dollars' worth of semi-professional equipment purchased off the Internet, Els is now engaged in a new kind of composition – with bacterial DNA taking most compelling stories and the place of musical notesmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782391614</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreview|author=Ron Butlin|title=Ghost MoonFrontpage|ratingisbn=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Maggie sits in an elderly persons' care home tgryig to exist through the ever tightening grip of dementia. Her son, Tom, visits trying to jog her memory but she doesn't even recognise him. To Maggie, Tom is 'Michael' a name that means nothing to a son getting more desperate to break through to his mother once again. However there was once a Michael, in a life that bubbles with secrets that even Tom doesn't know; for once, long ago, Maggie was young.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773770</amazonuk>}} {{newreview8409290103|title=The One I WasIf Only|author=Eliza GrahamMatthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In 1939Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, before to ensure that the outbreak of young man got on board the Second World War, boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a boy arrived at Harwich docksmonthly allowance. He was Patrick sent the money regularly and a Kindertransport refugee fleeing correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the anti-Semitism in Nazi Germanytwo although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. Benjamin Goldman would change It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his name to Benny Gault when his idea son, it was that the war wouldnhe didn't happen and he could go home care to Germany came to nothing, but have him in the meantime this country where he was adopted by Lord might be a danger to his wife and Lady Dornerother children. Six boys were The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to live at their country home - Fairfleet - and be educated by a private tutor. On get the face of it Benny's luck could not have worked out better, but he was hiding a secretyoung man on his way. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910229016</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Indecent ActsAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|authortitle=Nick BrooksRed is My Heart
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Meet Grace. She's in her forties, living with a hit-[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and-miss family in a Glasgow council flat, white and read in the middle of a whole host of issuesmy house. She has issues about her parentsAnd so was this one, and their moving on or death; she has issues about her sister who might or might not although I could have had a much superior life pattern than Grace; she has issues about her children – Francis who has left Grace with her own daughter to spend time with drink or drugs instead, and son Vincent, who will like as not create an issue by joining the army and moving on himself. Grace also has issues with the fact spelled that she is nearly as blind as a bat, and can neither read nor write. She's started the novel where she shouldn't be more accurately – at home in Glasgow, struggling, as she this one was due to fly to meet her sister at last, yet packed her glasses in the case that must be the other end, and completely missed her flight.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908754451</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=A Well-Tempered Heart|author=Jan-Philipp Sendker|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ten years on from the previous episode, Julia Win, successful corporate lawyer specialising in intellectual property rights is exhausted, unhappy black and alonewhite and red. Somewhat distant in all senses of the wordYes, if not exactly estrangedhe has an artistic collaborator on this piece, from her mother and brother, she has recently left a relationship that should have worked but just didnI think it't and her only real connection is with her artist friend Amy Lee.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184697285X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Something Like Happy|author=John Burnside|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=How do you pick a name for a short story collection? It seems s possible to me the ''...and other stories'' add-on is like picking a favourite child, a promotion of say not one portion of the content above the rest. [[:Category:John Burnside|John Burnside]] has got a title story here, but such is page lacks the mood influence of the book that he seems to have nailed the matter, and picked the most apposite name. ''Something Like Happy'' could in a way be the title for practically every piece heresome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099575590</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B098FFFBH9|title=Brief Loves That Live ForeverSnowcub|author=Andrei MakineGraham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Chitralekha Guraamaa Fourteen-year-old Rachel is preparing for her 84th birthday celebrations - her Chaurasi - school's animal rights project leader and she and her grandchildren (or rather grandadults as they friend are now) arrive from around producing a competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. They went away in search She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a better life but better comes lecturer at a costImperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, Nick. Baghwati married beneath her casteKate runs the family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, Manasa which is resentful where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of an apparently helpless disabled father-in-law and Agastaya hides a man-sized secret. All have one thing in commoninformation: the dread of facing their manipulative, powerful grandmother and their inability to get on with each otherfive soft toys. Worlds may collide but let the festivities commence!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780872984</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview|title=The Collected Works of A J FikryFrontpage|author=Gabrielle Zevin|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=A J Fikry is not having a good time. He's lost his wife to a car crash, and he's not making that much money. The book store he runs, stuck out on a limb on a quiet island community, is too remote to turn a profit year-round, and he has just dismissed the latest publisher's rep to turn up at his door, partly because her previous counterpart, an inconsequential part of A J's life when all is said and done, had died and he didn't know about it. But his bad time is about to get a lot worse, as the one thing he owns worth the most – a rare book, more valuable than his house, his business, anything – is about to vanish. Which bizarrely will cause several major changes to his one-person household…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408704617</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewYancey Williams|title=The Last Boat Home|author=Dea Brovig|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Then: On the farm above a remote Norwegian hamlet, in 1976, schoolgirl Else is waiting for her mother to return through the wind and the snow. She is also clutching at the kitchen table as the contractions worsen. Now: fast forward to 2009. Else now lives in the town the hamlet has grown into, on the back of oil money. Her daughter has a daughter Crosshairs of her own, but still spends many a night not coming home. ''She must have met someone'' the eleven-year-old granddaughter says matter-of-factly. Else has made a life for herself, running a spa, looking after her daughter and her granddaughter. A quiet life, but not such a bad one.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091954290</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=The Beggar and the Hare|author=Tuomas KyroDevil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Our heroAward-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, Vatanescu, is a fish out of water. He's a father without despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his familydaughter, a man without a homefinds himself living - or imprisoned, a possibility without a chance. Hefrom Eddie's being transported across Europe by a criminal peoplepoint of view -smuggler, who is also packing Vatanescu's sister off to the cosmetic surgeon then the prostitute trade. Our hero is destined to sit in discomfort, sleet and in hateful gazes room 315 of others as a beggar on the streets Garden of Helsinki. But at the same time impossibilities are amassing – one of which splits Vatanescu from his minder/mentorEden nursing home, and leaves him on the run with only a fistful of useless currency. A further impossibility gifts him a friendlytrusty nursing aide, warm companion – a rabbit being chased by local youths jumps into the sanctuary of his armsJenkins, and becomes a welcome source of focusfor palatable company. From then on many more jumps will be made Nothing is going to keep Eddie from one impossibility to anotherhis stock-in-trade of writing though, so here, for his readers, as the are his wanderings through his life of this illegal immigrant begins to resonate across his adopted homeland…'s work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780721641</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0008421714|title=The Blazing WorldMrs March|author=Siri HustvedtVirginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='All intellectual and artistic endeavours…fare better in The problem began just after the mind publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the crowd when last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the crowd knows local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that somewhere behind particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the great work or bread, ''but isn't this the great spoof it can locate first time he's based a cock and a pair of balls.character on you?'' Thus we are introduced to She mentioned that Johanna, the unforgettable Harriet Burden – larger-than-lifeprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''. Perhaps this would not have mattered, sixexcept for the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes -foot-tall amazon artist – and to some of the novel's essential elements: musing on what makes intellectual products successful in 'a postmodern marketplaceweak, feminist resentment of the overvaluing of male achievementplain, detestable, pathetic, and an unapologeticunloved, playful boldness with languageunloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444779648</amazonuk>''
}}