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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chuck PalahniukMatthew Tree|title=Make Something Up|rating=5|genre=Short Stories |summary=What are we to make of that subtitle-seeming writing on the front cover – ''stories you can't unread''? Does that not apply to all good fiction? Clearly it is here due to the reputation of the author, and the baggage his name brings to the page. We'd expect a dramatic approach from anything Palahniuk writes, and an added frisson, an extra layer, from which we might be forced to shrink back. But a lot of the contents don't quite go that far. Yes, things are dramatic, when society starts attaching defibrillators to itself, to create the perfect, simple, care- (''The Price is Right''-, and Kardashian-) free happiness. A man buys a horse for his daughter – but boy is it the wrong horse to buy. A man falls in love – yes, sometimes the plot summaries of these stories really are better off for being short (speaking of which, don't turn to the three-page entrant here as a taster, it'll put you off by dint of being, almost uniquely here, a nothing story). A call centre worker can't convince people he's on the level and even in their country – until someone starts riffing back to him. A housing estate report conveys bad regulation violations, but not as bad as the happenings at a 'Burning Man'-styled festival, in a very clever couple of tales. But many too are the instances where that extra step has been taken.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587688</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Aliya Whiteley|title= The Arrival of Missives|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=In the aftermath of the Great War, Shirley Fearn dreams of challenging the conventions of rural England, where life is as unchanging as the seasons. The scarred veteran Mr Tiller, left disfigured by an impossible accident on the battlefields of France, brings with him a message: part prophecy, part warning. As Shirley's village prepares for the annual May Day celebrations, where a new queen will be crowned and the future reborn, she must choose between change and renewal – will the missives Mr Tiller brings prevent her mastering her identity?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907389377</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= P K Lynch|title= Armadillos|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Aggie is one of Texas' downtrodden. Dirt poor and abused. ''a 'sub' from a 'sub' family'' … ''Her father and brother enact that 'sub'-ness on her, week in, week out.'' ''She has only the vaguest notion that there is something wrong with the abuse she endures..''|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178507959X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Tarjei Vesaas, Torbjorn Stoverud and Michael Barnes (translators)|title=The BirdsNever Know

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=We're somewhere in rural Scandinavia, on the shores of a large lake, but in a community relying on the farmland that is scattered in amongst the woods. Our chief concerns are brother and sister – Mattis and Hege. He, Mattis, is what the other villagers call 'simple' – sure, he knows a few things about life, and what makes a clever person and what makes a well-turned phrase, and how Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to talk to girls and when to not stare at them, but he is definitely not quite as the others would wish. Those others include be different from his sister, who is seeing her life waste away in listening to his chatter, knitting jumpers to make ends meetfather, a drunk and regretting in her own small way what has got her to middle-age in this situation. But from this galling introduction, you should take away the bigger picture – even if there is no way out, the life in this countryside is brilliantly conveyed, full chronic underachiever whose dreams of sun as well as shade, being exceptional at any of labour his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of idleness, and wit and charm as much as hardshipself confidence. I defy you So Tim applied himself to read this his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and think this corner of Scandinavia bleakset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0914671200</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nicola BarkerB0C47LV1PC|title=The Cauliflower®Fragility|author=Mosby Woods

|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Nicola Barker teasingly refers to herself as this bookCan you make a ''s Yo birthing person'collagist'joke? And if you could, piecing together diverse documents to create a picture of Sri Ramakrishna (1836–1886)is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, a largely illiterate guru who attracted followers to his intense worship of would it land? The catch is that the goddess Kalianswer for both could well be.... His life story no. ''Fragility'' is a sticky mass set as the city of contradictions:|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785150669</amazonuk>Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Toni Morrison Mosby Woods|title= God Help the ChildA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=The 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. A truly complex and emotionally raw portrayalwar here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that seeks to cover issues nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of racecircumstances. That man would be valuable, gender, and paedophiliaright? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. A slim volume, yesImagine then, but one that is powerful in its punchthis man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099555921</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jesus Carrasco and Margaret Jull Costa (translator)0571379559|title=Out in the OpenThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=35

|summary=Meet ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the boystory of four people. We never learn his name – Tess Hembry's roots are in fact we learn very little Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in this bookthe house on the riverbank, such built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as where or when we areit might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and whyfloods. What we do know is that he has left home. We get the feeling Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his father is too handy with punishmentvegetables, but that can't be to complete the only reason for him first hiding out delivery rounds - and to bring in an olive grove overnightsufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, then fleeing across the plains surrounding rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his familymother's villageJamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Especially as hePeople don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's chosen one of the most awkward, attritional times to cross said plains – the land an assumption when Max is in the middle of a horrendous droughtout with his mother that she's his nanny. When he tries to steal his first provisions from an aged goatherd, however, he finds some light and liquid, but is this substitute father figure ever going to be enough to help the boy flee what he needs to?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009958218X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philip DentClaire North|title=Mutable Passions: Charlotte Bronte: A Disquieting AffairHouse of Odysseus|rating=35|genre=Historical Literary Fiction |summary=As the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë's birth approaches, it is a perfect time for reading about her. Philip Dent's second novel chooses a lesser known period of her life What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to dramatize. All her siblings are now dead; during a hard winter when she is unable to visit her best friend, Ellen Nussey, Charlotte spends her time finishing the excellent ''VilletteIthaca'', her final novelpicks up a few months after where we left off. The family servantIn the palace of Odysseus, Tabby, ribs Charlotte about with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her romantic prospects – including Patrick Brontë's curatehusband, Arthur Bell Nichollswho sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. Charlotte responds with indignation: 'I could no more kiss As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the lips throne of a man with a beard as big as rooks' nests than I could yours, Tabbythe Western Isles.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178589093X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Miroslav Penkov|title=Stork Mountain|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=A young man, his grandfather Having survived – politically and a stork with a broken wing are physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca''company of rebels'' at s shores, Queen Penelope is on the heart brink of this lively tale set in Bulgaria's Strandja Mountainsa fragile peace. The storks One that shatters however with the return to the mountains each spring are migrantsof Orestes, like so many King of the people that have passed through the region over the centuries. The young narrator is also in transitMycenae, born in Bulgaria, but raised and educated in America. The story opens with his return to Bulgaria in search of his grandfather who has broken off contact with his family in America. But the young man's motives are not as clear cut as first appearssister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473622182</amazonuk>0356516075

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Elisa AlbertKay Chronister|title= After BirthDesert Creatures

|genre= Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary= This book With a world that is definitely not becoming increasingly inhospitable for anyone who has humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a rosy picture of new motherhood. In factrobotic takeover, I would probably avoid it if you are contemplating giving birth in the near future. For any woman who has ever struggled through the first few months a world devoid of motherhood, however, water or a partner of somebody who is going through itnuclear holocaust, it this genre is an astounding and revelatory reada way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. Never before have I read ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a more searing, honest and open discussion new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the emotional upheaval fears that exist for humanity today. It is a woman often goes through after giving birthshocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009959014X</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Ayelet Gundar-GoshenEric LaRocca|title= Waking LionsThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There

|genre= Literary FictionHorror|summary= If the point of 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 ''literatureBig Bad'' - as opposed to the less exalted though just-as-worthwhile forms of writing - , whether that is to force you to think about the real worlda home invader, the political worlda monster or a ghost, the painful life-as-we-know-it worldusually something tangible and, whilst catching you up in a by the end of the story about something , beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that never really happened. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, but, you know, might well have done so…and if you think grief and humiliation. Horrors that matters, then you must read this booklinger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782271562</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yan LiankeMadelaine Lucas|title=The Four BooksThirst for Salt

|summary=''The Four BooksLove, I'' is d read, was supposed to be a difficultlight and weightless feeling, challenging novel and not but I had always longed for the feint heartedgravity'' Told from a retrospective view, or for someone looking for a pageyoung woman unravels the year-turnerlong relationship that once defined her. It really challenges Overlaid with later wisdom, the reader's perceptions and opens up narrator relives the affair with a gateway man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to an era that is difficult to imagine for anyone brought up in a western cultureits sorrowful end the summer after. Set in Maoist China it tells against the story backdrop of four protagonists and a memorable antagonist. The four, found guilty of anti-revolutionary crimes are undergoing re-education in a work camp governed by the child. With an Orwellian feel, isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'The Four Books'details the 24-year-old narrator' will come to be regarded as an undoubted masterpieces deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099569493</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yann MartelMichael Grothaus|title=The High Mountains of PortugalBeautiful Shining People

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Tomas is being thrust into the twentieth Century, ''But fearing something and he doesn't like having itcome to pass are two different things. He has given himself the job And I'm willing to bet most of seeking something out in the High Mountains of Portugalwhat we fear will never happen, based on an ancient religious diary he found working in an archive, and or we can take steps to do so he needs change it.'' ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the use question of his uncle's brand new car to get him there identity and back in timeacceptance. His jaw drops when he learns he will have Of what it means to do the driving himself, for he cannot make head nor tail of be human. Of what anything on the infernal machine does is real and why. It what is of course a certain kind of progress, a looking forwardartificial, which has become quite anathema to him – for ever since he lost his beloved wife, beloved child and father, all in whether the space development of a week, he has walked everywhere backwards – shielding himself from what really technology is ahead with a padded behind, and never letting sight of what he has lostexciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782114696</amazonuk>191458564X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Antonio Moresco and Richard Dixon (translator)Jennifer Saint|title=Distant LightAtalanta|rating=4.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Our unnamed narrator might ''I was as worthy as well be the only person aliveany one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. He knows he's I would take my place, not – he still goes down to just in the nearest inhabited village to buy things to eat and other necessities, and he sees planes spreading their contrails over name of the remote area he lives in – but he might as well begoddess. A lot It was for the sake of his thoughts are about life, howevermy name, too. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for he has little to do except notice the nature around himbeing born a daughter rather than a son, from Atalanta is raised under the smell protective eye of lilies burgeoning with nobody else to see them in this deserted villagethe goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the swallows darting across the ravines Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the countryside. Life Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and the nature carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of a light challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that he sees spring into activity every night at what he thought was a totally lifelessif she marries, empty forest area on land separated from his lookout post in his back garden by a deep, wooded gorge…it will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0914671421</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tania JamesAmanthi Harris|title=The Tusk That Did the DamageBeautiful Place|rating=3.5

|summary=Tania James Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was a Fulbright Fellow in New Delhi in 2011–12born into, but the one she thinks of as home. For this How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her second novel after life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''Atlas of Unknownsscore'' (shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian literature) this gentle and the story collection yet subtly violent novel. Padma''Aerogrammes'', she clearly draws on s present fails to escape her personal knowledge past and much like the musical score of India in all a film, that strand weaves its contradictions, especially when it comes to environmental policy. The novel alternates between three perspectives: a third-person account of an elephant named way through everything that happens at the Gravedigger and first-person narratives from a poacher and a documentary filmmakerVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784700584</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Anakana Schofield178563335X|title= Martin John|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I had heard much about this novel before I read it for review, by which I mean I had heard it was profane, strange and had a daring subject matter accompanied by elements of humour. I have to say that whilst I agree it is certainly profane and strange and incredibly innovative, I didn't find much humour in it at all.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276665</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewSea Defences|author=Jon Kalman Stefansson and Philip Roughton (translator)|title=The Heart of ManHilary Taylor|rating=35

|summary=What could be better than an existentialist book from rural IcelandWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, full of gnomic comments about how close life sitting in on a PCC meeting and death are, that has as its core a journey taken bywondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, amongst othersChristopher, a naïve collects six-year-old Hannah and hormonal teenaged lad and a full coffin? Whyher elder brother, I hear you cryJamie, whilst Rachel holds a trilogy concerning the samesobbing parishioner. Yes, itThelma's the obvious answer, really – why else would we come to this third partdaughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, where on the survivors of the expedition rest upNorfolk coast, note the women giving them helpis a lovely place, and see how eminently close the circle of life but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the figure parish - and she's in awe of a snake swallowing its tail throughthe vicar, among other thingsGail, dogs rutting in but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a church below walk on the coffin's bier?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184866236X</amazonuk>beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Joanna Walsh1398515388|title= VertigoThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary General Fiction|summary= The short stories First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in Joanna Walsh's collection have the overall effect of disparate streams of consciousness of a woman laying bear her very soulocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, whilst often going about seemingly mundane activities of caused the ordinary nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and every dayutter devastation. The narrative voice appeared to me to be deaths were uncountable, and the same woman speaking throughout, playing different roles, though I'm not sure this loss of livelihoods was meant to be the casewidespread. The style fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the stories is that of short vignettes, mostly written in tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a modernist, stream of consciousness styleconvenience store. Sometimes, He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the prose appears almost poeticdog jumped in. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276800</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kristopher Jansma0989715337|title=Why We Came to Papa on the CityMoon|author=Marco North|rating=4.5

|summary='We came to 'Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the city because we wished to live haphazardlyfragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, to reach 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.'' How is that for only an opening? The style of this novel in the least realistic form of our desires, interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to see if we could not learn what our failures had to teach, wistful and notmusing, when we came to liveturning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, discover that we had never died. We wanted to dig deep and suck out all who has the marrow most wonderful turn of lifephrase, starts as he means to be overworked and reduced to our last witgo on.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0525426604</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ernst Haffner and Michael Hofmann (translator)Daisy Hildyard|title=Blood BrothersEmergency

|summary=ItThe summary of this book doesn's Berlin, and t come close to explaining what is done with the Nazis are on their way to power, even if they will never cross these pages themselvespremise. |isbn=1913097811}}  {{Frontpage |author=Sally Oliver |title=The city – hugeWeight of Loss |rating=4 |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, glamorousshe awakes to find strange, bustlingthick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, vicious in diagnosing the way it can swallow people – is home odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to a countless hoard of teenagersher grief, but we focus on just a fewrecommends she go to stay at Nede, most of whom have been an experimental new treatment centre in some corrective institution or other before nowWales. They call themselves the Blood Brothers, even if all they share Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the most unglamorous drudgery other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of going from one doss-house a kind. As Marianne's memories threaten to anotheroverwhelm her, balancing the cost Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a few cigarettes with 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= Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a warm room for delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the expression in a few hours or some stale rolls to eatway I'm not familiar with. But en route I have to them is another 'Borstal' escapee, Williconfess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. Surely his fate is going From the little I have read (in translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be nothing if not more of a tendency towards the fantastical – the same?mystical realism. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099594048</amazonuk>0861541901

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sara TaylorJennifer Saint|title=The ShoreElektra|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=The first 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story we hear from the Shore, a group of isolated islands off the coast of Virginia, is from Chloe, three women who's telling her sister about what she overheard live in the storeheavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. She'd been there buying chicken necks so that they could go crabbing. Normally they used bacon rindsCassandra, Clytemnestra, but they'd already eaten those. Cabel Bloxom had been murdered and ''they done cut his thang clean off''. The girls Elektra are motherless and Chloe is fiercely protective all bit players in the story of her little sister Reneethe Trojan War. She's Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the first of silent women have the strong women we'll encounter in these most compelling stories, which interlink to give a greater pictureand the most extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009959188X</amazonuk>1472273915

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Adam Baron8409290103|title=BlackheathIf Only|author=Matthew Tree

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Househusband James is happy in BlackheathTwenty-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 monthly allowance. He's started doing standPatrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts -sprang up again so between the 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 too has an achievement didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his life to balance wife Alice's award winning poetry. Children Ida and Dominic are doing well so all is great. Elsewhere in the area Amelia is equally happy with her actor husband Richard, her own career and other children Niamh and teenage Michael. Sometimes happiness isn't enough though and, as The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the worlds of the two families start to mingle, things start changing for each of themyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908434902</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julian BarnesAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=The Noise of TimeRed is My Heart

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Julian Barnes's first novel since he won the Booker Prize for [[The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] is a fictionalised biography of Russian composer Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (1906–75)books have always been black and white and read in my house. Knowing Barnes's penchant for stylistic experimentation, thoughAnd so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was never going to be a straightforward, chronological life storyand is, black and white and red. Instead, as Barnes so often doesYes, he sets up a tripartite structurehas an artistic collaborator on this piece, focussing on three moments in Shostakovichand I think it's life when he has a reckoning with Power (always capitalised here). The title phrase helpfully spells out what possible to say not one page lacks the book is all about: 'Art is the whisper influence of history, heard above the noise of timesome striking visual ideas.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910702609</amazonuk>1913547183

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Danielle McLaughlinB098FFFBH9|title=Dinosaurs on Other PlanetsSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright

|genre=Short Stories Literary Fiction|summary=Seeing as this book Fourteen-year-old Rachel is clearly a talented author hitting the ground running, I will dispense with any major preamble. We start with a tale of a daughter affected by the emotions of her parents as they separate – and the influence of a certain school-teacher – from the mother's point of view. An ancient input shows how alien, animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the modern day domesticity how regular, way in which human beings exploit the isolation of animal world. She gets a woman can feel, as events are peppered by minor acts great deal of destruction. But men can be alienated too – especially onesupport from her family: father Pip Harrison, a reluctant guest lecturer at a party for children hosted by someone he once had an affair with – he feels the new form of this influence in the light of another one he has had to try Imperial College, London, mother Kate and abandonher twin, Nick. 'All About Alice' – that's what Kate runs the title character wants to say but has nobody to speak it tofamily business, but is it her – mid-40s and singlea toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, living with her father – that which is most removed from her dreams or her old friend and now child factory, Marian? And where we complete a lap 'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of the calendar with the wintry tale of a man unable to tell his work superiors of the problems he faces at home – a new home, recently built like so many one sees while driving round Irelandinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473613701</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anne EnrightYancey Williams|title=The Green RoadCrosshairs of the Devil

|summary=''The Green Road'' Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is the story of a family. If the author was anyone other than Anne Enright it would be stereotypically Irishgetting on in years and, with all the appropriate characters in place: the boy who goes off despite his strenuous objections and thanks to be a priest, the his daughter who likes the bottle far too much, the son who does good works and the woman who stays back where she was born and marries a local manfinds himself living - or imprisoned, the dead husband who was perhaps just a little bit beneath the wife who plays the from Eddie''grande dame'' and is perfect at being needy, whilst all the while maintaining that she needs nothing. But, s point of course, it ''is'' Anne Enright.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099539799</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Kate Atkinson|title=A God view - in Ruins|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Teddy Todd never really expected to survive room 315 of the war. As a bomber pilot it wasn't something which you could rely on and he certainly knew the statistics. But - against all the odds, he came through itGarden of Eden nursing home, albeit with some time spent as only a prisoner of war. On balance he had a good wartrusty nursing aide, but time will see him married to NancyJenkins, father for palatable company. Nothing is going to Viola and grandfather to Sunny and Bertie keep Eddie from his stock- and left with the feeling that it's more difficult to have a good peace than a good war.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552776645</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Chuck Palahniuk|title=Beautiful You|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Meet Penny Harrigan. And let's hope your introduction to her is more gentle than that we have on the first page of this book, where she is being raped in front -trade of a full court house, who – male to the bone – sit back and say nothingwriting though, if not whip out their camera phone. Once people take her out on a gurney and recognise herso here, we can start from the beginningfor his readers, where she is a lowly underling at a law firm, having failed too many exams to progress satisfactorily. The company is where the worldare his wanderings through his life's richest man is in legal negotiations having left the world's best and most beautiful actress, and lo and behold he just happens to pick Penny to replace her with, even if she doesn't think of herself as the most beautiful girl aroundwork. But what exactly is it she is wanted for, and can her apolitical style of feminism and aspirations be met?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009958767X</amazonuk>0986031658}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Helle Helle and Martin Aitken (translator)0008421714|title=This Should be Written in the Present TenseMrs March|author=Virginia Feito|rating=4.5

|summary= This is The problem began just after the first novel publication of Helle HelleGeorge March's, an award winning Danish author, most successful novel to be translated into Englishdate. It is easy Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to see from this novel why she is gaining accolades in her Danish homelandeither be reading it or had already done so. The rhythmic, natural flow of Every day Mrs March went to the narrative is mesmerising and appears local patisserie to lull you through buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the book. It has some lovelybread, spare sentences of description: ''There were run-down cottages with open doors and news but isn't this the first time he's based a character on the radio. you?'' Gulls flocked around an early harvester in She mentioned that Johanna, the late sunprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''. But mostlyPerhaps this would not have mattered, it except for the fact that Johanna is written in the whore of Nantes - ''a modernistweak, plain, detestable, almost stream of consciousness stylepathetic, unloved, which I found refreshingunloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587475</amazonuk>''