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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=I J Kay295967572X|title=Mountains of the MoonPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens

|summary=The story starts harshly, with Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a release from prison, a bail hostel, a refuge for people train journey with mental health problems as a better-than-nothing-lied-to-be-obtained kind of a sanctuary and a slow easing back into societyhis companion Django. If you can call a housing association flat, with a decorating voucher Where they're going and no furniturewhat the purpose of this journey is, only occasional power and annoying neighbours is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''societyon the floor somewhere''and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554739</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennie RooneyMakenna Goodman|title=Red JoanHelen of Nowhere

|summary=It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is very obvious where Jennie Rooney has taken the idea for her novel ''Red Joan'' fromnot quite right. As she acknowledges fullyThe protagonist, it has its origin in a disgraced professor on the 1999 story brink of Melita Norwood whose espionage for the Russians wasn't discovered until she was in her late 80slosing both his career and his relationship, but while Norwood was a dyed in the wool communistembodies this feeling. However, Rooney offers Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a more complex back story to her characterforce which is seductive, Joanradical and unnerving: Helen. The result connection between Helen and the protagonist is a very different type indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of spy novel than normal. Joanthe countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a widowed grandmothervolta in his life, is going about her day past tied to day life when MI5 come knocking on her door to ask about her pasthis potential fresh start. The narrative switches between their questions to her realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her recollections as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|isbn=1804272205}}{{Frontpage|author=Olga Tokarczuk|title=House of her time at Cambridge Day, House of Night|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'' The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the late 1930s where communist feelings weresmall, by somesubtle changes which govern our lives, given a more sympathetic earlike the shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. When Joan falls for LeoBut, the cousin of her Russian born friend Sonyaconstant in that image is the house, she gets dragged into a world that stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is dangerous and morally complexperceived.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701187573</amazonuk>1804271918

In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, above all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. |isbn=1804271799}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jason HinojosaJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=The Conception of Zachary MuseVaim

|summary=Evangeline Muse gives birth to Zachary alone ''All was strange''... This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a fictional fishing village in her special lagoon… but that's starting at Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and Eline, two of the endprotagonists caught in its melancholic current. In the beginning|isbn=1804271829}}{{Frontpage|author=Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Big Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, Thomas Greene is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a tutor kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and Will Archer closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. When the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me,'' it is less an invitation than a talented wood carver who both accept employment from Michael Musedesperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. What they don't realise at that moment The imagined recipient of this plea isXavier, once they meet his beautiful daughterher ex-partner, Evangeline, nothing will ever be the same again for any of thema ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>9380905440</amazonuk>1804271934

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andrew CowanHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Worthless MenLili is Crying

|summary=If you read a lot 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'' depicts a much more gritty and earthy England. Set First published in 1916 1953 in an industrial and market townFrench, it weaves together several narratives that combine to depict this novel is a hard life even before timeless text which wrenches the outbreak hearts of war. In fact, its easier to imagine the lure of adventure that the war initially offered readers just as a change Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the harsh realities of life at homepage and positions them elsewhere, although by the time Cowan's novel beginsdisjointed, truncated. Like the grim reality lives of what is involved has dampened much of this enthusiasmher characters, they are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>144475940X</amazonuk>1804271675

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Meike ZiervogelJonathan Buckley|title=MagdaOne Boat

|summary=Meet ''One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. Set against the evocative backdrop of a woman whosmall coastal Greek town, despite praying this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and its power to remain virginalprovoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the death of both her parents. Prompted by her mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-aware, had seven childreninviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. Meet It is a woman whose mother book that not only requires but inspires depth of thought her , since its narrative structure is fragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|isbn=1804271764}}{{Frontpage|author=Eowyn Ivey|title=Black Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''hoity-toityBlack Woods Blue Sky''tells the story of Birdie, and spoiltthe young mother of toddler Emaleen, and who thought longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she should go to work in works as a bar waitress, a factory at school age to know setting which enables her bad habits and her place betteraccidental neglect of Emaleen. Meet Described as a woman of whom her oldest daughter would write 'I don't care what Mother says. Mother isnwild card''t always right. No, she definitely isn'tfeels stuck in her day-to-day life, and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature.' All three women areWhen she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man, of coursewho says he has a cabin over there, one she feels called to go - and the samebring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and theyEmaleen're Magda Goebbels, the woman who epitomised more than anyone the Nazi wifes lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907773401</amazonuk>1472279042

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shani BoianjiuSally Rooney|title=The People Intermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction |summary=Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of Forever are life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469}}{{Frontpage|author=Fyodor Dostoyevsky|title=White Nights|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=As always in Dostoyevsky, the character work is sublime. One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity.|isbn=0241619785}}{{Frontpage|author=James Baldwin|title=Giovanni's Room|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the real tension in the novel arises not Afraidfrom his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|isbn=0141186356}}{{Frontpage|author=Alba de Cespedes |title=Forbidden Notebook

|summary=YaelThis Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the moment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, purchases her forbidden notebook, Lea and Avishag go through their final years at high school learns about herself in a little Israeli town on the Lebanese border most intimate and then on to the inevitable: the Israeli Defense Force (IDF)revealing ways. Gender |isbn=1782278222}}{{Frontpage|author=Ottessa Moshfegh|title=My Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=At best, this novel is immaterial, all Israeli citizens must serve at least two years a scathing critique of modern society and for these girls reveals the moment arrives after graduation. Yael's posting seems futile as she guards a training base against marauding ladsfragility of human relationships; at worst, sneaking across it is the border to pinch perfume from pockets rather than pose any real security threatcynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. Lea's assignment on This unlikely heroine, a border checkpoint searching the daily line of immigrant workers slim, attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is riddled disillusioned with routine. Avishag joins up with her own demonsthe world, her brother Dan having died after his national service. She knows how it happened but continues resolves not to struggle with why; something she must handle alonelose sleep over it: in fact, her solution lies in her hibernation. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781090092</amazonuk>1784707422

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Barbara PymMatthew Tree|title=A Glass of BlessingsWe'll Never Know

|summary=Wilmet Forsyth is Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a married woman, childless drunk and living a life chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of leisure. She and her friend Rowena met their husbands - both Majors - in Italy, where they served as Wrens during the war. Rowena now has three children and her husband David might just be developing a wandering eye. Wilmet's husband, Rodney, is still ''Noddy'' to his mother with whom they live. Unburdened by children or domestic responsibility Wilmet lunches or shops artistic passions all failed miserably and becomes involved in the social life who had endless crises of the local church, St Luke'sself confidence. But it's her relationship with Piers, Rowena's somewhat wayward brother, which might pose the biggest threat So Tim applied himself to her comfortablehis studies, if cultivated his abilities rather boring existencethan his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844085805</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Toni JordanMosby Woods|title=Nine DaysA 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 war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that 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 circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?|isbn=B0C9SNG8R1}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0571379559|title=The House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Christopher 'Kip' Westaway The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in a suburb the house on the riverbank, built of Melbournebroken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, Australia with mother Jeanit's stood the passage of time, sister Connie storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twinboys - Sonny and Max, Francisthe rainbow twins. KipSonny's colouring reflects his mother considers him a layabout who doesn't deserve the special privileges of s Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his educationally elite brother and so he works at the big house next door for the Hustings, caring for their horsesfather. One day Mr Husting presents Kip People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with a shilling; their little secret. As its 1939, his mother thatshe's a fair amount of money so Kip hides it away, not realising how special that coin will become as the decades passhis nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444763555</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=Sarah ButlerKay Chronister|title=Ten Things 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}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Eric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because IBled 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 've Learnt About Love'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 illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.}}{{Frontpage|author=Madelaine Lucas|title=Thirst for Salt

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Alice returns home ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to spend time with her dying father. Shebe a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''s been travelling in Mongolia Told from a retrospective view, finding temporary escape from a young woman unravels the issues year-long relationship that had haunted once defined her life in London but now. Overlaid with later wisdom, on the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her return, events bring senior from its inception – the pain she thought was behind her into sharp focus. Meanwhile Daniel is an elderly vagrant who calls summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the streets of London homesummer after. He seeks his lost child, leaving a trail of random items across Set against the city in the hope of reunion like someone occupying a verse backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'Eleanor Rigby'details the 24-year-old narrator'. Disparate livess deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, seeking love how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and acceptance in a world that seems to exclude how italtered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447222490</amazonuk>0861546490

''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|isbn=191458564X}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yan LiankeJennifer Saint|title=Lenin's KissesAtalanta|rating=4.5

|summary=Yan Lianke's 2004 novel, ''Lenin's Kisses''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, newly and beautifully translated by Carlos Rojas, is a rare and fascinating exampleI vowed. I would take my place, not just of Chinese fiction from a writer living and working in China, but also a book that has won literary awards (the prestigious Chinese ''Lao She Literary Award''), now available in English. In many respects, the fact that this book won such a literary prize is somewhat surprising - not I hasten to add because name 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 politicsgoddess. It's a book that is literary with a capital L, and while was for the core sake of the plot is relatively simplemy name, what makes this book so interesting is the structure and way the story is toldtoo.Atalanta''|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701188073</amazonuk>}}Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero.

{{newreview|author=Jan-Philipp Sendker|title=The Art Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of Hearing Heartbeats|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Sendker is German-born (Hamburg 1960) the goddess Athemis and worked as American correspondent fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for ''Stern'' (1990 adventure. When the opportunity comes – to 95) and then as its Asian correspondent join the Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from '95 the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis'99. He now lives name and carve out her own legendary place in Berlinhistory. This probably gives him enough global insight to write about What follows is a US-born high flyer with an Asian heritage heading off to Burma to find out the truth whirlwind of her fatherchallenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis's disappearance. It probably also gives him the language skills to do fatal warning: that if she marries, it in English without recourse to a translatorwill be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184697240X</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=George Bernard ShawAmanthi Harris|title=Cashel Byron's ProfessionBeautiful Place|rating=35

|summary=''Cashel Byron’s Profession'' is Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the fourth southern coast of five 'Novels of My Nonage'her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into,written by George Bernard Shaw in 1882. In but the preface one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the bookVilla, Shaw heavily criticises these early workshow it became her home, which were rejected by and the publishing houses of machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the time, blaming his immaturity ''score'' for this gentle and lack of experience in lifeyet subtly violent novel. He was clearly unhappy about Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the way he had written some musical score of his charactersa film, stating that: '...he has not in his nonage the satisfaction of knowing strand weaves its way through everything that his guesses happens at life are truethe Villa.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848547471</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chris Womersley178563335X|title=The Low RoadSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=45

|summary=Wild is When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a man trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the runchildren up. In a slowHer husband, Christopher, underhand collects six-year-old Hannah and underwhelming way he is leaving behind dangerher elder brother, mistakes and unhappiness in his pastJamie, and has fetched up whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in a nondescript motel-law won't let her see her grandson. However this Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is only the beginninga lovely place, for he but Rachel is quickly ordered struggling to put his medical training to good use develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the case of Leevicar, Gail, when but then she's been doing the latter is dumped into his care with a gunshot woundjob for more than thirty years. Lee, too, is Rachel and Christopher hoped that a man walk on the run beach would do them some good - from danger, mistakes and unhappiness in his futureit was stormy but it was probably what they needed. But this pairing are not the only people running in this pitch black thrillerAnd then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780870574</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Claudie Gallay1398515388|title=In The Boy and the Gold of TimeDog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=A young father (I'm not sure we ever know his name) leaves his Montreuil apartment First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and takes his wife this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and their seven-year-old twin daughters on the annual holiday to the coastutter devastation. They have a houseThe deaths were uncountable, La Téméraire, overlooking and the sea a few kilometres south loss of Dieppelivelihoods was widespread. They'd bought The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the house just list of priorities but - six months after the girls were born and go there every summer, and maybe for tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a weekend or two in the Springconvenience store. Never 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 dog jumped in winter.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051261</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Philippe Claudel0989715337|title=The InvestigationPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North

|summary=And you think you ''Some frogs had it badgotten into the well. Our hero gets off a train at the right station, but doesn't get collected by those he's working on behalf of, can ''t have his order at Walter stood waist-deep in the bar fulfilledfragrant water, cannot get to the place naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of work on timetheir eggs wove around him, then cannot find sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the hotel almost opposite without a major trek through a snowy, unsavoury but completely empty city. And when he gets to dogs leaned over the hotel - well that opening and barked down at the strange noise of the other people buckets as he meets there are a whole new category filled them.'' How is that for an opening? The style of odd. Is this how things are supposed novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to be - is this limbowistful and musing, turning on a nightmare or just a novel our hero is trapped in?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051547</amazonuk>sixpence. And author Marco North, who has the most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to go on.

{{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]]