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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!{{Frontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=Pale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either -- Remove -->but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jon Kalman Stefansson and Philip Roughton (translator)Makenna Goodman|title=The Heart Helen of ManNowhere|rating=34.5

|summary=What It could be better than an existentialist argued that the pervading theme of this book from rural Icelandis malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, full a disgraced professor on the brink of gnomic comments about how close life losing both his career and death arehis relationship, embodies this feeling. However, that has as its core Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a journey taken by, amongst othersforce which is seductive, a naïve radical and hormonal teenaged lad unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and a full coffin? Why, I hear you cry, a trilogy concerning the sameprotagonist is indirect yet intimate. Yes, itAs the former owner of the countryside house he's the obvious answerconsidering, Helen represents a volta in his life, really – why else would we come her past tied to this third part, where his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the survivors of protagonist around the expedition rest up, note the women giving them helphouse shares stories about Helen, and see how eminently close the circle of life describes her as ''an entity that is to the figure of a snake swallowing its tail throughpure consciousness, among other thingsbeyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, dogs rutting in a church below Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the coffin's bier?sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184866236X</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Joanna WalshOlga Tokarczuk|title= VertigoHouse of Day, House of Night|rating= 45|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= The short stories in Joanna Walsh''What's collection have the overall effect good of disparate streams a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'' The title of consciousness this spellbinding work, ''House of a woman laying bear her very soulDay, House of Night'', whilst often going about seemingly mundane activities somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the ordinary and every small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day. The narrative voice appeared to me to be the same woman speaking throughoutnight, playing different roleshowever quotidian, though I'm not sure this was meant to be the casecausing chaos. The style of But, the stories constant in that image is that of short vignettes, mostly written in a modernist, stream of consciousness style. Sometimesthe house, stoic against the prose appears almost poeticancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908276800</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kristopher JansmaThea Lenarduzzi|title=Why We Came to the CityThe Tower|rating=4.5

|summary='We came to 'How unctuous are the city because we wished to live haphazardlyfats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, to reach for only Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the least realistic identity of our desiresT, and to see if we could not learn what our failures had to teachthe protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is being told, and notthe story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, when we came to livethe daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, discover that we had never who diedof tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. We wanted Annie's fate is, above all, an enticing story to dig deep T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and suck out all the marrow in service of lifemyth, to be overworked fable and reduced to our last witfantasy.' |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0525426604</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ernst Haffner Jon Fosse and Michael Hofmann Damion Searls (translator)|title=Blood BrothersVaim

|summary=It's Berlin, and the Nazis are on their way to power, even if they will never cross these pages themselves'All was strange''... The city – huge, glamorous, bustling, vicious in This haunting phrase encapsulates the way it can swallow people – is home to a countless hoard pervading sense of teenagersotherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, but we focus on just a few, most of whom have been fictional fishing village in some corrective institution or other before now. They call themselves the Blood BrothersNorway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and Eline, even if all they share is the most unglamorous drudgery two of going from one doss-house to another, balancing the cost of a few cigarettes with that of a warm room for a few hours or some stale rolls to eat. But en route to them is another 'Borstal' escapee, Williprotagonists caught in its melancholic current. Surely his fate is going to be nothing if not more of the same?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099594048</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sara TaylorClaire-Louise Bennett|title=The ShoreBig Kiss, Bye-Bye

|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=The first story we hear from the ShoreEverything in this book, a group of isolated islands off the coast of Virginiahowever sweet or seemingly innocent, is from Chloe, who's telling her sister about what she overheard steeped in the storeanguish and distortion. She'd been there buying chicken necks so that they could go crabbingEven a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. Normally they used bacon rindsWhen the narrator cries out internally, but they'd already eaten those. Cabel Bloxom had been murdered 'come over here and kiss me,''they done cut his thang clean off''it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The girls are motherless and Chloe imagined recipient of this plea is fiercely protective of Xavier, her little sister Renee. She's the first of the strong women we'll encounter in these storiesex-partner, which interlink a ghost she conjures to give a greater picturetest her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009959188X</amazonuk>1804271934

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adam BaronHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=BlackheathLili is Crying

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Househusband James First published in 1953 in French, this novel is happy in Blackheatha timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the page and positions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. Like the lives of her characters, they are often left tragically incomplete. He|isbn=1804271675}}{{Frontpage|author=Jonathan Buckley|title=One Boat|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= 's started doing stand-up again so 'One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that he too has an achievement in his life to balance wife Alice's award winning poetrydefies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. Children Ida Set against the evocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and Dominic are doing well so all is greatits power to provoke profound introspection. Elsewhere in Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the area Amelia is equally happy with death of both her parents. Prompted by her actor husband Richardmourning, her own career and children Niamh and teenage Michael. Sometimes happiness isn't enough though narrative voice is meditative anddeeply self-aware, as inviting the worlds reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a book that not only requires but inspires depth of the two families start to minglethought, things start changing since its narrative structure is fragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for each of themits propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908434902</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julian BarnesEowyn Ivey|title=The Noise of TimeBlack Woods Blue Sky

|summary=Julian Barnes's first novel since he won 'Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the Booker Prize young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for [[The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes]] is a fictionalised biography life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Russian composer Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (1906–75)Emaleen. Knowing BarnesDescribed as a ''wild card''s penchant for stylistic experimentation, thoughshe feels stuck in her day-to-day life, this was never going and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to be fulfil her desires of a straightforward, chronological simple life storysurrounded by nature. InsteadWhen she meets Arthur Nielson, as Barnes so often doesa strange, he sets up a tripartite structuretaciturn and solitary man, focussing on three moments in Shostakovich's life when who says he has a reckoning cabin over there, she feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with Power (always capitalised here)her. The title phrase helpfully spells out what the book is all about: Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen'Art is the whisper of history, heard above the noise of times lives forever.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910702609</amazonuk>1472279042

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Danielle McLaughlinSally Rooney|title=Dinosaurs on Other PlanetsIntermezzo

|genre=Short Stories General Fiction |summary=Seeing as this book is clearly a talented author hitting Sally Rooney has studied the ground running, I will dispense with any major preamble. We start with a tale chessboard of a daughter affected by the emotions of her parents as they separate – life and the influence is something of a certain school-teacher – from the mother's point of viewgrandmaster at putting it into words. An ancient input shows how alienHer dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, and as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the modern day domesticity how regularmany relationships woven into this story, the isolation of central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a woman can feelsocially awkward chess prodigy, as events are peppered by minor acts of destruction. But men can be alienated too – especially onecontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a reluctant guest at successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a party for children hosted by someone he once had an affair long battle with – he feels cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new form of this influence trials.|isbn=0571365469}}{{Frontpage|author=Fyodor Dostoyevsky|title=White Nights|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=As always in Dostoyevsky, the light of another one he has had to try and abandoncharacter work is sublime. 'All About Alice' – that's One is never left wondering what the title a character wants to say but has nobody to speak it to, but is it her – mid-40s and single, living with her father – that is most removed from her dreams thinking or her old friend feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and now child factory, Marian? And we complete a lap of the calendar temperaments 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 Irelandremarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473613701</amazonuk>0241619785

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anne EnrightJames Baldwin|title=The Green RoadGiovanni's Room

|summary=''The Green Road'' is the story This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of a family. If suspense and tension from the author was anyone other than Anne Enright it would be stereotypically Irishmoment our protagonist, with all the appropriate characters in place: the boy who goes off to be a priestValeria Cossati, the daughter who likes the bottle far too muchpurchases her forbidden notebook, the son who does good works and learns about herself in the woman who stays back where she was born and marries a local man, the dead husband who was perhaps just a little bit beneath the wife who plays the ''grande dame'' most intimate and is perfect at being needy, whilst all the while maintaining that she needs nothing. But, of course, it ''is'' Anne Enrightrevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099539799</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kate AtkinsonOttessa Moshfegh|title=A God in RuinsMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=53

|summary=Teddy Todd never really expected to survive the war. As At best, this novel is a bomber pilot it wasn't something which you could rely on scathing critique of modern society and he certainly knew reveals the statistics. But - against all the oddsfragility of human relationships; at worst, he came through itis the cynical, albeit with some time spent as a prisoner predictable and slightly trite tale of waran unlikeable protagonist. On balance he had This unlikely heroine, a good war, but time will see him married to Nancyslim, father to Viola and grandfather to Sunny and Bertie - attractive and left newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the feeling that world, but resolves not to lose sleep over it's more difficult to have a good peace than a good war: in fact, her solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552776645</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chuck PalahniukMatthew Tree|title=Beautiful YouWe'll Never Know|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 of a full court house, who – male to the bone – sit back and say nothing, if not whip out their camera phone. Once people take her out on a gurney and recognise her, we can start from the beginning, where she is a lowly underling at a law firm, having failed too many exams to progress satisfactorily. The company is where the world'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 around. But what exactly is it she is wanted for, and can her apolitical style of feminism and aspirations be met?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009958767X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Helle Helle and Martin Aitken (translator)|title=This Should be Written in the Present Tense|rating=5

|summary= This is the first novel of Helle Helle's, an award winning Danish author, Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be translated into English. It is easy to see different from this novel why she is gaining accolades in her Danish homeland. The rhythmichis father, natural flow a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of the narrative is mesmerising being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and appears who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to lull you through the book. It has some lovelyhis studies, spare sentences of description: ''There were run-down cottages with open doors cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and news on the radio. Gulls flocked around an early harvester in the late sun''. But mostly, it is written in a modernist, almost stream of consciousness style, which I found refreshingset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099587475</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alice ThompsonB0C47LV1PC|title=The Book CollectorFragility|author=Mosby Woods

|summary= Deep in the heart of Germany sits the village of Furstenfelde. It lies on Can you make a spit of land that''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, legend has is the question should you make it, a giant created, between two lakes – ? Or is the Great Lakequestion if you did, and would it land? The catch is that the Deep Lakeanswer for both could well be.... All around is forestno. The village  ''Fragility'' is enjoying summer, and we can see the inhabitants set as they go about their lazy life on the last hot day and night before the seasons change, from the teenage lads fishing and crashing cars or preparing for a bell-ringing exam, to the girl who wants out, to the middle-aged man who made a pub out city of a garage and some curtainsPortland, to the older man (a retired soldier) who is watching his last piece of titillating TV before going out to either fetch cigarettes or shoot himselfOregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the older still lady painting a portrait of the town ready to auction it off on the morrow. For the morrow is restrictions imposed during the annual fete, and all those people are, one way or another, reacting to its imminent arrival.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782271295</amazonuk>covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andre AlexisMosby Woods|title=Fifteen DogsA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5

|summary=Gods (and brothers) Hermes and Apollo were arguing The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in a bar about what would happen the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if animals had human intelligence and eventually mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a wager was agreedpush for climate action there. Human intelligence would be granted to fifteen dogs staying overnight A feeling that nobody is in a veterinary clinic and the wager, suggested by Apolloactual charge. Imagine then, there was that Hermes would be his servant for a year if the dogs were not more unhappy than they would have been originallyman with precognition. But - if even one of Imagine the dogs was happy at the end strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of its life Hermes circumstances. That man would winbe 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?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178125558X</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Marina Warner0571379559|title=Fly Away Home|rating=3|genre=Short Stories|summary=How would you subvert a fairy tale? You know enough The House of them and enough about them to do it, so think on it. Would you give a mermaid a smartphone? Would you pepper them with pop stars, and perhaps let them be witness to the Schadenfreude caused by a cave that's sacred to native Canadians? Would you, in the light of their characters usually being routine, interchangeable tropes, give them a closely-observed personality – as seen here in a teacher's interior thoughts when faced with a piece of East Anglian lore? Would you take the exoticism of the east, and Egypt in particular, and see it in the light of a musical teacher on a zero-hours contract who ends up muttering to himself, directing traffic in the middle of the road, or from the remove of an elderly man with ''swollen feet in orthopaedic sandals'' with a message from the past? Certainly these two are not the standard Arabian Nights-styled pieces…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784630381</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewBroken Bricks|author=Jeanette Winterson|title=The Gap of TimeFiona Williams|rating=3.5

|summary=This is the inaugural volume of a new series of Shakespeare retellings from Hogarth Press. Still to come: Margaret Atwood on ''The TempestHouse of Broken Bricks'', Howard Jacobson on ''The Merchant is the story of Venicefour people. Tess Hembry'' and Anne Tyler s roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on ''The Taming of the Shrew''riverbank, among othersbuilt of broken bricks. How is this first book? It Insubstantial as it might look, it's pretty good as Winterson novels go, incorporating Shakespearean themes stood the passage of time, deception storms and adoption floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and turning bears to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and statues into metaphors while remaining loyal to Max, the essence of the plotrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Yet two crucial elements of the play People don't make sense in a modern settingbelieve that they're related, much less twins and in the end I felt this added nothing to my enjoyment of the originalthere's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781090297</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Marlon JamesClaire North|title=A Brief History House of Seven KillingsOdysseus

|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction |summary=On December 3rd 1976 ''What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a group 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 armed men go the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Bob MarleyIthaca's Jamaican home in Hope Road shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a mission to kill 'The Singer'fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge. No one will be arrested |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 but that doesn't mean is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their lives afterwards will be normalmost existential fears. This ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a total fictionalisation new work of their story and therefore the story post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the people of the Jamaican ghettoes: the politics, the unrest, the gang warfare and the deathfears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780746350</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Hanya YanagiharaEric LaRocca|title=A Little LifeThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=3.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Willem, JB, Malcolm and Jude don't have Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a lot in common apart from their friendship. They gravitated together at college way to reflect our darkest emotions and remain close how we as they become successful in careers as different as the theatre humans react and architectureprocess them. However even hopes for successful future canMost horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad''t erase , whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the blight end of the past for one of themstory, beatable. Jude Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is physically disabled from a cause not like that isn't genetic or congenital. In fact It is a collection of short stories more interested in the cause isn't even something he's shared with the other threehorrors of illness, grief and humiliation. The events around it stem back to his childhood Horrors that linger and haunt each thought and action he takes as well as his ability are harder to take themdefeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447294815</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julia Franck and Anthea Bell (translator)Madelaine Lucas|title=WestThirst for Salt|rating=3.5

|summary=Put yourself in the shoes of ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a young mother to two childrenlight and weightless feeling, who declares her intention to leave the Communist East Germany but I had always longed for West Berlingravity'' Told from a retrospective view, and thus loses a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her scientist job. What would you expect on Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the other side affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – shops full of attainable products, pleasant neighbourhoods, nice neighbours, an active and busy new life, where things might feel alien but at least you speak the same language? Well, for Nelly Senff, this is hardly summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the casesummer after. Once past Set against the depressing Eastern exit procedures she is confronted with more desultory interrogations from those backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'welcoming' her to details the West, beyond which she and 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her children (their fatherolder lover, whom she never marrieddepicting its all-consuming nature, is long assumed dead by the authorities, if nobody else) are practically left in a shared accommodation in a transit camp. The shops are full of what is still unobtainable, the children hate their new school – how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and people still look down on them as being foreign, even if they have only moved across a cityhow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099554321</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Salman RushdieMichael Grothaus|title= Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight NightsBeautiful Shining People|rating= 3.54

|summary= Tediously captivating may not sound like the most compelling recommendation for a book you've ever heard'But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. Yet itAnd I's the nearest I m willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can come take steps to summing up change it.'' ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the style question of this novelidentity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, which features some and whether the development of the most beautiful language and imagery I've ever read whilst telling a story which moves at a glacial pacetechnology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>191070203X</amazonuk>191458564X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Aldous HuxleyJennifer Saint|title= The Genius and the GoddessAtalanta|rating= 45|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= So, three books in, I've now got to grips with the idea that Huxley doesn't so much want to tell a story I was as worthy as expound his ideasany one of them. Once you know I would get on board thatship, I vowed. I would take my place, it makes it easier to choose whether to read him or notjust in the name of the goddess. It was for the sake of my name, too. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. On balance Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, I have come down on Atalanta is raised under the side protective eye of not the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – I won't be dashing out to work my way through join the rest Argonauts, a fierce band of his output warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the way I want chance to withfight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, sayAtalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, Nevil Shute, or George Orwellit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784870366</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dan RhodesAmanthi Harris|title=When the Professor Got Stuck in the SnowBeautiful Place|rating=4.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary= Two people are on Padma, a train on their way young Sri Lankan, has returned to, of all things, a WI meeting where the ladies of All Bottoms will be lectured Villa Hibiscus on the non-existence southern coast of Godher home country. One of the two people This is Professor Richard Dawkins, rampant atheist, hectoring scientist chappie, and all-round devotee of ''Deal or No Deal''a place she spent her formative years. The other It is Smeenot a place she was born into, his mono-named assistant, amanuensis or 'male secretary'but the one she thinks of as home. Smee will come to the fore when the weather sets in and the train journey has How she came to be abandoned some way short of its ultimate destination, Upper Bottom. Instead the pair fetch up at the isolated yet friendly community of Market HortonVilla, how it became her home, and the only option machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for accommodation is taken – yes, the died-in-the-wool non-believer has this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to be housed by a retired vicar escape her past and his wife. This clash much like the musical score of titanic opinions, peppered with social faux pas aplenty will provide for a particularly English kind of farcical comedyfilm, but one with that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the legs to go as far as any other Good Books have reached in the past…Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910709018</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Aldous Huxley178563335X|title= Time Must Have A Stop|rating= 3|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Sometimes we start reading "authors" as opposed to specific books, because we feel we ''should''. So it was with me and Huxley. I seem to remember reading and actually enjoying the classic ''Brave New World'' and so felt compelled to explore more of the oeuvre.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178487034X</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewSea Defences|author=Michel Houellebecq and Lorin Stein (translator)|title=SubmissionHilary Taylor|rating=45

|summary=What do When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you expect from Submission? need to pick the children up. It is after all from one of EuropeHer husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's more blunt hugedaughter-sellers, one who is most forthright in his opinions, narratives and characters-law won' sexual livest let her see her grandson. It has become indelibly linked with Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a new Europelovely place, after its reception and contents led but Rachel is struggling to publicity on develop a real bond with the cover parish - and she's in awe of ''Charlie Hebdo''the vicar, which resulted in something less savoury than literatureGail, to say but then she's been doing the leastjob for more than thirty years. Do you expect it to be about Rachel and Christopher hoped that a France of walk on the near future, where a Muslim political party provides the president? beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. Well, don't go into this submissively following your expectationsAnd then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785150243</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Rachel Elliott1398515388|title= Whispers Through A MegaphoneThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Miriam doesn’t speak. WellFirst of all, it was the earthquake, that’s not strictly true. She does speakdeep in the ocean floor, but nothing above a whisper which makes it hard to have a conversation with her. Particularly as she hasn’t left her house in three years. But today is created the day. She’s going to open that door tsunami and walk outside. She really is. Ralph has finally twigged (and with no small amount of surprise) that his wife Sadie doesn’t actually love him. And now he’s not sure if she ever really did. Having spent so much time regurgitating his every moment onto Social Mediathis, Ralph hasn’t really had a chance to think about it. But now he hasin turn, it is so shockingly awful that he has decided to run awaycaused the nuclear meltdown. And of all the places he could run away to, he has chosen the same woods that Miriam has picked to be the first place she will visit out-of-doorsThe result was complete and utter devastation. And Sadie? WellThe deaths were uncountable, she’s had enough of reading Tweets and living vicariously through the posts loss of otherslivelihoods was widespread. Sadie is going to have an adventure of her own. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0992918227</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Benjamin Johncock|title=The Last Pilot|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=You'd be forgiven for assuming fact that debut novelist Benjamin Johncock is American: ''The Last Pilot'' has many pets were separated from their owners came far down the literary weight list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a Great American Novel, with dog outside a limitless desert setting plus the prospect of soon dominating space, and the spare yet profound writing style of Ernest Hemingway or Cormac McCarthyconvenience store. Johncock is British, He wasn't a dog person but you can tell he's taken inspiration from stories about the dawn of the astronaut age, including Tom Wolfeconvenience store owner's ''The Right Stuff'' comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and films like ''Apollo 13''. His protagonist, Jim Harrison, is a fictional Air Force test pilot who rubs shoulders with historical figures like Chuck Yeager and John Glenn Tamon the dog jumped in the quest to break the sound barrier and conquer space.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908434848</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tessa Hadley0989715337|title=The PastPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North

|summary=Tessa Hadley writes beautifully subtle stories ''Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of English family lifetheir eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Her understated style has a touch Two of the 1950s or 1960s about it, calling to mind Elizabeth Taylor or early Margaret Drabble, dogs leaned over the opening and she seems to adapt classic genres like barked down at the novel strange noise of manners or the country house novelbuckets as he filled them. Here she deliberately channels Elizabeth Bowen with a setup borrowed from '' How is that for an opening? The House style of this novel in Paris'': the novel is divided into three parts, titled 'The Present', 'The Past', form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and 'The Present'. That structure allows for a deeper look at what the house laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a neighbouring cottage have meant to the central familysixpence. And author Marco North, and paves who has the way for one final shocker most wonderful turn of a secretphrase, starts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224101692</amazonuk>