Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__{{Frontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=Pale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=5|genre=Literary fiction=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 - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.__NOTOC__}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yan LiankeMakenna Goodman|title=Lenin's KissesHelen of Nowhere

|summary=Yan Lianke's 2004 novel, ''Lenin's Kisses'', newly and beautifully translated by Carlos Rojas, It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a rare and fascinating example, hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not just of Chinese fiction from a writer living and working in Chinaquite right. The protagonist, but also a book that has won literary awards (disgraced professor on the prestigious Chinese ''Lao She Literary Award'')brink of losing both his career and his relationship, now available in Englishembodies this feeling. In many respectsHowever, the fact that this book won such Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a literary prize force which is somewhat surprising - not I hasten to add because of any lack of quality - but because Liankeseductive, who has previously sailed too close to radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the political wind for Chinese censors, here presents a not altogether flattering view former owner of Chinese politics. Itthe countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a book that is literary with a capital Lvolta in his life, and while her past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the core of protagonist around the plot house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that is relatively simplepure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, what makes this book so interesting is Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the structure and way reader gets the story is toldsense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701188073</amazonuk>1804272205

The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in that image is the house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{Frontpage|author=Thea Lenarduzzi|title=The Tower|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. 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}}{{Frontpage|author=Jon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Vaim|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''All was strange''... This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and Eline, two of the protagonists caught in its melancholic current.|isbn=1804271829}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=JanClaire-Philipp SendkerLouise Bennett|title=Big Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and 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 desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The Art imagined recipient of Hearing Heartbeatsthis plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|isbn=1804271934}}{{Frontpage|author=Helene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Lili is Crying

|summary=Sendker First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a 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.|isbn=1804271675}}{{Frontpage|author=Jonathan Buckley|title=One Boat|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''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 small coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and its power to provoke 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 Germanmeditative and deeply self-born (Hamburg 1960) aware, inviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a book that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and worked as American correspondent 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=''SternBlack Woods Blue Sky'' (1990 to 95) tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and then her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Described as its Asian correspondent from a ''wild card'95 to '99. He now lives , she feels stuck in Berlin. This probably gives him enough global insight her day-to write about a US-born high flyer with an Asian heritage heading off day life, and yearns to Burma cross the Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to find out the truth fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man, who says he has a cabin over there, she feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with her father. Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen's disappearance. It probably also gives him the language skills to do it in English without recourse to a translatorlives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184697240X</amazonuk>1472279042

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=George Bernard ShawSally Rooney|title=Cashel ByronIntermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction |summary=Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of 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 ProfessionRoom|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 from 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|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the moment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, purchases her forbidden notebook, and learns about herself in the most intimate and revealing ways.|isbn=1782278222}}{{Frontpage|author=Ottessa Moshfegh|title=My Year of Rest and Relaxation

|summary=''Cashel Byron’s Profession'' At best, this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the fourth fragility of five 'Novels of My Nonage'human relationships; at worst,written by George Bernard Shaw in 1882. In it is the preface cynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of the bookan unlikeable protagonist. This unlikely heroine, Shaw heavily criticises these early worksa slim, which were rejected by attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the publishing houses of the timeworld, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, blaming her solution lies in her hibernation.|isbn=1784707422}}{{Frontpage|author=Matthew Tree|title=We'll Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his immaturity father, a drunk and lack chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of experience in life. He was clearly unhappy about the way he his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had written some endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to his charactersstudies, stating that: '...he has not in cultivated his nonage the satisfaction of knowing that abilities rather than his guesses at life are truedaydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848547471</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=Chris WomersleyMosby Woods|title=The Low RoadA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=Wild 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 a man on the runbest course of action. Governments are flailing. In A war here, a slow, underhand and underwhelming way he push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is leaving behind dangerin actual charge. Imagine then, mistakes and unhappiness there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in his pastthis asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, and has fetched up right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in a nondescript motelhistory. However 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|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''The House of Broken Bricks'' is only the beginningstory of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, for he is quickly ordered to put his medical training to good use she lives in the case house on the riverbank, built of Leebroken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, when it's stood the latter is dumped into his care with a gunshot woundpassage of time, storms and floods. LeeHer husband, Richard, toostruggles to grow his vegetables, is a man on to complete the run delivery rounds - from danger, mistakes and unhappiness to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his futurefather. But this pairing are not the only people running in this pitch black thrillerPeople don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780870574</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=Claudie GallayKay Chronister|title=In 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 I Bled There|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the Gold horrors of Timeillness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.}}{{Frontpage|author=Madelaine Lucas|title=Thirst for Salt|rating=4.5

|summary=A young father (''Love, I'm not sure we ever know his name) leaves his Montreuil apartment d read, was supposed to be a light and takes his wife and their seven-weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-old twin daughters on long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the annual holiday summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the coastsummer after. They have a houseSet against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, La Témérairedepicting its all-consuming nature, overlooking the sea a few kilometres south how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|isbn=0861546490}}{{Frontpage|author= Michael Grothaus|title=Beautiful Shining People|rating=4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= ''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of Dieppewhat we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it. They'd bought ' ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the house just after the girls were born question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and go there every summerwhat is artificial, and maybe for a weekend whether the development of technology is exciting or two in the Spring. Never in winterfrightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051261</amazonuk>191458564X

Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing.|isbn=1472292154}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philippe ClaudelAmanthi Harris|title=The InvestigationBeautiful Place|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= 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 born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|isbn=1784631930}}{{Frontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=Sea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=45

|summary=And 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 think you had it badneed to pick the children up. Our hero gets off Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a train at the right station, but doesn't get collected by those hesobbing parishioner. Thelma's working on behalf of, candaughter-in-law won't have his order at let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the bar fulfilledNorfolk coast, is a lovely place, cannot get but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the place parish - and she's in awe of work on timethe vicar, Gail, but then cannot find she's been doing the hotel almost opposite without job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a major trek through a snowy, unsavoury walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but completely empty cityit was probably what they needed. And when he gets to then Hannah went missing.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the hotel - well that nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the other people he meets there are a whole new category loss of oddlivelihoods was widespread. Is this how things are supposed to be The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - is this limbo, Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a nightmare or just convenience store. He wasn't a novel our hero is trapped 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?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051547</amazonuk>.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jenn Ashworth0989715337|title=The Friday GospelsPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=54

|summary=There are five in ''Some frogs had gotten into the Leeke familywell. Martin is the father and he works in the mail sorting office. There's not a lot of ''pleasure '' Walter stood waist-deep in Martin's lifethe fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, but if you were making a list you'd put Bovril sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the top strange noise of itthe buckets as he filled them. She's a labrador and Martin's obsessed with her training. Well, he's partly obsessed with the training and the training  How is partly that for an excuse for his other obsession. Nina owns two labradors opening? The style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and Martin sees them (he laconic to wistful and Ninamusing, that is - not he and the labs) as having turning on a future togethersixpence. It would be easy to be criticalAnd author Marco North, but Martin's wife is in a wheelchair. Pauline's been unwell since who has the birth most wonderful turn of their youngest child. She's not quite doubly incontinentphrase, but accidents are frequent and embarrassing. She's also got a penchant for spending starts as he means to go on home improvements - despite the fact that there ''really'' isn't the money for them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444707728</amazonuk>