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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]{{adsense2}}__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Suzanne Rindell295967572X|title=The Other TypistPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The Other Typist Our unnamed narrator is set in 1920s New York City, about to begin a train journey with Prohibition at its height and Rose Baker, an orphaned young woman, working as a police typisthis companion Django. While she has no real friends, sheWhere they's good at her job re going and seems to have what the respect purpose of the Sergeantthis journey is, whom she admires and is uncertain. Django found the Lieutenant Detective, whom shetickets ''s less keen onthe floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Then a perfect storm comes into their lives, Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the shape of past as the pair travel to the enchanting Odalie, station by coach and nothing will be the same againtrain is a steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241002885</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ioanna Bourazopoulou and Yannis Panas (Translator)Makenna Goodman|title=What Lot's Wife SawHelen of Nowhere|rating=4.5|genre=Science Literary Fiction|summary= It's been over 20 years since The Overflow came, flooding half could be argued that the pervading theme of Europe. Around the same time Violet Salt, this book is malaise - a new multihard-functional mineral, appeared, its production now governed globally by the mysterious, allto-powerful Consortiumplace feeling that something in your life is not quite right. Meanwhile back in Europe The Colonyprotagonist, a haven for those escaping floods disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and indeed justicehis relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is ruled by Governor Bera seductive, radical and six officials, unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he'Purple Stars'. All seems to be well s considering, Helen represents a volta in a despotichis life, lawless way until the six wake up her past tied to the realisation that the Governor has died mysteriously in the nighthis potential fresh start. The Consortium needs answers so choose realtor who shows the greatest crossword compiler of protagonist around the agehouse shares stories about Helen, Phileas Bookand describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, to investigatebeyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, whether he wants to or Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are notaltogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1845025474</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Gabriel WestonOlga Tokarczuk|title=Dirty WorkHouse of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=#There are two women in an operating theatre and when one starts bleeding heavily - fatally - the other freezes, unable, despite all her training and undoubted skills, to do anything at all. Whatever the outcome it cannot pass unnoticed, unreported and surgeon Nancy Mullion is called to appear before a tribunal appointed by the General Medical Council. Over a period of weeks she''What's forced to confront the effect good of being a doctor who has killed as well as cured. Youworld that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'re probably making assumptions now and nodding wisely. Don't - because you are almost certainly going to be wrong. This will not be the story which you are expecting and it was certainly not the story which Nancy's hospital wanted to hear.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022409128X</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Roland Watson-GrantThea Lenarduzzi|title=SketcherThe Tower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Nine-year-old Skid Beaumont lives with his three brothers, father Alrick and mother Valerie in the swamps beyond the New Orleans city limits. Life is hard and home is a rundown shack with no running water but they're only there temporarily; a 'temporarilyHow unctuous are the fats of another' that is rather long-term. Alrick moved them from s life, how dizzying their nice home sugars in New Orleans because the land was cheap and soon the city would build out to envelop them. Years later theyour bloodstream're still waiting for that to happen. Life isn’t exactly mundane though; there are rumours that when Skid's brother Frico draws left-handed, strange things seem to happen.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846882427</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philip SingtonJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=The Valley of UnknowingVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In the mid-to-late eighties the German Democratic Republic looked like enduring. Bolstered by a system of ''Mitarbeiter'All was strange' (''fellow workers'' is a much more amenable term than ''informers'') the Stasi kept their populace in check. Western media was easy to censor in those days. Border controls were brutal. People were shot on This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a regular basis trying to cross the no-man's-land into West Berlin fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and along Eline, two of the other inner German bordersprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099535823</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert WalserClaire-Louise Bennett|title=The Walk and other storiesBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The publication of Everything in this collection of around forty short stories affords the English speaking public book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a unique opportunity; that symbol of reading Walserintimacy and closeness, possibly the leading modernist writer becomes evidence of Swiss German in love lost. When the last century. He has received high praise in narrator cries out internally, 'A Place in the Country'come over here and kiss me, W G Sebald's recently published posthumous collection and he ' it is well-known as being less an invitation than a significant influence on Franz Kafka. His work here dates from 1907 desperate attempt to 1929 and along with his poetry won him recognition with Berlin's avant gardeconfirm her emotional numbness. He combines lyrical delicacy with detailed observation; reflective melancholy with criticism The imagined recipient of brash commercialism. The fine writing in this volume strives to achieve plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a hard won integrity together with an experimental capacity for reflection. It challenges the reader and provokes him ghost she conjures to new insightstest her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846689589</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joydeep Roy-BhattacharyaHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=The WatchLili is Crying|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Nizam pushes a barrow up to a fortified US army base First published in 1953 in Afghanistan. What French, this novel is she doing there? How will a timeless text which wrenches the soldiers react? What do they believe: hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their experienceproper position on the page and positions them elsewhere, their trainingdisjointed, their gut reaction or a young girl amputee in truncated. Like the middle lives of the desert who may be the last thing her characters, they ever see?are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099565773</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anthony CartwrightJonathan Buckley|title=How I Killed Margaret ThatcherOne Boat|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=What motivates someone to become ''One Boat'' is a killer? When deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader first meets Sean Bullinto a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, he is nine years oldTeresa. Set against the evocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, living a seemingly carefree this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and happy existence surrounded 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 his family her mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and friends in a closedeeply self-knit community in Dudleyaware, West Midlandsinviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. He loves Star Wars and playing football with his school friends and adores his teenage uncle JohnnyIt is a book that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, who tells him stories since its narrative structure is fragmentary and creates the most wonderful pieces of artironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781251576</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jenni FaganEowyn Ivey|title=The PanopticonBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Imagine reading ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a book set in life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a Scottish children’s care home. It’s about bar waitress, a violent setting which enables her bad habits and a deeply disturbed fifteen year old drug addict who, when she was eleven, found her prostitute foster mother murdered in the bathtubaccidental neglect of Emaleen. That’s the set-up of Jenni Fagan’s Described as a ''The Panopticonwild card'', she feels stuck in her day-to-day life, and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and that’s what it’s about – but live on the funny thing is that whatever you’re picturing in your head right nowNorth Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and what I was imagining before I sat down solitary man, who says he has a cabin over there, she feels called to read go - and bring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, bears absolutely no resemblance to the book Fagan has actually writtenthis calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099558645</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jess RichardsSally Rooney|title=Cooking with BonesIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary= Sisters Amber and Maya run away from home, Sally Rooney has studied the city chessboard of Paradon, life and arrive in is something of a small villagegrandmaster at putting it into words. Finding an old cottageHer dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the girls settle in comfortablymany relationships woven into this story, hidden from the locals' sight while joining in with their customs as Amber backs honey cakes each night from the ingredients left daily outside central one for readers to unravel is the cottage fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and the instructions of the former occupant's cookery books. Now they've moved away from their old life Amber tries to encourage Maya to stand on her own two feet which isn't easyPeter Koubek. For Maya is a formwandererIvan, engineered to reflect other's wants; a role in which it's difficult to exist normallysocially awkward chess prodigy, let alone while trying to adjust to change… andcontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, indeed, unexpected death.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444738038</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kate Atkinson|title=Life After Life|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Spanning the period from just before World War One to the end of World War Two, Kate Atkinson's ''Life After Life'' tells the story of Ursula Todd. Or more accurately, it tells the potential stories of Ursula Todd. If you've seen the movie ''Sliding Doors'' then you will have some idea of the concept Atkinson explores; that of small changes a successful lawyer living in life leading to different outcomes, many of which lead to tragic endings but strangely the book manages to be a celebration of the spirit of Ursula and is often quite upliftingDublin. ItFollowing their father's passing after a book that sounds like it is going to be much more confusing than it is though and long battle with cancer, the result is a very special book indeed. Itbrothers's that rare thing of a book that has a strong literary style but which is also very readablealready strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0385618670</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Emily PerkinsFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=The ForrestsWhite Nights
|rating=5
|genre=Literary FictionShort Stories|summary= This is the chronicle of the Forrest family during the life of daughter Dorothy. They move ('they' being DorothyAs always in Dostoyevsky, father Frank, mother Lee and siblings Michael, Evelyn and little Ruthie) from New York to New Zealand at the age of seven years oldcharacter work is sublime. Frank hopes the migration will signal One is never left wondering what a change in his luck as well as a new life for his family. He's right in that changes follow but there are as many to shake character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their stability as to still it innermost dispositions and the past remains temperaments with each of them as well as the ''de'' ''facto'' adoptee Daniel. Indeed, Dorothy grows to realise that the past is a garment that's worn in some form throughout an entire lifetimeremarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>140883149X</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elif ShafakJames Baldwin|title=HonourGiovanni's Room|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction |summary=Jamila and Pembe are twins who''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, growing up among the Kurdish an American man living in TurkeyParis, are as wrapped in the customs of their Muslim faith and heritage as they are he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in the love of their family. Jamila develops a talent that will make her the hub of her communitygay bar. Pembe's destiny lies over the sea as she migrates While David is engaged to England with her husband Adem Hella, who is travelling in search of a better life. HoweverSpain, the destiny they travel towards is oh so different real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the destiny deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of which they dreamhis sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670921165</amazonuk>0141186356
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Therese Anne FowlerAlba de Cespedes |title=Z: A Novel of Zelda FitzgeraldForbidden Notebook|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As Therese Anne Fowler points out in her acknowledgements, views on the relationship between F Scott Fitzgerald and his wife and muse, Zelda, tend to split into 'Team Scott' and 'Team Zelda'. The former believe that it was Zelda's instability and possessiveness that limited Scott's creative output while the latter argue that it was Scott's debauched behaviour that led to Zelda's mental problems. ''Z'' takes a more balanced view - the truth This Italian work of the matter is that they needed each other but were tragically, mutually destructive. Getting the fact-based feminist fiction tone right is always a challenge, holds an air of suspense and this is exacerbated when tension from the author gives a writer the narrative voicemoment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, and Zelda was a talented writer in purchases her own right as well as a dancerforbidden notebook, artist and general social phenomenon. However Fowler pulls it off with aplomb learns about herself in what is a sensitive the most intimate and engrossing story of Zelda - 'the First Flapper'revealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444761404</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sheila HetiOttessa Moshfegh|title=How Should A Person Be?My Year of Rest and Relaxation
|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Much has been made in the media about the similarity in approach At best, this novel is a scathing critique of Sheila Heti's fictionalised autobiographical ''How Should A Person Be?'' modern society and Lena Dunham's HBO television series ''Girls''. They certainly share a similarly bleak and introspective view reveals the fragility of lifehuman relationships; at worst, both are apparently based on it is the writer's own experiencecynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. This unlikely heroine, both have a somewhat knowingly shock factor particularly when it comes to sex and both leave me somewhat depressed slim, attractive and sad. And both have been critical successes newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the US. Indeed, ''How Should A Person Be?'' also features on the 2013 long list for the [[Women's Prize for Fiction 2013|Women's Prize for Fiction]]world, although it's but resolves not easy to assess where the fiction starts and the reality stops. In lose sleep over it: in fact, the conceit is also somewhat similar to the scripted reality shows that dominate certain television channels. The effect is something that is interesting as a concept and exercise but less than enjoyable to readher solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846557542</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Barbara KingsolverMatthew Tree|title=Flight BehaviourWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Set in rural TennesseeTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, Dellarobia Turnbow is a young mother, trapped in the result drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of a shotgun wedding in a largely loveless marriage on her husband's failing family farm dominated by the disapproval his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of her God-fearing mother in lawself confidence. She dreams of escape with equally unsuitable younger men until one day on her way So Tim applied himself to acting on this impulse for the first timehis studies, she encounters an act of nature that will change her life for good. Barbara Kingsolver perfectly captures in the opening paragraphs the sense of entrapment and dissatisfaction of Dellarobia cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and doesn't let up for a momentset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0571290779</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0C47LV1PC
|title=Fragility
|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.
''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nikolai Leskov, Richard Pevear (translator) and Larissa Volokhonsky (translator)Mosby Woods|title=The Enchanted Wanderer and Other StoriesA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is a collection quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of 17 Nikolai Leskov stories as mixed in subject matter as they action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in lengthactual charge. From the very short ''Spirit of Madame de Genlis''Imagine then, warning of there was a man with precognition. Imagine the dire consequences of selecting literature for strategic advantage in this asset; a mollycoddled princess, to the novella-length ''The Enchanted Wanderer'' telling the tale man who can tell you what will happen given any set of the apparently immortal monk who prayed for suicide victimscircumstances. That man would be valuable, Leskov (aided greatly by right? Perhaps the talented translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky) unlocks the moresmost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, traditions, religion and superstitions of 19th century Russia for a modern readershipthat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099577356</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Taiye Selasi0571379559|title=Ghana Must GoThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Kweku Sai''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, fatherbut instead, husband and doctorshe lives in the house on the riverbank, awakes early one morning and wanders outside into his Ghanaian gardenbuilt of broken bricks. As he gazes back at his houseInsubstantial as it might look, he suffers a fatal heart attack andit's stood the passage of time, during his last moments reflects on his life storms and a family fragmentedfloods. On hearing of Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his deathvegetables, his children to complete the delivery rounds - and first wife Folasade look back on what they were before to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny andMax, thanks in part to Folasadethe rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and Kwekuthere's actions, what theyan assumption when Max is out with his mother that she've becomes his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919861</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{Frontpage|author= Kay Chronister|title= Desert Creatures|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|isbn=1803364998}}{{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 horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michele RobertsMadelaine Lucas|title=IgnoranceThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Michèle Roberts's 'Love, I'Ignoranced read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' is Told from a beautifully writtenretrospective view, lyrical story about life in wartime Francea young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Narrated mainly by two characters, Jeanne and Marie-Angèle, it jumps back and forward in time and is an enthralling mixture of guiltOverlaid with later wisdom, faith, and survival. The two girls could not be more different. Marie-Angèle is the grocer's daughter while Jeanne is narrator relives the daughter of affair with a Jewish mother who washes clothes for a living. The two girls together go man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the village convent for their education but come from different ends of the social spectrumsummer after. When Set against the German occupation arrives, the two girlsbackdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town '' experiences are very different but both are Thirst for Salt'ignorant' of each others plight and their judgements are repeatedly shown to be wide of details the mark. In fact the book could just as well have been titled 24-year-old narrator'Judgement'. Just when you think you know one through the eyes of the others deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, you get the opposite view of thingshow it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408831155</amazonuk>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 what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anouk MarkovitsJennifer Saint|title=I Am ForbiddenAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The date is 1939 and the place is what we know ''I was as worthy as Romania and Hungaryany one of them. Young Zalman Stern is stopped by soldiers and for a moment he feels this is his last moment I would get on Earthboard that ship, I vowed. MeanwhileI would take my place, not just in the name of the goddess. It was for the sake of my name, too far away. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. 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 moment 5 year old Josef Lichtenstein is playing with his baby sisterwho longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the next his childhood is deleted by Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the same bigotry chance to fight in Artemis' name and blood that deletes carve out herown legendary place in history. One day their paths will meet. This What follows is the story a whirlwind of Zalmanchallenges and discovery and through it, JosefAtalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, their descendants; their struggles, their beliefs; the cost of escape and the cost of remainingit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099571943</amazonuk>1472292154
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jami AttenbergAmanthi Harris|title=The MiddlesteinsBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Two lovers write letters to each other about their lovePadma, a young Sri Lankan, their dreams and their separate lives; lives that they hope will one day merge once again has returned to become onethe Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. For Sasha life It is not a place she was born into, but the everyday grind with work and demanding loved ones along with one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the challenges they engender. For VolodenkaVilla, how it's became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life in ever since she first arrived there provide the Russian army ''score'' for this gentle and his eventual posting yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to China. However their love is more complicated than most as more than geography escape her past and circumstance stands between them: they're also separated by much like the decades… manymusical score of a film, many decadesthat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780871058</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Maggie O'Farrell178563335X|title=Instructions for a HeatwaveSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In LondonWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in July 1976 it hadnon a PCC meeting and wondering why they't rained for monthsre held when you need to pick the children up. Gardens Her husband, Christopher, collects six- if you could call them that any longer year- were thick with aphids old Hannah and what water there washer elder brother, which was to be consumed or used for washingJamie, came from whilst Rachel holds a standpipesobbing parishioner. Robert Riordan told his wifeThelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, Grettaon the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, that he was going round the corner but Rachel is struggling to buy develop a newspaper. This was what he did every morningreal bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but this time he didnthen she't come backs been doing the job for more than thirty years. The police weren't interested as Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the closer they looked the more beach would do them some good - it was obvious that there stormy but it was an intention to disappearprobably what they needed. Gretta turned to her three adult children for helpAnd then Hannah went missing. But how much help would they - could they - be?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755358783</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jude Cook1398515388|title=Byron EasyThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Byron Easy is a 30-year-old poet First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and product of a failed marriage whothis, in turn, has a failed marriage caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of his ownlivelihoods was widespread. He works in The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a shop whilst waiting to be discovered as dog outside a poetconvenience store. How did his depression-tinted life reach this point? Once there was hope, love and many good times and, as he sits on He wasn't a train travelling to his motherdog person but the convenience store owner's for Christmas with a bag full of money, comment that he reflects and ponders while trying would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to escape something more tangible open his car door and dangerous than Tamon the pastdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434021938</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrea Eames0989715337|title=The White ShadowPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' As a general principle I am a little tired ''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of books that start the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the endstrange noise of the buckets as he filled them. I want '' How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to argue for wistful and musing, turning on a return to good old fashioned narrative where stories start at sixpence. And author Marco North, who has the beginningmost wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to go on until the end, and then stop. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099565420</amazonuk>
}}