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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Toni Morrison Jeremy Cooper|title= God Help the ChildDiscord|rating= 43.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=A truly complex Discord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas) The principal example of discord within the novel, as with most instances of discord, is easily located. The two protagonists of the novel, Rebekah Rosen and emotionally raw portrayalEvie Bennet, that seeks are as different as they come. Rebekah is an uptight, traditional and no-nonsense composer close to cover issues retirement, while Evie is a force of racenature, genderbounding onto the musical scene as a precocious saxophonist, oozing with talent and paedophiliacharm. A slim volumeThe two, yespredictably, but one that is powerful in its punchdon't always see eye to eye, their approaches different and Evie's progressive views at odds with Rebekah's conservative leaning. However, something connects them beyond just their musical project: a sort of fragile alliance formed within the clamour.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099555921</amazonuk>1804272264

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jesus Carrasco and Margaret Jull Costa (translator)Polly Barton|title=Out in the OpenWhat Am I, A Deer?|rating=34

|summary=Meet the boy. We never learn his name – in fact we learn very little in this book, such Polly Barton's debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as where or when we are, both subject and why. What we do know is that he has left homegoverning metaphor. We get the feeling his father is too handy with punishmentThe narrator, but that can't be the only reason for him first hiding out in an olive grove overnightnewly relocated from London to Berlin, then fleeing across works translating video games into Japanese through the plains surrounding his family's village. Especially as he's chosen one process of the most awkwardlocalisation, attritional times rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to cross said plains – the land is in the middle of a horrendous droughtnew audience. When he tries to steal his first provisions from an aged goatherdBarton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, howeverin striving for universality, he finds some light and liquidlanguage is endlessly repackaged, but is its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. From this substitute father figure ever going to be enough , the novel opens out into a wider, resonant question: to help the boy flee what he needs extent do we translate ourselves in order tobe understood, accepted, or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009958218X</amazonuk>1804272175

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philip DentMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=Mutable Passions: Charlotte Bronte: A Disquieting Affair|rating=3|genre=Historical Fiction |summary=As the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë's birth approaches, it is a perfect time for reading about her. Philip Dent's second novel chooses a lesser known period of her life to dramatize. All her siblings are now dead; during a hard winter when she is unable to visit her best friend, Ellen Nussey, Charlotte spends her time finishing ''Villette'', her final novel. The family servant, Tabby, ribs Charlotte about her romantic prospects – including Patrick Brontë's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls. Charlotte responds with indignation: 'I could no more kiss the lips of a man with a beard as big as rooks' nests than I could yours, Tabby.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178589093X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Miroslav Penkov|title=Stork MountainDisappearing Act

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=A young manDespite her anonymisation of place names and people, his grandfather and a stork with a broken wing are the Stepanova''company s message in this short work of rebels'' at the heart of this lively tale set in Bulgaria's Strandja Mountainsautofiction is unmistakable. The storks that return A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the mountains each spring are migrants, like so many town of the people that have passed through the region over the centuriesF for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. The young narrator is also in transitDetoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, born her journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in Bulgariathis series of events, but raised and educated in America. The story opens with his return M eventually offers to Bulgaria step in search of his grandfather for a circus performer who has broken off contact with his family in Americaunexpectedly left the show. But The train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and a retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the young man's motives are not as clear cut as first appearsvery heart of the novel form itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473622182</amazonuk>1804272329

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Elisa Albert295967572X|title= After Birth|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= This book is definitely not for anyone who has a rosy picture of new motherhood. In fact, I would probably avoid it if you are contemplating giving birth in the near future. For any woman who has ever struggled through the first few months of motherhood, however, or a partner of somebody who is going through it, it is an astounding and revelatory read. Never before have I read a more searing, honest and open discussion of the emotional upheaval a woman often goes through after giving birth.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009959014X</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewPale Pieces|author= Ayelet Gundar-Goshen|title= Waking Lions|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= If the point of ''literature'' - as opposed to the less exalted though just-as-worthwhile forms of writing - is to force you to think about the real world, the political world, the painful life-as-we-know-it world, whilst catching you up in a story about something that never really happened, but, you know, might well have done so…and if you think that matters, then you must read this book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782271562</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Yan Lianke|title=The Four BooksG M Stevens

|summary=''The Four Books'' Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a difficult, challenging novel and not for the feint hearted, or for someone looking for a page-turnertrain journey with his companion Django. It really challenges the readerWhere they's perceptions re going and opens up a gateway to an era that is difficult to imagine for anyone brought up in a western culture. Set in Maoist China it tells what the story purpose of four protagonists and a memorable antagonistthis journey is, is uncertain. The four, Django found guilty of anti-revolutionary crimes are undergoing re-education in a work camp governed by the child. With an Orwellian feel, tickets ''The Four Bookson the floor somewhere'' will come and has persuaded our narrator to be regarded as an undoubted masterpieceaccompany him.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099569493</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Yann Martel|title=The High Mountains of Portugal|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Tomas Why not? Not much else is being thrust into the twentieth Century, and he doesn't like it. He has given himself the job of seeking something out clear either - but we are probably in the High Mountains of Portugal, based on an ancient religious diary he found working in an archive, and to do so he needs past as the use of his uncle's brand new car pair travel to get him there and back in time. His jaw drops when he learns he will have to do the driving himself, for he cannot make head nor tail of what anything on the infernal machine does and why. It is of course a certain kind of progress, a looking forward, which has become quite anathema to him – for ever since he lost his beloved wife, beloved child station by coach and father, all in the space of a week, he has walked everywhere backwards – shielding himself from what really train is ahead with a padded behind, and never letting sight of what he has loststeam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782114696</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Antonio Moresco and Richard Dixon (translator)Makenna Goodman|title=Distant LightHelen of Nowhere

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Our unnamed narrator might as well It could be argued that the only person alivepervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. He knows he's not – he still goes down to The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the nearest inhabited village to buy things to eat brink of losing both his career and other necessitieshis relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and he sees planes spreading their contrails over the remote area protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he lives 's considering, Helen represents a volta in – but he might as well be. A lot of his thoughts are about life, however, for he has little her past tied to do except notice his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the nature protagonist around him, from the smell of lilies burgeoning with nobody else to see them in this deserted villagehouse shares stories about Helen, to the swallows darting across the ravines of the countryside. Life – and the nature of a light describes her as ''an entity that he sees spring into activity every night at what he thought was a totally lifelessis pure consciousness, empty forest area on land separated from his lookout post beyond form''. Although she lives in his back garden by a deepan assisted living facility now, wooded gorge…Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0914671421</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tania JamesOlga Tokarczuk|title=The Tusk That Did the DamageHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=3.5

|summary=Tania James was ''What's the good of a Fulbright Fellow world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in New Delhi in 2011–12. For it?'' The title of thisspellbinding work, her second novel after ''Atlas House of Day, House of UnknownsNight'' (shortlisted for , somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the DSC Prize for South Asian literature) and small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the story collection ''Aerogrammes''shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, she clearly draws on her personal knowledge of India the constant in all its contradictionsthat image is the house, especially when stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it comes to environmental policy. The novel alternates between three perspectives: a third-person account of an elephant named the Gravedigger and first-person narratives from a poacher and a documentary filmmakeris perceived.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784700584</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Anakana SchofieldThea Lenarduzzi|title= Martin JohnThe Tower|rating= 45|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I had heard much about ''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel before I read it for review, by which I mean I had heard it was profaneThea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is being told, strange and had the story of a daring subject matter accompanied by elements second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of humoura wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. I have Annie's fate is, above all, an enticing story to say that whilst I agree it T. It is certainly profane a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and strange knowledge, and incredibly innovativein service of myth, I didn't find much humour in it at allfable and fantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908276665</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jon Kalman Stefansson Fosse and Philip Roughton Damion Searls (translator)|title=The Heart of ManVaim|rating=34

|summary=What could be better than an existentialist book from rural Iceland, full ''All was strange''... This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of gnomic comments about how close life and death areotherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, that has as its core a journey taken by, amongst others, a naïve and hormonal teenaged lad fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and a full coffin? Why, I hear you cryEline, a trilogy concerning the same. Yes, it's the obvious answer, really – why else would we come to this third part, where the survivors two of the expedition rest up, note the women giving them help, and see how eminently close the circle of life is to the figure of a snake swallowing protagonists caught in its tail through, among other things, dogs rutting in a church below the coffin's bier?melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184866236X</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Joanna WalshClaire-Louise Bennett|title= VertigoBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= The short stories Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in Joanna Walsh's collection have the overall effect of disparate streams of consciousness of anguish and distortion. Even a woman laying bear her very soulkiss, whilst often going about seemingly mundane activities usually a symbol of the ordinary intimacy and every daycloseness, becomes evidence of love lost. The narrative voice appeared to me to be When the same woman speaking throughoutnarrator cries out internally, playing different roles''come over here and kiss me, though I'm not sure this was meant ' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to be the caseconfirm her emotional numbness. The style imagined recipient of the stories this plea is that of short vignettesXavier, her ex-partner, mostly written in a modernist, stream of consciousness style. Sometimes, the prose appears almost poeticghost she conjures to test her detachment. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908276800</amazonuk>1804271934

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kristopher JansmaHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Why We Came to the CityLili is Crying

|summary='We came to the city because we wished to live haphazardlyFirst published in 1953 in French, to reach for only this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the least realistic hearts of our desires, its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and to see if we could not learn what our failures had to teach, sentences from their proper position on the page and notpositions them elsewhere, when we came to livedisjointed, discover that we had never diedtruncated. We wanted to dig deep and suck out all Like the marrow lives of lifeher characters, to be overworked and reduced to our last witthey are often left tragically incomplete.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0525426604</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ernst Haffner and Michael Hofmann (translator)Jonathan Buckley|title=Blood BrothersOne Boat

|summary=It's Berlin'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 Nazis are on their way evocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and its power to power, even if they will never cross provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these pages themselvesqualities as the reason she has visited it after the death of both her parents. The city – hugePrompted by her mourning, glamorousher narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-aware, bustling, vicious in inviting the way it can swallow people – reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is home to a countless hoard book that not only requires but inspires depth of teenagersthought, but we focus since its narrative structure is fragmentary and ironically relies on just analepsis for its propulsion.|isbn=1804271764}}{{Frontpage|author=Eowyn Ivey|title=Black Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Black Woods Blue Sky'' 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 fewbar waitress, most a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of whom have been in some corrective institution or other before nowEmaleen. They call themselves the Blood BrothersDescribed as a ''wild card'', even if all they share is the most unglamorous drudgery of going from one dossshe feels stuck in her day-house to another-day life, balancing and yearns to cross the cost Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to fulfil her desires of a few cigarettes with that of simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a warm room for strange, taciturn and solitary man, who says he has a few hours or some stale rolls cabin over there, she feels called to eatgo - and bring Emaleen with her. But en route to them is another Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen'Borstal' escapee, Willis lives forever. Surely his fate is going to be nothing if not more of the same?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099594048</amazonuk>1472279042

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sara TaylorSally Rooney|title=The ShoreIntermezzo

|summary=The first story we hear from the ShoreAs always in Dostoyevsky, a group of isolated islands off the coast of Virginia, character work is from Chloe, who's telling her sister about what she overheard in the store. She'd been there buying chicken necks so that they could go crabbing. Normally they used bacon rinds, but they'd already eaten those. Cabel Bloxom had been murdered and ''they done cut his thang clean off''sublime. The girls are motherless and Chloe One is fiercely protective of her little sister Renee. She's the first of the strong women we'll encounter in these stories, which interlink to give never left wondering what a greater picturecharacter is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009959188X</amazonuk>0241619785

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adam BaronJames Baldwin|title=BlackheathGiovanni's Room

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Househusband James is happy in Blackheath. He''Giovanni's started doing stand-up again so that Room'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he too has navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an achievement 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 life to balance wife Aliceinfidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's award winning poetrycrippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni. Children Ida |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 Dominic are doing well so all is great. Elsewhere in tension from the area Amelia is equally happy with moment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, purchases her actor husband Richardforbidden notebook, her own career and children Niamh learns about herself in the most intimate and teenage Michael. Sometimes happiness isn't enough though and, as the worlds of the two families start to mingle, things start changing for each of themrevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908434902</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julian BarnesOttessa Moshfegh|title=The Noise My Year of TimeRest and Relaxation|rating=3.5

|summary=Julian Barnes's first At best, this novel since he won the Booker Prize for [[The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes]] is a fictionalised biography scathing critique of modern society and reveals the fragility of Russian composer Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (1906–75). Knowing Barnes's penchant for stylistic experimentationhuman relationships; at worst, thoughit is the cynical, this was never going to be a straightforward, chronological life storypredictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. Instead, as Barnes so often doesThis unlikely heroine, he sets up a tripartite structureslim, focussing on three moments attractive and newly orphaned girl in Shostakovich's life when he has a reckoning her twenties is disillusioned with Power (always capitalised here). The title phrase helpfully spells out what the book is all aboutworld, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: 'Art is the whisper of historyin fact, heard above the noise of timeher solution lies in her hibernation.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910702609</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Danielle McLaughlinMatthew Tree|title=Dinosaurs on Other PlanetsWe'll Never Know

|genre=Short Stories Literary Fiction|summary=Seeing as this book is clearly a talented author hitting the ground runningTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, I will dispense with any major preamble. We start with a tale of a daughter affected by the emotions of her parents as they separate – drunk and the influence chronic underachiever whose dreams of a certain school-teacher – from the mother's point being exceptional at any of view. An ancient input shows how alien, his artistic passions all failed miserably and the modern day domesticity how regular, the isolation of a woman can feel, as events are peppered by minor acts of destruction. But men can be alienated too – especially one, a reluctant guest at a party for children hosted by someone he once who had an affair with – he feels the new form of this influence in the light endless crises of another one he has had to try and abandonself confidence. 'All About Alice' – that's what the title character wants to say but has nobody to speak it So Tim applied himself tohis studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but is it her – mid-40s and single, living with her father – that is most removed from her dreams or her old friend and now child factory, Marian? And we complete a lap of the calendar with the wintry tale of a man unable to tell his work superiors of the problems he faces at home – a new home, recently built like so many one sees while driving round Irelandachievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473613701</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|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}}{{Frontpage|author=Anne EnrightMosby Woods|title=The Green RoadA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5

|summary=''The Green Road'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 story best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a familypush for climate action there. If the author A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was anyone other than Anne Enright it would be stereotypically Irish, a man with all precognition. Imagine the appropriate characters strategic advantage in place: the boy who goes off to be this asset; a priest, the daughter man who likes the bottle far too much, the son who does good works and the woman who stays back where she was born and marries a local can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That manwould be valuable, right? Perhaps the dead husband who was perhaps just a little bit beneath the wife who plays the ''grande dame'' and is perfect at being needymost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, whilst all the while maintaining that she needs nothingthis man loses this ability. But, of course, What would governments do to get it ''is'' Anne Enright.back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099539799</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kate Atkinson0571379559|title=A God in RuinsThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|summary=Teddy Todd never really expected to survive ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the warstory of four people. As a bomber pilot it wasnTess Hembry't something which you could rely s roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on and he certainly knew the statisticsriverbank, built of broken bricks. But - against all the oddsInsubstantial as it might look, he came through it's stood the passage of time, albeit with some time spent as a prisoner of warstorms and floods. On balance he had a good warHer husband, Richard, but time will see him married struggles to Nancygrow his vegetables, father to Viola complete the delivery rounds - and grandfather to Sunny bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Bertie - Max, the 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 left there's an assumption when Max is out with the feeling his mother that itshe's more difficult to have a good peace than a good warhis nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552776645</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chuck PalahniukClaire North|title=Beautiful YouHouse of Odysseus|rating=45|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Meet Penny Harrigan. And let's hope your introduction to her is 'What could matter more gentle than that love?'' The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we have on left off. In the first page palace of this bookOdysseus, where she is being raped in front of a full court housewith delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who – male 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 bone Western Isles. Having survived – sit back politically and say nothingphysical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, if not whip out their camera phone. Once people take her out Queen Penelope is on the brink of a gurney fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and recognise herhis 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, we post-apocalyptic fiction can start from the beginningbecome an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, where she this genre is a lowly underling at way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a law firm, having failed too new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many exams of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to progress satisfactorilyfind hope. |isbn=1803364998}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Eric LaRocca|title= The company Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is where the worldused as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad''s richest man , whether that is in legal negotiations having left the world's best and most beautiful actressa home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and lo and behold he just happens to pick Penny to replace her with, even if she doesn't think by the end of herself as the most beautiful girl aroundstory, beatable. But what exactly Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is it she not like that. It is wanted fora collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and can her apolitical style of feminism humiliation. Horrors that linger and aspirations be met?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009958767X</amazonuk>are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Helle Helle and Martin Aitken (translator)Madelaine Lucas|title=This Should be Written in the Present TenseThirst for Salt

|summary= This is the first novel of Helle Helle's'Love, an award winning Danish authorI'd read, was supposed to be translated into English. It is easy to see a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from this novel why she is gaining accolades in a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her Danish homeland. The rhythmicOverlaid with later wisdom, natural flow of the narrative is mesmerising and appears narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to lull you through its sorrowful end the booksummer after. It has some lovely, spare sentences Set against the backdrop of description: an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt''There were rundetails the 24-year-down cottages old narrator's deepening relationship with open doors her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and news on the radio. Gulls flocked around an early harvester in the late sun''. But mostly, familial relationships and how it is written in a modernist, almost stream of consciousness style, which I found refreshingaltered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099587475</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alice ThompsonMichael Grothaus|title=The Book CollectorBeautiful Shining People

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Meet Violet''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. Swept off her feet by a disarming encounter with a landed gentleman '' ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and bookshop owner at a coffee shop, she immediately falls in love with him, acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is quickly marriedartificial, and almost whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|isbn=191458564X}}{{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Saint|title=Atalanta|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''I was as worthy as quickly with childany one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. When I would take my place, not just in the name of the goddess. It was for the boy is sake of my name, too. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being borna daughter rather than a son, howeverAtalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, fairly understandable doubts creep inone who longs for adventure. Is her husband hiding anything behind his assuredness When the opportunity comes – especially when she wakes in to join the middle Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the night alone? What ghost is left by Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the fact he lost his first wife chance to fight in Artemis' name and baby carve out her own legendary place in childbirth? history. What should she understand from her own opinions about her new lifefollows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, her new lifeAtalanta must remember Artemis's lifefatal warning: that if she marries, and the idea of a nanny looking after it? Just what is going on in will be her new country pile?undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784630438</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sasa Stanisic and Anthea Bell (translator)Amanthi Harris|title=Before the FeastBeautiful Place|rating=2.5

|summary= Deep in the heart of Germany sits the village of Furstenfelde. It lies on Padma, a spit of land thatyoung Sri Lankan, legend has it, a giant created, between two lakes – returned to the Great Lake, and Villa Hibiscus on the Deep Lakesouthern coast of her home country. All around This is foresta place she spent her formative years. The village It is enjoying summernot a place she was born into, and we can see but the inhabitants one she thinks of as they go about their lazy life on home. How she came to be at the last hot day Villa, how it became her home, and night before the seasons change, from machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the teenage lads fishing ''score'' for this gentle and crashing cars or preparing for a bell-ringing exam, to the girl who wants out, yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to the middle-aged man who made a pub out of a garage escape her past and some curtains, to much like the older man (a retired soldier) who is watching his last piece musical score of titillating TV before going out to either fetch cigarettes or shoot himself, to the older still lady painting a portrait of the town ready to auction it off on the morrow. For the morrow is the annual fetefilm, and all those people are, one that strand weaves its way or another, reacting to its imminent arrivalthrough everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782271295</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andre Alexis178563335X|title=Fifteen DogsSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=4.5

|summary=Gods (and brothers) Hermes and Apollo were arguing When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a bar about what would happen if animals had human intelligence PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and eventually her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a wager was agreedsobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Human intelligence would be granted Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to fifteen dogs staying overnight in develop a veterinary clinic real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the wagervicar, suggested by ApolloGail, was but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that Hermes would be his servant for a year if walk on the dogs were not more unhappy than they beach would have been originally. But do them some good - if even one of the dogs it was stormy but it was happy at the end of its life Hermes would winprobably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178125558X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Marina Warner1398515388|title=Fly Away HomeThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=34.5|genre=Short StoriesGeneral Fiction|summary=How would you subvert a fairy tale? You know enough First of them and enough about them to do itall, 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 was the Schadenfreude caused by a cave that's sacred to native Canadians? Would youearthquake, deep in the light of their characters usually being routineocean floor, interchangeable tropeswhich created the tsunami and this, give them a closely-observed personality – as seen here in a teacher's interior thoughts when faced with a piece of East Anglian lore? turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. Would you take the exoticism of the east, The result was complete and Egypt in particularutter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and see it in the light loss of a musical teacher on a zero-hours contract who ends up muttering to himself, directing traffic in livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the middle list of priorities but - six months after the road, or from the remove of an elderly man with ''swollen feet in orthopaedic sandals'tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn' with t a message from dog person but the past? Certainly these two are not convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the standard Arabian Nights-styled pieces…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784630381</amazonuk>dog jumped in.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeanette Winterson0989715337|title=The Gap of TimePapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=3.54

|summary=This is ''Some frogs had gotten into the inaugural volume of a new series of Shakespeare retellings from Hogarth Presswell. Still to come: Margaret Atwood on ''The Tempest ''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, Howard Jacobson on ''The Merchant naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of Venice'' the dogs leaned over the opening and Anne Tyler on ''The Taming barked down at the strange noise of the Shrewbuckets as he filled them.'', among others.  How is that for an opening? The style of this first book? It's pretty good as Winterson novels go, incorporating Shakespearean themes novel in the form of time, deception interconnected short stories goes from succinct and adoption laconic to wistful and musing, turning bears and statues into metaphors while remaining loyal to on a sixpence. And author Marco North, who has the essence of the plot. Yet two crucial elements most wonderful turn of the play don't make sense in a modern settingphrase, and in the end I felt this added nothing starts as he means to my enjoyment of the originalgo on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781090297</amazonuk>