Newest General Fiction Reviews
General fiction
My Life in Black and White by Kim Izzo
My Life in Black and White starts off in a police station in England. The film noir theme that permeates the novel begins immediately. Clara Bishop is dressed in a gold evening gown, and treats the police officer who is interviewing her just as a femme fatale would. This girl has sass. But when she begins to recount her tale, it is clear this is a new development. The old Clara describes her life as something from a screwball comedy, not a film noir. How does a screenwriter-slash-gossip-columnist from LA end up being interviewed about an assault in England? Full review...
Chaplin and Company by Mave Fellowes
In 'Chaplin & Company', Mave Fellowes takes a quirky look at life on London's canal boats. Yet, while her story is full of eccentric characters, not least the main human character of Odeline Milk, who moves to the boat that shares the title of the book after her mother passes away to pursue her dream of becoming a mime artist in the more culturally enlightened big city after a lonely life in provincial Arundel, the book is delightfully free of sentimentality. I say the main human character, because this is also the story of a boat with a remarkable history of owners, and also a story of the strange life on the canal which somehow exists beneath the city through which it flows. Full review...
The Deception Artist by Fayette Fox
This story is all about the characters. Plot-wise, it is set in 1980s suburban America. There are no explosions or even fairy tale adventures in this book. It’s just the simple adventure of life when you’re a child and learning new things every day. Ivy accounts her day-to-day life with an extreme attention to the strangest details, just like a child. As well as explaining what she has learnt in school, she describes her daydreams, her friends and her family. When her dad loses his job, her parents start arguing and she is worried they might have to get a divorce like sad Sara in her class. And not only that, they might have to return their new TV. Full review...
The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving by Jonathan Evison
Ben hasn't worked for a while and so, deciding on a career change, trains to become a caregiver. His first client is Trev, a 20 year old Duchene Muscular Dystrophy sufferer who hasn't the sunniest of dispositions. In fact Trev is angry, self-centred and goes through caregivers like a knife through milk. However, Ben, needing a job, holds on tight and tries to encourage Trev to live a little. Eventually Trev complies and dictates a way forward: a road trip. A road trip with a housebound, ill, angry person is not what Ben had in mind at all. Meanwhile it gradually becomes clear to us that Trev isn't the only one who has to learn to live a little differently. Full review...
A Wolf in Hindelheim by Jenny Mayhew
Germany, the 1920s. Whatever that old proverb is about an ending of something merely being a beginning of something else in disguise, this novel is an evocation of it. In the rural habitation of the title a father and son pair of policemen is called to a remote house by news that a newborn baby is missing. In the house is an awkward combination of families – elderly matriarch, her son and daughter and both their spouses – two couples living on top of each other, with a disabled boy and maid in the mix too. We soon are given an explanation for the child being dead – a terrible instance of clumsiness, but like I say, this is only the beginning – of several things, including the older policeman's infatuation with the grieving mother's sister-in-law… Full review...
Tomorrow There Will be Apricots by Jessica Soffer
Lorca is in her early teens and struggling to get attention from her mother. She's resorted to self-harming and even her obvious abilities in the kitchen don't seem to be enough to merit some of her chef mother's time. Her last chance to make an impact before she's sent away to boarding school seems to be to find a way to make Masgouf - an Iraqi fish dish - which her mother has described as her favourite meal. Along with her only friend - a young man who goes by the name of Blot - they discover that some Iraqi Jewish cooking classes are being offered by a chef. Full review...
The Patron Saint of Lost Dogs by Nick Trout
Dr Cyrus Mills only intended to return to Vermont for long enough to sell the veterinary practice which his father had left him, collect the money and get back to South Carolina where he was trying to sort out the little matter of having his licence to practice suspended. He had never got on with his father who had - somehow - managed NOT to tell his son that his mother had died until after her funeral. The first snag he encountered was quite a big one: his father had been equally forgetful about dealing with his financial affairs and the Bedside Manor practice was dying on its feet. Cyrus didn’t have the money to prop it up and it looked as though he would have to hand everything over to the Bank and walk away with nothing. The second problem was an aging Golden Retriever by the name of Frieda and an owner who’s very keen to see her put to sleep. Full review...
Flowers From Fukushima by Clive Lawton
In 2011, Japan was hit by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake. That and the subsequent tsunami caused level 7 meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Flowers from Fukushima riffs on this in a post-apocalyptic story of a Japan devastated by even more and even bigger natural disasters. It follows two main characters as they pick their way through the devastation, each trying to make sense of this new and very different world. Full review...
First Aid Kit Girl by Lynsey Rose
Steph hates her job. She hates her colleagues. She likes the work first aid kit, a lot. She’s trundling along, doing not very much, finding her release where she can. To me it seems like she loves to hate her life. Takes great pleasure in despising it, in fact. Full review...
The Hive by Gill Hornby
There's an old joke that, for parents, there are only two good days in the school holidays - the first and the last, but in St Ambrose the real work begins when the children go back to school at the start of the new school year. There's a new head at the school (and he'll have to be knocked into shape) but the real power is Beatrice - 'Bea' to those whom she elects to call friends for the time being - who rules the parents, decides who is in or out and what status they should have in the community. And how does she do it? Well, she's the queen. Full review...
A Bright Moon For Fools by Jasper Gibson
Jasper Gibson’s debut novel, A Bright Moon For Fools, tells the story of Harry Christmas and his drunken escapades in Caracas and the small villages of Venezuela. Harry Christmas is nowhere near as jolly as his name suggests, in fact Harry is drunken conman. He has pushed his luck too far and is forced to fly to Venezuela to evade William Slade, the irate son of a woman Harry fleeced out of £27,000. Harry’s life is defined by booze and where to get the next drink; he is having a major breakdown. Slade is no better off and is also having his own mental crisis: unfortunately for Harry, Slade’s breakdown is of a much more psychotic nature. Full review...
Come Home by Lisa Scottoline
You divorce a partner, not a child, so although Jill and William’s split meant she was no longer legal step mum to his daughter Abby, in some ways she never stopped seeing her as a daughter. Now, years after they last met up, Abby shows up on Jill’s doorstep with some devastating news about Jill’s ex-husband. News that will unsettle both their lives, and the lives of Jill’s new fiancé Sam, and of her own biological daughter. While Abby wants to pull her into untangling a mystery, Sam is reluctant to encourage this investigation, and the family reunion it will bring, leaving Jill torn between her new family and her old one. Full review...
The President's Hat by Antoine Laurain
The milliners' advertising used to say 'to get ahead, get a hat'. They would very much approve of this book. Daniel Mercier is a Mr Average - or perhaps a Monsieur Mediocre. He's a lowly accountant until one evening he finds himself dining next to French President, François Mitterrand, who leaves the restaurant without his hat. When Daniel decides to keep it, his life starts to change and he feels somehow more confident. In other strands of the story, Fanny Marquant is having an affair with an older man who clearly has no intention of leaving his wife while celebrated perfumer Pierre Aslan has lost his ability to detect smells and to create perfumes. Bernard Lavallière, meanwhile is struggling to live up to the right wing standards of his wife's friends and starts to read the more left wing papers. At some point, all will come into contact with the President's hat and it will have an impact on all of them. Full review...
The Dark Road by Ma Jian
One of my many lovable traits, according to my beloved, is my ability to absolutely insist I haven't read a book before (when he catches me reading it again). This has the huge benefit of my getting to discover it all over again – and the massive downside that I will never get to the end of my reading list, which must exist in some kind of Möbius loop. Full review...
Dear Lucy by Julie Sarkissian
Dear Lucy. Dear, sweet Lucy. Lucy lives on a farm with Mister and Missus, but the only person who is truly kind to her is Samantha, who lives there with them. Lucy finds it difficult, sometimes. She doesn’t always have the words she needs. She tries very hard to be good but sometimes her helping is more of a hindrance. But she knows more that people think. She knows that although Mum Mum sent her to live on the farm, she will come back for her one day. That is why Lucy must never leave the farm, otherwise Mum Mum won’t know where to find her. Full review...
Snapper by Brian Kimberling
There's little doubt that Brian Kimberling's debut novel, Snapper is a slightly unusual book. The publishers describe it as a coming of age story, and it is after a fashion, but it's more in the vein of an adult looking back on his young adult self than the more conventional young person grows up way of looking at things. The narrator, Nathan, shares many of the traits of his creator. Like Kimberling, he is brought up in Indiana and is involved in research of songbirds in that state; effectively a paid bird watcher. The title of the book though comes not from any type of bird, but from the snapping turtle that lives in the state. It's a broadly affectionate and wry look at the people of Indiana, known as 'Hoosiers'. Full review...
Grace and Mary by Melvyn Bragg
Grace and Mary is a tender and moving account spanning three generations of the same family. In the first chapter, we are introduced to ninety-two year old Mary and her doting son, John. Mary is in a nursing home and has dementia, hovering in a limbo-world, precariously balanced between the present and the past. John delights when he catches the occasional glimpse of the real Mary, and they find a meeting place, of sorts in their shared world of memories and songs. Full review...
The Sea Sisters by Lucy Clarke
Kate is as sensible, focused and down to earth as her sister Mia is reckless and unsettled, so it’s no surprise that it’s Mia who leaves London behind to go traveling. With dreams of seeing the USA, Australia and beyond, Mia sets off excitedly with her best friend Finn, but this once in a lifetime trip tragically becomes just that as some months later Mia is found dead in Bali, an apparent suicide plunge. With her life thrown into turmoil and unable to get past the things they said, and didn’t say, to each other when Mia was alive, Kate makes a rather Mia-like decision to leave it all behind too. Armed with Mia’s travel journey, she sets off to retrace her sister’s steps, stop by stop, to try and work out what Mia was going through, and what ultimately lead to her death. Full review...
Briefs Encountered by Julian Clary
Choosing this book from Julian Clary was irresistible. Normally, I try not to review books where I’m already familiar with author. But I didn’t feel that seeing him live several times or watching him regularly on TV counted, as I hadn’t read either of his two previous novels. Full review...
The Safest Place by Suzanne Bugler
Jane and David Berry have always lived and worked in London. However, since their children have come along, the house has felt too cramped and Jane has often dreamed of moving away. When their son Sam fails to get a place at his chosen secondary school, that is the catalyst she needs to start making her dream a reality. The only problem is that the rest of the family are not quite as enthusiastic about moving as she would have hoped. David will have to commute every day to London and the children are anxious about starting a new school, particularly Sam who finds it difficult to make friends. Even Jane starts to wonder if it was a good idea, isolated in a house miles from anywhere, finding it difficult to get to know the local community. Full review...
Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
Much like the missing question mark in the title it would seem, Bernadette has disappeared. Maria Semple's Where'd You Go, Bernadette works as both a physical and emotional question. Bernadette Fox is the wife of Elgie Branch, a star at Microsoft in Seattle, and mother of 15 year old, Bee. The narrative begins with Bee wondering where her mother had gone, but then quickly moves to an epistolary format told in e-mails, notes and messages between the major players, including some rather obnoxious mothers at Bee's school, one of whom also works at Microsoft with Elgie. We are taken back a few weeks to when Bernadette was around and a seemingly somewhat angry mother prior to her mysterious disappearance. One of the delights about the book, which along with being very funny on issues like helicopter parenting, corporate life and, er, Canadians, is that it emerges that Bernadette is more than a wife and mother but has a past career of her own as a talented architect which she has sacrificed for one reason or another. Thus, in many ways she disappeared long before her physical disappearance. Full review...
The Ottoman Motel by Christopher Currie
Simon Sawyer is 11 years old, forced on a road-trip with his parents to visit his grandmother, Iris. Iris is living in some backwater town hemmed in on three sides by corn fields, and on the fourth by the sea. The town is called Reception in a heavy-handed attempt at irony, as we learn the town actually has no reception for mobile phones and is pretty much isolated from the rest of the world but for a few dirt tracks leading out. Full review...
Homecoming by Susie Steiner
Ann and Joe Hartle are approaching their sixties and hoping to slow down a little. Their sheep farming life is starting to take its toll and it’s an enticing thought that they may be able to pass the farm on to their son Max. The only problem is that the farm is hardly making any profit and Max is not the most capable person in the world. Added to that, Max’s wife Primrose is expecting a baby and that is not without its difficulties. The Hartle’s other son, Bartholomew, is far away in London trying to run his own business and also scared about committing to his girlfriend, Ruby. The family has started to fall apart over the years but when things go badly wrong on the farm including a barn fire and a virus that spreads through the sheep and newborn lambs, there is the opportunity to pull together and start anew. Is this something that the family can do or will they fall apart even more? Full review...
