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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__ {{Frontpage|author= Tahi Saihate|title= Astral Season, Beastly Season|rating= 3.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= We long for our past even though it is a place to which we can never return. Tahi Saihate, in her debut novel ''Astral Season, Beastly Season'' illustrates how these rose-tinted glasses often lie. Her novel is a meditation on youth and how the things we do as a teenager can seem intensely important and often life-altering.|isbn= 1916277101}}
{{Frontpage|classauthor=Laura Imai Messina|title=The Phone Box at the End of the World|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= In the northeast of Japan, in Inwate Prefecture a man installed a telephone box in his garden. ''Inside there is an old black, telephone, disconnected, that carries voices into the wind.'' It is a real place, a necessary place, and I am pleased to see the IMPORTANT NOTE that the author attaches to her story, that the place is not a tourist destination, it is a sacred place, a place that must be left to those who really need it.|isbn=178658039X}}{{Frontpage|author=Amin Maalouf|title=The Disoriented|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Adam has lived in Paris for years, speaks French more easily than his native Arabic. In fact he hasn't been back to his homeland for 25 years. An old friend is dying…or as Adam prefers to think of him a former-friend, perhaps not as harsh as an ex-friend, or maybe. The falling out was a long time ago, and Adam's partner has no idea what it was about, even so she urges him to go knowing that he'll regret not doing so. Not knowing whether he's going because he needs or wants to, or simply because he was asked, he's on the next plane. |isbn=B07ZQSK9CY}}{{Frontpage|author=Joanne M Harris|title=A Pocketful of Crows|rating=5|genre= Confident Readers|summary= I have always been of the mind that once you're above picture-"wikitable" cellpaddingbook level and before you get to graphic sex & violence, there is no difference between books for children and books for adults. There are good books and poor ones. And Joanne Harris does not produce poor ones. ''A Pocketful of Crows'' is clearly aimed at the younger readers as witness the use of the middle initial in the author's name to differentiate from her adult offers. Ignore that if you have loved anything from ''Chocolat'' onwards you will know that Harris is mistress of the modern fairy tale. This is no different. It is an utter delight.|isbn=1473222184}}{{Frontpage|author=Frederic Beigbeder and Frank Wynne (translator)|title=A Life Without End|rating=4|genre="15" Literary Fiction|summary=I looked at the calendar the other week, and disappointedly realised I have a birthday this year – I know, yet another one. It won't be one of the major numbers, but the time when I have the same number as Heinz varieties looms on the horizon. And then a few of the big 0-numbers, and if all goes well, I'll be an OBE. (Which of course stands for Over Bloody Eighty.) Now if that's the extent of my mid-life crisis, I guess I have to be happy. Our author here doesn't use that exact phrase, but he might be said to be living one. Determined to find out how to prolong life for as long as he wants – he would like to see 400 – he hops right into bed with the assistant to the first geneticist he interviews, and they end up with a child, which is at least a way of continuing the life of his genes, and a motive to keep on going. <!But how can he get to not flick the 'final way out' switch, especially when foie gras tastes so nice?|isbn=1642860670}}{{Frontpage|author= Maryse Condé|title= The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= We live in a post- world: post-colonialism, post- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HEREmodernism, post truth. The list goes on. There are numerous works that utilise the prefix post-in their categorisation, but perhaps none more so than Maryse Condé. In her new novel, ''The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana'', Condé writes with fervour about the scars left by colonialism on the countries to which it latched itself. Ivan and Ivana are twins born in Guadeloupe, a French overseas department. They grow up with intense and passionate feelings for each other. As they grow up and move overseas, the ravages of a post->colonial society drive them apart with tragic consequences.|isbn=1642860697}}{{Frontpage|author= Ukamaka Olisakwe|title= Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All Right|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= The new novel by Ukamaka Olisakwe is a look at the trauma and heartache of being a woman in 1980s Nigeria. The title is ''Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All Right''. Ogadinma is the eponymous heroine of the story.. We are with her in every scene and it is her narrative voice that leads the story, although Olisakwe writes in third person. This provides a sense of detachment for the reader and highlights the isolation of Ogadinma. She is exiled from her father's home and sent to Lagos where she is married to an older man named Tobe. Their marriage descends into violence and indignities and Ogadinma must utilise her resourcefulness to escape.|isbn=1911648160}}{{Frontpage|author=Elliot Reed|title=A Key to Treehouse Living|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=This is the story of a young boy, William Tyce, who is being raised by his uncle after the death of his mother and his father's abandonment. However, it isn't told in the usual narrative way. Instead, the book is made up of glossary entries, written by William, as a way of describing certain events, situations and emotions. It runs alphabetically, starting with ABSENCE, then moving to ALPHABETICAL ORDER. As I began to read I did find myself thinking 'what on earth?!' but I soon grew used to the style, and was instead caught up in William's story.|isbn=1911545418}}{{Frontpage|author= Karina Sainz Borgo and Elizabeth Bryer (translator)|title= It Would Be Night in Caracas|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction |summary= ''It Would Be Night in Caracas'' illuminates the everyday horrors of modern day Venezuela. It begins with the death of Adelaida Falcon's mother and chronicles Adelaida's coming to terms with her new solitude in this world and her attempts to escape it. Danger stalks the shadows and, in a society where the establishment is crumbling, who can you turn to? |isbn=0062936867}}
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===[[The Gradual Disappearance Photographer of Jane Ashland the Lost by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator)Caroline Scott]]===
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Historical Fiction|General Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
Jane Ashland May 1921. Edie receives a photograph through the post. There is dyingno letter or note with it. That's a description There is nothing written on the back of the photograph. It is a very early scene here – but also, picture of courseher husband, a platitude that can apply to all of usFrancis. Francis has been missing for four years. Jane's life Technically, if anythinghe has been "missing, believed killed" but that is going up and down in levels of pleasure, energy – sobriety – in these pages, but we soon learn not something that it recently found a very deeply dark down placeyoung widow can believe. Here then, scattered through a timeline-bending narrative She hangs on the word 'missing', we have her days finding a Lincolnesque lover as a student in New York, glimpses of therapy, a drive to find her ancestors that takes her from rural America to Norway – and a trip there with a new-found friend to watch disbelieving the musk oxen, of all thingsword killed. And nowhere in sight is anything like a platitude… [[The Gradual Disappearance Photographer of Jane Ashland the Lost by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator)Caroline Scott|Full Review]]
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===[[Black Sugar The Dutch House by Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)Ann Patchett]]===
[[image:4star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
Miguel Bonnefoy's 'When we first meet Danny and his elder sister, Maeve Conroy, they'Black Sugar'' is a sensual epic chronicling three generations of the Otero family. re both living at The tale begins Dutch House with their parents and under the gaze of the disappearance portraits of Captain Henry Morganthe former owners whose oil paintings still hang on the walls. It's treasure a strange family dynamic: Cyril Conroy is distant and then illustrates the power this treasure holds over peopleclosest Danny seems to come to him is when he goes out with him on a Saturday collecting rents from properties the family owns. Multiple people become obsessed with finding this fabled treasure that has become an urban legend in Elna Conroy is loving, but absent increasingly often until the town in which point comes when the story children are told that she will not be returning. In other circumstances this might have affected Maeve and Danny deeply, but their primary relationship is setwith each other. It's a bond which only death will break. [[Black Sugar The Dutch House by Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)Ann Patchett|Full Review]]
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===[[The Zero and the One A Winter Book by Ryan RubyTove Jansson]]===
[[image:4star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]]
Tove Jansson''The Zero and the One'' is an incredibly well written and well crafted book. We meet our narrator, Owen, s worldwide fame lasts on the plane to New York for the funeral of his best friend. He is still reeling after recent eventsMoomin books, a suicide pact written in which his friend died but he lived, the 1940s and he is going through the motions later becoming television characters of the funeral simplicity, naivety and consoling family whilst still trying to get to grips with his own feelings of grief and guiltsheer 'goodness' that would later produce flowerpot men or teletubbies. So farSimple drawings, simple stories, so simplegoodness. But this What is where the talent often forgotten outside of Ryan Ruby steps in and slowly, so slowly, he reveals little tantalising clues her native Finland is that all is not what it seems, she was a throw-away comment here, serious writer…that she wrote for adults as well as children…and that she had a mis-step there, feeling for the natural world and it becomes clear the simple life that Owen is not a reliable narratoronly informed those child-like trolls but went far beyond any fantasy of how the world might be. [[The Zero and the One A Winter Book by Ryan RubyTove Jansson|Full Review]]
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===[[Anatomy of a Miracle The Summer Book by Jonathan MilesTove Jansson]]===
[[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
Look closely at the cover of Jonathan MilesTove Jansson's third short novel and you'll see the central drama depicted: white wheelchair tracks snake up about Summer is several worlds away from the bottom and stop three-quarters of the way from the top, where they are replaced by footprintsMoomintrolls she is most famous for outside her native Scandinavia. On 23 August 2014Book yourself an afternoon this Summer, wheelchair-bound veteran Cameron Harris stands up and walks outside the Biz-E-Bee convenience store in Biloxitake yourself and The Summer Book somewhere quiet, Mississippi. In the rest preferably within sight and sound of the novel we find out how he got to this point sea, settle back and what others – ranging from his doctor prepare to representatives of the Roman Catholic Church – will make of his recoverybe transported. Was it a miracle, or an explainable medical phenomenon? [[Anatomy of a Miracle The Summer Book by Jonathan MilesTove Jansson|Full Review]]
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===[[Fire on the Mountain Snowflake, AZ by Jean McNeilMarcus Sedgwick]]===
[[image:4star3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
This is an unusual a deep, interesting read unlike any book, I've read in style it feels like a quite some time. The novel by E M Forster; with 's story follows a deep study at young man named Ash in the minutiae process of life and thought, yet the plot and content is thoroughly modern. The bulk joining a community of sick people in the story is told through the perspective curiously named town of NickSnowflake, Arizona. These people are sick, and we see his point but it's not a sickness you've heard of view on life around him. The main characters of the bookInstead, they're environmentally ill – affected by household chemicals and fabrics, pesticides, howeverstatic electricity, are Pieter and Riaanradiation – and their only ''cure'' is to stay in the town away from the real world. Though it's about a real place, as the people in it are fictional. It really is these characters who fascinate Nick and a place apart, quite literally cut off from the outside world – people are the focus of his contemplation and crisiseven required to decontaminate themselves thoroughly before becoming fully integrated. [[Fire on the Mountain Snowflake, AZ by Jean McNeilMarcus Sedgwick|Full Review]]
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===[[The Last of the Greenwoods by Clare Morrall]]===
 
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
 
Down in hidden railway carriages, deep behind foliage and further down Long Meadow Road than most care to go, live the Greenwood Brothers. They haven't spoken to each other in years, but one morning a letter arrives on their doorstep - a letter from a sister long thought dead...As the brothers are forced to confront painful memories of a past that both tried to keep buried, the post-woman who delivered the letter struggles with secrets of her own... [[The Last of the Greenwoods by Clare Morrall|Full Review]]
 
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===[[The Baghdad Clock Nightjar by Shahad Al RawiDeborah Hewitt]]===
[[image:24.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary FictionFantasy|Literary FictionFantasy]], [[:Category:Historical Literary Fiction|Historical Literary Fiction]]
''The Baghdad ClockNightjar'' is a tale of two friends growing up during the first an unusual and second Iraqi warexciting story. Shahad Al Rawi uses magic realism to illustrate the displacement felt by Alice Wyndham lives a normal life in London until she finds a young girl box on her doorstep one morning and her neighbourhood. The novel introduces us life begins to the various characters surrounding the protagonistunravel, fast. They are full of From that very moment, her life is flooded with magic, loss, expectation and yet never seem to add anything to the central narrativeparticularly, betrayal. RawiAs everything around her shifts, all that she knows, it would seemall that she thinks she knows, has a problem with telling a storymust change. Who can she trust? Who must she trust? Who will she trust? More importantly, can she even trust herself? [[The Baghdad Clock Nightjar by Shahad Al RawiDeborah Hewitt|Full Review]]
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Maybe you've heard about Scarcross Hall? Hidden on the old coffin path that winds from the village to the moor top, the villagers only speak of it in hushed tones - of how it's a foreboding place filled with evil. Mercy Booth has lived there since birth, and she's always loved the grand house and its isolation, but a recurrence of strange events begins to unsettle her. From objects disappearing through to a shadowy presence sensed in the house, mysteries come to light that can only be solved by Mercy unearthing long-buried secrets. And will a dark stranger help Mercy protect everything she has come to love or tear it from her grasp? [[The Coffin Path by Katherine Clements|Full Review]]
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[[image:2.5star.jpg| stylelink="vertical-alignCategory:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[: top; text-alignCategory: left;"General Fiction|===General Fiction]], [[The Execution of Justice by Friedrich Durrenmatt and John E Woods (translator):Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]===
I came to this book thinking I knew just what to expect, even though it is [[image:2Category:Andy Mulligan|the author's]] debut in the adult novel market (hence the more mature name – he used to be an Andy).5star I thought it simple to sum up, the tale of a middle-aged man who knows too much about train travel having his life turned around in the most pleasant way.jpg|link= I hadn't opened it when I'd shelved it alongside [[:Category:{{{rating}}} Star ReviewsChris Cleave|Chris Cleave]] , and [[:Category:CrimeDavid Nicholls|CrimeDavid Nicholls]]. I expected some whimsy, some warmth and some affirmative loveliness.
It's 1957, and we're somewhere in Switzerland, and there's just one case on everyone's lips – the simple fact that a politician has gone into the crowded room of one of those 'the place to go' restaurants, and point blank shot a professor everyone there must have known, and ferried a British companion to the airport in his chauffeur-driven Rolls before handing himself in to face the murder rapMore fool me. Of course he's found guilty, even if the gun involved has managed to disappear. He's certainly of much interest, not only to our narrator, a young lawyer called Spaet – even if he rarely gets to frequent such establishments with such people, he is eager to know more, especially once he is actually tasked by the man in hand to look into things a second time. But what's this, where he opens his testimony about the affair with the conclusion, that he himself will need to turn killer to redress the balance? [[The Execution of Justice Train Man by Friedrich Durrenmatt and John E Woods (translator)Andrew Mulligan|Full Review]]
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===[[The Impostor by Javier Cercas and Frank Wynne (translator)]]===
 
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
 
Enric Marco is without doubt an extraordinary man. A veteran of the Spanish Civil War, honoured for his bravery on the battlefield. A political prisoner of two fascist regimes. A survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. A prominent figure in the clandestine resistance against Franco's tyranny. A tireless warrior for social justice and the defence of human rights. A national hero. But the most extraordinary thing about Enric Marco is this: that he is really none of these things. He is an impostor. And Javier Cercas sets out to tell his story – the true story of Spain's most notorious liar. [[The Impostor by Javier Cercas and Frank Wynne (translator)|Full Review]]
 
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===[[A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars by Yaba Badoe]]===
 
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Teens|Teens]]
 
Sante was a baby when she was washed ashore in a sea-chest laden with treasure. It seems she is the sole survivor of the tragic sinking of a ship carrying migrants and refugees. Her people. Fourteen years on she's a member of Mama Rose's unique and dazzling circus. But, from their watery grave, the unquiet dead are calling Sante to avenge them. A bamboo flute. A golden bangle. A ripening mango which must not fall... if Sante is to tell their story and her own. [[A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars by Yaba Badoe|Full Review]]
 
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===[[The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao A Perfect Explanation by Martha Batalha and Eric M B Becker (translator)Eleanor Anstruther]]===
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]]
On Enid Campbell was a woman who, on the surfaceface of it, young housewife Euridice Gusmao has it allhad everything. A nice-enoughLeading the life of an aristocrat – full of inherited wealth and splendour, parent-pleasing husband with a steady banking job, two young children upon whom to dote, an immaculate home complete with maidglamourous locales and high expectations. ThatOnly Enid's all anyone could ever wantlife has been plagued by mental illness – undiagnosed, isn't it? Not Euridice. She has an inexplicable ache inside untreated and threatening both Enid and those close to her for something more, like many of us. Yet each After losing custody of her pet projectschildren, from a desire to publish a recipe book Enid sells her son to starting a cottage sewing industry in her living roomsister for £500 – but is this an act of greed, are met with scorn from or an act of desperation? Exploring the true story of her stern husband Antenor. He wants a wife who doesn't draw attention to herselfown grandmother, Eleanor Anstruther has found the perfect subject for an explosive, whose only domains are her house moving and her familybeautifully well written debut. [[The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao A Perfect Explanation by Martha Batalha and Eric M B Becker (translator)Eleanor Anstruther|Full Review]]
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===[[The Dark-Blue Winter Overcoat and other stories from the North Choke by Sjon Hodgkinson and Ten Hodgkinson (editors)Sofie Laguna]]===
[[image:3star2star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Anthologies|Anthologies]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]]
A compilation like this should be nigh on brilliant. ItThere's not one author's best short works, it's that of a dozen. It's not from one snapshot in timedull, as some were written the year dispiriting pang of publication disappointment that comes when you try something everyone else loves and some in the 1960s. Itfind out that you's re really not from one tiny patch of author's desk or one set of laptop keys, but from the entire Nordic world, whether that be urban Scandinavia, the Faroes and other island groups, or Greenlandinto it. Coffee. That is a world that's changing – as the Greenland-born author now living in Brooklyn, and the Iraqi blood on these pages, testifyIce skating. It's a world where A new roads and new building works mean a family living on the edge of the forest at the beginning of the story Netflix series. Books are being surrounded by other life by the endlike that, and with the influence of centuries of folklore featured, a lot more than that changes – sometimes it seems to be even the characters' species… but doubly so. [[The Dark-Blue Winter Overcoat and other stories from the North Choke by Sjon Hodgkinson and Ten Hodgkinson (editors)Sofie Laguna|Full Review]]
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===[[Companions Equator by Christina Hesselholdt Antonin Varenne and Paul Russell Garrett Sam Taylor (translator)]]===
[[image:3star3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
''Companions'' is written as It strikes me that nobody can speak well of the Wild West outside the walls of a series of monologues, where six middle-aged friends take theme park. Our agent to see how bad it in turns to narrate scenes from their liveswas here is Pete Ferguson, charting who bristles at the intimate details indignity of their holidayswhite man against Native 'Indian', dinner parties, families, marriages, affairs and work lives who spends days being physically sick while indulging in a style that mixes honesty buffalo hunt, and openness with fantasy who hates the way man – and evasion. The charm woman, of course – can turn against fellow man at the novel lies in bat of an eyelid. But this book is about so much more than the way 1870s USA, and the friendsattendant problems with gold rushes, pioneer spirits and racial genocide. He finds himself trying to find this book' voices bicker with one another among s version of Utopia, namely the pagesEquator, where everything is upside down, as we discover that there are always several sides people walk on their heads with rocks in their pockets to keep them on the same story. We learn most about ground to counter the characters not through what they say about themselves but through what the others say about them. Along the wayanti-gravity, there is heartbreak and griefwhere, but this who knows, things might actually be better. But that equator is always offset by an abundance a long way away – and there's a whole adventure full of humour Mexico and Latin America between him and a writing style that never fails to be refreshingly light-hearted. it… [[Companions Equator by Christina Hesselholdt Antonin Varenne and Paul Russell Garrett Sam Taylor (translator)|Full Review]]
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===[[Stranger Nights of the Creaking Bed by David BergenToni Kan]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] ''Stranger'' tells the story of Íso, a young Guatemalan woman, and her affair with an American doctor. When an accident forces him to return to the States, she is left pregnant and lonely. Her anguish becomes even more profound when her daughter is abducted, and taken to live with the doctor and his wife. What followed - tales of the journey Íso embarked upon in the hope of finding her baby - was an amazing story of the lengths a mother will go to in order to save her child. [[Stranger by David Bergen|Full Review]]
<!-- Chonghaile -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Chonghaile_Rain.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1785079018/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Rain Falls On Everyone by Clar Ni Chonghaile]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] It's a cliché that the Irish have a picturesque turn of phrase, but clichés only exist because they're true. Roddy Doyle put it differently in a recent interview with ''Writing'' magazine, when he said that ''With Irish, there's another language bubbling under the English''. However you express it, that art of expression is woven into every other line of Clár's prose. Pick a page at random and you'll find something like ''the sickness that had come to roost in her home like a cursed owl'' or ''like he was God, Jesus and Justin Timberlake rolled into one'' or ''a low sobbing, slow and inevitable as rain on a Sunday'': expressions that catch your smile unawares, or tear at your heart in their mundane sadness. Or sometimes both. [[Rain Falls On Everyone by Clar Ni Chonghaile|Full Review]] <!-- Mete -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Mete_Sinful.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1524682527/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Sinful Words by Hesene Mete]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] When we meet him, Behram is a student at the school of theology. He loves God with a passion and has a determination to live a life dedicated to God and to live by His rules. He rents a property from Lulu Khan and his wife, Lady Geshtina and Khan invites Behram to his own home for a visit. It's a delightful place and the wealth of the couple is obvious as is their standing within the local community: Lady Geshtina's late father is buried in what amounts to a mausoleum, but it's not all this which enchants Behram. The couple have twin children and Behram is taken, enthralled by the daughter, Nagina. [[Sinful Words by Hesene Mete|Full Review]] <!-- Laurel -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Laurel_Gurugu.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1908276940/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Gurugu Pledge by Juan-Tomas Avila Laurel]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Juan-Tomas Avila Laurel, one of Equatorial Guinea's best-known dissident writers, is an author who deserves to be read the world over. With The Gurugu Pledge, he's captured an angry and incredibly urgent slice of the migrant experience – a snapshot of the dangers faced by those crossing the African continent in search of the barbed wire fences at Melilla- the Spanish enclave on the North Eastern tip of Morocco. [[The Gurugu Pledge by Juan-Tomas Avila Laurel|Full Review]] <!-- Smith -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Smith_Waking.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0995654158/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Waking by Matthew Smith]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary FictionShort Stories|Literary FictionShort Stories]]
Isabel Sykes, 23, recounts ''Nights of the recent attempt she made to come to terms with the loss Creaking Bed'' is a collection of her mother, the acclaimed but psychologically disturbed novelist Marianne Sykesshort stories by Toni Kan. Marianne died in an unexplained house fire when Isabel was ten. Inspired by The series of stories tell of the appearance lives and lusts of Imogen Taylor, an enchanting young woman who wants to write a PhD on her mother's work, Isabel plunges into the depths assortment of her past characters living in and an intense new friendshiparound Lagos, Nigeria. After discovering that Imogen Nigeria, in this collection, is not who she seems to be, Isabel must face imbued with its very own heart of darkness. Danger stalks the darkest moments from her childhood in order to protect her family from shadows and people are killed for nothing more tragedythan a wrong look. She receives unexpected help from beyond the grave: in the strange, glittering fragments Kan writes with a vitality and passion that allows these cynical stories to achieve a glimmer of her mother's last, unfinished work, 'Midnightsong'hope. [[The Waking Nights of the Creaking Bed by Matthew SmithToni Kan|Full Review]]
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