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Newest Literary Fiction Reviews (view source)

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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- Remove -->altering.|isbn= 1916277101}}
{{Frontpage|class-"wikitable" cellpaddingauthor=Laura Imai Messina|title=The Phone Box at the End of the World|rating=5|genre="15" <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->Literary FictionIa Pendilly lives |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 caravan on real place, a necessary place, and I am pleased to see the IMPORTANT NOTE that the author attaches to her story, that the coast 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 Cornwall – him a woman former-friend, perhaps not as raw harsh as the landscape 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 surrounds herhe'll regret not doing so. Living with Bran Not knowing whether he's going because he needs or wants to, or simply because he was asked, her abusive cousin 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-book level and common law husbandbefore you get to graphic sex & violence, shethere 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 never yet had name to differentiate from her own babyadult offers. Ignore that if you have loved anything from ''Chocolat'' onwards you will know that Harris is mistress of the modern fairy tale. Discovering 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=Literary Fiction|summary=I looked at the calendar the other week, and disappointedly realised I have a waif washed up 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 shorethe horizon. And then a few of the big 0-numbers, and if all goes well, Ia rescues I'll be an OBE. (Which of course stands for Over Bloody Eighty.) Now if that's the girl 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 also rescued by at least a way of continuing the girl – given life of his genes, and a new found strength motive to keep on going. But how can he get to escape 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 to embark on Ivana|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= We live in a new journeypost- world: post-colonialism, post-modernism, post truth. The journey takes 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 deep into 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 troubled society French overseas department. They grow up with intense and passionate feelings for each other. As they grow up and through move overseas, the ravages of a damagedpost-colonial society drive them apart with tragic consequences.|isbn=1642860697}}{{Frontpage|author= Ukamaka Olisakwe|title= Ogadinma Or, hurting world – finding family Everything Will Be All Right|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= The new novel by Ukamaka Olisakwe is a look at the trauma and memories long hidden will break Iaheartache of being a woman in 1980s Nigeria. The title is ''Ogadinma Or, remake Everything Will Be All Right''. Ogadinma is the eponymous heroine of the story.. We are with her in every scene and perhaps give it is her narrative voice that leads the elusive story, although Olisakwe writes in third person. This provides a sense of freedom detachment for the reader and highlights the isolation of Ogadinma. She is exiled from her father's home and sent to Lagos where sheis 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 been seekingmother 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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===[[Black Sugar Photographer of the Lost by Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)Caroline Scott]]===
[[image:4star4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
Miguel Bonnefoy's ''Black Sugar'' is May 1921. Edie receives a sensual epic chronicling three generations of photograph through the Otero familypost. The tale begins There is no letter or note with it. There is nothing written on the disappearance back of Captain Henry Morgan's treasure and then illustrates the power this treasure holds over peoplephotograph. It is a picture of her husband, Francis. Francis has been missing for four years. Multiple people become obsessed with finding this fabled treasure Technically, he has been "missing, believed killed" but that is not something that has become an urban legend in a young widow can believe. She hangs on the town in which word 'missing', disbelieving the story is setword killed. [[Black Sugar Photographer of the Lost by Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)Caroline Scott|Full Review]]
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===[[The Zero and the One Dutch House by Ryan RubyAnn Patchett]]===
[[image:4star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
When we first meet Danny and his elder sister, Maeve Conroy, they''re both living at The Zero Dutch House with their parents and under the gaze of the portraits of the One'former owners whose oil paintings still hang on the walls. It' s a strange family dynamic: Cyril Conroy is an incredibly well written distant and well crafted book. We meet our narrator, Owen, on the plane closest Danny seems to come to New York for him is when he goes out with him on a Saturday collecting rents from properties the funeral of his best friendfamily owns. He Elna Conroy is still reeling after recent eventsloving, a suicide pact in which his friend died but he lived, and he is going through absent increasingly often until the motions of point comes when the funeral and consoling family whilst still trying to get to grips with his own feelings of grief and guilt. So far, so simplechildren are told that she will not be returning. But In other circumstances this is where the talent of Ryan Ruby steps in might have affected Maeve and slowlyDanny deeply, so slowly, he reveals little tantalising clues that all but their primary relationship is not what it seems, with each other. It's a throw-away comment here, a mis-step there, and it becomes clear that Owen is not a reliable narratorbond which only death will break. [[The Zero and the One Dutch House by Ryan RubyAnn Patchett|Full Review]]
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===[[Anatomy of a Miracle A Winter Book by Jonathan MilesTove Jansson]]===
[[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]]
Look closely at the cover of Jonathan MilesTove Jansson's third novel and you'll see worldwide fame lasts on the central drama depicted: white wheelchair tracks snake up from Moomin books, written in the bottom 1940s and stop three-quarters later becoming television characters of the way from the topsimplicity, where they are replaced by footprintsnaivety and sheer 'goodness' that would later produce flowerpot men or teletubbies. On 23 August 2014Simple drawings, wheelchair-bound veteran Cameron Harris stands up and walks outside the Biz-E-Bee convenience store in Biloxisimple stories, Mississippisimple goodness. In the rest What is often forgotten outside of her native Finland is that she was a serious writer…that she wrote for adults as well as children…and that she had a feeling for the novel we find out how he got to this point natural world and what others – ranging from his doctor to representatives the simple life that not only informed those child-like trolls but went far beyond any fantasy of how the Roman Catholic Church – will make of his recoveryworld might be. Was it a miracle, or an explainable medical phenomenon? [[Anatomy of a Miracle A Winter Book by Jonathan MilesTove Jansson|Full Review]]
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===[[Fire on the Mountain The Summer Book by Jean McNeilTove Jansson]]===
[[image:4star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
This Tove Jansson's short novel about Summer is several worlds away from the Moomintrolls she is most famous for outside her native Scandinavia. Book yourself an unusual bookafternoon this Summer, in style it feels like a novel by E M Forster; with a deep study at the minutiae of life and thought, yet the plot take yourself and content is thoroughly modern. The bulk of the story is told through the perspective of NickSummer Book somewhere quiet, preferably within sight and we see his point of view on life around him. The main characters sound of the book, however, are Pieter and Riaansea, as it is these characters who fascinate Nick settle back and are the focus of his contemplation and crisisprepare to be transported. [[Fire on the Mountain The Summer Book by Jean McNeilTove Jansson|Full Review]]
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===[[The Last of the Greenwoods Snowflake, AZ by Clare MorrallMarcus Sedgwick]]===
[[image:4star3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
Down in hidden railway carriages, This is a deep behind foliage and further down Long Meadow Road than most care to go, live the Greenwood Brothersinteresting read unlike any book I've read in quite some time. They havenThe novel't spoken to each other s story follows a young man named Ash in the process of joining a community of sick people in yearsthe curiously named town of Snowflake, Arizona. These people are sick, but one morning it's not a letter arrives on sickness you've heard of. Instead, they're environmentally ill – affected by household chemicals and fabrics, pesticides, static electricity, and radiation – and their doorstep - a letter only ''cure'' is to stay in the town away from the real world. Though it's about a sister long thought dead...As real place, the brothers people in it are forced to confront painful memories of fictional. It really is a past that both tried to keep buriedplace apart, quite literally cut off from the post-woman who delivered the letter struggles with secrets of her own..outside world – people are even required to decontaminate themselves thoroughly before becoming fully integrated. [[The Last of the Greenwoods Snowflake, AZ by Clare MorrallMarcus Sedgwick|Full Review]]
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[[image:Rawi_Baghdad1509896465.jpg|left|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/17860732261509896465/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Baghdad Clock by Shahad Al Rawi]]=== [[image:2.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]]
''The Baghdad Clock'' is a tale of two friends growing up during the first and second Iraqi war. Shahad Al Rawi uses magic realism to illustrate the displacement felt by a young girl and her neighbourhood. The novel introduces us to the various characters surrounding the protagonist. They are full of life and yet never seem to add anything to the central narrative. Rawi, it would seem, has a problem with telling a story. [[The Baghdad Clock by Shahad Al Rawi|Full Review]]
 
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===[[The Coffin Path Nightjar by Katherine ClementsDeborah Hewitt]]===
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary FictionFantasy|Literary FictionFantasy]], [[:Category:Horror|Horror]], [[:Category:Historical Literary Fiction|Historical Literary Fiction]]
Maybe you've heard about Scarcross Hall? Hidden 'The Nightjar'' is an unusual and exciting story. Alice Wyndham lives a normal life in London until she finds a box on the old coffin path her doorstep one morning and her life begins to unravel, fast. From that winds from the village to the moor topvery moment, the villagers only speak of it in hushed tones - of how it's a foreboding place filled her life is flooded with evil. Mercy Booth has lived there since birthmagic, loss, expectation and she's always loved the grand house and its isolationparticularly, but a recurrence of strange events begins to unsettle betrayal. As everything around her. From objects disappearing through to a shadowy presence sensed in the houseshifts, all that she knows, mysteries come to light all that she thinks she knows, must change. Who can only be solved by Mercy unearthing long-buried secrets. And she trust? Who must she trust? Who will a dark stranger help Mercy protect everything she has come to love or tear it from her grasptrust? More importantly, can she even trust herself? [[The Coffin Path Nightjar by Katherine ClementsDeborah Hewitt|Full Review]]
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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 rap. 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 by Friedrich Durrenmatt and John E Woods (translator)|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 Impostor by Javier Cercas and Frank Wynne (translator):Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]===
I came to this book thinking I knew just what to expect, even though it is [[image:5starCategory:Andy Mulligan|the author's]] debut in the adult novel market (hence the more mature name – he used to be an Andy).jpg|link= 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. I hadn't opened it when I'd shelved it alongside [[:Category:{{{rating}}} Star ReviewsChris Cleave|Chris Cleave]] , and [[:Category:Literary FictionDavid Nicholls|Literary FictionDavid Nicholls]]. I expected some whimsy, some warmth and some affirmative loveliness.
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 liarMore fool me. [[The Impostor Train Man by Javier Cercas and Frank Wynne (translator)Andrew Mulligan|Full Review]]
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[[image:Badoe_Jigsaw1784631647.jpg|left|link=httpshttp://www.amazon.co.uk/gpdp/product1784631647/1786695480ref=nosim?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1786695480]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[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:Category:Short Stories|Full ReviewShort Stories]]
''Nights of the Creaking Bed'' is a collection of short stories by Toni Kan. The series of stories tell of the lives and lusts of an assortment of characters living in and around Lagos, Nigeria. Nigeria, in this collection, is imbued with its very own heart of darkness. Danger stalks the shadows and people are killed for nothing more than a wrong look. Kan writes with a vitality and passion that allows these cynical stories to achieve a glimmer of hope. [[Nights of the Creaking Bed by Toni Kan|Full Review]]
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{{newreview
|author= Clar Ni Chonghaile
|title= Rain Falls On Everyone
|rating= 5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= 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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785079018</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Hesene Mete
|title=Sinful Words
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1524682527</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author= Juan-Tomas Avila Laurel
|title= The Gurugu Pledge
|rating= 5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= 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 a 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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276940</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author= Matthew Smith
|title= The Waking
|rating= 5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary=Isabel Sykes, 23, recounts the recent attempt she made to come to terms with the loss of her mother, the acclaimed but psychologically disturbed novelist Marianne Sykes. Marianne died in an unexplained house fire when Isabel was ten. Inspired by the appearance of Imogen Taylor, an enchanting young woman who wants to write a PhD on her mother's work, Isabel plunges into the depths of her past and an intense new friendship. After discovering that Imogen is not who she seems to be, Isabel must face the darkest moments from her childhood in order to protect her family from more tragedy. She receives unexpected help from beyond the grave: in the strange, glittering fragments of her mother's last, unfinished work, 'Midnightsong'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0995654158</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author= Ali Smith
|title= Autumn
|rating= 5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= The first part in Ali Smith's four part 'Seasonal' series, Autumn is the story of Daniel Gluck and Elisabeth Demand, unexpected friends who used to be neighbours when Elisabeth was a little girl. In a series of memories and dreams, we discover their friendship from Daniel babysitting Elisabeth through to her visits with him now that he is in a home and drawing towards the end of his extremely long and fascinating life. Along the way, we get a wonderfully written insight into time, memories, and the fleeting nature of life itself.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241973317</amazonuk>
}}
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