Changes

[[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|class-"wikitable" cellpaddingauthor="15" <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->Laura Imai Messina<!-- Wise -->|title=The Phone Box at the End of the World|-rating=5| stylegenre="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|Literary Fiction[[image:0857302183.jpg|linksummary=http://wwwIn the northeast of Japan, in Inwate Prefecture a man installed a telephone box in his garden.amazon ''Inside there is an old black, telephone, disconnected, that carries voices into the wind.co'' 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.uk/dp/0857302183/ref|isbn=nosim?tag178658039X}}{{Frontpage|author=Amin Maalouf|title=thebookbag-21]]The Disoriented|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction| stylesummary="verticalAdam 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-align: top; textfriend, perhaps not as harsh as an ex-align: left;"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=[[The Emperor I have always been of the mind that once you're above picture-book 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 Shoes by Spencer Wise]]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=Literary Fiction[[image:3star|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.jpg But how can he get to not flick the 'final way out' switch, especially when foie gras tastes so nice?|linkisbn=Category:{1642860670}}{{Frontpage|author= Maryse Condé|title= The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana|rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction]] |summary= We live in a post- world: post-colonialism, post-modernism, 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 Emperor Wondrous and Tragic Life of ShoesIvan and Ivana'' is , 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 story ravages of Alex Cohena 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 heir to trauma and heartache of being a lucrative shoe factory based woman in southern China1980s Nigeria. More idealistic than his profit-obsessed fatherThe 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 less motivated solely by it is her narrative voice that leads the bottom linestory, healthough 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 unsure 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 himself: unsure whether he can continue a young boy, William Tyce, who is being raised by his uncle after the death of his mother and his father's successabandonment. However, it isn't told in the usual narrative way. But complications arise when he starts 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 question how morally sound the business really isstyle, and whether 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 workers are being given a fair dealeveryday horrors of modern day Venezuela. [[The Emperor It begins with the death of Shoes by Spencer WiseAdelaida 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? |Full Review]]isbn=0062936867}}

{|class-"wikitable" cellpadding="15"<!-- Vodolazkin Caroline Scott -->

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===[[The Aviator Photographer of the Lost by Eugene Vodolazkin and Lisa Hayden (Translator)Caroline Scott]]===

[[image:4star4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]

Innokenty Petrovich Platonov wakes up in May 1921. Edie receives a hospital bed with photograph through the post. There is no recollection of who he is letter or how he got therenote with it. He There is tended by a single doctor, Doctor Geiger, who gives him a pencil and notebook and encourages him to write down his observations and memoriesnothing written on the back of the photograph. The notebook It is thick, like a novel. How can Innokenty fill it if he cannot remember anything? But slowly the memories start to return, memories picture of childhood holidays at the beachher husband, of life in the dacha, of the airfield and the aviatorsFrancis. Francis has been missing for four years..and the island...it seems like some memories may be better left buried. He remembers that Technically, he is the same age as the centuryhas been "missing, born in 1900. But if believed killed" but that is not something that a young widow can believe. She hangs on the caseword 'missing', how is he still a young man when disbelieving the pills by his bedside are dated 1999? word killed. [[The Aviator Photographer of the Lost by Eugene Vodolazkin and Lisa Hayden (Translator)Caroline Scott|Full Review]]

<!-- Houm Ann Patchett -->

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===[[The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland Dutch House by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator)Ann Patchett]]===

[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]

Jane Ashland is dying. ThatWhen we first meet Danny and his elder sister, Maeve Conroy, they's a description re both living at The Dutch House with their parents and under the gaze of a very early scene here – but also, the portraits of course, a platitude that can apply to all of usthe former owners whose oil paintings still hang on the walls. Jane It's life, if anything, a strange family dynamic: Cyril Conroy is going up distant and down in levels of pleasure, energy – sobriety – in these pagesthe closest Danny seems to come to him is when he goes out with him on a Saturday collecting rents from properties the family owns. Elna Conroy is loving, but we soon learn absent increasingly often until the point comes when the children are told that it recently found a very deeply dark down placeshe will not be returning. Here then, scattered through a timeline-bending narrative, we In other circumstances this might have her days finding a Lincolnesque lover as a student in New Yorkaffected Maeve and Danny deeply, glimpses of therapy, a drive to find her ancestors that takes her from rural America to Norway – and a trip there but their primary relationship is with each other. It's a new-found friend to watch the musk oxen, of all thingsbond which only death will break. And nowhere in sight is anything like a platitude… [[The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland Dutch House by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator)Ann Patchett|Full Review]]

<!-- Bonnefoy Tove Jansson -->

[[image:19104775240954899520.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/19104775240954899520/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]

===[[Black Sugar A Winter Book by Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)Tove Jansson]]===

[[image:4star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]]

Miguel BonnefoyTove Jansson's worldwide fame lasts on the Moomin books, written in the 1940s and later becoming television characters of the simplicity, naivety and sheer 'goodness'Black Sugar'' that would later produce flowerpot men or teletubbies. Simple drawings, simple stories, simple goodness. 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 sensual epic chronicling three generations of the Otero family. The tale begins with feeling for the disappearance of Captain Henry Morgan's treasure natural world and then illustrates the power this treasure holds over people. Multiple people become obsessed with finding this fabled treasure simple life that has become an urban legend in not only informed those child-like trolls but went far beyond any fantasy of how the town in which the story is setworld might be. [[Black Sugar A Winter Book by Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)Tove Jansson|Full Review]]

<!-- Ruby Jansson -->

[[image:14555651800954221710.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/14555651800954221710/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]

===[[The Zero and the One Summer Book by Ryan RubyTove Jansson]]===

[[image:4star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]

Tove Jansson''The Zero and s short novel about Summer is several worlds away from the One'' Moomintrolls she is an incredibly well written and well crafted book. We meet our narrator, Owen, on the plane to New York most famous for the funeral of his best friendoutside her native Scandinavia. He is still reeling after recent eventsBook yourself an afternoon this Summer, a suicide pact in which his friend died but he livedand take yourself and The Summer Book somewhere quiet, preferably within sight and he is going through the motions sound of the funeral sea, settle back and consoling family whilst still trying prepare to get to grips with his own feelings of grief and guilt. So far, so simple. But this is where the talent of Ryan Ruby steps in and slowly, so slowly, he reveals little tantalising clues that all is not what it seems, a throw-away comment here, a mis-step there, and it becomes clear that Owen is not a reliable narratorbe transported. [[The Zero and the One Summer Book by Ryan RubyTove Jansson|Full Review]]

<!-- Miles Sedgwick -->

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===[[Anatomy of a Miracle Snowflake, AZ by Jonathan MilesMarcus Sedgwick]]===

Look closely at the cover of Jonathan MilesThis is a deep, interesting read unlike any book I's third ve read in quite some time. The novel and you'll see the central drama depicted: white wheelchair tracks snake up from the bottom and stop three-quarters of the way from the top, where they are replaced by footprints. On 23 August 2014, wheelchair-bound veteran Cameron Harris stands up and walks outside the Biz-E-Bee convenience store s story follows a young man named Ash in Biloxi, Mississippi. In the rest process of the novel we find out how he got to this point and what others – ranging from his doctor to representatives joining a community of sick people in the Roman Catholic Church – will make curiously named town of his recovery. Was it a miracleSnowflake, or an explainable medical phenomenon? [[Anatomy of a Miracle by Jonathan Miles|Full Review]] <!-- Mcneil -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Mcneil FireArizona.jpg|left|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1785078992/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Fire on the Mountain by Jean McNeil]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] This is an unusual bookThese people are sick, in style but it feels like 's not a novel by E M Forster; with a deep study at the minutiae sickness you've heard of life and thought, yet the plot and content is thoroughly modern. The bulk of the story is told through the perspective of NickInstead, they're environmentally ill – affected by household chemicals and we see his point of view on life around him. The main characters of the bookfabrics, howeverpesticides, are Pieter and Riaanstatic electricity, as it is these characters who fascinate Nick and are the focus of his contemplation and crisis. [[Fire on the Mountain by Jean McNeil|Full Review]] <!-- Morrall -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Morrall_Last.jpg|left|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/ISBN/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[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 radiation – 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]] <!-- Rawi -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Rawi_Baghdad.jpg|left|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1786073226/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]] only ''The Baghdad Clockcure'' is a tale of two friends growing up during the first and second Iraqi war. Shahad Al Rawi uses magic realism to illustrate stay in the displacement felt by a young girl and her neighbourhood. The novel introduces us to town away from the various characters surrounding the protagonistreal world. They are full of life and yet never seem to add anything to the central narrative. Rawi, Though it would seem, has a problem with telling a story. [[The Baghdad Clock by Shahad Al Rawi|Full Review]] <!-- Clements -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Clements_Coffin.jpg|left|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1472204271/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Coffin Path by Katherine Clements]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Horror|Horror]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]] Maybe you've heard s about Scarcross Hall? Hidden on the old coffin path that winds from the village to the moor topa real place, the villagers only speak of it people in hushed tones - of how it's are fictional. It really is a foreboding place filled with evil. Mercy Booth has lived there since birthapart, and she's always loved quite literally cut off from the grand house and its isolation, but a recurrence of strange events begins outside world – people are even required to unsettle herdecontaminate themselves thoroughly before becoming fully integrated. 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 Snowflake, AZ by Katherine ClementsMarcus Sedgwick|Full Review]]

<!-- Durrenmatt Hewitt -->

[[image:Durrenmatt_Justice1509896465.jpg|left|link=httpshttp://www.amazon.co.uk/gpdp/product1509896465/1782273875?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1782273875]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Execution of Justice by Friedrich Durrenmatt and John E Woods (translator)]]=== [[image:2.5star.jpg|linkref=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime|Crime]] 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 balancenosim? [[The Execution of Justice by Friedrich Durrenmatt and John E Woods (translator)|Full Review]] <!-- Cercas -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Cercas_Impostor.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0857056506?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=0857056506]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[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]]

===[[A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars The Nightjar by Yaba BadoeDeborah Hewitt]]===

[[image:4star4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]], [[:Category:Literary FictionFantasy|Literary FictionFantasy]], [[:Category:General Literary Fiction|General Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Teens|Teens]]

Sante was ''The Nightjar'' is an unusual and exciting story. Alice Wyndham lives a baby when normal life in London until she was washed ashore in finds a sea-chest laden with treasurebox on her doorstep one morning and her life begins to unravel, fast. It seems she From that very moment, her life is the sole survivor of the tragic sinking of a ship carrying migrants flooded with magic, loss, expectation and refugeesparticularly, betrayal. Her people. Fourteen years on As everything around her shifts, all that she's a member of Mama Rose's unique and dazzling circus. Butknows, from their watery graveall that she thinks she knows, the unquiet dead are calling Sante to avenge themmust change. A bamboo flute. A golden bangle. A ripening mango which Who can she trust? Who must not fall... if Sante is to tell their story and her own. she trust? Who will she trust? More importantly, can she even trust herself? [[A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars The Nightjar by Yaba BadoeDeborah Hewitt|Full Review]]

<!-- Batalha Mulligan -->

| style="''width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"''|[[image:Batalha_Invisible1784742716.jpg|left|link=httpshttp://www.amazon.co.uk/gpdp/product1784742716/178607298Xref=nosim?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=178607298X]]

[[image| style=''vertical-align: top; text-align:4.5star.jpgleft;''|link===Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary FictionTrain Man by Andrew Mulligan]]===

On the surface, young housewife Euridice Gusmao has it all[[image:2. A nice-enough, parent-pleasing husband with a steady banking job, two young children upon whom to dote, an immaculate home complete with maid5star. That's all anyone could ever want, isn't it? Not Euridice. She has an inexplicable ache inside her for something more, like many of us. Yet each of her pet projects, from a desire to publish a recipe book to starting a cottage sewing industry in her living room, are met with scorn from her stern husband Antenor. He wants a wife who doesn't draw attention to herself, whose only domains are her house and her family. [[The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao by Martha Batalha and Eric M B Becker (translator)jpg|Full Reviewlink=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] <!-- Hodgkinson -->|-| style="width[[: 10%; vertical-alignCategory: top; text-align: center;"General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[image:Hodgkinson_Dark.jpgCategory:Literary Fiction|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1782273824/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21Literary Fiction]]

| style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===More fool me. [[The Dark-Blue Winter Overcoat and other stories from the North Train Man by Sjon Hodgkinson and Ten Hodgkinson (editors)Andrew Mulligan|Full Review]]===

[[image:3star.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. It's not one author's best short works, it's that of a dozen. It's not from one snapshot in time, as some were written the year of publication and some in the 1960s. It's 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 Greenland. That is a world that's changing – as the Greenland-born author now living in Brooklyn, and the Iraqi blood on these pages, testify. It's a world where new roads and new building works mean a family living on the edge of the forest at the beginning of the story are being surrounded by other life by the end, and with the influence of centuries of folklore featured, a lot more than that changes – sometimes it seems to be even the characters' species… [[The Dark-Blue Winter Overcoat and other stories from the North by Sjon Hodgkinson and Ten Hodgkinson (editors)|Full Review]] <!-- Hesselholdt Anstruther -->

[[image:Hesselholdt_Companions1784631647.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/19106953351784631647/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]

===[[Companions A Perfect Explanation by Christina Hesselholdt and Paul Russell Garrett (translator)Eleanor Anstruther]]===

[[image:3star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]]

''Companions'' is written as Enid Campbell was a series woman who, on the face of monologues, where six middle-aged friends take it in turns to narrate scenes from their lives, charting had everything. Leading the intimate details life of their holidaysan aristocrat – full of inherited wealth and splendour, dinner partiesglamourous locales and high expectations. Only Enid's life has been plagued by mental illness – undiagnosed, families, marriages, affairs and work lives in a style that mixes honesty untreated and openness with fantasy threatening both Enid and evasionthose close to her. The charm After losing custody of the novel lies in the way the friends' voices bicker with one another among the pagesher children, as we discover that there are always several sides Enid sells her son to the same story. We learn most about the characters not through what they say about themselves her sister for £500 – but through what the others say about them. Along the way, there is heartbreak and griefthis an act of greed, but this is always offset by or an abundance act of humour desperation? Exploring the true story of her own grandmother, Eleanor Anstruther has found the perfect subject for an explosive, moving and a writing style that never fails to be refreshingly light-heartedbeautifully well written debut. [[Companions A Perfect Explanation by Christina Hesselholdt and Paul Russell Garrett (translator)Eleanor Anstruther|Full Review]]

<!-- BERGEN Laguna -->

[[image:Bergen_Stranger191070962X.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0715652419191070962X/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]

===[[Stranger The Choke by David BergenSofie Laguna]]===

[[image:4star2star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]

There''Stranger'' tells the story of Íso, s a young Guatemalan womandull, dispiriting pang of disappointment that comes when you try something everyone else loves and her affair with an American doctorfind out that you're really not into it. Coffee. Ice skating. When an accident forces him to return to the States, she is left pregnant and lonelyA new Netflix series. Her anguish becomes even more profound when her daughter is abductedBooks are like that, 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 childbut doubly so. [[Stranger The Choke by David BergenSofie Laguna|Full Review]]

<!-- Chonghaile Varenne -->

[[image:Chonghaile_Rain0857058738.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/17850790180857058738/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]

===[[Rain Falls On Everyone Equator by Clar Ni ChonghaileAntonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)]]===

[[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]

It's a cliché strikes me that nobody can speak well of the Irish have Wild West outside the walls of a picturesque turn of phrase, but clichés only exist because they're truetheme park. Roddy Doyle put Our agent to see how bad it differently in a recent interview with ''Writingwas here is Pete Ferguson, who bristles at the indignity of white man against Native 'Indian' magazine, when he said that ''With Irishwho spends days being physically sick while indulging in a buffalo hunt, there's another language bubbling under and who hates the English''. However you express itway man – and woman, that art of expression is woven into every other line course – can turn against fellow man at the bat of Clár's prosean eyelid. Pick a page at random But this book is about so much more than the 1870s USA, and the attendant problems with gold rushes, pioneer spirits and you'll racial genocide. He finds himself trying to find something like 'this book's version of Utopia, namely the Equator, where everything is upside down, people walk on their heads with rocks in their pockets to keep them on the ground to counter the sickness anti-gravity, and where, who knows, things might actually be better. But that had come to roost in her home like equator is a cursed owl'' or ''like he was God, Jesus long way away – and Justin Timberlake rolled into one'' or 'there's a low sobbing, slow whole adventure full of Mexico and Latin America between him 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. it… [[Rain Falls On Everyone Equator by Clar Ni ChonghaileAntonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)|Full Review]]

<!-- Mete Kan -->

[[image:Mete_Sinful1911115847.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/15246825271911115847/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]

===[[Sinful Words Nights of the Creaking Bed by Hesene MeteToni Kan]]===

[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]]

When we meet him, Behram ''Nights of the Creaking Bed'' is a student at the school collection of theologyshort stories by Toni Kan. He loves God with a passion The series of stories tell of the lives and has a determination to live a life dedicated to God lusts of an assortment of characters living in and to live by His rulesaround Lagos, Nigeria. He rents a property from Lulu Khan and his wifeNigeria, in this collection, Lady Geshtina is imbued with its very own heart of darkness. Danger stalks the shadows and Khan invites Behram to his own home people are killed for nothing more than a visitwrong look. It's Kan writes with a delightful place vitality 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 passion that allows these cynical stories to achieve a mausoleum, but it's not all this which enchants Behram. The couple have twin children and Behram is taken, enthralled by the daughter, Naginaglimmer of hope. [[Sinful Words Nights of the Creaking Bed by Hesene MeteToni Kan|Full Review]]