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[[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<!-- Dehnel -->|title=The Phone Box at the End of the World|-rating=5| stylegenre="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|Literary Fiction[[image:1786073579.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/1786073579/ref=nosim?tag|isbn=thebookbag-21]]178658039X}}{{Frontpage| styleauthor="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"Amin Maalouf|title=The Disoriented|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=[[Lala by Jacek Dehnel 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 Antonia Lloyd-Jones (translator)]]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[[image:5star|genre= Confident Readers|summary= 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 the modern fairy tale. This is no different. It is an utter delight.jpg|linkisbn=Category:{1473222184}}{{Frontpage|author=Frederic Beigbeder and Frank Wynne (translator)|title=A Life Without End|rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction=4|genre=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''This is t be one of the major numbers, but the time when I have the same number as Heinz varieties looms on the mysterious nature horizon. And then a few of storytelling: the same start can also mean different endingsbig 0-numbers, and different starts can lead 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 the same finalebe happy. It Our author here doesn's all subordinate 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 greater narrativefirst geneticist he interviews, and they end up with a child, which starts somewhere in Kievis 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-modernism, post truth. This beautiful book is exactly The list goes on. There are numerous works thatutilise the prefix post- in their categorisation, the mysterious art of storytellingbut perhaps none more so than Maryse Condé. In her new novel, ''The wayward meanderings Wondrous and Tragic Life of memoryIvan 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 tangents 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 digressionsheartache of being a woman in 1980s Nigeria. The title is ''Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All Right''. Ogadinma is the eponymous heroine of side notes the story.. We are with her in every scene and elaborationsit is her narrative voice that leads the story, but above all that although Olisakwe writes in third person. This provides a sense of affection; detachment for both the story reader and highlights the storytellerisolation of Ogadinma. What makes us who we are if not our culture She is exiled from her father's home and heritage sent to Lagos where she is married to an older man named Tobe. Their marriage descends into violence and in this book our narrator re-lives indignities and re-tells 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 heritage 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 him by his grandmotherthe style, and was instead caught up in William's story. [[Lala by Jacek Dehnel |isbn=1911545418}}{{Frontpage|author= Karina Sainz Borgo and Antonia Lloyd-Jones Elizabeth Bryer (translator)|Full Review]]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}}

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

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===[[The Emperor Photographer of Shoes the Lost by Spencer WiseCaroline Scott]]===

[[image:3star4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]

''The Emperor of Shoes'' May 1921. Edie receives a photograph through the post. There is no letter or note with it. There is nothing written on the story back of Alex Cohen, the heir to photograph. It is a lucrative shoe factory based in southern Chinapicture of her husband, Francis. More idealistic than his profit-obsessed father Francis has been missing for four years. Technically, and less motivated solely by the bottom linehe has been "missing, he's unsure of himself: unsure whether he believed killed" but that is not something that a young widow can continue his father's successbelieve. But complications arise when he starts to question how morally sound She hangs on the business really isword 'missing', and whether disbelieving the workers are being given a fair dealword killed. [[The Emperor Photographer of Shoes the Lost by Spencer WiseCaroline Scott|Full Review]]

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===[[The Aviator Dutch House by Eugene Vodolazkin and Lisa Hayden (Translator)Ann Patchett]]===

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

Innokenty Petrovich Platonov wakes up in a hospital bed with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. He is tended by a single doctor, Doctor Geiger, who gives him a pencil When we first meet Danny and notebook and encourages him to write down his observations and memories. The notebook is thickelder sister, like a novel. How can Innokenty fill it if he cannot remember anything? But slowly the memories start to returnMaeve Conroy, memories of childhood holidays they're both living at The Dutch House with their parents and under the beach, gaze of life in the dacha, portraits of the airfield and former owners whose oil paintings still hang on the aviators..walls. It's a strange family dynamic: Cyril Conroy is distant and the island...it closest Danny seems like some memories may be better left buriedto come to him is when he goes out with him on a Saturday collecting rents from properties the family owns. He remembers that he Elna Conroy is loving, but absent increasingly often until the same age as point comes when the century, born in 1900children are told that she will not be returning. But if that is the case In other circumstances this might have affected Maeve and Danny deeply, how but their primary relationship is he still with each other. It's a young man when the pills by his bedside are dated 1999? bond which only death will break. [[The Aviator Dutch House by Eugene Vodolazkin and Lisa Hayden (Translator)Ann Patchett|Full Review]]

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===[[The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland A Winter Book by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator)Tove Jansson]]===

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

Jane Ashland is dying. ThatTove Jansson's a description of a very early scene here – but alsoworldwide fame lasts on the Moomin books, written in the 1940s and later becoming television characters of coursethe simplicity, a platitude naivety and sheer 'goodness' that can apply to all of uswould later produce flowerpot men or teletubbies. Jane's lifeSimple drawings, if anythingsimple stories, simple goodness. What is going up and down in levels often forgotten outside of pleasure, energy – sobriety – in these pages, but we soon learn her native Finland is that it recently found she was a very deeply dark down place. Here then, scattered through a timeline-bending narrative, we have her days finding a Lincolnesque lover serious writer…that she wrote for adults as well as children…and that she had a student in New York, glimpses of therapy, a drive to find her ancestors feeling for the natural world and the simple life that takes her from rural America to Norway – and a trip there with a newnot only informed those child-found friend to watch like trolls but went far beyond any fantasy of how the musk oxen, of all thingsworld might be. And nowhere in sight is anything like a platitude… [[The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland A Winter Book by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator)Tove Jansson|Full Review]]

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

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

Miguel BonnefoyTove Jansson's ''Black Sugar'' short novel about Summer is a sensual epic chronicling three generations of several worlds away from the Otero familyMoomintrolls she is most famous for outside her native Scandinavia. Book yourself an afternoon this Summer, and take yourself and The tale begins with Summer Book somewhere quiet, preferably within sight and sound of the disappearance of Captain Henry Morgan's treasure sea, settle back and then illustrates the power this treasure holds over people. Multiple people become obsessed with finding this fabled treasure that has become an urban legend in the town in which the story is setprepare to be transported. [[Black Sugar The Summer Book by Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)Tove Jansson|Full Review]]

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===[[The Zero and the One by Ryan Ruby]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] ''The Zero and the One'' is an incredibly well written and well crafted book. We meet our narrator, Owen, on the plane to New York for the funeral of his best friend. He is still reeling after recent events, a suicide pact in which his friend died but he livedSnowflake, and he is going through the motions of the funeral and consoling family whilst still trying 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 narrator. [[The Zero and the One by Ryan Ruby|Full Review]] <!-- Miles -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:0553447580.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0553447580/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Anatomy of a Miracle AZ by Jonathan MilesMarcus Sedgwick]]===

Look closely at This is a deep, interesting read unlike any book I've read in quite some time. The novel's story follows a young man named Ash in the process of joining a community of sick people in the cover curiously named town of Jonathan MilesSnowflake, Arizona. These people are sick, but it's third novel and not a sickness you'll see the central drama depicted: white wheelchair tracks snake up from the bottom and stop three-quarters ve heard of the way from the top. Instead, where they are replaced 're environmentally ill – affected by footprints. On 23 August 2014household chemicals and fabrics, pesticides, static electricity, wheelchair-bound veteran Cameron Harris stands up and walks outside the Biz-E-Bee convenience store radiation – and their only ''cure'' is to stay in Biloxi, Mississippi. In the rest of the novel we find out how he got to this point and what others – ranging town away from his doctor to representatives of the Roman Catholic Church – will make of his recoveryreal world. Was Though it 's about a real place, the people in it are fictional. It really is a miracleplace apart, or an explainable medical phenomenon? quite literally cut off from the outside world – people are even required to decontaminate themselves thoroughly before becoming fully integrated. [[Anatomy of a Miracle Snowflake, AZ by Jonathan MilesMarcus Sedgwick|Full Review]]

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===[[Fire on the Mountain The Nightjar by Jean McNeilDeborah Hewitt]]===

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

This ''The Nightjar'' is an unusual book, and exciting story. Alice Wyndham lives a normal life in style it feels like London until she finds a novel by E M Forster; with a deep study at the minutiae of box on her doorstep one morning and her life and thoughtbegins to unravel, yet the plot and content is thoroughly modernfast. The bulk of the story From that very moment, her life is told through the perspective of Nickflooded with magic, loss, expectation and we see his point of view on life particularly, betrayal. As everything around him. The main characters of the bookher shifts, howeverall that she knows, are Pieter and Riaanall that she thinks she knows, as it is these characters who fascinate Nick and are the focus of his contemplation and crisismust change. Who can she trust? Who must she trust? Who will she trust? More importantly, can she even trust herself? [[Fire on the Mountain The Nightjar by Jean McNeilDeborah Hewitt|Full Review]]

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| style="''width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"''|[[image:Morrall_Last1784742716.jpg|left|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/ISBN1784742716/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]]

<!-- Rawi -->|-| style="width: 10%; ''vertical-align: top; text-align: centerleft;"''|===[[image:Rawi_Baghdad.jpg|left|linkTrain Man by Andrew Mulligan]]=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1786073226/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]

[[image:2.5star.jpg| stylelink="vertical-alignCategory:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[: top; text-alignCategory: left;"General Fiction|===General Fiction]], [[The Baghdad Clock by Shahad Al Rawi:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]===

I came to this book thinking I knew just what to expect, even though it is [[image:2.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star ReviewsAndy Mulligan|the author's]] debut in the adult novel market (hence the more mature name – he used to be an Andy). 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:Literary FictionChris Cleave|Literary FictionChris Cleave]], and [[:Category:Historical FictionDavid Nicholls|Historical FictionDavid Nicholls]]. I expected some whimsy, some warmth and some affirmative loveliness.

''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 storyMore fool me. [[The Baghdad Clock Train Man by Shahad Al RawiAndrew Mulligan|Full Review]]

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===[[The Execution of Justice A Perfect Explanation by Friedrich Durrenmatt and John E Woods (translator)Eleanor Anstruther]]===

[[image:2.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:CrimeLiterary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|CrimeHistorical Fiction]]

It's 1957Enid Campbell was a woman who, 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 face of it, had everything. Leading the crowded room life of one an aristocrat – full of those 'the place to go' restaurants, inherited wealth and point blank shot a professor everyone there must have knownsplendour, glamourous locales and ferried a British companion to the airport in his chauffeur-driven Rolls before handing himself in to face the murder raphigh expectations. Of course heOnly Enid's found guiltylife has been plagued by mental illness – undiagnosed, even if the gun involved has managed untreated and threatening both Enid and those close to disappearher. He's certainly After losing custody of much interesther children, not only Enid sells her son to our narrator, a young lawyer called Spaet her sister for £500 – even if he rarely gets to frequent such establishments with such people, he but is eager to know morethis an act of greed, especially once he is actually tasked by or an act of desperation? Exploring the man in hand to look into things a second time. But what's thistrue story of her own grandmother, where he opens his testimony about the affair with Eleanor Anstruther has found the conclusionperfect subject for an explosive, that he himself will need to turn killer to redress the balance? moving and beautifully well written debut. [[The Execution of Justice A Perfect Explanation by Friedrich Durrenmatt and John E Woods (translator)Eleanor Anstruther|Full Review]]

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[[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]] <!-- Badoe -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Badoe_Jigsaw.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1786695480?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]] <!-- Batalha -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Batalha_Invisible.jpg|left|link=https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/178607298X?ie=UTF8&tag=thebookbag-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=178607298X]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao by Martha Batalha and Eric M B Becker (translator)]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] On the surface, young housewife Euridice Gusmao has it all. A nice-enough, parent-pleasing husband with a steady banking job, two young children upon whom to dote, an immaculate home complete with maid. 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)|Full Review]] <!-- Hodgkinson -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Hodgkinson_Dark191070962X.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1782273824191070962X/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]

===[[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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[[image:Hesselholdt_Companions0857058738.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/19106953350857058738/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]

===[[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:5star4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]]

It's a cliché that 'Nights of the Irish have Creaking Bed'' is a picturesque turn collection of phrase, but clichés only exist because they're trueshort stories by Toni Kan. Roddy Doyle put it differently The series of stories tell of the lives and lusts of an assortment of characters living in a recent interview with ''Writing'' magazineand around Lagos, when he said that ''With IrishNigeria. Nigeria, there's another language bubbling under the English''. However you express itin this collection, that art of expression is woven into every other line imbued with its very own heart of Clár's prosedarkness. Danger stalks the shadows and people are killed for nothing more than a wrong look. Pick Kan writes with a page at random vitality and you'll find something like ''the sickness passion that had come allows these cynical stories to roost in her home like achieve 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 bothglimmer of hope. [[Rain Falls On Everyone Nights of the Creaking Bed by Clar Ni ChonghaileToni Kan|Full Review]]