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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__ {{Frontpage|author= Tahi Saihate|title= Astral Season, Beastly Season|rating= 3.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= We long for our past even though it is a place to which we can never return. Tahi Saihate, in her debut novel ''Astral Season, Beastly Season'' illustrates how these rose-tinted glasses often lie. Her novel is a meditation on youth and how the things we do as a teenager can seem intensely important and often life-altering.|isbn= 1916277101}}
{{Frontpage|classauthor=Laura Imai Messina|title=The Phone Box at the End of the World|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= In the northeast of Japan, in Inwate Prefecture a man installed a telephone box in his garden. ''Inside there is an old black, telephone, disconnected, that carries voices into the wind.'' It is a real place, a necessary place, and I am pleased to see the IMPORTANT NOTE that the author attaches to her story, that the place is not a tourist destination, it is a sacred place, a place that must be left to those who really need it.|isbn=178658039X}}{{Frontpage|author=Amin Maalouf|title=The Disoriented|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Adam has lived in Paris for years, speaks French more easily than his native Arabic. In fact he hasn't been back to his homeland for 25 years. An old friend is dying…or as Adam prefers to think of him a former-friend, perhaps not as harsh as an ex-friend, or maybe. The falling out was a long time ago, and Adam's partner has no idea what it was about, even so she urges him to go knowing that he'll regret not doing so. Not knowing whether he's going because he needs or wants to, or simply because he was asked, he's on the next plane. |isbn=B07ZQSK9CY}}{{Frontpage|author=Joanne M Harris|title=A Pocketful of Crows|rating=5|genre= Confident Readers|summary= I have always been of the mind that once you're above picture-"wikitable" cellpaddingbook level and before you get to graphic sex & violence, there is no difference between books for children and books for adults. There are good books and poor ones. And Joanne Harris does not produce poor ones. ''A Pocketful of Crows'' is clearly aimed at the younger readers as witness the use of the middle initial in the author's name to differentiate from her adult offers. Ignore that if you have loved anything from ''Chocolat'' onwards you will know that Harris is mistress of the modern fairy tale. This is no different. It is an utter delight.|isbn=1473222184}}{{Frontpage|author=Frederic Beigbeder and Frank Wynne (translator)|title=A Life Without End|rating=4|genre="15" Literary Fiction|summary=I looked at the calendar the other week, and disappointedly realised I have a birthday this year – I know, yet another one. It won't be one of the major numbers, but the time when I have the same number as Heinz varieties looms on the horizon. And then a few of the big 0-numbers, and if all goes well, I'll be an OBE. (Which of course stands for Over Bloody Eighty.) Now if that's the extent of my mid-life crisis, I guess I have to be happy. Our author here doesn't use that exact phrase, but he might be said to be living one. Determined to find out how to prolong life for as long as he wants – he would like to see 400 – he hops right into bed with the assistant to the first geneticist he interviews, and they end up with a child, which is at least a way of continuing the life of his genes, and a motive to keep on going. <!But how can he get to not flick the 'final way out' switch, especially when foie gras tastes so nice?|isbn=1642860670}}{{Frontpage|author= Maryse Condé|title= The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= We live in a post- world: post-colonialism, post- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HEREmodernism, post truth. The list goes on. There are numerous works that utilise the prefix post-in their categorisation, but perhaps none more so than Maryse Condé. In her new novel, ''The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana'', Condé writes with fervour about the scars left by colonialism on the countries to which it latched itself. Ivan and Ivana are twins born in Guadeloupe, a French overseas department. They grow up with intense and passionate feelings for each other. As they grow up and move overseas, the ravages of a post->colonial society drive them apart with tragic consequences.|isbn=1642860697}}{{Frontpage|author= Ukamaka Olisakwe|title= Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All Right|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= The new novel by Ukamaka Olisakwe is a look at the trauma and heartache of being a woman in 1980s Nigeria. The title is ''Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All Right''. Ogadinma is the eponymous heroine of the story.. We are with her in every scene and it is her narrative voice that leads the story, although Olisakwe writes in third person. This provides a sense of detachment for the reader and highlights the isolation of Ogadinma. She is exiled from her father's home and sent to Lagos where she is married to an older man named Tobe. Their marriage descends into violence and indignities and Ogadinma must utilise her resourcefulness to escape.|isbn=1911648160}}{{Frontpage|author=Elliot Reed|title=A Key to Treehouse Living|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=This is the story of a young boy, William Tyce, who is being raised by his uncle after the death of his mother and his father's abandonment. However, it isn't told in the usual narrative way. Instead, the book is made up of glossary entries, written by William, as a way of describing certain events, situations and emotions. It runs alphabetically, starting with ABSENCE, then moving to ALPHABETICAL ORDER. As I began to read I did find myself thinking 'what on earth?!' but I soon grew used to the style, and was instead caught up in William's story.|isbn=1911545418}}{{Frontpage|author= Karina Sainz Borgo and Elizabeth Bryer (translator)|title= It Would Be Night in Caracas|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction |summary= ''It Would Be Night in Caracas'' illuminates the everyday horrors of modern day Venezuela. It begins with the death of Adelaida Falcon's mother and chronicles Adelaida's coming to terms with her new solitude in this world and her attempts to escape it. Danger stalks the shadows and, in a society where the establishment is crumbling, who can you turn to? |isbn=0062936867}}
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===[[Aftershocks Photographer of the Lost by A N WilsonCaroline Scott]]===
[[image:34.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Historical Fiction|Literary Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:General Literary Fiction|General Literary Fiction]]In a country very much like New Zealand, but at the same time most avowedly not, two women will find love. Strong love too, for our narrator will say that her first attraction for her partner was the only thing to make sense of all those exaggerated songs she'd heard, and books and poems she'd read, and plays she'd acted in – works of art that had until then seemed sheer hyperbole. It was entirely unrequited love for quite some time, but it does burgeon, or so we're promised from the off, because of something quite drastic – a major earthquake very much like the one that hit Christchurch, but at the same time most avowedly not. This book then is the combined exploration of the lovers and the story of the quake. [[Aftershocks by A N Wilson|Full Review]]
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===[[The Gilded Ones Dutch House by Brooke Fieldhouse]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime|Crime]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] It was a hot day in 1984 and Pulse had two job interviews for the day, but the heat wasn't the only reason why he wasn't feeling on top form. He'd had a disturbing dream the night before. He'd been following a Porsche on a difficult route, probably somewhere in the Alps when the Porsche went off the road. The passenger, a man, was dead, but the woman was still alive. ''I'm Freia...'', she said. ''It's spelled the German way.'' Of the two job interviews, the first was with an up-and-coming design studio in Brighton and it would almost certainly be good for Pulse's career. The second was with a run-down practice based in an old London house and headed by Patrick Lloyd-Lewis, whose wife, Freia, had recently died in unexplained circumstances. The link with the dream of the night before was too much for Pulse to refuse the offer of a job. He couldn't resist the lure of the mystery. [[The Gilded Ones by Brooke Fieldhouse|Full Review]] <!-- Cullen -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:0718189140.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0718189140/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Lost Letters of William Woolf by Helen Cullen]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] William Woolf is a letter detective, working in the Dead Letters Depot in East London. He spends his days deciphering smudged addresses, tracking down mysterious people and reading endless letters of love, guilt, death, hope, and everyday life. [[The Lost Letters of William Woolf by Helen Cullen|Full Review]] <!-- Dehnel -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1786073579.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1786073579/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Lala by Jacek Dehnel and Antonia Lloyd-Jones (translator)Ann Patchett]]===
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
When we first meet Danny and his elder sister, Maeve Conroy, they''This is re both living at The Dutch House with their parents and under the gaze of the mysterious nature portraits of storytelling: the same start can also mean different endings, and different starts can lead to former owners whose oil paintings still hang on the same finalewalls. It's all subordinate a strange family dynamic: Cyril Conroy is distant and the closest Danny seems to come to him is when he goes out with him on a Saturday collecting rents from properties the greater narrative, which starts somewhere in Kiev''family owns. This beautiful book Elna Conroy is exactly that, the mysterious art of storytelling. The wayward meanderings of memory, of tangents and digressions, of side notes and elaborationsloving, but above all that of affection; for both absent increasingly often until the story and point comes when the storyteller. What makes us who we children are if told that she will not our culture and heritage and in be returning. In other circumstances this book our narrator re-lives might have affected Maeve and re-tells the story of his heritage told to him by his grandmotherDanny deeply, but their primary relationship is with each other. It's a bond which only death will break. [[Lala The Dutch House by Jacek Dehnel and Antonia Lloyd-Jones (translator)Ann Patchett|Full Review]]
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===[[The Emperor of Shoes A Winter Book by Spencer WiseTove Jansson]]===
[[image:3star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]]
Tove Jansson''The Emperor of Shoes'' is s worldwide fame lasts on the story of Alex CohenMoomin books, written in the heir to a lucrative shoe factory based in southern China. More idealistic than his profit-obsessed father, 1940s and less motivated solely by later becoming television characters of the bottom linesimplicity, henaivety and sheer 's unsure of himself: unsure whether he can continue his fathergoodness's successthat would later produce flowerpot men or teletubbies. Simple drawings, simple stories, simple goodness. But complications arise when he starts to question how morally sound 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 business really is, natural world and whether the workers are being given a fair dealsimple life that not only informed those child-like trolls but went far beyond any fantasy of how the world might be. [[The Emperor of Shoes A Winter Book by Spencer WiseTove Jansson|Full Review]]
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===[[The Aviator Summer Book by Eugene Vodolazkin and Lisa Hayden (Translator)Tove Jansson]]===
[[image:4star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
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===[[The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland Snowflake, AZ by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator)Marcus Sedgwick]]===
[[image:43.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
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===[[Black Sugar The Nightjar by Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)Deborah Hewitt]]===
[[image:4star4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Fantasy|Fantasy]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
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| style="''width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"''|[[image:14555651801784742716.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/14555651801784742716/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[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 lived, 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]]
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===[[Train Man by Andrew Mulligan]]===
[[image:2.5star.jpg| stylelink="vertical-alignCategory:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[: top; text-alignCategory: left;"General Fiction|===General Fiction]], [[Anatomy of a Miracle by Jonathan Miles:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]===
I came to this book thinking I knew just what to expect, even though it is [[image:3Category:Andy Mulligan|the author's]] debut in the adult novel market (hence the more mature name – he used to be an Andy).5star I thought it simple to sum up, the tale of a middle-aged man who knows too much about train travel having his life turned around in the most pleasant way.jpg|link= I hadn't opened it when I'd shelved it alongside [[:Category:{{{rating}}} Star ReviewsChris Cleave|Chris Cleave]] , and [[:Category:Literary FictionDavid Nicholls|Literary FictionDavid Nicholls]]. I expected some whimsy, some warmth and some affirmative loveliness.
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===[[Fire on the Mountain A Perfect Explanation by Jean McNeilEleanor Anstruther]]===
[[image:4star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]]
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[[image:Morrall_Last191070962X.jpg|left|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/ISBN191070962X/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 and further down Long Meadow Road than most care to go, live the Greenwood Brothers. They haven't spoken to each other in years, but one morning a letter arrives on their doorstep - a letter from a sister long thought dead...As the brothers are forced to confront painful memories of a past that both tried to keep buried, the post-woman who delivered the letter struggles with secrets of her own... [[The Last of the Greenwoods by Clare Morrall|Full Review]]
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===[[The Baghdad Clock Choke by Shahad Al RawiSofie Laguna]]===
[[image:2.5star2star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]]
There''The Baghdad Clock'' is s a tale dull, dispiriting pang of two friends growing up during the first disappointment that comes when you try something everyone else loves and second Iraqi warfind out that you're really not into it. Shahad Al Rawi uses magic realism to illustrate the displacement felt by a young girl and her neighbourhoodCoffee. Ice skating. The novel introduces us to the various characters surrounding the protagonistA new Netflix series. They Books are full of life and yet never seem to add anything to the central narrative. Rawilike that, it would seem, has a problem with telling a storybut doubly so. [[The Baghdad Clock Choke by Shahad Al RawiSofie Laguna|Full Review]]
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[[image:Clements_Coffin0857058738.jpg|left|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/14722042710857058738/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]]
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===[[The Execution of Justice Equator by Friedrich Durrenmatt Antonin Varenne and John E Woods Sam Taylor (translator)]]===
[[image:23.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:CrimeHistorical Fiction|CrimeHistorical Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
It's 1957, and we're somewhere in Switzerland, and there's just one case on everyone's lips – strikes me that nobody can speak well of the Wild West outside the simple fact that walls of a politician has gone into theme park. Our agent to see how bad it was here is Pete Ferguson, who bristles at the crowded room indignity of one of those white man against Native 'the place to goIndian' restaurants, and point blank shot who spends days being physically sick while indulging in a professor everyone there must have knownbuffalo hunt, and ferried a British companion to who hates the airport in his chauffeur-driven Rolls before handing himself in to face way man – and woman, of course – can turn against fellow man at the murder rapbat of an eyelid. Of course he's found guilty But this book is about so much more than the 1870s USA, even if and the gun involved has managed to disappearattendant problems with gold rushes, pioneer spirits and racial genocide. Hefinds himself trying to find this book's certainly version of much interestUtopia, namely the Equator, not only to our narratorwhere everything is upside down, a young lawyer called Spaet – even if he rarely gets to frequent such establishments people walk on their heads with such people, he is eager rocks in their pockets to know more, especially once he is actually tasked by keep them on the man in hand ground to look into counter the anti-gravity, and where, who knows, things a second timemight actually be better. But whatthat equator is a long way away – and there'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? a whole adventure full of Mexico and Latin America between him and it… [[The Execution of Justice Equator by Friedrich Durrenmatt Antonin Varenne and John E Woods Sam Taylor (translator)|Full Review]]
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[[image:Cercas_Impostor1911115847.jpg|left|link=httpshttp://www.amazon.co.uk/gpdp/product1911115847/0857056506ref=nosim?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]]
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===[[The Invisible Life Nights of Euridice Gusmao the Creaking Bed by Martha Batalha and Eric M B Becker (translator)Toni Kan]]===
[[image:4.5star4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]]
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