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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-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 May 1921. Edie receives a country very much like New Zealand, but at photograph through the same time most avowedly not, two women will find lovepost. There is no letter or note with it. Strong love too, for our narrator will say that her first attraction for her partner was There is nothing written on the back of the only thing to make sense photograph. It is a picture of all those exaggerated songs she'd heard, and books and poems she'd readher husband, and plays she'd acted in – works of art that had until then seemed sheer hyperboleFrancis. It was entirely unrequited love Francis has been missing for quite some timefour years. Technically, he has been "missing, believed killed" but it does burgeon, or so we're promised from the off, because of that is not something quite drastic – that a major earthquake very much like young widow can believe. She hangs on the one that hit Christchurchword 'missing', but at disbelieving the same time most avowedly notword killed. This book then is the combined exploration of the lovers and the story [[Photographer of the quake. [[Aftershocks Lost by A N WilsonCaroline Scott|Full Review]]
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===[[Tirzah and the Prince of Crows The Dutch House by Deborah Kay DaviesAnn Patchett]]===
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
This is a quiet but remarkable storyWhen we first meet Danny and his elder sister, written in a style reminiscent of E. M. ForsterMaeve Conroy, they''[Tirzah re both living at The Dutch House with their parents and under the gaze of the Prince portraits of Crowsthe former owners whose oil paintings still hang on the walls. It'' has no great s a strange family dynamic: Cyril Conroy is distant and stirring action but rather small ripples that make the closest Danny seems to come to him is when he goes out with him on a huge impactSaturday collecting rents from properties the family owns. Tirzah Elna Conroy is a young girl of sixteen raised in a small Welsh town in loving, but absent increasingly often until the point comes when the 1970s by highly religious parents as part of a strict religious community. The book follows Tirzah though a tumultuous year as she tries to decide who children are told that she wants to will not bereturning. In other circumstances this might have affected Maeve and Danny deeply, and what she wants to do but their primary relationship is with her lifeeach other. It's a bond which only death will break. [[Tirzah and the Prince of Crows The Dutch House by Deborah Kay DaviesAnn Patchett|Full Review]]
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===[[The Gilded Ones A Winter Book by Brooke FieldhouseTove Jansson]]===
[[image:4star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:CrimeLiterary Fiction|CrimeLiterary Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary FictionShort Stories|Literary FictionShort Stories]]
It was a hot day in 1984 and Pulse had two job interviews for the day, but the heat wasnTove Jansson't the only reason why he wasn't feeling s worldwide fame lasts on top form. He'd had a disturbing dream the night before. He'd been following a Porsche on a difficult routeMoomin books, probably somewhere written in the Alps when the Porsche went off 1940s and later becoming television characters of the road. The passengersimplicity, a man, was dead, but the woman was still alive. naivety and sheer 'goodness'I'm Freia.that would later produce flowerpot men or teletubbies..''Simple drawings, she said. ''It's spelled the German way.'' Of the two job interviewssimple stories, the first was with an up-and-coming design studio in Brighton and it would almost certainly be good for Pulse's careersimple goodness. The second What is often forgotten outside of her native Finland is that she was with a run-down practice based in an old London house and headed by Patrick Lloyd-Lewis, whose wife, Freia, serious writer…that she wrote for adults as well as children…and that she had recently died in unexplained circumstances. The link with the dream of the night before was too much a feeling for Pulse to refuse the offer of a job. He couldn't resist natural world and the lure simple life that not only informed those child-like trolls but went far beyond any fantasy of how the mysteryworld might be. [[The Gilded Ones A Winter Book by Brooke FieldhouseTove Jansson|Full Review]]
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===[[The Lost Letters of William Woolf Summer Book by Helen CullenTove Jansson]]===
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
William Woolf Tove Jansson's short novel about Summer is a letter detective, working in several worlds away from the Dead Letters Depot in East LondonMoomintrolls she is most famous for outside her native Scandinavia. He spends his days deciphering smudged addressesBook yourself an afternoon this Summer, and take yourself and The Summer Book somewhere quiet, tracking down mysterious people preferably within sight and reading endless letters sound of love, guilt, death, hopethe sea, settle back and everyday lifeprepare to be transported. [[The Lost Letters of William Woolf Summer Book by Helen CullenTove Jansson|Full Review]]
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===[[Lala Snowflake, AZ by Jacek Dehnel and Antonia Lloyd-Jones (translator)Marcus Sedgwick]]===
[[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] ''This is the mysterious nature of storytelling: the same start can also mean different endings, and different starts can lead to the same finale. It's all subordinate to the greater narrative, which starts somewhere in Kiev''. This beautiful book is exactly that, the mysterious art of storytelling. The wayward meanderings of memory, of tangents and digressions, of side notes and elaborations, but above all that of affection; for both the story and the storyteller. What makes us who we are if not our culture and heritage and in this book our narrator re-lives and re-tells the story of his heritage told to him by his grandmother. [[Lala by Jacek Dehnel and Antonia Lloyd-Jones (translator)|Full Review]] <!-- Wise -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:0857302183.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0857302183/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Emperor of Shoes by Spencer Wise]]=== [[image:3star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
This is a deep, interesting read unlike any book I've read in quite some time. The novel'The Emperor s story follows a young man named Ash in the process of joining a community of Shoes'' is sick people in the story curiously named town of Alex CohenSnowflake, Arizona. These people are sick, the heir to but it's not a lucrative shoe factory based in southern Chinasickness you've heard of. More idealistic than his profit-obsessed fatherInstead, they're environmentally ill – affected by household chemicals and less motivated solely by the bottom linefabrics, pesticides, static electricity, heand radiation – and their only ''cure''s unsure of himself: unsure whether he can continue his fatheris to stay in the town away from the real world. Though it's successabout a real place, the people in it are fictional. But complications arise when he starts to question how morally sound the business It really isa place apart, and whether quite literally cut off from the workers outside world – people are being given a fair dealeven required to decontaminate themselves thoroughly before becoming fully integrated. [[The Emperor of Shoes Snowflake, AZ by Spencer WiseMarcus Sedgwick|Full Review]]
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===[[The Aviator Nightjar by Eugene Vodolazkin and Lisa Hayden (Translator)Deborah Hewitt]]===
[[image:4star4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Fantasy|Fantasy]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
Innokenty Petrovich Platonov wakes up in a hospital bed with no recollection of who he ''The Nightjar'' is or how he got therean unusual and exciting story. He is tended by Alice Wyndham lives a single doctor, Doctor Geiger, who gives him normal life in London until she finds a pencil box on her doorstep one morning and notebook and encourages him her life begins to write down his observations and memories. The notebook is thickunravel, like a novelfast. How can Innokenty fill it if he cannot remember anything? But slowly the memories start to returnFrom that very moment, memories of childhood holidays at the beachher life is flooded with magic, of life in the dachaloss, of the airfield expectation and the aviatorsparticularly, betrayal...and the island...it seems like some memories may be better left buried. He remembers As everything around her shifts, all that she knows, all that he is the same age as the centuryshe thinks she knows, born in 1900must change. But if that is the caseWho can she trust? Who must she trust? Who will she trust? More importantly, how is he still a young man when the pills by his bedside are dated 1999can she even trust herself? [[The Aviator Nightjar by Eugene Vodolazkin and Lisa Hayden (Translator)Deborah Hewitt|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]], [[Black Sugar by Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator):Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]===
I came to this book thinking I knew just what to expect, even though it is [[image:4starCategory: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.
Miguel Bonnefoy's ''Black Sugar'' is a sensual epic chronicling three generations of the Otero family. The tale begins with the disappearance of Captain Henry Morgan's treasure 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 setMore fool me. [[Black Sugar Train Man by Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)Andrew Mulligan|Full Review]]
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===[[The Zero and the One A Perfect Explanation by Ryan RubyEleanor Anstruther]]===
[[image:4star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]]
''The Zero and the One'' is an incredibly well written and well crafted book. We meet our narrator, OwenEnid Campbell was a woman who, on the plane to New York for the funeral face of his best friendit, had everything. He is still reeling after recent events, a suicide pact in which his friend died but he lived, and he is going through Leading the motions life of the funeral an aristocrat – full of inherited wealth and consoling family whilst still trying to get to grips with his own feelings of grief splendour, glamourous locales and guilthigh expectations. So farOnly Enid's life has been plagued by mental illness – undiagnosed, so simpleuntreated and threatening both Enid and those close to her. But this is where the talent After losing custody of Ryan Ruby steps in and slowlyher children, so slowly, he reveals little tantalising clues that all Enid sells her son to her sister for £500 – but is not what it seemsthis an act of greed, a throw-away comment hereor an act of desperation? Exploring the true story of her own grandmother, a mis-step thereEleanor Anstruther has found the perfect subject for an explosive, moving and it becomes clear that Owen is not a reliable narratorbeautifully well written debut. [[The Zero and the One A Perfect Explanation by Ryan RubyEleanor Anstruther|Full Review]]
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===[[Anatomy of a Miracle The Choke by Jonathan MilesSofie Laguna]]===
[[image:3.5star2star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
Look closely at the cover of Jonathan MilesThere's third novel a dull, dispiriting pang of disappointment that comes when you try something everyone else loves and find out that 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 footprintsre really not into it. Coffee. On 23 August 2014, wheelchair-bound veteran Cameron Harris stands up and walks outside the Biz-E-Bee convenience store in Biloxi, MississippiIce skating. In the rest of the novel we find out how he got to this point and what others – ranging from his doctor to representatives of the Roman Catholic Church – will make of his recoveryA new Netflix series. Was it a miracleBooks are like that, or an explainable medical phenomenon? but doubly so. [[Anatomy of a Miracle The Choke by Jonathan MilesSofie Laguna|Full Review]]
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[[image:Mcneil Fire0857058738.jpg|left|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/17850789920857058738/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 book, 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 and content is thoroughly modern. The bulk of the story is told through the perspective of Nick, and we see his point of view on life around him. The main characters of the book, however, are Pieter and Riaan, 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]]
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===[[The Last of the Greenwoods Equator by Clare MorrallAntonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)]]===
[[image:4star3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
Down It strikes me that nobody can speak well of the Wild West outside the walls of a theme park. Our agent to see how bad it was here is Pete Ferguson, who bristles at the indignity of white man against Native 'Indian', who spends days being physically sick while indulging in hidden railway carriagesa buffalo hunt, deep behind foliage and further down Long Meadow Road who hates the way man – and woman, of course – can turn against fellow man at the bat of an eyelid. But this book is about so much more than most care to gothe 1870s USA, live and the Greenwood Brothersattendant problems with gold rushes, pioneer spirits and racial genocide. They haven He finds himself trying to find this book't spoken to each other in yearss version of Utopia, namely the Equator, where everything is upside down, but one morning a letter arrives people walk on their doorstep - a letter from a sister long thought dead...As heads with rocks in their pockets to keep them on the brothers are forced to confront painful memories of a past that both tried ground to keep buried, counter the postanti-woman gravity, and where, who delivered the letter struggles with secrets knows, things might actually be better. But that equator is a long way away – and there's a whole adventure full of her own... Mexico and Latin America between him and it… [[The Last of the Greenwoods Equator by Clare MorrallAntonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)|Full Review]]
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[[image:Rawi_Baghdad1911115847.jpg|left|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/17860732261911115847/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 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 about Scarcross Hall? Hidden on the old coffin path that winds from the village to the moor top, the villagers only speak of it in hushed tones - of how it's a foreboding place filled with evil. Mercy Booth has lived there since birth, and she's always loved the grand house and its isolation, but a recurrence of strange events begins to unsettle her. From objects disappearing through to a shadowy presence sensed in the house, mysteries come to light that can only be solved by Mercy unearthing long-buried secrets. And will a dark stranger help Mercy protect everything she has come to love or tear it from her grasp? [[The Coffin Path by Katherine Clements|Full Review]]
 
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===[[The Execution of Justice by Friedrich Durrenmatt and John E Woods (translator)]]===
 
[[image:2.5star.jpg|link=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 balance? [[The Execution of Justice by Friedrich Durrenmatt and John E Woods (translator)|Full Review]]
 
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===[[The Impostor by Javier Cercas and Frank Wynne (translator)]]===
 
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
 
Enric Marco is without doubt an extraordinary man. A veteran of the Spanish Civil War, honoured for his bravery on the battlefield. A political prisoner of two fascist regimes. A survivor of the Nazi concentration camps. A prominent figure in the clandestine resistance against Franco's tyranny. A tireless warrior for social justice and the defence of human rights. A national hero. But the most extraordinary thing about Enric Marco is this: that he is really none of these things. He is an impostor. And Javier Cercas sets out to tell his story – the true story of Spain's most notorious liar. [[The Impostor by Javier Cercas and Frank Wynne (translator)|Full Review]]
 
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===[[A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars by Yaba Badoe]]===
 
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Teens|Teens]]
 
Sante was a baby when she was washed ashore in a sea-chest laden with treasure. It seems she is the sole survivor of the tragic sinking of a ship carrying migrants and refugees. Her people. Fourteen years on she's a member of Mama Rose's unique and dazzling circus. But, from their watery grave, the unquiet dead are calling Sante to avenge them. A bamboo flute. A golden bangle. A ripening mango which must not fall... if Sante is to tell their story and her own. [[A Jigsaw of Fire and Stars by Yaba Badoe|Full Review]]
 
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===[[The Invisible Life 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]]
On ''Nights of 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. ThatCreaking Bed's all anyone could ever want, isn't it? Not Euridiceis a collection of short stories by Toni Kan. She has The series of stories tell of the lives and lusts of an inexplicable ache inside her for something moreassortment of characters living in and around Lagos, like many of usNigeria. Yet each of her pet projectsNigeria, from a desire to publish a recipe book to starting a cottage sewing industry in her living roomthis collection, is imbued with its very own heart of darkness. Danger stalks the shadows and people are met killed for nothing more than a wrong look. Kan writes with scorn from her stern husband Antenor. He wants a wife who doesn't draw attention vitality and passion that allows these cynical stories to herself, whose only domains are her house and her familyachieve a glimmer of hope. [[The Invisible Life Nights of Euridice Gusmao the Creaking Bed by Martha Batalha and Eric M B Becker (translator)Toni Kan|Full Review]]
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