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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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===[[The Hidden Photographer of the Lost by Mary ChamberlainCaroline Scott]]===
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Historical Fiction|Literary Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Literary Fiction|Historical Literary Fiction]]
When Barbara Hummel arrives, determined to identify May 1921. Edie receives a photograph through the mysterious woman whose photograph she has found among her mother's possessions, Dora and Joe find their worlds upended – and are swiftly forced to confront their pastspost. There is no letter or note with it. Revisiting their time There is nothing written on the Channel Islands during World War II, Dora remembers back of the photograph. It is a time when she concealed picture of her Jewish identityhusband, and JoeFrancis. Francis has been missing for four years. Technically, a Catholic Priesthe has been "missing, remembers believed killed" but that is not something that a time when he hid something very differentyoung widow can believe. In this story of love She hangs on the word 'missing', loss and betrayal, it remains to be seen whether a speck of light can diffuse disbelieving the darkest shadows of war… word killed. [[The Hidden Photographer of the Lost by Mary ChamberlainCaroline Scott|Full Review]]
<!-- Clár Ní Chonghaile -->|-| style=''width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;''|[[image:1787198146.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1787198146/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style=''vertical-align: top; text-align: left;''|===[[The Reckoning by Clar Ni Chonghaile]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] As the blurb says, ''In a cottage in Normandy, Lina Rose is writing to the daughter she abandoned as a baby''…the whole of Chonghaile's second novel is a series of letters addressed to Diane. Lina is now in her seventies and Diane is a mother herself. They have met just once since Lina gave her up for adoption. It was not a good meeting. [[The Reckoning by Clar Ni Chonghaile|Full Review]]<!-- Abbs -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1473691206.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1473691206/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Frieda by Annabel Abbs]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Married to English Professor Ernest Weekley, aristocrat Frieda Von Richtofen finds herself stifled by the confines of married life. Visiting family in Munich, she becomes captivated by the ideas of revolution and free love. Meeting the penniless writer D.H. Lawrence, she finds herself drawn into a passionate affair and a tempestuous relationship, changing the course of both their lives, and unleashing a creative outpouring that will change the course of literature forever. [[Frieda by Annabel Abbs|Full Review]] <!-- Susan Fletcher -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:0349007640.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0349007640/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[House of Glass by Susan Fletcher]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]] Clara suffered from ''Osteogenesis imperfecta'': these days it would probably be called brittle bone disease and whilst there is still no cure, treatments have advanced. At the beginning of the twentieth century it meant that Clara was confined to her home, living life through a window and the tales her mother, Charlotte, brought home. Both became far too knowledgeable about bones and the sounds they made on breaking. Charlotte would ''list bones like continents''. Clara would only escape the house after her mother's death - of a tumour at the age of thirty nine - and in her wanderings discovered Kew Gardens. Her growing knowledge of tropical plants led to the offer of a job stocking a newly-built glass house at Shadowbrook in Gloucestershire. [[House of Glass by Susan Fletcher|Full Review]] <!-- Hajaj -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1786073943.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1786073943/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Water Thief by Claire Hajaj]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Nick is in the middle of wedding preparations when he decides to leave his fiancée behind in London and take up a post in some un-named west African country providing engineering support for the building of a children's hospital. He has no idea what he is getting himself into. [[The Water Thief by Claire Hajaj|Full Review]]  <!-- Wilson -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1786496038.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1786496038/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Aftershocks by A N Wilson]]=== [[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General 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]] <!-- Davies Ann Patchett -->
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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: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[[image:5star. 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 passengerjpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], 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:Category:Short Stories|Full ReviewShort Stories]]
Tove 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' 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 feeling for the natural world and the simple life that not only informed those child-like trolls but went far beyond any fantasy of how the world might be. [[A Winter Book by Tove 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 a deep, interesting read unlike any book I've read in quite some time. The novel'This is s story follows a young man named Ash in the mysterious nature process of storytelling: joining a community of sick people in the same start can also mean different endingscuriously named town of Snowflake, and different starts can lead to the same finaleArizona. ItThese people are sick, but it's all subordinate to the greater narrative, which starts somewhere in Kievnot a sickness you''. This beautiful book is exactly that, the mysterious art ve heard of storytelling. The wayward meanderings of memoryInstead, of tangents they're environmentally ill – affected by household chemicals and digressionsfabrics, of side notes pesticides, static electricity, and radiation – and elaborations, but above all that of affection; for both their only ''cure'' is to stay in the story and town away from the storytellerreal world. What makes us who we Though it's about a real place, the people in it are if not our culture and heritage and in this book our narrator re-lives and re-tells fictional. It really is a place apart, quite literally cut off from the story of his heritage told outside world – people are even required to him by his grandmotherdecontaminate themselves thoroughly before becoming fully integrated. [[Lala Snowflake, AZ by Jacek Dehnel and Antonia Lloyd-Jones (translator)Marcus Sedgwick|Full Review]]
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===[[The Emperor of Shoes Nightjar by Spencer WiseDeborah Hewitt]]===
[[image:3star4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Fantasy|Fantasy]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
''The Emperor of ShoesNightjar'' is the an unusual and exciting story of Alex Cohen, the heir to . Alice Wyndham lives a lucrative shoe factory based normal life in southern ChinaLondon until she finds a box on her doorstep one morning and her life begins to unravel, fast. More idealistic than his profit-obsessed fatherFrom that very moment, her life is flooded with magic, loss, expectation and less motivated solely by the bottom lineparticularly, he's unsure of himself: unsure whether he can continue his father's successbetrayal. But complications arise when he starts to question how morally sound the business really isAs everything around her shifts, all that she knows, all that she thinks she knows, and whether the workers are being given a fair dealmust change. Who can she trust? Who must she trust? Who will she trust? More importantly, can she even trust herself? [[The Emperor of Shoes Nightjar by Spencer WiseDeborah Hewitt|Full Review]]
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| style="''vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"''|===[[The Aviator Train Man by Eugene Vodolazkin and Lisa Hayden (Translator)Andrew Mulligan]]=== [[image:4star.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 and notebook and encourages him to write down his observations and memories. The notebook is thick, like a novel. How can Innokenty fill it if he cannot remember anything? But slowly the memories start to return, memories of childhood holidays at the beach, of life in the dacha, of the airfield and the aviators...and the island...it seems like some memories may be better left buried. He remembers that he is the same age as the century, born in 1900. But if that is the case, how is he still a young man when the pills by his bedside are dated 1999? [[The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin and Lisa Hayden (Translator)|Full Review]] <!-- Houm -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1782273778.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1782273778/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] 
[[image:2.5star.jpg| stylelink="vertical-alignCategory:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[: top; text-alignCategory: left;"General Fiction|===General Fiction]], [[The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator):Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]===
I came to this book thinking I knew just what to expect, even though it is [[image:4.5star.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:General FictionChris Cleave|General FictionChris Cleave]], and [[:Category:Literary FictionDavid Nicholls|Literary FictionDavid Nicholls]]. I expected some whimsy, some warmth and some affirmative loveliness.
Jane Ashland is dyingMore fool me. That's a description of a very early scene here – but also, of course, a platitude that can apply to all of us. Jane's life, if anything, is going up and down in levels of pleasure, energy – sobriety – in these pages, but we soon learn that it recently found a very deeply dark down place. Here then, scattered through a timeline-bending narrative, we have her days finding a Lincolnesque lover as a student in New York, glimpses of therapy, a drive to find her ancestors that takes her from rural America to Norway – and a trip there with a new-found friend to watch the musk oxen, of all things. And nowhere in sight is anything like a platitude… [[The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland Train Man by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator)Andrew Mulligan|Full Review]]
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===[[Black Sugar A Perfect Explanation by Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)Eleanor Anstruther]]===
[[image:4star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] 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 set. , [[Black Sugar by Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)|Full Review]] <!-- Ruby -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-alignCategory: top; text-align: center;"Historical Fiction|[[image:1455565180.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1455565180/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21Historical Fiction]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Zero and the One by Ryan Ruby]]===
[[image:4starEnid Campbell was a woman who, on the face of it, had everything. Leading the life of an aristocrat – full of inherited wealth and splendour, glamourous locales and high expectations. Only Enid's life has been plagued by mental illness – undiagnosed, untreated and threatening both Enid and those close to her. After losing custody of her children, Enid sells her son to her sister for £500 – but is this an act of greed, or an act of desperation? Exploring the true story of her own grandmother, Eleanor Anstruther has found the perfect subject for an explosive, moving and beautifully well written debut.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary FictionA Perfect Explanation by Eleanor Anstruther|Literary FictionFull Review]]
''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]] <!-- Miles Laguna -->
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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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===[[Fire on the Mountain Equator by Jean McNeilAntonin 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]]
This 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 an unusual bookPete Ferguson, in style it feels like a novel by E M Forster; with a deep study who bristles at the minutiae indignity of life white man against Native 'Indian', who spends days being physically sick while indulging in a buffalo hunt, and thought, yet who hates the plot way man – and content is thoroughly modern. The bulk woman, of course – can turn against fellow man at the story bat of an eyelid. But this book is told through about so much more than the 1870s USA, and the perspective of Nickattendant problems with gold rushes, pioneer spirits and we see his point of view on life around himracial genocide. The main characters He finds himself trying to find this book's version of Utopia, namely the bookEquator, howeverwhere everything is upside down, people walk on their heads with rocks in their pockets to keep them on the ground to counter the anti-gravity, are Pieter and Riaanwhere, who knows, as it things might actually be better. But that equator is these characters who fascinate Nick a long way away – and are the focus there's a whole adventure full of his contemplation Mexico and Latin America between him and crisis. it… [[Fire on the Mountain Equator by Jean McNeilAntonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)|Full Review]]
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===[[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 Nights of the Creaking Bed by Shahad Al RawiToni Kan]]===
[[image:2.5star4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical FictionShort Stories|Historical FictionShort Stories]]
''The Baghdad ClockNights of the Creaking Bed'' is a tale collection of two friends growing up during the first and second Iraqi war. Shahad Al Rawi uses magic realism to illustrate the displacement felt short stories by a young girl and her neighbourhoodToni Kan. The novel introduces us to series of stories tell of the various lives and lusts of an assortment of characters surrounding the protagonist. They are full of life living in and yet never seem to add anything to the central narrativearound Lagos, Nigeria. RawiNigeria, it would seemin this collection, has is imbued with its very own heart of darkness. Danger stalks the shadows and people are killed for nothing more than a problem wrong look. Kan writes with telling a storyvitality and passion that allows these cynical stories to achieve a glimmer of hope. [[The Baghdad Clock Nights of the Creaking Bed by Shahad Al RawiToni Kan|Full Review]]
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