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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|author=Laura Imai Messina|class-"wikitable" cellpaddingtitle="15" <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->The Phone Box at the End of the World<!-- Mulligan -->|rating=5|-genre=Literary Fiction| stylesummary=In the northeast of Japan, in Inwate Prefecture a man installed a telephone box in his garden. ''width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;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[[image:1784742716|rating=4.jpg5|linkgenre=http://wwwLiterary 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.amazon 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.co Not knowing whether he's going because he needs or wants to, or simply because he was asked, he's on the next plane.uk/dp/1784742716/ref|isbn=nosim?tagB07ZQSK9CY}}{{Frontpage|author=Joanne M Harris|title=thebookbag-21]]A Pocketful of Crows|rating=5|genre= Confident Readers| stylesummary=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. 'vertical-align: top; text-align: left;'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=[[Train Man by Andrew Mulligan]]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[[image|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= We live in a post- world:2post-colonialism, post-modernism, post truth. The list goes on. There are numerous works that utilise the prefix post- in their categorisation, but perhaps none more so than Maryse Condé.5starIn 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.jpgIvan 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.|linkisbn=Category:1642860697}}{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General FictionFrontpage|author= Ukamaka Olisakwe|General Fiction]]title= Ogadinma Or, [[:Category:Literary FictionEverything Will Be All Right|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction]] I came to this book thinking I knew just what to expect|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, even though Everything Will Be All Right''. Ogadinma is the eponymous heroine of the story.. We are with her in every scene and it is [[:Category:Andy Mulligan|her narrative voice that leads the author's]] debut story, although Olisakwe writes in third person. This provides a sense of detachment for the adult novel market (hence reader and highlights the more mature name – he used isolation of Ogadinma. She is exiled from her father's home and sent to Lagos where she is married to be an Andy)older man named Tobe. Their marriage descends into violence and indignities and Ogadinma must utilise her resourcefulness to escape. I thought it simple |isbn=1911648160}}{{Frontpage|author=Elliot Reed|title=A Key to sum up, Treehouse Living|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=This is the tale story of a middle-aged man young boy, William Tyce, who knows too much about train travel having is being raised by his uncle after the death of his mother and his life turned around father's abandonment. However, it isn't told in the most pleasant 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 hadnbegan to read I did find myself thinking 't opened it when what on earth?!' but Isoon grew used to the style, and was instead caught up in William'd shelved it alongside [[:Category:Chris Cleaves story.|isbn=1911545418}}{{Frontpage|Chris Cleave]], author= Karina Sainz Borgo and [[:Category:David NichollsElizabeth Bryer (translator)|title= It Would Be Night in Caracas|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction |David Nicholls]]summary= ''It Would Be Night in Caracas'' illuminates the everyday horrors of modern day Venezuela. I expected some whimsy, some warmth 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 some affirmative lovelinessher attempts to escape it.Danger stalks the shadows and, in a society where the establishment is crumbling, who can you turn to? |isbn=0062936867More fool me. [[Train Man by Andrew Mulligan|Full Review]]}}
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===[[A Perfect Explanation Photographer of the Lost by Eleanor AnstrutherCaroline Scott]]===
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Historical Fiction|Literary Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Literary Fiction|Historical Literary Fiction]]
Enid Campbell was May 1921. Edie receives a woman who, on photograph through the face of post. There is no letter or note with it, had everything. Leading There is nothing written on the life back of an aristocrat – full the photograph. It is a picture of inherited wealth and splendourher husband, glamourous locales and high expectationsFrancis. Only Enid's life Francis has been plagued by mental illness – undiagnosedmissing for four years. Technically, untreated and threatening both Enid and those close to her. After losing custody of her childrenhe has been "missing, Enid sells her son to her sister for £500 – believed killed" but that is this an act of greed, or an act of desperation? Exploring not something that a young widow can believe. She hangs on the true story of her own grandmotherword 'missing', Eleanor Anstruther has found disbelieving the perfect subject for an explosive, moving and beautifully well written debutword killed. [[A Perfect Explanation Photographer of the Lost by Eleanor AnstrutherCaroline Scott|Full Review]]
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===[[The Choke Dutch House by Sofie LagunaAnn Patchett]]===
[[image:2star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
ThereWhen we first meet Danny and his elder sister, Maeve Conroy, they're both living at The Dutch House with their parents and under the gaze of the portraits of the former owners whose oil paintings still hang on the walls. It's a dullstrange 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 family owns. Elna Conroy is loving, dispiriting pang of disappointment that but absent increasingly often until the point comes when you try something everyone else loves and find out the children are told that you're really she will not into itbe returning. Coffee. Ice skating. A new Netflix series. Books are like that In other circumstances this might have affected Maeve and Danny deeply, but doubly sotheir primary relationship is with each other. It's a bond which only death will break. [[The Choke Dutch House by Sofie LagunaAnn Patchett|Full Review]]
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===[[Equator A Winter Book by Antonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)Tove Jansson]]===
[[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:General FictionShort Stories|General FictionShort Stories]]
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 Tove Jansson's worldwide fame lasts on the indignity of white man against Native 'Indian'Moomin books, who spends days being physically sick while indulging written in a buffalo hunt, and who hates the way man – 1940s and woman, later becoming television characters of course – can turn against fellow man at the bat of an eyelidsimplicity, naivety and sheer 'goodness' that would later produce flowerpot men or teletubbies. But this book is about so much more than the 1870s USASimple drawings, and the attendant problems with gold rushessimple stories, pioneer spirits and racial genocidesimple goodness. He finds himself trying to find this book's version What is often forgotten outside of Utopia, namely the Equator, where everything her native Finland is upside down, people walk on their heads with rocks in their pockets to keep them on that she was a serious writer…that she wrote for adults as well as children…and that she had a feeling for the ground to counter natural world and the antisimple life that not only informed those child-gravity, and where, who knows, things like trolls but went far beyond any fantasy of how the world might actually be better. But that equator is a long way away – and there's a whole adventure full of Mexico and Latin America between him and it… [[Equator A Winter Book by Antonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)Tove Jansson|Full Review]]
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===[[Nights of the Creaking Bed The Summer Book by Toni KanTove Jansson]]===
[[image:4star5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category: Literary Fiction| Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]]
Tove Jansson''Nights of s short novel about Summer is several worlds away from the Creaking Bed'' Moomintrolls she is a collection of short stories by Toni Kanmost famous for outside her native Scandinavia. The series of stories tell of the lives Book yourself an afternoon this Summer, and lusts of an assortment of characters living in take yourself and around LagosThe Summer Book somewhere quiet, Nigeria. Nigeria, in this collection, is imbued with its very own heart preferably within sight and sound of darkness. Danger stalks the shadows sea, settle back and people are killed for nothing more than a wrong look. Kan writes with a vitality and passion that allows these cynical stories prepare to achieve a glimmer of hopebe transported. [[Nights of the Creaking Bed The Summer Book by Toni KanTove Jansson|Full Review]]
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===[[The Resurrection of Jesus Snowflake, AZ by Yancey WilliamsMarcus Sedgwick]]===
[[image:43.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
In March 1990 two police officers entered BostonThis is a deep, interesting read unlike any book I's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museumve read in quite some time. They left with thirteen famous paintings by Rembrandt, Degas and Vermeer. The frames remain empty to this day: whilst there might have been rumours about novel's story follows a young man named Ash in the whereabouts process of joining a community of sick people in the paintingscuriously named town of Snowflake, even promises that the case was about to be solved, the paintings Arizona. These people are still missing. Yancey Williams has a theorysick, which he delaborates on in his novel but it's not a sickness you'The Resurrection ve heard of Jesus'. Instead, they're environmentally ill – affected by household chemicals and fabrics, pesticides, static electricity, and whilst his suspects might seem unlikely, whoradiation – and their only ''cure''s is to say that hestay in the town away from the real world. Though it's wrong? Forget about a real place, the assertions that people in it was down are fictional. It really is a place apart, quite literally cut off from the outside world – people are even required to the Mafia and meet Jésus Ángel Escobar and Hiram Johnny Walker Quicksilverdecontaminate themselves thoroughly before becoming fully integrated. [[The Resurrection of Jesus Snowflake, AZ by Yancey WilliamsMarcus Sedgwick|Full Review]]
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===[[In The Full Light of the Sun Nightjar by Clare ClarkDeborah Hewitt]]===
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary FictionFantasy|Literary FictionFantasy]], [[:Category:Historical Literary Fiction|Historical Literary Fiction]]
In 1930's Berlin'The Nightjar'' is an unusual and exciting story. Alice Wyndham lives a normal life in London until she finds a box on her doorstep one morning and her life begins to unravel, three people obsessed with art find themselves swept up into a scandalfast. EmmelineFrom that very moment, a wayward young studenther life is flooded with magic, Juliusloss, an anxious middle-aged art expertexpectation and particularly, and Rachmannbetrayal. As everything around her shifts, a mysterious art dealerall that she knows, live in the politically turbulent Weimar Berlinall that she thinks she knows, and soon find themselves whipped up into excitement over the surprise discovery of thirty-two previously unknown paintings by Vincent Van Goghmust change. Based on a true story and unfolding through the subsequent rise of Hitler and the Nazis, the discovery of the art allows these characters to explore authenticityWho can she trust? Who must she trust? Who will she trust? More importantly, vanity and self-delusion. can she even trust herself? [[In The Full Light of the Sun Nightjar by Clare ClarkDeborah Hewitt|Full Review]]
<!-- Kazan -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:0749024801.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0749022132/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Phoenix of Florence by Philip Kazan]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]] Deep in the Tuscan countryside of fifteenth century Italy, Onoria survives a massacre that destroys her family and home. Alone in the forest, she meets a band of soldiers who, believing her to be a boy train and develop her – and the determined Onoria becomes a mercenary – desperate to avoid any situation in which she may feel vulnerable again. Along the way, she meets ex-soldier Celavini, whose journey to Florence sees him investigating two brutal murders. As he digs further and uncovers links to his own family history, Celavini must revisit the past he shares with Onoria, in the hope that they can lay the ghosts of their shared history to rest, before it's too late... [[The Phoenix of Florence by Philip Kazan|Full Review]] <!-- Kennedy -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1786331691.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1786331691/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Great Wide Open by Douglas Kennedy]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Douglas Kennedy's ''The Great Wide Open'' has been described as epic by just about everyone, and it often feels as though that was the intention. Though the novel often feels like a pastiche of the great American novel – epic in scope, preoccupied with matters of money and literature, fixated with New York – it often feels more like Kennedy is trying to reverse-engineer the concept altogether. Initially, the novel presents itself as an intimate study of family drama, in the latter half of the novel it smoothly turns to examining the turn of American society since the 70s, and the rapid rise of the hyper-capitalist neoliberal values that have dominated the west since the election of Ronald Reagan. Though it takes place over a twenty-year period between the 70s and the 90s, it notably always keeps one an eye on the present day (Trump, of course, makes an inevitable and slightly incongruous cameo) such that what happens links subtly into current affairs without ever explicitly referencing them. [[The Great Wide Open by Douglas Kennedy|Full Review]] <!-- d'Eramo -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1782273883.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1782273883/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Deviation by Luce d'Eramo and Anne Milano Appel (translator)]]=== [[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Autobiography|Autobiography]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]] For those of you who have read books of life in the Nazi camps – and of course, for those of you who have not – this can be considered a next step. It begins, after all, with someone escaping Dachau and fleeing her work assignment during a bombing raid, and you'd not blame her one minute, as her career was deemed to be cess-tank cleaner and sewage unblocker by the Germans. In Munich, she stumbles on help to get her to what seems to be a camp for non-native civilians to look for work, or company, or transport elsewhere, either official or otherwise. But then the next chapter sees her going back into the camp next to Dachau once more, and by then eyebrows are being raised. [[Deviation by Luce d'Eramo and Anne Milano Appel (translator)|Full Review]]  <!-- Chamberlain -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1786076446.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1786076446/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Hidden by Mary Chamberlain]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]] When Barbara Hummel arrives, determined to identify 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 pasts. Revisiting their time on the Channel Islands during World War II, Dora remembers a time when she concealed her Jewish identity, and Joe, a Catholic Priest, remembers a time when he hid something very different. In this story of love, loss and betrayal, it remains to be seen whether a speck of light can diffuse the darkest shadows of war… [[The Hidden by Mary Chamberlain|Full Review]] <!-- Clár Ní Chonghaile Mulligan -->
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===[[The Reckoning Train Man by Clar Ni ChonghaileAndrew Mulligan]]===
[[image:2.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
As the blurb says, ''In a cottage in NormandyI came to this book thinking I knew just what to expect, Lina Rose even though it is writing to [[:Category:Andy Mulligan|the daughter she abandoned as a baby''…the whole of Chonghaileauthor's second ]] debut in the adult novel is a series of letters addressed market (hence the more mature name – he used to Dianebe an Andy). Lina is now 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 her seventies and Diane is a mother herself. They have met just once since Lina gave her up for adoptionthe most pleasant way. It was not a good meeting. I hadn't opened it when I'd shelved it alongside [[The Reckoning by Clar Ni Chonghaile:Category:Chris Cleave|Full ReviewChris Cleave]]<!-- Abbs -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|, and [[image:1473691206.jpgCategory:David Nicholls|link=http://wwwDavid Nicholls]].amazon I expected some whimsy, some warmth and some affirmative loveliness.co.uk/dp/1473691206/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]
More fool me. [[Train Man by Andrew Mulligan|Full Review]]
| 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 Anstruther -->
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===[[House of Glass A Perfect Explanation by Susan FletcherEleanor Anstruther]]===
[[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 cureEnid Campbell was a woman who, treatments have advanced. At on the beginning face of the twentieth century it meant that Clara was confined to her home, living had everything. Leading the life through a window of an aristocrat – full of inherited wealth and the tales her mother, Charlottesplendour, brought home. Both became far too knowledgeable about bones glamourous locales and the sounds they made on breaking. Charlotte would ''list bones like continents''high expectations. Clara would only escape the house after her motherOnly Enid's death - of a tumour at the age of thirty nine - life has been plagued by mental illness – undiagnosed, untreated and threatening both Enid and in those close to her wanderings discovered Kew Gardens. Her growing knowledge After losing custody of tropical plants led 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 offer true story of a job stocking a newly-built glass house at Shadowbrook in Gloucestershireher own grandmother, Eleanor Anstruther has found the perfect subject for an explosive, moving and beautifully well written debut. [[House of Glass A Perfect Explanation by Susan FletcherEleanor Anstruther|Full Review]]
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===[[The Water Thief Choke by Claire HajajSofie Laguna]]===
[[image:4star2star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
Nick is in the middle There's a dull, dispiriting pang of wedding preparations disappointment that comes when he decides to leave his fiancée behind in London you try something everyone else loves and take up a post in some un-named west African country providing engineering support for the building of a childrenfind out that you's hospitalre really not into it. Coffee. Ice skating. A new Netflix series. He has no idea what he is getting himself intoBooks are like that, but doubly so. [[The Water Thief Choke by Claire HajajSofie Laguna|Full Review]]
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===[[Aftershocks Equator by A N WilsonAntonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)]]===
[[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]]
In It strikes me that nobody can speak well of the Wild West outside the walls of a country very much like New Zealandtheme park. Our agent to see how bad it was here is Pete Ferguson, but who bristles 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 indignity of all those exaggerated songs shewhite man against Native 'Indian'd heard, who spends days being physically sick while indulging in a buffalo hunt, and books who hates the way man – and poems she'd readwoman, and plays she'd acted in of course – works can turn against fellow man at the bat of art that had until then seemed sheer hyperbolean eyelid. It was entirely unrequited love for quite some time, but it does burgeon, or But this book is about so we're promised from much more than the off1870s USA, because of something quite drastic – a major earthquake very much like and the one that hit Christchurchattendant problems with gold rushes, but at the same time most avowedly notpioneer spirits and racial genocide. This He finds himself trying to find this book then 's version of Utopia, namely the Equator, where everything is upside down, people walk on their heads with rocks in their pockets to keep them on the combined exploration of ground to counter the lovers anti-gravity, and where, who knows, things might actually be better. But that equator is a long way away – and the story there's a whole adventure full of the quake. Mexico and Latin America between him and it… [[Aftershocks Equator by A N WilsonAntonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)|Full Review]]
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===[[Tirzah and Nights of the Prince of Crows Creaking Bed by Deborah Kay DaviesToni Kan]]===
[[image:5star4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]]
This is a quiet but remarkable story, written in a style reminiscent of E. M. Forster, ''[Tirzah and Nights of the Prince of CrowsCreaking Bed'' has no great and stirring action but rather small ripples that make a huge impact. Tirzah is a young girl collection of sixteen raised in a small Welsh town in the 1970s short stories by highly religious parents as part of a strict religious communityToni Kan. The book follows Tirzah though a tumultuous year as she tries to decide who she wants to be, series of stories tell of the lives and what she wants to do with her life. [[Tirzah and the Prince lusts of an assortment of Crows by Deborah Kay Davies|Full Review]] <!-- Brooke Fieldhouse -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1789013992.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1789013992/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Gilded Ones by Brooke Fieldhouse]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime|Crime]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] It was a hot day characters living in 1984 and Pulse had two job interviews for the dayaround Lagos, but the heat wasn't the only reason why he wasn't feeling on top formNigeria. He'd had a disturbing dream the night before. He'd been following a Porsche on a difficult routeNigeria, probably somewhere in the Alps when the Porsche went off the road. The passengerthis collection, a man, was dead, but the woman was still alive. ''I'm Freia...'', she said. ''It's spelled the German wayis imbued with its very own heart of darkness.'' Of the two job interviews, Danger stalks the first was with an up-shadows and-coming design studio in Brighton and it would almost certainly be good people are killed for Pulse's careernothing more than a wrong look. The second was Kan writes with a run-down practice based in an old London house vitality 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 passion that allows these cynical stories to refuse the offer of achieve a job. He couldn't resist the lure glimmer 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.cohope.uk/dp/0718189140/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]  | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Lost Letters Nights 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 Creaking Bed by Helen CullenToni Kan|Full Review]]
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