Difference between revisions of "Newest Literary Fiction Reviews"

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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
 
[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__  
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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Lucy Holland
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|title=Sistersong
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|rating=5
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|genre=Literary Fiction
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|summary=Sistersong is part of a genre I particularly enjoy, the modern retelling of folk and fairy tales. These stories, for most of us, are a cornerstone of childhood and I relish seeing them retold with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective. If handled well these retellings give new life and new meaning to stories that are now becoming increasingly narrow and outdated, fleshing out characters, examining relationships and re-evaluating the role of women. Sistersong is a perfect example of a modern retelling done well, the plot is handled with care, keeping its archaic historical feel but allowing the characters to come to life, to feel real and human, most importantly they feel relatable in a modern world whilst still feeling appropriate for the pre-Saxon age they live in. This is a masterpiece of storytelling and I was captivated from beginning to end.
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|isbn=1529039037
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=B002SQCYWQ
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|title=The Complete Barchester Chronicles
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|author=Anthony Trollope
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|rating=5
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|genre=Literary Fiction
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|summary=When I told my daughter that I didn't know what to listen to now that I'd finished [[The Complete Novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion by Jane Austen|The Complete Novels of Jane Austen]] for the second time on the trot she had the perfect answer: The Barchester Chronicles and they were in my inbox in a matter of minutes.  They're not ''quite'' as well known as the Austen books but they're an excellent follow on.
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=B077K6BQFD
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|title=The Complete Novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion
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|author=Jane Austen
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|rating=5
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|genre=Literary Fiction
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|summary=Yes - that's over eighty-one hours of listening for the purchase of one audio book.  All six major novels are read by conmedienne Alison Larkin and they're presented in the order in which they were published.
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Andrea Bajani and Elizabeth Harris (translator)
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|title=If You Kept a Record of Sins
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|rating=4.5
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|genre=Literary Fiction
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|summary=This was an incredibly readable novella, but one that left me a little conflicted. We start as our hero arrives at Bucharest airport, and before we even know his gender or the nature of the person he's addressing in his second person monologue of a narration, we see him picked up by his mother's chauffeur, and carted off to do all the necessary introductions before said mother is buried the following day. The mother was a businesswoman, who clearly left northern Italy and settled in Romania with her (night-time and business) partner, and feelings of abandonment are still strong. And so we flit from current (well, this came out in the original Italian in 2007, so moderately current) Bucharest, to the lad's childhood, and see just what he has to tell her as a private farewell address.
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|isbn=1939810965
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Afonso Cruz and Rahul Bery (translator)
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|title=Kokoschka's Doll
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|rating=2.5
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|genre=Literary Fiction
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|summary=Well, this looked very much like a book I could love from the get-go, which is why I picked my review copy up and flipped pages over several times before actually reading any of it.  I found things to potentially delight me each time – a weird section in the middle on darker stock paper, a chapter whose number was in the 20,000s, letters used as narrative form, and so on.  It intrigued with the subterranean voice a man hears in wartorn Dresden that what little I knew of it mentioned, too.  But you've seen the star rating that comes with this review, and can tell that if love was on these pages, it was not actually caused by them.  So what happened?
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|isbn=1529402697
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=0571362672
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|title=Snow
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|author=John Banville
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|rating=5
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|genre=Crime (Historical)
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|summary=''Well, at least you're a Wexford man.''
  
{|class-"wikitable" cellpadding="15" <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->
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So said Colonel Osborne when he welcomed DI St John (pronounced 'Sinjun') Strafford to Ballyglass House just before Christmas 1957.  Osborne was master of the Keelmore Hounds and had done something memorable with the Inniskilling Dragoons at Dunkirk.  The niceties had to be established even when there was a Catholic priest dead on the library floor with some precious bits of his anatomy missing.  Strafford was from Roslea at Bunclody and this, along with his good-but-shabby suit, marked him out as of Osborne's class and obviously Protestant. The dead priest was Father Tom Lawless from Scallanstown, who - despite the different religions - was in the habit of spending time at Ballyglass House.  His horse was stabled there.
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{{Frontpage
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|author= Tahi Saihate
[[image:191070962X.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/191070962X/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]
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|title= Astral Season, Beastly Season
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|rating= 3.5
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|genre= Literary Fiction
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|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.
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|isbn= 1916277101
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Laura Imai Messina
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|title=The Phone Box at the End of the World
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|rating=5
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|genre=Literary Fiction
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|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.
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|isbn=178658039X
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Amin Maalouf
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|title=The Disoriented
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|rating=4.5
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|genre=Literary Fiction
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|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.
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|isbn=B07ZQSK9CY
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Joanne M Harris
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|title=A Pocketful of Crows
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|rating=5
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|genre= Confident Readers
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|summary= I have always been of the mind that once you're above picture-book level and before you get to graphic sex & violence, there is no difference between books for children and books for adults.  There are good books and poor ones.  And Joanne Harris does not produce poor ones.  ''A Pocketful of Crows'' is clearly aimed at the younger readers as witness the use of the middle initial in the author's name to differentiate from her adult offers.  Ignore that if you have loved anything from ''Chocolat'' onwards you will know that Harris is mistress of the modern fairy tale.  This is no different.  It is an utter delight.
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|isbn=1473222184
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Frederic Beigbeder and Frank Wynne (translator)
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|title=A Life Without End
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|rating=4
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|genre=Literary Fiction
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|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?
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|isbn=1642860670
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author= Maryse Condé
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|title= The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana
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|rating= 4.5
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|genre= Literary Fiction
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|summary= We live in a post- world: post-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. 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.
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|isbn=1642860697
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author= Ukamaka Olisakwe
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|title= Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All Right
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|rating= 5
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|genre= Literary Fiction
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|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.
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|isbn=1911648160
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Elliot Reed
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|title=A Key to Treehouse Living
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|rating=4
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|genre=General Fiction
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|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.
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|isbn=1911545418
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author= Karina Sainz Borgo and Elizabeth Bryer (translator)
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|title= It Would Be Night in Caracas
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|rating= 4
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|genre= Literary Fiction
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|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?
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|isbn=0062936867
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1471186393
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|title=Photographer of the Lost
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|author=Caroline Scott
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|rating=4.5
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|genre=Historical Fiction
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|summary=May 1921.  Edie receives a photograph through the post. There is no letter or note with it.  There is nothing written on the back of the photograph.  It is a picture of her husband, Francis.  Francis has been missing for four years.  Technically, he has been "missing, believed killed" but that is not something that a young widow can believe.  She hangs on the word 'missing', disbelieving the word killed.
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1509896465
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|title=The Nightjar
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|author=Deborah Hewitt
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|rating=4.5
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|genre=Fantasy
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|summary=''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, fast. From that very moment, her life is flooded with magic, loss, expectation and particularly, betrayal. As everything around her shifts, all that she knows, all that she thinks she knows, must change. Who can she trust? Who must she trust? Who will she trust? More importantly, can she even trust herself?
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=0857058738
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|title=Equator
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|author=Antonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)
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|rating=3.5
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|genre=Historical Fiction
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|summary=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 the white man against Native 'Indian', who spends days being physically sick while indulging in a buffalo hunt, and 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 the 1870s USA, and the attendant problems with gold rushes, pioneer spirits and racial genocide.  He finds himself trying to find this book'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 ground to counter the anti-gravity, and where, who knows, things 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…
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=1526614960
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|title=The Dutch House
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|author=Ann Patchett
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|rating=5
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|genre=Literary Fiction
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|summary=When 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 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 family owns. Elna Conroy is loving, but absent increasingly often until the point comes when the children are told that she will not be returning. In other circumstances, this might have affected Maeve and Danny deeply, but their primary relationship is with each other. It's a bond which only death will break.
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=0954899520
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|title=A Winter Book
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|author=Tove Jansson
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|rating=5
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|genre=Literary Fiction
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|summary=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.
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}}
  
 
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Move on to [[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]
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===[[The Choke by Sofie Laguna]]===
 
 
 
[[image:2star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
 
 
 
There's a dull, dispiriting pang of disappointment that comes when you try something everyone else loves and find out that you're really not into it. Coffee. Ice skating. A new Netflix series. Books are like that, but doubly so. [[The Choke by Sofie Laguna|Full Review]]
 
 
 
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===[[Equator by Antonin 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]]
 
 
 
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 a buffalo hunt, and 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 the 1870s USA, and the attendant problems with gold rushes, pioneer spirits and racial genocide.  He finds himself trying to find this book'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 ground to counter the anti-gravity, and where, who knows, things 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 by Antonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)|Full Review]]
 
 
 
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===[[Nights of the Creaking Bed by Toni Kan]]===
 
 
 
[[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category: Literary Fiction| Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Short Stories|Short Stories]]
 
 
 
''Nights of the Creaking Bed'' is a collection of short stories by Toni Kan. The series of stories tell of the lives and lusts of an assortment of characters living in and around Lagos, Nigeria. Nigeria, in this collection, is imbued with its very own heart of darkness. Danger stalks the shadows and people are killed for nothing more than a wrong look. Kan writes with a vitality and passion that allows these cynical stories to achieve a glimmer of hope. [[Nights of the Creaking Bed by Toni Kan|Full Review]]
 
 
 
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===[[The Resurrection of Jesus by Yancey Williams]]===
 
 
 
[[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
 
 
 
In March 1990 two police officers entered Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.  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 the whereabouts of the paintings, even promises that the case was about to be solved, the paintings are still missing.  Yancey Williams has a theory, which he delaborates on in his novel ''The Resurrection of Jesus'', and whilst his suspects might seem unlikely, who's to say that he's wrong?  Forget the assertions that it was down to the Mafia and meet Jésus Ángel Escobar and Hiram Johnny Walker Quicksilver. [[The Resurrection of Jesus by Yancey Williams|Full Review]]
 
 
 
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===[[In The Full Light of the Sun by Clare Clark]]===
 
 
 
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]]
 
 
 
In 1930's Berlin, three people obsessed with art find themselves swept up into a scandal. Emmeline, a wayward young student, Julius, an anxious middle-aged art expert, and Rachmann, a mysterious art dealer, live in the politically turbulent Weimar Berlin, and soon find themselves whipped up into excitement over the surprise discovery of thirty-two previously unknown paintings by Vincent Van Gogh. 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 authenticity, vanity and self-delusion. [[In The Full Light of the Sun by Clare Clark|Full Review]]
 
 
 
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===[[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]]
 
 
 
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===[[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]]
 
 
 
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===[[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]]
 
 
 
 
 
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===[[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]]
 
 
 
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===[[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]]
 
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===[[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]]
 
 
 
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===[[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]]
 
 
 
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===[[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]]
 
 
 
 
 
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===[[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]]
 
 
 
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===[[Tirzah and the Prince of Crows by Deborah Kay Davies]]===
 
 
 
[[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
 
 
 
This is a quiet but remarkable story, written in a style reminiscent of E. M. Forster, ''[Tirzah and the Prince of Crows'' has no great and stirring action but rather small ripples that make a huge impact. Tirzah is a young girl of sixteen raised in a small Welsh town in 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 she wants to be, and what she wants to do with her life. [[Tirzah and the Prince of Crows by Deborah Kay Davies|Full Review]]
 
 
 
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===[[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 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]]
 
 
 
 
 
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===[[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]]
 
 
 
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===[[Lala by Jacek Dehnel and Antonia Lloyd-Jones (translator)]]===
 
 
 
[[image: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]]
 
 
 
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===[[The Emperor of Shoes by Spencer Wise]]===
 
 
 
[[image:3star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]
 
 
 
''The Emperor of Shoes'' is the story of Alex Cohen, the heir to a lucrative shoe factory based in southern China. More idealistic than his profit-obsessed father, and less motivated solely by the bottom line, he's unsure of himself: unsure whether he can continue his father's success. But complications arise when he starts to question how morally sound the business really is, and whether the workers are being given a fair deal. [[The Emperor of Shoes by Spencer Wise|Full Review]]
 
 
 
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Revision as of 16:54, 10 December 2020

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Review of

Sistersong by Lucy Holland

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Sistersong is part of a genre I particularly enjoy, the modern retelling of folk and fairy tales. These stories, for most of us, are a cornerstone of childhood and I relish seeing them retold with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective. If handled well these retellings give new life and new meaning to stories that are now becoming increasingly narrow and outdated, fleshing out characters, examining relationships and re-evaluating the role of women. Sistersong is a perfect example of a modern retelling done well, the plot is handled with care, keeping its archaic historical feel but allowing the characters to come to life, to feel real and human, most importantly they feel relatable in a modern world whilst still feeling appropriate for the pre-Saxon age they live in. This is a masterpiece of storytelling and I was captivated from beginning to end. Full Review

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Review of

The Complete Barchester Chronicles by Anthony Trollope

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

When I told my daughter that I didn't know what to listen to now that I'd finished The Complete Novels of Jane Austen for the second time on the trot she had the perfect answer: The Barchester Chronicles and they were in my inbox in a matter of minutes. They're not quite as well known as the Austen books but they're an excellent follow on. Full Review

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Review of

The Complete Novels: Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey and Persuasion by Jane Austen

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Yes - that's over eighty-one hours of listening for the purchase of one audio book. All six major novels are read by conmedienne Alison Larkin and they're presented in the order in which they were published. Full Review

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Review of

If You Kept a Record of Sins by Andrea Bajani and Elizabeth Harris (translator)

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

This was an incredibly readable novella, but one that left me a little conflicted. We start as our hero arrives at Bucharest airport, and before we even know his gender or the nature of the person he's addressing in his second person monologue of a narration, we see him picked up by his mother's chauffeur, and carted off to do all the necessary introductions before said mother is buried the following day. The mother was a businesswoman, who clearly left northern Italy and settled in Romania with her (night-time and business) partner, and feelings of abandonment are still strong. And so we flit from current (well, this came out in the original Italian in 2007, so moderately current) Bucharest, to the lad's childhood, and see just what he has to tell her as a private farewell address. Full Review

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Review of

Kokoschka's Doll by Afonso Cruz and Rahul Bery (translator)

2.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Well, this looked very much like a book I could love from the get-go, which is why I picked my review copy up and flipped pages over several times before actually reading any of it. I found things to potentially delight me each time – a weird section in the middle on darker stock paper, a chapter whose number was in the 20,000s, letters used as narrative form, and so on. It intrigued with the subterranean voice a man hears in wartorn Dresden that what little I knew of it mentioned, too. But you've seen the star rating that comes with this review, and can tell that if love was on these pages, it was not actually caused by them. So what happened? Full Review

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Review of

Snow by John Banville

5star.jpg Crime (Historical)

Well, at least you're a Wexford man.

So said Colonel Osborne when he welcomed DI St John (pronounced 'Sinjun') Strafford to Ballyglass House just before Christmas 1957. Osborne was master of the Keelmore Hounds and had done something memorable with the Inniskilling Dragoons at Dunkirk. The niceties had to be established even when there was a Catholic priest dead on the library floor with some precious bits of his anatomy missing. Strafford was from Roslea at Bunclody and this, along with his good-but-shabby suit, marked him out as of Osborne's class and obviously Protestant. The dead priest was Father Tom Lawless from Scallanstown, who - despite the different religions - was in the habit of spending time at Ballyglass House. His horse was stabled there. Full Review

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Review of

Astral Season, Beastly Season by Tahi Saihate

3.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

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. Full Review

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Review of

The Phone Box at the End of the World by Laura Imai Messina

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

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. Full Review

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Review of

The Disoriented by Amin Maalouf

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

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. Full Review

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Review of

A Pocketful of Crows by Joanne M Harris

5star.jpg Confident Readers

I have always been of the mind that once you're above picture-book level and before you get to graphic sex & violence, there is no difference between books for children and books for adults. There are good books and poor ones. And Joanne Harris does not produce poor ones. A Pocketful of Crows is clearly aimed at the younger readers as witness the use of the middle initial in the author's name to differentiate from her adult offers. Ignore that if you have loved anything from Chocolat onwards you will know that Harris is mistress of the modern fairy tale. This is no different. It is an utter delight. Full Review

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Review of

A Life Without End by Frederic Beigbeder and Frank Wynne (translator)

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

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? Full Review

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Review of

The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana by Maryse Condé

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

We live in a post- world: post-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. 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. Full Review

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Review of

Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All Right by Ukamaka Olisakwe

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

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. Full Review

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Review of

A Key to Treehouse Living by Elliot Reed

4star.jpg General Fiction

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. Full Review

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Review of

It Would Be Night in Caracas by Karina Sainz Borgo and Elizabeth Bryer (translator)

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

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? Full Review

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Review of

Photographer of the Lost by Caroline Scott

4.5star.jpg Historical Fiction

May 1921. Edie receives a photograph through the post. There is no letter or note with it. There is nothing written on the back of the photograph. It is a picture of her husband, Francis. Francis has been missing for four years. Technically, he has been "missing, believed killed" but that is not something that a young widow can believe. She hangs on the word 'missing', disbelieving the word killed. Full Review

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Review of

The Nightjar by Deborah Hewitt

4.5star.jpg Fantasy

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, fast. From that very moment, her life is flooded with magic, loss, expectation and particularly, betrayal. As everything around her shifts, all that she knows, all that she thinks she knows, must change. Who can she trust? Who must she trust? Who will she trust? More importantly, can she even trust herself? Full Review

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Review of

Equator by Antonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)

3.5star.jpg Historical Fiction

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 the white man against Native 'Indian', who spends days being physically sick while indulging in a buffalo hunt, and 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 the 1870s USA, and the attendant problems with gold rushes, pioneer spirits and racial genocide. He finds himself trying to find this book'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 ground to counter the anti-gravity, and where, who knows, things 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… Full Review

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Review of

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

When 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 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 family owns. Elna Conroy is loving, but absent increasingly often until the point comes when the children are told that she will not be returning. In other circumstances, this might have affected Maeve and Danny deeply, but their primary relationship is with each other. It's a bond which only death will break. Full Review

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Review of

A Winter Book by Tove Jansson

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

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. Full Review

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