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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christina Hesselholdt Matthew Tree|title=We'll Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and Paul Russell Garrett (translator)chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0C47LV1PC|title=Fragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no. ''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic}}{{Frontpage|author=Mosby Woods|title=CompanionsA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=34

|summary=The West isn''Companions'' is written as a series of monologues, where six middle-aged friends take t the dominant force it once was. Nobody in turns the West is quite sure how to narrate scenes from their lives, charting mend this or even if mending it is the intimate details best course of their holidaysaction. Governments are flailing. A war here, dinner partiesa push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, families, marriages, affairs and work lives in there was a style that mixes honesty and openness man with fantasy and evasionprecognition. The charm of Imagine the novel lies strategic advantage in the way the friends' voices bicker with one another among the pagesthis asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, as we discover that there are always several sides to right? Perhaps the same story. We learn most about the characters not through what they say about themselves but through what the others say about themvaluable asset in history. Along the wayImagine then, there is heartbreak and grief, but that this man loses this is always offset by an abundance of humour and a writing style that never fails ability. What would governments do to be refreshingly light-hearted.get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910695335</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Yaba Badoe0571379559|title= A Jigsaw The House of Fire and StarsBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating= 45|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=Sante was a baby when she was washed ashore in a sea-chest laden with treasure. It seems she ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the sole survivor story of the tragic sinking of a ship carrying migrants and refugees. Her four people. Fourteen years on she Tess Hembry's a member roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of Mama Rosebroken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's unique stood the passage of time, storms and dazzling circusfloods. But Her husband, Richard, from their watery gravestruggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the unquiet dead are calling Sante delivery rounds - and to avenge thembring in sufficient money. A bamboo flute They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. A golden bangle Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. A ripening mango which must not fallMax takes after his father... if Sante People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is to tell their story and her ownout with his mother that she's his nanny. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786695480</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Martha Batalha and Eric M B Becker (translator)Claire North|title= The Invisible Life House of Euridice GusmaoOdysseus|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= On ''What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the surface, young housewife Euridice Gusmao has it allexcellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. A nice-enoughIn the palace of Odysseus, parent-pleasing with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband with a steady banking job, two young children upon whom who sailed to dote, an immaculate war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home complete with maid. ThatAs ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's all anyone could ever wantshores, isn't it? Not Euridice. She has an inexplicable ache inside her for something more, like many Queen Penelope is on the brink of usa fragile peace. Yet each One that shatters however with the return of her pet projectsOrestes, from a desire to publish a recipe book to starting a cottage sewing industry in her living roomKing of Mycenae, are met with scorn from her stern husband Antenor. He wants a wife who doesn't draw attention to herselfand his sister Elektra, whose only domains are her house and her familyseeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178607298X</amazonuk>0356516075

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= David BergenKay Chronister|title= StrangerDesert Creatures

|genre= Literary Dystopian Fiction |summary=''Stranger'' tells the story of Íso, With a young Guatemalan womanworld that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, and her affair with post-apocalyptic fiction can become an American doctoralmost masochistic thrill. When an accident forces him to return to the StatesWhether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, she this genre is left pregnant and lonelya way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. Her anguish becomes even more profound when her daughter ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is abducted, and taken to live with the doctor and his wife. What followed - tales of the journey Íso embarked upon in the hope a new work of finding her baby post- was an amazing story apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the lengths fears that exist for humanity today. It is a mother will go shocking novel that still manages to in order to save her childfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715652419</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Clar Ni ChonghaileEric LaRocca|title= Rain Falls On EveryoneThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There

|genre= Literary FictionHorror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It's is used as a cliché that the Irish have a picturesque turn of phrase, but clichés only exist because they're trueway to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Roddy Doyle put it differently in Most horror fiction feature a recent interview with ''WritingBig Bad'' magazine, when he said whether that ''With Irishis a home invader, a monster or a ghost, there's another language bubbling under the English''. However you express itusually something tangible and, that art by the end of expression is woven into every other line of Clárthe story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's prose. Pick a page at random and you'll find something like 'The Trees Grew Because I Bled There''the sickness is not like that had come to roost . It is a collection of short stories more interested in her home like a cursed owl'' or ''like he was Godthe horrors of illness, Jesus grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and Justin Timberlake rolled into oneare harder to defeat than any '' or ''a low sobbing, slow and inevitable as rain on a SundayBig Bad'': expressions that catch your smile unawares, or tear at your heart in their mundane sadness. Or sometimes both.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785079018</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hesene Mete Madelaine Lucas|title=Sinful WordsThirst for Salt|rating=45

|summary=When we meet him, Behram is a student at the school of theology. He loves God with a passion and has a determination to live a life dedicated ''toLove, I'' God and d read, was supposed to live by His rules. He rents be a property from Lulu Khan light and his wifeweightless feeling, Lady Geshtina and Khan invites Behram to his own home but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, a visityoung woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. It's Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a delightful place and man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the wealth backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the couple is obvious as is their standing within the local community: Lady Geshtina24-year-old narrator's late father is buried in what amounts to a mausoleumdeepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, but how it's not all this which enchants Behram. The couple have twin children changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and Behram is taken, enthralled by the daughter, Naginahow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1524682527</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Juan-Tomas Avila LaurelMichael Grothaus|title= The Gurugu PledgeBeautiful Shining People|rating= 54

|summary= Juan Tomas Avila Laurel''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, one or we can take steps to change it.'' ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of Equatorial Guinea's best-known dissident writers, is an author who deserves identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be read the world overhuman. With The Gurugu PledgeOf what is real and what is artificial, he's captured a an angry and incredibly urgent slice of whether the migrant experience – a snapshot development of the dangers faced by those crossing the African continent in search of the barbed wire fences at Melilla- the Spanish enclave on the North Eastern tip of Moroccotechnology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908276940</amazonuk>191458564X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Matthew SmithJennifer Saint|title= The WakingAtalanta|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=Isabel Sykes''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, 23I vowed. I would take my place, recounts the recent attempt she made to come to terms with not just in the loss name of her mother, the acclaimed but psychologically disturbed novelist Marianne Sykesgoddess. Marianne died in an unexplained house fire when Isabel It was ten. Inspired by for the appearance sake of Imogen Taylormy name, an enchanting young woman who wants to write too. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a PhD on her mother's workson, Isabel plunges into Atalanta is raised under the depths protective eye of her past the goddess Athemis and an intense new friendshipfashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. After discovering that Imogen is not who she seems When the opportunity comes – to bejoin the Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, Isabel must face descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the darkest moments from chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her childhood own legendary place in order to protect her family from more tragedyhistory. She receives unexpected help from beyond the graveWhat follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: in the strangethat if she marries, glittering fragments of it will be her mother's last, unfinished work, 'Midnightsong'undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0995654158</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Ali SmithAmanthi Harris|title= AutumnBeautiful Place|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= The first part in Ali Smith's four part 'Seasonal' seriesPadma, a young Sri Lankan, Autumn is has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the story southern coast of Daniel Gluck and Elisabeth Demand, unexpected friends who used to be neighbours when Elisabeth was her home country. This is a little girlplace she spent her formative years. In It is not a series place she was born into, but the one she thinks of memories and dreamsas home. How she came to be at the Villa, we discover their friendship from Daniel babysitting Elisabeth through to how it became her visits with him now that he is in a home , and drawing towards the end of his extremely long machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and fascinating lifeyet subtly violent novel. Along Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the way, we get musical score of a wonderfully written insight into timefilm, memories, and that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the fleeting nature of life itselfVilla. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241973317</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nicola Pugliese and Shaun Whiteside (translator)178563335X|title=MalacquaSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=35

|summary=WeWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she're in Napless a trainee vicar, sitting in recent history, on a PCC meeting and itwondering why they's rainingre held when you need to pick the children up. It will in fact rain for four days solid – Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and seeing as ither elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's October everyonedaughter-in-law won's dressed for all seasons and expecting t let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a bit of greylovely place, but this Rachel is taking struggling to develop a real bond with the proverbial. Itparish - and she's also making the city rather dangerous – when people report a huge sink-hole appearing in one street it's soon found that a pair awe of cars went into itthe vicar, and two people have diedGail, and more passed on with a whole building collapsing. Whatbut then she's been doing the job for more, some strange noises are coming from an abandoned civic palacethan thirty years. Is the city being told something by these strange events, or can Rachel and Christopher hoped that a journalist find a logic behind walk on the circumstances?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1911508067</amazonuk>beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Iosi Havilio1398515388|title= Petite FleurThe Boy and the Dog|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summaryauthor= Every now Seishu Hase and then you read a book that leaves you thinking “well I have no idea what just happened but I know I enjoyed it”. This is how I felt after reading Petite Fleur, the fifth novel Alison Watts (perhaps 'long paragraph' would be more appropriatetranslator) from cult Argentinian writer Iosi Havilio.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1911508040</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Tania Hershman|title=Some of Us Glow More Than Others

|genre=Short Stories General Fiction|summary=I won't be alone First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in stating that reading short story collections can be slightly awkward. Going through from A-Zthe ocean floor, witnessing a bounty of ideas which created the tsunami and characters this, in short order can be too muchturn, but do you have caused the right to pick nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and choose according to what appeals, and what time you have to fill? utter devastation. The sequence has carefully been considereddeaths were uncountable, surelyand the loss of livelihoods was widespread. Such would appear to be The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the case heretsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. The last time I read one of this authorHe wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's collections, with [[The White Road by Tania Hershman|The White Road]], comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the only real difficulty was holding back and rationing them, but here you not only get a whopping forty pieces of writing, they are also spread into sectionsdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910061484</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James Kelman0989715337|title=That Was a Shiver, and Other StoriesPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=3.54|genre=Short Stories Literary Fiction|summary=This is ''Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the ninth book fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of short stories by this authortheir eggs wove around him, which means he's presented just as many collections sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of the short form buckets as he has novelsfilled them. You will find it hard to think of another author '' How is that has been so noted for longer works (what with [[How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman|How Late It Was, How Late]] winning the Booker) but who is so generous an opening? The style of this novel in presenting shorter pieces for the time-poorform of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, or those like me who see the variety in turning on a writer's short or less typical works to be the more interesting places to turnsixpence. Opening these pagesAnd author Marco North, from who has the pen most wonderful turn of such an esteemed prophrase, came with no small sense of anticipationstarts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786890909</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Kate MildenhallDaisy Hildyard|title= SkylarkingEmergency|rating= 4|genre= General Literary Fiction |summary= Kate and Harriet are best friends growing up together on an isolated Australian capeThe summary of this book doesn't come close to explaining what is done with the premise.|isbn=1913097811}}  {{Frontpage |author=Sally Oliver |title=The Weight of Loss |rating=4 |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving. As Traumatised after the daughters death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the lighthouse keepersbones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the two girls share everything, until odd phenomenon as a fishermanphysical reaction to her grief, McPhailrecommends she go to stay at Nede, arrives an experimental new treatment centre in their small communityWales. When Kate witnesses Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the desire other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a terrible price: that flares between him and Harrietof identity itself.|isbn= 086154112X }} {{Frontpage|author=Natalia Garcia Freire|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, she a delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is torn by her feelings perhaps using the expression in a way I'm not familiar with. I have to confess my ignorance of envy and longingthe Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. An innocent moment From the little I have read (in McPhailtranslation, I don's hut then occurs that threatens t read Spanish) there does seem to tear their peaceful community apartbe a tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785079239</amazonuk>0861541901

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joanna WalshJennifer Saint|title=Worlds from the Word's EndElektra|rating=3.54|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=We here at The Bookbag liked this author's fairly recent collection of short stories, [[Vertigo Elektra' by Joanna Walsh|Vertigo]]. I myself missed out, but that seemed to be vignettes from one character's narration – here we get homosexual male narrators and a host more, as well as much less of Jennifer Saint tells the sadness prevalent before. Having had a brief encounter with this author courtesy story of her entry into three women who live in the [[Bookshelf (Object Lessons) by Lydia Pyne|Object Lessons]] series, I was intrigued by her name being stamped on a selection heavily male dominated world of shortsAncient Greece. Was it the ideal calling card? Let's face itCassandra, the very short story itself can be a postcard – let's say, from a specific hotel or two, as we see here. Perhaps I should have geared myself up, howeverClytemnestra, for such intricate writing on said postcards – and for the exotic locations from which they came…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1911508105</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Raja Alem, Katharine Halls (translator) and Adam Talib (translator)|title= The Dove's Necklace|rating= 3|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I always hated Lit-Crit at school, so it came as something as a surprise that I ended up reviewing books, for fun. Now I understand. Finally, I see why literary critics get so up-Elektra are all bit players in-arms about lowly book reviewers. There is a difference. This book explains it all. The author is ''the first woman to win story of the International Prize for Arabic fiction'' for this bookTrojan War. The book also the LiBerator prize for ''the best book translated into German'' in 2014. I suspect it's not done yet. ''The Times'' tells Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that it ''exemplifies everything that is currently shaking often the foundations of Arab society.'' I am sure that not only will more plaudits fall upon silent women have the author most compelling stories and the book, but also that it will become a classic, spoken of in the same breath as the international classics: Proust, Márquez, Joyce, Rushdie, Nabokov…most extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715651757</amazonuk>1472273915

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Daniel Kehlmann and Ross Benjamin (translator)8409290103|title=You Should Have LeftIf Only|author=Matthew Tree

|genre=General Literary Fiction |summary=Our narrator is a screenwriter, tasked with coming up with a sequel to Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his hit movie ''Besties'' – a film which helped pay for a housefather, but which cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his actress wife keeps letting him knowaccountant, isn't ''art''. To concentrateMr Patrick, to ensure that the family – he, young man got on board the wife, boat and their four year old daughter – have rented thereafter Patrick was to send him a large, modern house at monthly allowance. Patrick sent the end money regularly and a correspondence - of a horrid, hairpin bendsorts -filled road, in a charming alpine landscapesprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. But things aren It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't right. The couple are at loggerheads too much, things keep unsettling our narratorcare for his son, it was that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and the sole shopkeeper for miles around is ready with the Hammer Horror styled warnings of strange eventsother children. Quickly we see the book's title in all its galling clarity – but it isn't too late The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get out… is it? And out of what, exactly?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786484048</amazonuk>the young man on his way.

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Tove JanssonAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title= Letters From KlaraRed is My Heart|rating= 3.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Famed [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in the UK for her creation of the Moomin family, Jansson is rather belatedly beginning to gather the richly deserved esteem for her adult writings. For that I offer my heart-felt thanks to publishers ''Sort of books'' and Thomas Teal, who has been responsible for most of the translationshouse. Receiving And so was this one, two things strike: firstly although I somehow seem to could have missed spelled that more accurately – this one of the serieswas, and is, black and white and red. Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and secondly thereI think it'll come a time sooner rather than later when there'll be no more s possible to be had. The former will be rectified, say not one page lacks the latter is a sad thoughtinfluence of some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908745614</amazonuk>1913547183

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tom Malmquist and Henning Koch (translator)B098FFFBH9|title=In Every Moment We Are Still AliveSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright

|summary=Tom Malmquist Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a poet from Sweden. Originally published competition entry to highlight the way in Swedish in 2015, this is his first work of prosewhich human beings exploit the animal world. While it's being marketed as She gets a novelgreat deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, it reads more like a stylized memoir. Similar to Karl Ove Knausgaard's bookslecturer at Imperial College, London, it features the author as the central character mother Kate and narratorher twin, and Nick. Kate runs the story family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of grief it tells is a highly personal oneinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473640008</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Michel DeonYancey Williams|title= Your Father's RoomCrosshairs of the Devil|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I don't feel altogether qualified to review Michel Déon's 2004 fictionalised memoir ''Your Father's Room''Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, translated here into English for the first time. I hadn't heard of Déon before receiving my copy, let alone read any of despite his books, published over a 70 year period strenuous objections and thanks to much acclaim in his homeland. But itdaughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's part point of view - in room 315 of the pleasure Garden of book reviewing to read Eden nursing home, with no prior knowledge or prejudiceonly a trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, all the more so if you discover an absolute gemfor palatable company.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910477346</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Naomi Alderman|title= The Power|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=It started with the girls and spread. From younger woman Nothing is going to older woman, it was awoken and everything changed. Womankind now has the power keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of electricity in their fingertips andwriting though, slowly at firstso here, the balance of power in the world starts shifting. We follow the stories of different peoplefor his readers, in different walks of are his wanderings through his life, who see this from the very beginning and hurtle towards 'the event'. One thing in this startling new development is certain, patriarchal archetypes and chauvinist thinkers are in for the shock of their lives. Literallys work. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670919969</amazonuk>0986031658}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anna Pitoniak0008421714|title=The FuturesMrs March|author=Virginia Feito|rating=4.5

|summary=When we first meet Evan Peck, he has The problem began just started at Yale College, where he plays ice hockey. Like lots of the other players, he is actually Canadian, from small-town British Columbia. One night after a party Evan meets Julia Edwards at their dorm and they go out for pizza. She technically has a boyfriend from her Boston boarding school days, but they soon break up and before long Julia and Evan have become inseparable, as they will remain for the rest publication of their college years.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718184564</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Stephan Collishaw|title= The Song of the Stork|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Stephan Collishaw has achieved a rare feat – a George March's most successful novel set amidst the horrors of Nazi tyranny that does not shy away from human suffering, but does not drown in it either. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785079190</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Sabrina Mahfouz|title= The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write|rating= 5|genre= Anthologies|summary= What does it mean to be British and Muslim? This is a question these writers tackle with stunning claritydate. Modern day British society has a varied sense of cultural heritage; it is a society that is changing and moving forward as it adds more and more voices to the population, Everyone but is also one that has an undercurrent of anxiety and fear towards those that are minorities. So this collection displays how all that fear is received; it comes in the form of stereotypical labels and racial prejudice, which are themes eloquently reproduced here.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0863561462</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= David Szalay|title= All That Man Is|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Two teenage boys on an Inter Rail trip around Europe find themselves staying with a frustrated housewife Mrs March (we know her first name only on the outskirts of Prague, a driftless young Frenchman discovers sexual fulfilment on a package holiday in Cyprus, a lovestruck Hungarian minder is embroiled in a prostitution racket at an upmarket London hotel, a Belgian academic is forced last page) seemed to confront his egotism when his partner becomes pregnant, a Danish tabloid journalist exposes a high-ranking politician's love affair, a property developer inspects a new project in the French alps, a Scot living in Croatia fails in love and business, a Russian millionaire confronts divorce, an elderly English politician survives a road accident in Italy. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099593696</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Elizabeth Hay|title= His Whole Life|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= If you think that ''un-put-down-able'' is the greatest accolade for a book, think again. ''Put-down-able'' can either be stronger praise: ''His Whole Life'' is put-down-ablereading it or had already done so. It encourages you Every day Mrs March went to put it down, the local patisserie to wrap yourself in the slow-moving storybuy olive bread but on that particular morning, the exquisite writingPatricia asked, as she was wrapping the subtleties of the characters, and just walk around for a while with them slowly sinking in; it encourages you to come back to it again and again; mostly it encourages you to put it downbread, to read it slowly, because you don't want it to end.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857055445</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Phillip Lewis|title= The Barrowfields|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Just before Henry Aster's birth, his father, a frustrated novelist and lawyer, reluctantly returns to the remote North Carolina mountains in which he was improbably raised and installs his young family in a gothic mansion - nicknamed but isn'the vulture house' - worthy of his hero Edgar Allan Poe. There, Henry grows up under the desk of t this fierce and brilliant man. But when a death in the family tips his father toward a fearsome unravelling, what was once a young sonfirst time he's reverence is poisoned, and Henry flees, not to return until years later when he, too, must go home again.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473636825</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Paula Cocozza|title= How to Be Human|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= When Mary arrives home from work one day to find based a magnificent fox character on her lawn - his ears spiked in attention and every hair bristling with his power to surprise - it is only the beginning. He brings gifts (at least, Mary imagines they are gifts), and gradually makes himself at home. And as he listens to Mary, Mary listens back. you?'' She begins to hear herself for the first time in years. Her bullish ex-boyfriendmentioned that Johanna, still lurking on the fringes of principal character had 'her life, would be appalledmannerisms''. So Perhaps this would the neighbours with a new baby. They only like wildlife that fits with the decor. But inside Mary a wildness is growing that will not be tamed. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786330334</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Helen Dunmore|title=Birdcage Walk|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Bristol 1792: Lizzie married well. John Diner Tredevant is a property developer who has reached the zenith of his life's work: building a terrace of prestigious houses overlooking the Avon Gorge. In a time of turbulence as France reaches the dawn of revolution, Britainhave mattered, including Diner, fears it may spread. This puts Lizzie in a difficult position since her mother and step-father both believe in propagating pamphlets and ideas of egalitarianism except for and to all, including women. In other words, they think nothing of spreading ideas of the sort that fanned the French flames. However, fact that's not Lizzie's only problem… there Johanna is a darkness in her husband's past of which she's unaware.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091959403</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Emma Henderson|title= The Valentine House|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= In June 1914, Sir Anthony Valentine, a keen mountaineer, arrives with his family to spend the summer in their chalet, high in the French Alps. There, for the first time, fourteen-year-old foundling Mathilde starts work as one whore of the 'uglies' Nantes - village girls employed as servants and picked, it is believed, to ensure they don't catch Sir Anthony's roving eye. For Mathilde it is the start of a life-long entanglement with les anglais - strangeweak, plain, exciting peopledetestable, far removed from the hard grind of farming. Except she soon finds the Valentines are less carefree than they appearpathetic, with a curiously absent daughter no one talks about. It will be decades - disrupted by warunloved, accidents and a cruel betrayal - before Mathilde discovers the key to the mysteryunloveable wretch. And in 1976, the year Sir Anthony's great-great grandson comes to visit, she must decide whether to use it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444704028</amazonuk>'