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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__
{{Frontpage
|author= Tahi SaihateMatthew Tree|title= Astral Season, Beastly SeasonWe'll Never Know|rating= 34.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= We long for our past even though it is Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a place drunk and 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 which we can never returnhis studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions. Tahi Saihate|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, in her debut novel 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''Astral Seasonis set as the city of Portland, Oregon, Beastly Seasoncautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic}}{{Frontpage|author=Mosby Woods|title=A Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= The West isn'' illustrates t the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how these rose-tinted glasses often lieto mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. Her novel A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a meditation on youth and how man with precognition. Imagine the things we do as strategic advantage in this asset; a teenager man who can seem intensely important and often life-alteringtell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|isbn= 1916277101B0C9SNG8R1
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Laura Imai Messina0571379559|title=The Phone Box at the End House of the WorldBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= In ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the northeast story of Japan, in Inwate Prefecture a man installed a telephone box in his gardenfour people. Tess Hembry''Inside s roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there is an old black, telephonebut instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, disconnectedbuilt of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, that carries voices into it's stood the windpassage of time, storms and floods.'' It is a real place Her husband, Richard, a necessary placestruggles to grow his vegetables, and I am pleased to see complete the IMPORTANT NOTE that the author attaches delivery rounds - and to her storybring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that the place is not a tourist destinationthey're related, it much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is a sacred place, a place out with his mother that must be left to those who really need itshe's his nanny.|isbn=178658039X
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{{Frontpage
|author=Amin MaaloufClaire North|title=House of Odysseus|rating=5|genre= Literary Fiction |summary= ''What could matter more than love?'' The Disorientedfollow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As 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 shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{Frontpage|author= Kay Chronister|title= Desert Creatures|rating=4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|isbn=1803364998}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Eric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable.Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.}}{{Frontpage|author=Madelaine Lucas|title=Thirst for Salt|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Adam has lived in Paris for years''Love, speaks French more easily than his native Arabic. In fact he hasnI't been back d read, was supposed to his homeland be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for 25 years. An old friend is dying…or as Adam prefers to think of him gravity'' Told from a former-friendretrospective view, perhaps not as harsh as an exa young woman unravels the year-friendlong relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, or maybethe narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. The falling out was a long time ago, and AdamSet against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'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 hedetails the 24-year-old narrator's going because he needs or wants todeepening relationship with her older lover, or simply because he was askeddepicting its all-consuming nature, he's how it changed her perspective on the next planeboth romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably. |isbn=B07ZQSK9CY0861546490
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{{Frontpage
|author=Joanne M HarrisMichael Grothaus|title=A Pocketful Beautiful Shining People|rating=4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= ''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, or we can take steps to change it.'' ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of Crowsidentity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|isbn=191458564X}}{{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Saint|title=Atalanta
|rating=5
|genre= Confident ReadersLiterary Fiction|summary= ''I have always been was as worthy as any one of the mind them. I would get on board that once you're above picture-book level and before you get to graphic sex & violenceship, there is no difference between books for children and books for adultsI vowed. There are good books and poor ones. And Joanne Harris does I would take my place, not produce poor onesjust in the name of the goddess. ''A Pocketful It was for the sake of Crowsmy name, too. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is clearly aimed at raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the younger readers as witness opportunity comes – to join the use Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the middle initial chance to fight in the authorArtemis's name to differentiate from and carve out her adult offersown legendary place in history. Ignore What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if you have loved anything from ''Chocolat'' onwards you she marries, it will know that Harris is mistress of the modern fairy tale. This is no different. It is an utter delightbe her undoing.|isbn=14732221841472292154
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{{Frontpage
|author=Frederic Beigbeder and Frank Wynne (translator)Amanthi Harris|title=A Life Without EndBeautiful Place|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I looked at Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the calendar Villa Hibiscus on the other week, and disappointedly realised I have southern coast of her home country. This is a birthday this year – I know, yet another oneplace she spent her formative years. It won't be one of the major numbersis not a place she was born into, but the time when I have the same number one she thinks of as Heinz varieties looms on the horizonhome. And then a few of How she came to be at the big 0-numbersVilla, how it became her home, and if all goes well, Ithe machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score''ll be an OBE. (Which of course stands for Over Bloody Eightythis gentle and yet subtly violent novel.) Now if that Padma's the extent of my mid-life crisis, I guess I have present fails 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 escape her past and much like to see 400 – he hops right into bed with the assistant to the first geneticist he interviews, and they end up with musical score of a childfilm, which is that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at least a way of continuing the life of his genes, and a motive to keep on goingVilla. But how can he get to not flick the 'final way out' switch, especially when foie gras tastes so nice?|isbn=16428606701784631930
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Maryse Condé178563335X|title= The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and IvanaSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= We live When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a postPCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six- world: postyear-colonialismold Hannah and her elder brother, post-modernismJamie, post truthwhilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. The list goes on. There are numerous works that utilise the prefix post Thelma's daughter- in their categorisation-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, but perhaps none more so than Maryse Condé. In her new novelon the Norfolk coast, ''The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana''is a lovely place, Condé writes but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with fervour about the scars left by colonialism on the countries to which it latched itself. Ivan parish - and Ivana are twins born she's in Guadeloupeawe of the vicar, a French overseas department. They grow up with intense and passionate feelings Gail, but then she's been doing the job for each othermore than thirty years. As they grow up Rachel and move overseas, Christopher hoped that a walk on the ravages of a postbeach would do them some good -colonial society drive them apart with tragic consequencesit was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|isbn=1642860697
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn= Ukamaka Olisakwe1398515388|title= Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All RightThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary General Fiction|summary= The new novel by Ukamaka Olisakwe is a look at First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the trauma tsunami and heartache of being a woman this, in 1980s Nigeriaturn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The title is ''Ogadinma Orresult was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, Everything Will Be All Right''. Ogadinma is and the eponymous heroine loss of the storylivelihoods was widespread.. We are with her in every scene and it is her narrative voice The fact that leads many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the story, although Olisakwe writes in third persontsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. This provides He wasn't a sense of detachment for dog person but the reader and highlights the isolation of Ogadinma. She is exiled from her fatherconvenience store owner's home and sent to Lagos where she is married comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to an older man named Tobe. Their marriage descends into violence open his car door and indignities and Ogadinma must utilise her resourcefulness to escapeTamon the dog jumped in.|isbn=1911648160
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{{Frontpage
|authorisbn=Elliot Reed0989715337|title=A Key to Treehouse LivingPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=This is ''Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the story fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of a young boytheir eggs wove around him, William Tyce, who is being raised by his uncle after sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the death strange noise of his mother and his fatherthe buckets as he filled them.'s abandonment. However, it isn't told How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the usual narrative wayform of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a sixpence. InsteadAnd author Marco North, who has the book is made up most wonderful turn of glossary entries, written by Williamphrase, starts as a way of describing certain events, situations and emotions. It runs alphabetically, starting with ABSENCE, then moving he means to ALPHABETICAL ORDER. As I began to read I did find myself thinking 'what go on earth?!' but I soon grew used to the style, and was instead caught up in William's story.|isbn=1911545418
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{{Frontpage
|author= Karina Sainz Borgo and Elizabeth Bryer (translator)Daisy Hildyard|title= It Would Be Night in CaracasEmergency|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction |summary= The summary of this book doesn''It Would Be Night in Caracas'' illuminates t come close to explaining what is done with the everyday horrors premise.|isbn=1913097811}} {{Frontpage |author=Sally Oliver |title=The Weight of modern day VenezuelaLoss |rating=4 |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving. It begins with Traumatised after the death of Adelaida Falcon's mother and chronicles Adelaida's coming her sister, she awakes to terms with find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her new solitude spine which steadily increase in this world size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her attempts grief, recommends she go to escape itstay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Danger stalks Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the shadows 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, in pain—but only at a society where the establishment is crumbling, who can you turn to? terrible price: that of identity itself.|isbn=0062936867086154112X
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{{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, a delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the expression in a way I'm not familiar with. I have to confess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. From the little I have read (in translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism. |isbn=14711863930861541901}}{{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Saint|title=Photographer Elektra|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and the Lostmost extreme furies.|isbn=1472273915}}{{Frontpage|isbn=8409290103|title=If Only|author=Caroline ScottMatthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=May 1921Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the young man got on board the boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. Edie receives Patrick sent the money regularly and a photograph through correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the posttwo although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. There is no letter or note with It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, itwas that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and other children. There is nothing written The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the young man on the back of the photographhis way. It }}{{Frontpage|author=Antoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Red is a picture of her husband, FrancisMy Heart|rating=3. Francis has 5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been missing for four yearsblack and white and read in my house. TechnicallyAnd so was this one, he has been "missingalthough I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, believed killed" but that and is not something that a young widow can believe, black and white and red. She hangs Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on the word this piece, and I think it'missing', disbelieving s possible to say not one page lacks the word killedinfluence of some striking visual ideas.|isbn=1913547183
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{{Frontpage
|isbn=1509896465B098FFFBH9|title=The NightjarSnowcub|author=Deborah HewittGraham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=FantasyLiterary Fiction|summary=Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school''The Nightjar'' is an unusual s animal rights project leader 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 friend are producing a competition entry to unravel, fasthighlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. From that very moment She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, her life is flooded with magica lecturer at Imperial College, lossLondon, expectation mother Kate and particularlyher twin, betrayalNick. As everything around her shifts Kate runs the family business, all that she knowsa toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, all that she thinks she knows, must changewhich is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys. Who can she trust? Who must she trust? Who will she trust? More importantly, can she even trust herself?
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{{Frontpage
|author=Yancey Williams|title=Crosshairs of the Devil|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's point of view - in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's work.|isbn=08570587380986031658}} {{Frontpage|isbn=0008421714|title=EquatorMrs March|author=Antonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)Virginia Feito|rating=34.5|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=It strikes me that nobody can speak well of The problem began just after the Wild West outside the walls publication of a theme parkGeorge March's most successful novel to date. Our agent Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to see how bad either be reading it was here is Pete Ferguson, who bristles at or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the indignity of the white man against Native 'Indian'local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, who spends days being physically sick while indulging in a buffalo huntPatricia asked, and who hates as she was wrapping the way man – and womanbread, of course – can turn against fellow man at ''but isn't this the bat of an eyelid. first time he's based a character on you?'' But this book is about so much more than the 1870s USAShe mentioned that Johanna, and the attendant problems with gold rushes, pioneer spirits and racial genocideprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''. He finds himself trying to find Perhaps this book's version of Utopiawould not have mattered, namely except for the Equator, where everything fact that Johanna is upside down, people walk on their heads with rocks in their pockets to keep them on the ground to counter the antiwhore of Nantes -gravity''a weak, and whereplain, detestable, pathetic, who knowsunloved, things might actually be betterunloveable wretch. 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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