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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dan RhodesMatthew Tree|title=Little Hands ClappingWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Tim Farnsworth seemed Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to have it all. He loved be different from his wife Jane and daughter Becka and his job as father, a partner in prestigious law firm was enjoyable, fulfilling drunk and financially rewarding. The fly in the ointment was that sometimes he was overtaken by a compulsion to walk. The time chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of day, the weather or the occasion did not matter – when the compulsion came he had to walk until he was physically exhausted and fell asleep immediately after calling his wife to come artistic passions all failed miserably and collect himwho had endless crises of self confidence. There seemed to be no medical explanation for what was happening – and So Tim and Jane had tried every source they could find – but Tim was still reluctant applied himself to accept that this was a mental his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than a physical illnesshis daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670917702</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joe TreasureB0C47LV1PC|title=BesottedFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is late August 1982, the day when O level results come out. Michael Cartwright already knows he has failed his exams and question should you make it? Or is dreading his parents finding out. He, his twin brother Kieran (who has done very well) and their younger sisters are on the family holidayquestion if you did, staying with their mother's parents in Kilross, County Cork. To escape boredom and his parents' anger, he wanders round would it land? The catch is that the village, where he meets Fergal Noonan, training to answer for both could well be a priest, and lively Peggy O'Connor. He has his first kiss and a bit more with Peggy. The family soon goes home to Cheltenham, but their brief visit to Ireland will have far reaching significance.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330511726</amazonuk>}}. no.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Aravind AdigaMosby Woods|title=The White TigerA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Balram HalwaiThe West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a Bangalore entrepreneur (of sorts) and a natural philosopherpush for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, hears that there is was a planned visit from man with precognition. Imagine the Chinese leader to India to learn the source strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of Indian entrepreneurial talentcircumstances. Balram knows that the story he will That man would be told by the Indian leader will be a long way from the true story of modern Indian life, and so resolvesvaluable, over right? Perhaps the course of seven nightsmost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to write to the Chinese premier with the story of his life and his own journey from a poor son of a rickshaw driver to the head of his own business.get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1843547228</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Matthew Condon0571379559|title=The Trout OperaHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Judges Carrington and Thorpe recline in leather armchairs on ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the verandah story of Buckleyfour people. Tess Hembry's Crossing hotel and watch roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in silence as a giant trout shuffles across the bridgehouse on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. The Judges Insubstantial as it might look, despite their initial prominence and convincing back-story giving them a valid reason for being in Buckleyit's Crossingstood the passage of time, will not really concern usstorms and floods. They are there Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to represent a type: a visitor complete the delivery rounds - and to small town Australiabring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, a fisherman from the city, a seeker rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after something in the Snowy his father. People don't believe that probably isnthey't fish. We shallre related, however, be concerned much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with the giant trouthis mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>038561506X</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christopher IsherwoodKay Chronister|title=A Single ManDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=If you've ever wanted to know what goes on inside someone's mind you'll love this short novelWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, first published back in 1964post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. We join George Falconer just at the moment he awakes from sleep and witness his innermost thoughts as he goes about Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a typical day. It all sounds pretty dull and monotonous but what makes nuclear holocaust, this exciting genre is that George isna way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures't just any old professor living the American Dream, oh no, he's so detached from the banal normality by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the world fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that he's almost outside of his own body at timesstill manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099548828</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Angelica GarnettEric LaRocca|title=The Unspoken TruthTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=45|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=I would not normally start 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 review with ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the biography end of the authorstory, but beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Unspoken Truth Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is presented as autobiographical fiction by a child collection of the Bloomsbury Group – short stories more interested in fact the subtitle is 'A Quartet horrors of Bloomsbury Stories'illness, grief and humiliation. The blurb on the inside cover even identifies which character is based on the author in each of the four stories, just in case we Horrors that linger and are not sureharder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184353</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amos OzMadelaine Lucas|title=Rhyming Life and DeathThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Rhyming ''Love , I'd read, was supposed to be a light and Death is weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a kind of philosophical love letter to literatureretrospective view, or perhaps more so to fictiona young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. It is Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a book about how to write, about man twenty years her senior from its inception – the compulsion summer after finishing university – to write, and about its sorrowful end the strange world that summer after. Set against the writer backdrop of fiction must live inan isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099521024</amazonuk>0861546490
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Michael Grothaus
|title=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.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom WolfeJennifer Saint|title=The Bonfire of the VanitiesAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In his own mind, bond trader Sherman McCoy is a 'Master 'I was as worthy as any one of the Universe'them. He has a pleasant wifeI would get on board that ship, a beautiful mistressI vowed. I would take my place, and a sweet six year old daughternot just in the name of the goddess. Henry Lamb is a black student from It was for the projectssake of my name, too. Under normal circumstances, itAtalanta's clear that McCoy's world and Lamb's world would never overlap Princess. Warrior. Lover. But when McCoy and his mistress Maria Ruskin end up lost in the Bronx, and an accident leads to Lamb being hit by McCoy's Mercedes, a chain of events start which will lead to his downfallHero.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548798</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ru FreemanAmanthi Harris|title=A Disobedient GirlBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=1999 – A renowned painterPadma, Robert Oliver, goes mad, attacking a painting with a knife. He's arrestedyoung Sri Lankan, and sent has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a psychiatrist who place she spent her formative years. It is also an artistnot a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. The psychiatrist How she came to be at the Villa, Andrew Marlowehow it became her home, canand the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score''t get his patient to talk to him, but tries to investigate what drove him to for this by talking to his wife gentle and his girlfriend, and reading some letters Oliver seems obsessed withyet subtly violent novel. 1879 – Beatrice de Clerval, aspiring artist, corresponds with Padma's present fails to escape her uncle-by-marriage Olivier Vignot, past and much like the musical score of a more experienced painter. Their letters will be found by Robert Oliver, 120 years laterfilm, and will lead to his loss of sanitythat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847442404</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Atiq Rahimi178563335X|title=The Patience StoneSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Set in Afghanistan, ''The Patience Stone'When we first meet Rachel Bird she' is s a partly allegorical tale of trainee vicar, sitting in on a Muslim wife tending PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her comatose soldier husband who has been shot elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in the neck-law won't let her see her grandson. As she cares for him Holthorpe, for on the first time ever she Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is able struggling to speak to him without fear develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of censorship and he becomesthe vicar, for herGail, like but then she's been doing the mythical Patience Stone to which you tell your troubles job for more than thirty years. Rachel and when Christopher hoped that a walk on the stone finally bursts, you are free from your tormentsbeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. But also this might mean the Apocalypse And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184167</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joyce Carol Oates1398515388|title=A Fair MaidenThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=I've recently read First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the terrific short story collection ''nuclear meltdown. The Female Of The Species'' also by Oates result was complete and couldn't wait to start her latest bookutter devastation. I felt sure that I was in for a literary treat - The deaths were uncountable, and I the loss of livelihoods waswidespread. Firstly, The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the book itself, tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a hardback with dog outside a beautifully nostalgic cover is convenience store. He wasn't a book loverdog person but the convenience store owner's delightcomment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847248586</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dai Sijie 0989715337|title=Once Papa on a Moonless Nightthe Moon|author=Marco North|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A French female scholar, studying in China, finds herself caught up in ''Some frogs had gotten into the search for a lost, sacred text that was inscribed on an ancient scrollwell. The scroll was torn in two by Emperor Puyi years ago, and was lost. After falling in love with a young grocer called Tumchooq the young woman becomes caught up in tales within tales, as she finds that Tumchooq's father found and translated half of the missing scroll and became obsessed with finding the other half, and soon Tumchooq too becomes embroiled in the search.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099521326</amazonuk>}}'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Iain BanksDaisy Hildyard|title=The Steep Approach to GarbadaleEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It took me a while to realise that Iain Banks is, most of all, a teller of tales - I would call him a story-teller had this term not became a compliment-cum-invective usually reserved for the Jeffrey Archers and Dan Browns of the modern publishing world. This ability to tell stories - not to plot as much as to weave a yarn - combines with a penchant for creating appealing contexts for Banks' narratives to unfold in (this gets magnificently realised in the world building of his [[:Category:Iain M Banks|Iain M. Banks]] alter-ego) and populating them with memorable, larger than life but usually short of caricature, characters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349119287</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mary McCarthy |title=The Group|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='Given the attention paid to relations between the sexes, it would be tempting to call The Group a forerunner of today's chick lit. Itthis book doesn's not.' So writes Candace Bushnell, the writer behind the TV series Sex and the City, in the introduction t come close to this new Virago Modern Classics edition of The Group by Mary McCarthy. First published in 1963, this novel explaining what is about done with the lives of a group of young women after leaving college in 1933, including careers, relationships, sex, babies, parents, and moneypremise. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844085937</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Janice GallowaySally Oliver |title=Collected StoriesThe Weight of Loss |rating=4 |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the 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 of identity itself.|isbn= 086154112X }} {{Frontpage|author=Natalia Garcia Freire|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet WindischEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. A miller I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the expression in a small village, he trudges through there, and through his neighbours, and through his life, counting his days and hours, for reasons that are way I'm not initially clearfamiliar with. But he does want something I have to confess my ignorance of the Spanish- he is waiting for a passport language literary tradition so he can leave for other climesforgive my generalisation here. The perks of his job are From the bags of flour he leaves by the mayorlittle I have read (in translation, I don's house with regularity, as an open bribe, but t read Spanish) there might does seem to be a bigger sacrifice to have to maketendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1852421398</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer JohnstonSaint|title=Truth or FictionElektra
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Caroline Wallace is not a happy woman'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. She has waited ten years for her lover to propose to herCassandra, and now just as he finally doesClytemnestra, she has to go to Dublin to interview faded literary star Desmond Fitzmaurice. Desmond promises his tale will be brimful of 'sex and violence', but Caroline has no idea Elektra are all bit players in the story of the mystery Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that lies at often the silent women have the heart of his storymost compelling stories and the most extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755330544</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Julian Barnes8409290103|title=Staring at the SunIf Only|author=Matthew Tree|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jean's first Incident involved Uncle LeslieTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, hyacinths and golf tees. It's perhaps best forgottenMr Patrick, but Jean doesn't forget. Uncle Leslie figures large in her life - mostly to ensure that the young man got on board the golf course - until the War comes boat and he runs away thereafter Patrick was to Americasend him a monthly allowance. He's replaced by Tommy Prosser, a grounded pilot who once saw Patrick sent the sun rise twice in one day money regularly and excites as many questions in Jean as he ever answers. Tommy is replaced by Michael, a policeman, whom Jean eventually marriescorrespondence - of sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. He doesn It wasn't know why minks are excessively tenacious of life and he doesnthat Lowry senior didn't much care. But Jean does. She cares much less for the Dutch cap his son, it was that Michael sent her off he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to obtain his wife and other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the wedding and much less again for their rather disastrous adventures in the bedroomyoung man on his way. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540096</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Russell Celyn JonesAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=The Ninth Wave (New Stories from the Mabinogion) Red is My Heart|rating=43.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Pwyll rules a medieval-style fiefdom [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in a post-climate change Walesmy house. Life And so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, and is different in many ways - there's a new-but-old social order built , black and white and red. Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on feudalism this piece, and horsepower is the main means of transport. But in many ways I think it's much possible to say not one page lacks the same - people still fight one another, towns still have sink estates, rich boys still have too much time on their hands and precious little meaning in their livesinfluence of some striking visual ideas. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1854115146</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Owen SheersB098FFFBH9|title=White Ravens (New Stories from the Mabinogion)Snowcub|author=Graham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In the Fourteen-year-old tale, Branwen Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the sister of Bendigeidfran - way in which human beings exploit the giant King of Britainanimal world. She marries the King gets a great deal of Irelandsupport from her family: father Pip Harrison, who doesn't treat her well. She manages to send Bendigeidfran a message via a tamed starling and war lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and killings ensue. In this new tale, a young girl has just walked away from her brothers whotwin, in the wake of Nick. Kate runs the devastating foot and mouth outbreakfamily business, are despoiling their heritage by rustling and illegally slaughtering sheep. She meets an old man who tells her a story involving the superstitions about the ravens toy shop called Cornucopia in the Tower Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of London, propaganda work during World War II, and an equally doomed love affairinformation: five soft toys. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115030</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shirley JacksonYancey Williams|title=We Have Always Lived In The CastleCrosshairs of the Devil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Mary Katherine Blackwood, also known as Merricat, Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is eighteen, and lives with her older sister Constance getting on in the family home where 'Blackwoods had always lived'. Merricat quickly draws the reader into her world by a series of matter of fact but bizarre statements – her likes include her sister years and death cap mushrooms, despite his strenuous objections and everyone else in her family is dead. The wealthy Blackwood family has always kept the house 'steady against the world'thanks to his daughter, shutting out other peoplefinds himself living - or imprisoned, and they live near a village. Merricat believes that from Eddie'The people s point of the village have always hated us', and tells us that she hates them too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141191457</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Deborah Gregory|title=Dancing With The Dead|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I wanted to read ''Dancing with the Dead'', because I'm interested view - in family history. The blurb on the back room 315 of the book also mentioned Gill – our heroine Garden of the piece – was moving from Bristol (my current Eden nursing home) to Lincolnshire (where I was born and brought up). I felt , with all these linksonly a trusty nursing aide, the novel could not fail to interest me – but this was not the case.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529305</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Elizabeth Baines|title=Too Many Magpies|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Becoming a mother brings a whole new world of fear into your life. Suddenly you see the danger in every situationJenkins, and fear and trepidation can be become your constant companionsfor palatable company. In this novella, we meet a young mother who Nothing is married to a logical scientist. They attempt going to control their children's futures on a scientific basis, growing their own fruit and vegetables, giving their children nothing sugary, eating no eggs for a whole year until any adverse affects keep Eddie from them were disproved. But after meeting with an enigmatic stranger our young mother begins to struggle as he introduces ideas his stock-in-trade of freedom into her world. She begins an affair with him, begins to let things slip at home and with the childrenwriting though, yet finds she is still continuously haunted by the sense of an ever-present danger.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844717216</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Katherine May|title=Burning Out|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Violet has it all – a well-paid jobso here, and a luxurious apartment all to herself. Everything is catered for; her mealshis readers, her clothes, and her health are all how she would like them to be. But the his wanderings through his life she is leading is beginning to take its toll. On the verge of snapping, a drained and somewhat out-of-sorts Violet, withdraws back to her home town. There, she meets someone familiar, a ghost reminding her of how she used to be ten years earlier – a young carefree girl, full of life. Only this isn't a ghost, but a girl living the life Violet once lived – exactly the same. Haunted by the past Violet realizes history is repeating itself and is convinced events will happen again. Events that will in turn haunt the girls work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906727392</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tove Jansson0008421714|title=The True Deceiver|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Most people of my age will have come across Jansson's work unwittingly, via the televised renditions of the Moomin tales. The readers amongst us would then have been entranced a few years ago to discover that at last Thomas Teal had set about the translation into English, first of The Summer Book and then of a collection of short stories which were published as 'A Winter Book'. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954899571</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMrs March|author=Daniel Kehlmann |title=Me and KaminskiVirginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=After reviewing several long books, itThe problem began just after the publication of George March's been refreshing most successful novel to read such a fluent yet pared down story as 'Kaminski and Me'date. In Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it, Sebastian Zollner, or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the obnoxious main character, shoves himself forward in a desperate attempt local patisserie to research a best seller which will re-ignite his career as an art critic. Kaminskibuy olive bread but on that particular morning, the proposed subjectPatricia asked, as she was a fashionable painter long agowrapping the bread, ''but now, ancient and chronically ill, has virtually slid into oblivion. So isn't this the second-rate writer is on a loser unless first time he can dig up some juicy details to hook the art world and general public.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847249892</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Hilary Dixon|title=When Rooks Speak of Love|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Arthur Transcombe is 's based a middle-aged, grey-haired, self-effacing poet. Unremarkable really - character on the outside. you?'' He has, howeverShe mentioned that Johanna, managed to achieve some success with his poems. (Being a guest speaker at the Cheltenham Literary Festival is no mean feat)principal character had 'her mannerisms''. He is also a babe magnet!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529429</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Malouf |title=Ransom|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Taking his theme from a small part of Homer's IliadPerhaps this would not have mattered, Malouf tells except for the story of fact that Johanna is the king whore of Troy, PriamNantes - 's grief-stricken voyage into the Greek camp to ransom Troy's wealth for the body of his fallen sona weak, plain, detestable, Hectorpathetic, killed by the equally grief-stricken Achilles whose great friend Hector had killed in battle before Achilles took his cruel revenge. Malouf tells the story in sparseunloved, yet lyrical and poetic fashion suggesting the personal stories behind the epic themes that Homer relatedunloveable wretch. It is an exquisitely written piece managing to be both deeply moving as well as a great piece of story telling.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184159</amazonuk>''
}}