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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Juli ZehMatthew Tree|title=Dark MatterWe'll Never Know

|summary=''Dark Matter'' is translated Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from German his father, a drunk and nothing has been 'lost in translation' here. The lives chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of two very bright academics are interwoven throughout. Students Sebastian his artistic passions all failed miserably and Oskar are the very best who had endless crises of friends; it's almost as if they share the same heartbeatself confidence. However, as they grow into adulthood real life comes along and tends So Tim applied himself to get in the way. Sebastian settles for domestic bliss. Their friendship cools offhis studies, becomes a little tense cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and strainedset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846552087</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Margaret ForsterB0C47LV1PC|title=Isa and MayFragility|author=Mosby Woods

|summary=Isamay is Can you make a would-be academic and she's writing a thesis about grandmothers in history'Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, inspired, one suspects, by her own grandmothers, Isa and May. Her efforts are constantly diverted by is the present needs of her grandmothers and the secrets about their pasts which rise to the surface when she least expects them. There's another complication too. Isamay question should you make it? Or is in her thirties and has never wanted a child, but reconsiders, despite the fact that her partner, Ianquestion if you did, would it land? The catch is adamant that he doesn't want childrenthe answer for both could well be.... The more Isamay delves, the more she realises that there are secrets in Ian's past toono.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184663</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Kathryn Stockett|title=The Help|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Jackson, Mississippi: 1960. The talk at the bridge club and the tennis club is of what Jackie Kennedy is wearing. They're white women, of course and they're free to play because a coloured woman will be looking after the children, doing the shopping and cleaning the house. TheyFragility're trusted to bring the children up, but they're not trusted to be honest about the silver. Aibileen is raising her seventeenth white child but something hardened in her heart when her son died whilst set as the white bosses looked the other way. They took his body city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the coloureds' hospital and rolled it off the back of restrictions imposed during the truck and left.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141039280</amazonuk>covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Olga GrushinMosby Woods|title=The Concert TicketA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=''The Concert Ticket'' follows the lives of a family in Soviet Russia who have grown desperately distant from one another. Sergei, the father, is a frustrated musician who longs to play the pre-revolutionary masterpieces of composers like Igor Selinsky but is forced to play the kind of patriotic ditties he despises. His schoolteacher wife, Anna, longs for his love, but is never quite able to get his attention with her shy gestures. Their shiftless son, Alexander, has quietly given up going to school and spends his days hanging around the park, consorting with undesirables. Also living in their house is Anna's silent, elderly mother.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918482</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Aatish Taseer|title=The Temple-Goers|rating=3

|summary=Aatish Taseer The 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 probably the best known course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for his journalismclimate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, publishing regularly in there was a man with precognition. Imagine the Indian press, strategic advantage in Prospectthis asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, and perhaps right? Perhaps the most prolifically valuable asset in Time magazinehistory. He has won acclaim for his memoir: Stranger to History in which he, raised by his Indian Sikh motherImagine then, traces his absent Muslim father across the border in Pakistan – and also for his translations of the short stories of Saadat Hasan Mantothat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670918504</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tom Connolly0571379559|title=The Spider TrucesHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5

|summary=''The title House of this debut novel by Tom Connolly Broken Bricks'' is enigmatic, mysteriousthe story of four people. It draws the reader in - just like a fly to a spiderTess Hembry's web. And roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in fairness 'The Spider Truces' does exactly what it say the house on the tin riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the main characterpassage of time, Ellisstorms and floods. Her husband, Richard, is obsessed struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and terrified to bring in equal measuresufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, of spidersthe rainbow twins. .Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage.Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when you live in an old house, as the OMax is out with his mother that she'Rourke family does, there are plenty of spiders and other creepy crawlies abouts his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956251528</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Mary Yukari Waters|title=The Favorites|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=This story is set in Kyoto, Japan, starting in June 1978. Fourteen year old Sarah Rexford and her Japanese mother, Yoko, have come back from follow-up to the US to stay with family for excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few weeksmonths after where we left off. Sarah was born and brought up in Japan but has lived in In the US palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her mother husband, who sailed to war at Troy and white American father then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for five years. She is very conscious the throne of the differences between life in Kyoto Western Isles. Having survived – politically and in Fielderphysical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's Butteshores, CaliforniaQueen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. Here in Kyoto, One that shatters however with the womenreturn of Orestes, including Sarah and her mum, go shopping every day for foodKing of Mycenae, and the food is very different – in an opening scene, Sarah is trying to explain to her grandfather what she normally has for breakfast in the UShis sister Elektra, and becoming aware of the gulf between her life in Japan and in Californiaseeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847392334</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rose TremainKay Chronister|title=TrespassDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Set in the hills of Southern FranceWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, Trespass post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a novel about sibling love and rivalryrobotic takeover, disputed territory and ultimately revenge. In the French corner are Aramon Lunel, resident a world devoid of the Mas Lunel, and his sister Audrun who lives in water or a cottage in the grounds. In the English corner are Victoria Vereynuclear holocaust, this genre is a garden designer, and her partner, an untalented watercolourist, Kittyway for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. The catalyst that brings these together is the arrival in France of Anthony Verey, Victoria's sister whose exclusive antiques business in London 'Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is failing and who decides to follow his sister in finding a new life in France. Aramon is tempted to sell his family Mas by the lure work of 'foreign' money even if post-apocalyptic fiction that means aligns many of the fears that his sister's house has to be destroyed to secure the dealexist for humanity today.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701177942</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Castle Freeman|title=All That I Have|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Castle Freeman may sound like two thirds of a firm of provincial solicitors but thankfully this Castle Freeman It is a man very skilled in writing about the law rather than practicing it. In his latest shocking novel Freeman tells an intriguing tale involving local Sheriff Lucian Wing and his practical yet low-key approach that still manages to maintaining order in rural Vermont. Not for Wing the gung ho approach to fighting crime. He doesn't wear a uniform, he drives a battered old car rather than the standard issue sheriff's wagon and his gun, so ubiquitous in US law enforcement, is safely tucked away in his bottom drawer. Everyone in the area knows the sheriff and by and large they respect him and his slightly unorthodox way of doing businessfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715639021</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Dan RhodesEric LaRocca|title=Little Hands ClappingThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionHorror|summary=The first character to mention in this book Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a mothway to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. ItMost horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad''s a human moth, drawn to the flame whether that is a museum of suicide - home invader, a monster or a supposedly cautionaryghost, life-affirmingit usually something tangible and, memento moriby the end of the story, somewhere in Germanybeatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. Its curator It is an old hand at lonely, unloved museums, fresh from an art gallery a collection of short stories more interested in an airport - it didn't take off - who notices the noise horrors of the latest suicide to happen in the museumillness, grief and goes right back to sleephumiliation. A spider crawls into his mouth Horrors that linger and gets eatenare harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847675298</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Delphine de ViganMadelaine Lucas|title=No and Me|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary=Lou is a clever, clever child with an IQ approaching 160. She's thirteen, but she's been moved up two years at school and she compares her flat chested, nervous self somewhat unfavourably with her fifteen-year-old peer group. Funnily enough, her only real friend at school is Lucas, who's seventeen and such a rebel that he's been moved down two years. Things at home aren't great Thirst for Lou. Her baby sister died a few years ago and her mother has been severely depressed ever since. She barely talks, seldom gets dressed. Her father is worn down to the bone with worry and Lou doesn't get a great deal of attention from him either, so distracted is he. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408807513</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Joshua Ferris |title=The UnnamedSalt

|summary=Tim Farnsworth seemed to have it all. He loved his wife Jane and daughter Becka and his job as a partner in prestigious law firm was enjoyable''Love, fulfilling and financially rewarding. The fly in the ointment was that sometimes he was overtaken by a compulsion to walk. The time of dayI'd read, 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 and collect him. There seemed supposed to be no medical explanation for what was happening – and Tim and Jane had tried every source they could find – but Tim was still reluctant to accept that this was a mental rather than a physical illness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917702</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Joe Treasure|title=Besotted|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It is late August 1982, the day when O level results come out. Michael Cartwright already knows he has failed his exams light and is dreading his parents finding out. Heweightless feeling, his twin brother Kieran (who has done very well) and their younger sisters are on the family holiday, staying with their motherbut I had always longed for gravity's parents in Kilross, County Cork. To escape boredom and his parents' anger, he wanders round the village, where he meets Fergal Noonan, training to 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>}}

{{newreview|author=Laila Lalami |title=Secret Son|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=''Secret Son'' is the story of Youssef El-MekkiTold from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the slumyear-dwelling teenage son of single mother Rachidalong relationship that once defined her. Youssef has always been told that his father is deadOverlaid with later wisdom, so when he finds out his mother has lied the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to conceal its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the fact that he was born out backdrop of wedlock, he plunges headlong into an identity crisis. He tracks down his real father, a wealthy businessman called Nabil Amrani who is surprisingly enthusiastic about his illegitimate sonisolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's arrival. Nabil has recently fallen out deepening relationship with his daughter her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and he seizes this opportunity to mould Youssef into the obedient son he has always wantedhow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670918296</amazonuk>0861546490

 {{newreview|author=Aravind Adiga|title=The White Tiger|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Balram Halwai, a Bangalore entrepreneur (of sorts) and a natural philosopher, hears that there is a planned visit from the Chinese leader to India to learn the source of Indian entrepreneurial talent. Balram knows that the story he will be told by the Indian leader will be a long way from the true story of modern Indian life, and so resolves, over the course of seven nights, 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.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843547228</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Matthew CondonMichael Grothaus|title=The Trout OperaBeautiful Shining People

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Judges Carrington and Thorpe recline in leather armchairs on the verandah of Buckley's Crossing hotel 'But fearing something and watch in silence as a giant trout shuffles across the bridgehaving it come to pass are two different things.  The Judges, despite their initial prominence and convincing back-story giving them a valid reason for being in BuckleyAnd I's Crossingm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, will not really concern usor we can take steps to change it. They are there to represent a type: a visitor to small town Australia, a fisherman from the city, a seeker after something in the Snowy that probably isn't fish. '

We shall''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, however, be concerned with and whether the giant troutdevelopment of technology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>038561506X</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Clare MorrallJennifer Saint|title=The Man Who DisappearedAtalanta|rating=45

|summary=''I was drawn to this book straight awayas worthy as any one of them. FirstlyI would get on board that ship, the jacket cover is lovelyI vowed. The subliminal message is read meI would take my place, please read me. We are introduced to not just in the Kendall family; mother, father and three children. All leading unremarkable, rather ordinary lives. The father, Felix, works hard to provide for his family. He loves them all dearly. They all love him back. It is a secure family unit. Until - completely out name of the blue - he simply disappearsgoddess. His family is distraught and mystified. We all know that a person cannot simply disappear. But Felix Kendall has taken himself off It was for the radarsake of my name, too. Why?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340994274</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''

{{newreview|author=Christopher Isherwood|title=A Single Man|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=If you've ever wanted to know what goes on inside someone's mind you'll love this short novel, first published back in 1964Princess. We join George Falconer just at the moment he awakes from sleep and witness his innermost thoughts as he goes about a typical dayWarrior. It all sounds pretty dull and monotonous but what makes this exciting is that George isn't just any old professor living the American Dream, oh no, he's so detached from the banal normality of the world that he's almost outside of his own body at timesLover. Hero.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548828</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Angelica Garnett|title=The Unspoken Truth|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I would not normally start Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a review with son, Atalanta is raised under the biography protective eye of the authorgoddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, but The Unspoken Truth is presented as autobiographical fiction by a child fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Bloomsbury Group Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in fact the subtitle is 'A Quartet of Bloomsbury StoriesArtemis'name and carve out her own legendary place in history. The blurb on the inside cover even identifies which character What follows is based on the author in each a whirlwind of the four storieschallenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, just in case we are not sureit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184353</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amos OzAmanthi Harris|title=Rhyming Life and DeathBeautiful Place

|summary=Rhyming Love and Death is Padma, a kind of philosophical love letter to literatureyoung Sri Lankan, or perhaps more so has returned to fictionthe Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a book about how to writeplace she was born into, about but the compulsion one she thinks of as home. How she came to writebe at the Villa, how it became her home, and about the strange world machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the writer musical score of fiction must live ina film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099521024</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paul Murray178563335X|title=Skippy DiesSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=3.5

|summary=Life When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in Seabrook College is on a messPCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Some of the staff are young enough to remember their own school days thereHer husband, Christopher, but many are certainly too collects six-year-old for thatHannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. A lot of Holthorpe, on the boys are victims of ragging and bullying for being too chunkyNorfolk coast, is a lovely place, or too smart but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - but some are so chunky and smart thereshe's a certain kudos to them. The female in awe of the species is a thing only spied from their own school next doorvicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and only met by selling Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them ritalin as a weightsome good -control pill, or meeting them at the very rare combined school discoit was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241141826</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tom Wolfe1398515388|title=The Bonfire of Boy and the VanitiesDog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=In his own mindFirst of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, bond trader Sherman McCoy is a 'Master of caused the Universe'nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. He has a pleasant wife The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a beautiful mistress, and dog outside a sweet six year old daughterconvenience store. Henry Lamb is He wasn't a black student from dog person but the projects. Under normal circumstances, itconvenience store owner's clear comment that McCoy's world and Lamb's world he would never overlap. But when McCoy call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and his mistress Maria Ruskin end up lost Tamon the dog jumped 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 downfall.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548798</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kate Cole-Adams0989715337|title=Walking to Papa on the Moon|author=Marco North

|summary=We meet ''Some frogs had gotten into the main character Jessica, or Jess as she is usually called, well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in an emotional black holethe fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. She can see no light at the end Long strands of the tunneltheir eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. And right from Two of the start, right from page one, we have a sense of dogs leaned over the beautiful opening and poetic language barked down at the strange noise of Cole-Adamsthe buckets as he filled them. 'Time and I have a new arrangement. We leave each other alone.' And indeed time is not important in this novel. We have all the time in the world would probably be the motto of the medical staff - if they had one. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849161348</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Ru Freeman|title=A Disobedient Girl|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=''A Disobedient Girl'' follows two women struggling to retain control How is that for an opening? The style of their lives this novel in the face form of servitude. Latha is a servant girl interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to the affluent Vithanage familywistful and musing, whose daughter, Thara, is Latha's ageturning on a sixpence. As childrenAnd author Marco North, who has the girls are the best most wonderful turn of friends, but they are destined to be separated by class, which is made painfully obvious when boys come into the picture. Meanwhilephrase, Biso serves a cruel and drunken husband who beats her and terrorises her children, one of whom is another man's love child. Biso's husband murdered her lover in a hateful rage when starts as he uncovered her affair and she realises that she must escape his house if she and her children are means to live. Latha too seeks escape, but she finds it in the arms of Thara's boyfriend and this sets off a chain of events that will echo far into her futurego on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917958</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Simon RobsonDaisy Hildyard|title=CatchEmergency

|summary=Catharine's husband Tom is away on business in Birmingham, and so Catharine awakes alone for the first time in their little cottage at the end The summary of their lane. They moved there a few months previously, and since then Catharine has spent her days quietly awaiting her husband's return from work. She is sure that she will figure out, some day, what her purpose in life is. She thought it might be to have a baby, but they have been trying for some time and it hasnthis book doesn't happened as yet. Meanwhile she waits, and thinks, and waits. In the lounge stands her piano, a stark reminder of the life she didn't manage come close to realise because although she studied music she found, quite quickly, that in spite of being passionate she lacked any kind of talent for it whatsoever. So, on this day, alone at home, Catharine finds herself tormented by the piano's presence and over-thinking every second of the day. She worries away at who she is, and explaining what her life is, as her loneliness and done with the day itself unravel around herpremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224090232</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Joe MenoSally Oliver |title=The Great PerhapsWeight 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

|summary=Jonathan Casper faints when he sees cloudsEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. His wife Madeline worries about everything, not least 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 pigeons that she is studying are murdering each otherSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. Their seventeen year old daughter Amelia wants to overthrow From the evil empire of capitalism and is making her own bomblittle I have read (in translation, while fourteen year old Thisbe is looking for God and praying I don't read Spanish) there does seem to him. Jonathan's father, seventy six year old Henry, is planning his disappearance. Jonathan and Madeline may be on a tendency towards the verge of splitting up, to fantastical – the dismay of both daughtersmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330512471</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elizabeth KostovaJennifer Saint|title=The Swan ThievesElektra|rating=24

|summary=1999 – A renowned painter, Robert Oliver, goes mad, attacking a painting with a knife. He's arrested, and sent to a psychiatrist Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who is also an artistlive in the heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. The psychiatristCassandra, Andrew MarloweClytemnestra, can't get his patient to talk to him, but tries to investigate what drove him to this by talking to his wife and his girlfriend, and reading some letters Oliver seems obsessed withElektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. 1879 – Beatrice de Clerval, aspiring artist, corresponds with her uncle-by-marriage Olivier Vignot, a more experienced painter. Their letters will be found by Robert Oliver, 120 years later, Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and will lead to his loss of sanitythe most extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847442404</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Atiq Rahimi8409290103|title=The Patience Stone|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Set in Afghanistan, ''The Patience Stone'' is a partly allegorical tale of a Muslim wife tending to her comatose soldier husband who has been shot in the neck. As she cares for him, for the first time ever she is able to speak to him without fear of censorship and he becomes, for her, like the mythical Patience Stone to which you tell your troubles and when the stone finally bursts, you are free from your torments. But also this might mean the Apocalypse.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184167</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewIf Only|author=Joyce Carol Oates|title=A Fair MaidenMatthew Tree

|summary=I've recently read Twenty-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 terrific short story collection ''The Female Of The Species'' boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. also by Oates Patrick sent the money regularly and couldna correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn't wait to start her latest book. I felt sure that I Lowry senior didn't care for his son, it was that he didn't care to have him in for this country where he might be a literary treat - danger to his wife and I wasother children. Firstly, The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the book itself, a hardback with a beautifully nostalgic cover is a book lover's delightyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847248586</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dai Sijie Antoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Once on a Moonless NightRed is My Heart

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=A French female scholar, studying [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in China, finds herself caught up in the search for a lostmy house. And so was this one, sacred text although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was inscribed on an ancient scroll. 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 talesis, as she finds that Tumchooq's father found black and translated half of the missing scroll white and became obsessed with finding the other halfred. Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and soon Tumchooq too becomes embroiled in I think it's possible to say not one page lacks the searchinfluence of some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099521326</amazonuk>1913547183

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Thomas Trofimuk B098FFFBH9|title=Waiting for ColumbusSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright

|summary=I was hooked instantly by Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the titleanimal world. OriginalShe gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, thought-provokingLondon, mother Kate and her twin, quirkyNick. The book revolves around Kate runs the family business, a youngish man who has been admitted to an insane asylum (these two words alone make me want to shiver) toy shop called Cornucopia in modern-day Spain. The staff have their work cut out. He doesnPutney, which is where we't remember his name or anything at all about his past. Hell meet Rachel's sporadically violent - and he says he is Christopher Columbus! As the Americans would say, go figuremain (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330518844</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Su TongYancey Williams|title=The Boat to Redemption|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ku Dongliang and his father, Ku Wenxuan, are forced to live on a barge on the river following Ku Wenxuan's fall from grace. Originally believed to be the son Crosshairs of a revolutionary martyr, it is eventually proved that Mr Ku was not so - as a result, his position in society takes a nose-dive. Dongliang suffers as a result of this, finding it hard to make friends within the barge community and on shore. Then an orphaned girl moves onto the barges and finds a place in Dongliang's apparently cold heart. Will she be able to take him out of himself? Or will she, too, turn her back on him?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>038561344X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Iain Banks|title=The Steep Approach to GarbadaleDevil|rating=4.5

|summary=It took me a while Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to realise that Iain Banks ishis daughter, most of allfinds himself living - or imprisoned, a teller from Eddie's point of tales view - I would call him a story-teller had this term not became a compliment-cum-invective usually reserved for in room 315 of the Jeffrey Archers and Dan Browns Garden of the modern publishing world. This ability to tell stories - not to plot as much as to weave a yarn - combines Eden nursing home, with only a penchant trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for creating appealing contexts for Banks' narratives palatable company. Nothing is going to unfold keep Eddie from his stock-in (this gets magnificently realised in the world building -trade of writing though, so here, for his [[:Category:Iain M Banks|Iain M. Banks]] alter-ego) and populating them with memorablereaders, larger than are his wanderings through his life but usually short of caricature, characters's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0349119287</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mary McCarthy 0008421714|title=The GroupMrs March|author=Virginia Feito

|summary=The problem began just after the publication of George March'Given s most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the attention paid last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to relations between the sexeslocal patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, it would be tempting to call The Group a forerunner of todayPatricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, ''but isn't this the first time he's chick lit. Itbased a character on you?'s not.' So writes Candace Bushnell She mentioned that Johanna, the writer behind the TV series Sex and the Cityprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''. Perhaps this would not have mattered, in except for the introduction to this new Virago Modern Classics edition of The Group by Mary McCarthy. First published in 1963, this novel fact that Johanna is about the lives whore of Nantes - ''a group of young women after leaving college in 1933weak, including careersplain, relationshipsdetestable, sexpathetic, babiesunloved, parents, and moneyunloveable wretch. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844085937</amazonuk>''

{{newreview|author=Janice Galloway|title=Collected Stories|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=In this collection, stories are taken from two previous volumes, Blood and Where You Find It. The forty-two snap shots of life are mainly of women and young girls, struggling with emotions, sometimes realized and sometimes not. In all, there seems to be an underlying link of isolation and truth. The settings are varied, from a visit to the dentist to the place known as home, to a walk in the evening. We have a peek into the deepest darkest corners of everyday relationships, with lovers, partners and most of all ourselves.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540398</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Herta Muller|title=The Passport|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Meet Windisch. A miller 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 not initially clear. But he does want something - he is waiting for a passport so he can leave for other climes. The perks of his job are the bags of flour he leaves by the mayor's house with regularity, as an open bribe, but there might be a bigger sacrifice to have to make.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1852421398</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jennifer Johnston|title=Truth or Fiction|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Caroline Wallace is not a happy woman. She has waited ten years for her lover to propose to her, and now just as he finally does, 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 of the mystery that lies at the heart of his story.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755330544</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Julian Barnes|title=Staring at the Sun|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Jean's first Incident involved Uncle Leslie, hyacinths and golf tees. It's perhaps best forgotten, but Jean doesn't forget. Uncle Leslie figures large in her life - mostly Move on the golf course - until the War comes and he runs away to America. He's replaced by Tommy Prosser, a grounded pilot who once saw the sun rise twice in one day and excites as many questions in Jean as he ever answers. Tommy is replaced by Michael, a policeman, whom Jean eventually marries. He doesn't know why minks are excessively tenacious of life and he doesn't much care. But Jean does. She cares much less for the Dutch cap that Michael sent her off to obtain before the wedding and much less again for their rather disastrous adventures in the bedroom. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540096</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Russell Celyn Jones|title=The Ninth Wave (New Stories from the Mabinogion) |rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Pwyll rules a medieval-style fiefdom in a post-climate change Wales. Life is different in many ways - there's a new-but-old social order built on feudalism and horsepower is the main means of transport. But in many ways it's much 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 lives. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115146</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]