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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paolo GiordanoMatthew Tree|title=The Solitude of Prime Numbers|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''The Solitude of Prime Numbers'' follows the lives of Alice and Mattia from childhood to middle age. Alice is a wilful anorexic, scarred by a childhood skiing accident and an overbearing father. Mattia is an reclusive self-harmer trying to live with the guilt of having been responsible for his disabled twin sisterWe's death. Their paths cross at a school friend's party during a painful adolescence and their lives are destined to intertwine throughout the coming years, despite the chronic awkwardness of their courtship.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552775983</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Juli Zeh|title=Dark Matterll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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>}}
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{{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
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tom Connolly0571379559|title=The Spider TrucesHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{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 Francework of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. Aramon It is tempted to sell his family Mas by the lure of 'foreign' money even if that means a shocking novel that his sister's house has still manages to be destroyed to secure the dealfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701177942</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Castle FreemanEric LaRocca|title=All That The Trees Grew Because I HaveBled There|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Castle Freeman may sound like two thirds of a firm of provincial solicitors but thankfully this Castle Freeman Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a man very skilled in writing about the law rather than practicing it. In his latest novel Freeman tells an intriguing tale involving local Sheriff Lucian Wing way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and his practical yet low-key approach to maintaining order in rural Vermontprocess them. Not for Wing the gung ho approach to fighting crime. He doesnMost horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad''t wear , whether that is a uniformhome invader, he drives a battered old car rather than monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the standard issue sheriffstory, beatable. Eric LaRocca's wagon and his gun, so ubiquitous in US law enforcement, ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is safely tucked away in his bottom drawernot like that. Everyone It is a collection of short stories more interested in the area knows the sheriff horrors of illness, grief and by humiliation. Horrors that linger and large they respect him and his slightly unorthodox way of doing businessare harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715639021</amazonuk>
}}
|rating=5
|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 and is dreading his parents finding out. He, his twin brother Kieran (who has done very well) and their younger sisters are on the family holiday, staying with their mother's parents in Kilross'Love, County Cork. To escape boredom and his parentsI' angerd read, he wanders round the village, where he meets Fergal Noonan, training was supposed to be a priest, and lively Peggy O'Connor. He has his first kiss light and a bit more with Peggy. The family soon goes home to Cheltenhamweightless feeling, 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 SonI had always longed for gravity'' is the story of Youssef El-Mekki, the slum-dwelling teenage son of single mother Rachida. Youssef has always been told that his father is dead, so when he finds out his mother has lied to conceal the fact that he was born out 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 son's arrival. Nabil has recently fallen out with his daughter and he seizes this opportunity to mould Youssef into the obedient son he has always wanted.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918296</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Matthew CondonMichael Grothaus|title=The Trout OperaBeautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Judges Carrington ''But fearing something and Thorpe recline in leather armchairs on the verandah having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of Buckleywhat we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.''s Crossing hotel and watch in silence as a giant trout shuffles across the bridge.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Clare MorrallJennifer Saint|title=The Man Who DisappearedAtalanta|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amos OzAmanthi Harris|title=Rhyming Life and DeathBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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>
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{{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
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Simon RobsonDaisy Hildyard|title=CatchEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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
|rating=3.5
|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
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Thomas Trofimuk B098FFFBH9|title=Waiting for ColumbusSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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>
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{{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
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='Given the attention paid to relations between The problem began just after the sexes, it would be tempting to call The Group a forerunner publication of todayGeorge March's chick lit. It's not.' So writes Candace Bushnell, the writer behind the TV series Sex and the City, in the introduction most successful novel to this new Virago Modern Classics edition of The Group by Mary McCarthydate. First published in 1963, this novel is about Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the lives of a group of young women after leaving college in 1933, including careers, relationships, sex, babies, parents, and money. |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 last page) seemed to either be an underlying link of isolation and truthreading it or had already done so. The settings are varied, from a visit Every day Mrs March went to the dentist local patisserie to the place known buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as home, to a walk in she was wrapping the evening. We have a peek into the deepest darkest corners of everyday relationshipsbread, 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 ''but isn't this the bags of flour first time he leaves by the mayor's house with regularity, as an open bribe, but there might be based 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. character on you?'' She has waited ten years for mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had '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 Fitzmauricemannerisms''. Desmond promises his tale will be brimful of 'sex and violence'Perhaps this would not have mattered, but Caroline has no idea of except for the mystery fact that lies at Johanna is the heart whore of his story.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755330544</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Julian Barnes|title=Staring at the Sun|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=JeanNantes - ''s first Incident involved Uncle Lesliea weak, hyacinths and golf tees. It's perhaps best forgottenplain, but Jean doesn't forget. Uncle Leslie figures large in her life - mostly on the golf course - until the War comes and he runs away to America. He's replaced by Tommy Prosserdetestable, 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 Michaelpathetic, a policemanunloved, whom Jean eventually marriesunloveable wretch. 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>
}}
