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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David EaglemanMatthew Tree|title=Sum: Tales from the AfterlivesWe'll Never Know

|summary=For some reason I find myself unable Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to start this review. So I'll mention this book starts with the endbe different from his father, a drunk and see where we go from there. Of course, that's the key – this book does just that – starts with the end chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of our human life here on Earth (or wherever you happen to be reading this) his artistic passions all failed miserably and posits forty possibilities who had endless crises of what happens thereafterself confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, in the hereafter. It's not so much 'Five People You Meet in Heaven' as 'Forty Heavens you Might Meet People In'cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847674283</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=M J HylandB0C47LV1PC|title=This Is HowFragility|author=Mosby Woods

|summary=Things werenCan you make a ''Yo birthing person't going too badly for Patrick Oxtoby. He's intelligent and joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did , would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well at school. Then his Gran died. He started getting pains in his shoulder and things rapidly went downhill from therebe. He drops out of university to become a mechanic. By the time we meet him as a 23-year-old, he's become a loner who cannot communicate his feelings and who cannot seem to fit himself into society. Now his fiancee has left him (and you can see her point) and he finds himself in a seaside boarding house in an unnamed English town, hoping to start a new life. Then, one night he commits an act of violence (you can see it coming) and his life goes from bad to awfulno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184767383X</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=John Buchan|title=Sick Heart River|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=This was a surprise for me. It’s rare for a book to come to my attention from ''Fragility'' is set as the reviewing gods that’s a rerelease of a 1930s novel, and one that surfaced a couple city of years ago now. But when it strikes me as startlingly ConradianPortland, updated for the timesOregon, and perfectly able cautiously begins to stand alongside one of literature’s greats, then it’s just a sign those reviewing gods are on emerge from the restrictions imposed during the ball.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184697030X</amazonuk>covid pandemic

 {{newreview|author=Jim Crace|title=All That Follows|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Leonard Lessing is a sofa socialist. He avoids corporate brands both in food and in clothes. He abides by all the right-on boycotts. He signs petitions. He does free gigs at benefit concerts. He gives donations - you know the kind of thing. Once, eighteen long years ago in Texas in 2006, he came very close to some real direct action. But he bottled it. And now, the frozen-shouldered jazzman-on-sabbatical finds his less-than-glorious radical past catching up with him right there in his living room, on the TV. Maxie Lermon, he of Austin 2006 and no stranger to violent agitprop, is in the UK, just up the road from Leonard, and he's taken a family hostage as a protest against the upcoming Reconciliation Summit. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330445642</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ed Hillyer|title=The Clay Dreaming|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Hillyer has taken several historical facts and seamlessly blended in a big dollop of fiction to create a complex and riveting story. The title is suitably enigmatic, as is King Cole (or Brippoki). He and his fellow cricketers (who also have been given rather unkind nicknames) have sailed from the bottom of the world, to the bustling metropolis of London. Talk about extremes. And although they have all been diligently 'schooled' in all things English, nevertheless, they are the talk of the town. The novel has barely started and already the mind boggles.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956251501</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Wendy Law-YoneMosby Woods|title=The Road to WantingA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5

|summary=We first meet Na Ga in her hotel room in Wanting, on the Chinese side of the border with Na GaThe West isn's native Burma (or Myanmar for t the more geographically pedantic, although Burma is used throughout this book)dominant force it once was. She Nobody in the West is attempting quite sure how to commit suicide, but mend this or even if mending it is interrupted by news from the hotel receptionist who tells her best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that her guide across the bordernobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, Mr Jiang, has just committed suicide himselfthere was a man with precognition. You might by now have Imagine the impression that strategic advantage in this is not asset; a cheery kind man who can tell you what will happen given any set of bookcircumstances. That man would be valuable, and you'd be right up to a point? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, although it's certainly not without its light touchesthat this man loses this ability. In fact What would governments do to get it's often quite beautiful, which makes the exposure of the seedier side so much more shocking.back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184086</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roddy Doyle0571379559|title=The Dead RepublicHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|summary=Henry left ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in 1922Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, after she lives in the house on the Irish Civil War. It is now 1951. After his long exileriverbank, nothing is as he expectedbuilt of broken bricks. He revisits an old home to find no trace that a house ever stood there. The project that has brought him back is not Insubstantial as he expected. The Quiet Man will be a hugely successful film for John Fordit might look, but the life portrayed in it is not Henry Smart's life, and stood the portrait passage of Irish politics time, storms and everyday life in the film is not one he recognisesfloods. In his late 40s Her husband, he feels he is an old man alreadyRichard, alone with struggles to grow his memories of vegetables, to complete the wife delivery rounds - and family he lostto bring in sufficient money.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224090097</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=James Kelman|title=If it is Your Life|rating=3|genre=Short Stories|summary= They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother'If This Is Your Life'' is not so much a collection of short stories as a collection of pieces of creative writings Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Kelman doesn People don't really do believe that they'storiesre related, much less twins and there'. In nineteen pieces of writing of varying length from just a single page to more lengthy pieces, such as the story s an assumption when Max is out with his mother that gives its title to this collection, Kelman writes (mostly) about people on the edge of society. He addresses issues such as class, politics, gender, age and ill healthshe's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241142423</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yoko OgawaClaire North|title=The Housekeeper and the Professor House of Odysseus

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I never really got on with maths at school. Or sport. So a book that seems to deal with both baseball and mathematics ought to fly to the bottom of my 'to read' pile. However, this slim little Japanese novel slipped into my hands and into my heart as soon as I saw it. The premise is very simple - a young housekeeper is assigned to a job working for an elderly, brain damaged professor of mathematics. He has only eighty minutes of short-term memory, so he doesnWhat could matter more than love?''t remember her from one day to the next, but his memory pre-1975 remains intact and somehow he continues to function, living through his obsession with numbers. Each morning he greets her at the door asking for her birth date and her telephone number. He finds puzzles and equations in everything, including shoe sizes and baseball, and the housekeeper becomes fascinated as she and her son also begin to see the beauty and the poetry in numbers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099521342</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Glen Duncan|title=A Day and a Night and a Day|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Augustus Rose was brought The follow-up in New York, but not in a des res, in an altogether grittier part of to the city. excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off... his childhood in East Harlem, darkness framing In the blistered stooppalace of Odysseus, the blinding asphaltwith delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the smell throne of garbage cans the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and urine.' Hephysical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's had an unfortunate start in life. Mothershores, white, father (unknown) black so that makes Queen Penelope is on the young Augustus an in-between, brink of a not-sure, a neither-one-colour-nor-the-otherfragile peace. Today, in One that shatters however with the 21st centuryreturn of Orestes, no one would raise an eyebrowKing of Mycenae, bat an eyelid. But this novel is set in the 1960s where racial tensions abound. Yesand his sister Elektra, even in cosmopolitan cities such as New Yorkseeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847394175</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eleanor ThomKay Chronister|title=The Tin-KinDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Dawn With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a single mother who has been avoiding robotic takeover, a lot world devoid of things for water or a long time. When her auntnuclear holocaust, who raised Dawn as this genre is a daughter, dies, Dawn finds the key way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a cupboard which she was forbidden to look into as a childnew work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. Inside she finds clues to her family history, links to a Traveller Community, unearthing It is a journey shocking novel that sees her finding her roots. We also witness her struggle still manages to renew her complicated relationship with her family and her efforts to escape the ever-present memory of her abusive husbandfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715639013</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Patricia DunckerEric LaRocca|title=The Strange Case of the Composer and His JudgeTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=45|genre=General FictionHorror|summary=Horror taps into something primeval within us. It's rural France, and 2000 is barely begun, when hunters come across used as a spread of human corpses in the mountains. Several families, all in the same cult, seem way to have killed themselves on their path to whereverreflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. If soMost horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', this whether that is a problemhome invader, for the last time it happened, in Switzerland a few years previousmonster or a ghost, nobody could work out why – it usually something tangible and who was there to dispose of some , by the end of the evidencestory, beatable. This isnEric LaRocca's 't 'The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a problem for collection of short stories more interested in the policeman involvedhorrors of illness, as he fell desperately in love with the investigative judge in collaborating on the initial casegrief and humiliation. Combining again, they see a link with everybody involved in both cases, a famous conductor /composerHorrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408807041</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Marilyn ChinMadelaine Lucas|title=Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen: A Manifesto in 41 Tales Thirst for Salt

|summary=Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen (oh''Love, how I love that title!) will almost certainly not 'd read, was supposed to be to everyone's tastea light and weightless feeling, but I confess had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that I loved once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its originalitysorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, boldnessdepicting its all-consuming nature, sassy style how it changed her perspective on both romantic and the humour of familial relationships and how italtered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241144612</amazonuk>0861546490

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paolo GiordanoMichael Grothaus|title=The Solitude of Prime NumbersBeautiful Shining People

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''The Solitude of Prime Numbers'' follows the lives of Alice But fearing something and Mattia from childhood having it come to middle agepass are two different things. Alice is a wilful anorexicAnd I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, scarred by a childhood skiing accident and an overbearing fatheror we can take steps to change it. Mattia is an reclusive self-harmer trying to live with the guilt of having been responsible for his disabled twin sister'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 Matter|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Dark MatterBeautiful Shining People'' is translated from German revolves around the question of identity and nothing has been 'lost in translation' hereacceptance. The lives of two very bright academics are interwoven throughout. Students Sebastian and Oskar are the very best of friends; Of what it's almost as if they share the same heartbeatmeans to be human. However, as they grow into adulthood Of what is real life comes along and tends to get in the way. Sebastian settles for domestic bliss. Their friendship cools offwhat is artificial, becomes a little tense and strainedwhether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846552087</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreview|author=Margaret Forster|title=Isa and May|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Isamay is a would-be academic and she's writing a thesis about grandmothers in history, inspired, one suspects, by her own grandmothers, Isa and May. Her efforts are constantly diverted by 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 is in her thirties and has never wanted a child, but reconsiders, despite the fact that her partner, Ian, is adamant that he doesn't want children. The more Isamay delves, the more she realises that there are secrets in Ian's past too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184663</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kathryn StockettJennifer Saint|title=The HelpAtalanta

|summary=Aatish Taseer is probably best known for his journalism''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, publishing regularly not just in the Indian press, in Prospect, and perhaps most prolifically in Time magazinename of the goddess. He has won acclaim It was for his memoir: Stranger to History in which he, raised by his Indian Sikh mother, traces his absent Muslim father across the border in Pakistan – and also for his translations sake of the short stories of Saadat Hasan Mantomy name, too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918504</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''

{{newreview|author=Tom Connolly|title=The Spider Truces|rating=4Princess.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The title of this debut novel by Tom Connolly is enigmatic, mysteriousWarrior. It draws the reader in - just like a fly to a spider's webLover. And in fairness 'The Spider Truces' does exactly what it say on the tin as the main character, Ellis, is obsessed and terrified in equal measure, of spidersHero. ... and when you live in an old house, as the O'Rourke family does, there are plenty of spiders and other creepy crawlies about.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956251528</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Mary Yukari Waters|title=The Favorites|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=This story Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is set in Kyotoraised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, Japan, starting in June 1978one who longs for adventure. Fourteen year old Sarah Rexford and her Japanese motherWhen the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, Yokoa fierce band of warriors, have come back descendent from the US Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to stay with family for a few weeks. Sarah was born fight in Artemis' name and brought up carve out her own legendary place in Japan but has lived in the US with her mother and white American father for five yearshistory. She What follows is very conscious a whirlwind of the differences between life in Kyoto challenges and in Fielder's Butte, California. Here in Kyoto, the women, including Sarah discovery and her mumthrough it, go shopping every day for food, and the food is very different – in an opening scene, Sarah is trying to explain to her grandfather what Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she normally has for breakfast in the USmarries, and becoming aware of the gulf between it will be her life in Japan and in Californiaundoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847392334</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rose TremainAmanthi Harris|title=TrespassBeautiful Place|rating=45

|summary=Set in Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the hills southern coast of Southern France, Trespass her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a novel about sibling love and rivalryplace she was born into, disputed territory and ultimately revenge. In but the French corner are Aramon Lunel, resident one she thinks of the Mas Lunel, and his sister Audrun who lives in a cottage in the groundsas home. In How she came to be at the English corner are Victoria VereyVilla, a garden designerhow it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her partner, an untalented watercolourist, Kitty. The catalyst that brings these together is life ever since she first arrived there provide the arrival in France of Anthony Verey, Victoria's sister whose exclusive antiques business in London is failing 'score'' for this gentle and who decides to follow his sister in finding a new life in Franceyet subtly violent novel. Aramon is tempted Padma's present fails to sell his family Mas by escape her past and much like the lure musical score of 'foreign' money even if a film, that means strand weaves its way through everything that his sister's house has to be destroyed to secure happens at the dealVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701177942</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Castle Freeman178563335X|title=All That I HaveSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=4.5

|summary=Castle Freeman may sound like two thirds of When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a firm of provincial solicitors but thankfully this Castle Freeman is trainee vicar, sitting in on a man very skilled in writing about PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the law rather than practicing itchildren up. In his latest novel Freeman tells an intriguing tale involving local Sheriff Lucian Wing Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and his practical yet lowher elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-key approach to maintaining order in rural Vermont-law won't let her see her grandson. Not for Wing Holthorpe, on the gung ho approach to fighting crime. He doesn't wear Norfolk coast, is a uniformlovely place, he drives but Rachel is struggling to develop a battered old car rather than real bond with the standard issue sheriffparish - and she's wagon and his gunin awe of the vicar, so ubiquitous in US law enforcementGail, is safely tucked away in his bottom drawerbut then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Everyone in Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the area knows the sheriff and by and large beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they respect him and his slightly unorthodox way of doing businessneeded. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715639021</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dan Rhodes1398515388|title=Little Hands ClappingThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|summary=The first character to mention in this book is a moth. It's a human moth, drawn to the flame that is a museum First of suicide - a supposedly cautionaryall, life-affirming, memento mori, somewhere in Germany. Its curator is an old hand at lonely, unloved museums, fresh from an art gallery in an airport - it didn't take off - who notices was the noise of the latest suicide to happen earthquake, deep in the museum, and goes right back to sleep. A spider crawls into his mouth and gets eaten.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847675298</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Delphine de Vigan|title=No and Me|rating=5|genre=Teens|summary=Lou is a cleverocean floor, 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 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 which created the bone with worry tsunami and Lou doesn't get a great deal of attention from him eitherthis, so distracted is he. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408807513</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Joshua Ferris |title=The Unnamed|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|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 enjoyableturn, fulfilling and financially rewardingcaused the nuclear meltdown. The fly in the ointment result was that sometimes he was overtaken by a compulsion to walkcomplete and utter devastation. The time of daydeaths were uncountable, and the weather or the occasion did not matter – when the compulsion came he had to walk until he loss of livelihoods was physically exhausted and fell asleep immediately after calling his wife to come and collect himwidespread. There seemed 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 The fact 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 and is dreading his parents finding out. He, his twin brother Kieran (who has done very well) and many pets were separated from their younger sisters are on the family holiday, staying with their mother'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 owners came far reaching significance.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330511726</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Laila Lalami |title=Secret Son|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=''Secret Son'' is down the story list of Youssef Elpriorities but -Mekki, six months after the slumtsunami -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 crisisKazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He tracks down his real father, wasn't a wealthy businessman called Nabil Amrani who is surprisingly enthusiastic about his illegitimate sondog person but the convenience store owner'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>}} {{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 comment 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, would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to write to the Chinese premier with the story of open his life car door and his own journey from a poor son of a rickshaw driver to Tamon the head of his own businessdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843547228</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Matthew Condon0989715337|title=The Trout OperaPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North

|summary=Judges Carrington and Thorpe recline in leather armchairs on the verandah of Buckley's Crossing hotel and watch in silence as a giant trout shuffles across 'Some frogs had gotten into the bridgewell. ''

The Judges, despite their initial prominence and convincing back''Walter stood waist-story giving them a valid reason for being deep in Buckley's Crossingthe fragrant water, will not really concern usnaked except for his beaten leather hat. They are there to represent a type: a visitor to small town AustraliaLong strands of their eggs wove around him, a fisherman from sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the city, a seeker after something in strange noise of the Snowy that probably isnbuckets as he filled them.''t fish.

We shallHow is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, howeverturning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, be concerned with who has the giant troutmost wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>038561506X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Clare MorrallDaisy Hildyard|title=The Man Who DisappearedEmergency

|summary=I was drawn to The summary of this book straight away. Firstly, the jacket cover is lovely. The subliminal message is read me, please read me. We are introduced to the Kendall family; mother, father and three children. All leading unremarkable, rather ordinary lives. The father, Felix, works hard doesn't come close to provide for his family. He loves them all dearly. They all love him back. It explaining what is a secure family unit. Until - completely out of the blue - he simply disappears. His family is distraught and mystified. We all know that a person cannot simply disappear. But Felix Kendall has taken himself off done with the radarpremise. Why?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340994274</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Christopher IsherwoodSally Oliver |title=A Single ManThe 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

|summary=If you've ever wanted to know what goes Early comments on inside someone's mind you'll love this short debut novelfrom Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I will agree with the first published back – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the expression in 1964a way I'm not familiar with. We join George Falconer just at I have to confess my ignorance of the moment he awakes from sleep and witness his innermost thoughts as he goes about a typical daySpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. It all sounds pretty dull and monotonous but what makes this exciting is that George isn't just any old professor living From the American Dreamlittle I have read (in translation, oh no, heI don's so detached from t read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the banal normality of fantastical – the world that he's almost outside of his own body at timesmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099548828</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Angelica GarnettJennifer Saint|title=The Unspoken TruthElektra

|summary=I would not normally start a review with 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the biography story of three women who live in the authorheavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, but The Unspoken Truth is presented as autobiographical fiction by a child of the Bloomsbury Group – Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in fact the subtitle is 'A Quartet story of Bloomsbury Stories'the Trojan War. The blurb on Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the inside cover even identifies which character is based on silent women have the author in each of most compelling stories and the four stories, just in case we are not suremost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184353</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Amos Oz8409290103|title=Rhyming Life and DeathIf Only|author=Matthew Tree|rating=4.5

|summary=Rhyming Love 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 boat and Death is thereafter Patrick was to send him a kind monthly allowance. Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of philosophical love letter to literature, or perhaps sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more so about what Lowry has to fictionsay than Patrick. It is wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, it was that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a book about how danger to write, about the compulsion his wife and other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to write, and about the strange world that get the writer of fiction must live inyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099521024</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul MurrayAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Skippy DiesRed is My Heart

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Life [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in Seabrook College is a messmy house. Some of the staff are young enough to remember their own school days thereAnd so was this one, but many are certainly too old for although I could have spelled thatmore accurately – this one was, and is, black and white and red. A lot of the boys are victims of ragging and bullying for being too chunkyYes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, or too smart - but some are so chunky and smart thereI think it's a certain kudos possible to them. The female say not one page lacks the influence of the species is a thing only spied from their own school next door, and only met by selling them ritalin as a weight-control pill, or meeting them at the very rare combined school discosome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241141826</amazonuk>1913547183

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tom WolfeB098FFFBH9|title=The Bonfire of the VanitiesSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright|rating=4.5

|summary=In his own mind, bond trader Sherman McCoy Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a 'Master of competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the Universe'animal world. He has She gets a pleasant wifegreat deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a beautiful mistresslecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and a sweet six year old daughterher twin, Nick. Henry Lamb is a black student from Kate runs the projects. Under normal circumstancesfamily business, it's clear that McCoy's world and Lamb's world would never overlap. But when McCoy and his mistress Maria Ruskin end up lost a toy shop called Cornucopia in the BronxPutney, and an accident leads to Lamb being hit by McCoywhich is where we'll meet Rachel's Mercedes, a chain main (if unsuspected) source of events start which will lead to his downfallinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548798</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kate Cole-AdamsYancey Williams|title=Walking to Crosshairs of the MoonDevil|rating=4.5

|summary=We meet the main character Jessica, or Jess as she is usually called, deep in an emotional black hole. She can see no light at the end of the tunnel. And right from the start, right from page one, we have a sense of the beautiful and poetic language of ColeAward-Adams. 'Time and I have a new arrangement. We leave each other alone.' And indeed time winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski 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 of their lives getting on in the face of servitude. Latha is a servant girl to the affluent Vithanage family, whose daughter, Thara, is Latha's age. As children, the girls are the best of friends, but they are destined to be separated by class, which is made painfully obvious when boys come into the picture. Meanwhile, Biso serves a cruel years 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 he uncovered her affair and she realises that she must escape despite his house if she strenuous objections and her children are thanks to live. Latha too seeks escapehis daughter, but she finds it in the arms of Tharahimself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's boyfriend and this sets off a chain point of events that will echo far into her future.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917958</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Simon Robson|title=Catch|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Catharine's husband Tom is away on business view - in Birmingham, and so Catharine awakes alone for the first time in their little cottage at room 315 of the end Garden of their lane. They moved there Eden nursing home, with only a few months previouslytrusty nursing aide, and since then Catharine has spent her days quietly awaiting her husband's return from work. She is sure that she will figure outJenkins, 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 hasn't happened as yetpalatable company. Meanwhile she waits, and thinks, and waits. In the lounge stands her piano, a stark reminder of the life she didn't manage Nothing is going to realise because although she studied music she found, quite quickly, that keep Eddie from his stock-in spite of being passionate she lacked any kind -trade of talent for it whatsoever. Sowriting though, on this dayso here, alone at homefor his readers, Catharine finds herself tormented by the pianoare his wanderings through his life's presence and over-thinking every second of the day. She worries away at who she is, and what her life is, as her loneliness and the day itself unravel around herwork.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224090232</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joe Meno0008421714|title=The Great PerhapsMrs March|author=Virginia Feito

|summary=Jonathan Casper faints when he sees clouds. His wife Madeline worries about everything, not least The problem began just after the way the pigeons that she is studying are murdering each other. Their seventeen year old daughter Amelia wants to overthrow the evil empire publication of capitalism and is making her own bomb, while fourteen year old Thisbe is looking for God and praying to him. JonathanGeorge March's father, seventy six year old Henry, is planning his disappearancemost successful novel to date. Jonathan and Madeline may be Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the verge of splitting up, last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the dismay of both daughters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330512471</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Elizabeth Kostova|title=The Swan Thieves|rating=2|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=1999 – A renowned painterlocal patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Robert OliverPatricia asked, goes madas she was wrapping the bread, attacking a painting with a knife. He's arrested, and sent to a psychiatrist who is also an artist. The psychiatrist, Andrew Marlowe, can'but isn'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 with. 1879 – Beatrice de Clerval, aspiring artist, corresponds with her uncle-by-marriage Olivier Vignot, the first time he's based a more experienced painter. Their letters will be found by Robert Oliver, 120 years later, and will lead to his loss of sanity.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847442404</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Atiq Rahimi|title=The Patience Stone|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Set in Afghanistancharacter on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had ''The Patience Stoneher mannerisms'' 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 Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the first time ever she fact that Johanna is able to speak to him without fear the whore of censorship and he becomesNantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, for herpathetic, like the mythical Patience Stone to which you tell your troubles and when the stone finally burstsunloved, you are free from your tormentsunloveable wretch. But also this might mean the Apocalypse.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184167</amazonuk>''

{{newreview|author=Joyce Carol Oates|title=A Fair Maiden|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I've recently read the terrific short story collection ''The Female Of The Species'' also by Oates and couldn't wait Move on to start her latest book. I felt sure that I was in for a literary treat - and I was. Firstly, the book itself, a hardback with a beautifully nostalgic cover is a book lover's delight.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847248586</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]