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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philip SingtonMatthew Tree|title=The Einstein GirlWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The two central characters are (and we've come across it many times before) Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a psychiatrist (in this case Kirsch) drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his patient (known as the Einstein Girl) artistic passions all failed miserably and hence the novel's titlewho had endless crises of self confidence. The case of this girl is intriguing, not least because both doctor and patient had accidentally met prior So Tim applied himself to her admission to hospital. Kirsch appears immediately smitten - which may be a problem. He's already spoken for. In a nutshellhis studies, the Einstein Girl has lost her memory. Kirsch finds more and more of cultivated his abilities rather than his professional time given over to her recovery, back to mental well-being. It becomes a long daydreams and complicated journey, for both of themset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099535793</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This is Can you make a sixth novel from best-selling Turkish author''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, Elif Shafak. Set in twelfth century Anatoliais the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, two famous characters from Islamic history meet in a gorgeously real world. A delicate contemporary US love story would it land? The catch is wrapped around that the rich, meaty historical fictionanswer for both could well be.... no. Don't be misled by the dodgy-sounding title!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918733</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lorrie MooreMosby Woods|title=A Gate At The StairsWhirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Bass-playing, 20 year-old Tassie Keltjin 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 studying an eclectic range the best course of subjects (Geology, British Literature, Sufismaction. Governments are flailing. A war here, Soundtracks to War Movies and Wine Tasting) in post 9/11 USA when she lands a job as a child minder push for chef, Sarah Bink who is adopting an African-American babyclimate action there. A Gate at the Stairs feeling that nobody is at times in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a very funny and at others man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a sad reflection man who can tell you what will happen given any set of growing up circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in modern Americahistory. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>057119530X</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Eleanor Catton0571379559|title=The RehearsalHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the type passage of person who wants their novels time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to start at grow his vegetables, to complete the beginning, build character delivery rounds - and plot before coming to a satisfying bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they all lived happily ever after' endingre related, then avoid this book at all costs. You will hate it. But I cannot remember much less twins and there's an assumption when I last enjoyed a first time novel as much as this one. It Max is ambitious, daring and complex, and yet it works beautifullyout with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847081398</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Barbara KingsolverClaire North|title=The LacunaHouse of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ten years ago, Barbara Kingsolver's [[The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver|Poisonwood Bible]] revealed the grim politics in the Congo. The Lacuna has a similarly political theme, this time turning her focus on Mexico and the USA in the 1940s and 1950s.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057125263X</amazonuk>}}'What could matter more than love?''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=M J HylandKay Chronister|title=This Is HowDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Things weren't going too badly With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for Patrick Oxtoby. He's intelligent and did well at school. Then his Gran died. He started getting pains in his shoulder and things rapidly went downhill from there. He drops out of university to humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become a mechanican almost masochistic thrill. By the time we meet him as Whether it is a 23-year-oldrobotic takeover, 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 world devoid of water or a seaside boarding house in an unnamed English townnuclear holocaust, hoping this genre is a way for humans to start cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new lifework of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. Then, one night he commits an act of violence (you can see it coming) and his life goes from bad It is a shocking novel that still manages to awfulfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184767383X</amazonuk>1803364998
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{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=John BuchanEric LaRocca|title=Sick Heart RiverThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionHorror|summary=This was Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a surprise for meway to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. It’s rare for Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a book to come to my attention from the reviewing gods that’s home invader, a rerelease of monster or a 1930s novelghost, it usually something tangible and one , by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that surfaced . It is a couple collection of years ago now. But when it strikes me as startlingly Conradian, updated for short stories more interested in the timeshorrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and perfectly able are harder to stand alongside one of literature’s greats, then it’s just a sign those reviewing gods are on the balldefeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184697030X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jim CraceMadelaine Lucas|title=All That FollowsThirst for Salt|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''Love, eighteen long years ago in Texas in 2006I'd read, he came very close was supposed 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 be a light and no stranger to violent agitpropweightless feeling, is in the UK, just up the road from Leonard, and hebut I had always longed for gravity''s taken a family hostage as a protest against the upcoming Reconciliation Summit. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330445642</amazonuk>}}
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{{Frontpage
|author= Michael Grothaus
|title=Beautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Roddy DoyleJennifer Saint|title=The Dead RepublicAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Henry left in 1922, after the Irish Civil War. It is now 1951. After his long exile, nothing is ''I was as worthy as he expectedany one of them. He revisits an old home to find no trace I would get on board that a house ever stood thereship, I vowed. The project that has brought him back is I would take my place, not as he expected. The Quiet Man will be a hugely successful film for John Ford, but the life portrayed just in it is not Henry Smart's life, and the portrait name of Irish politics and everyday life in the film is not one he recognisesgoddess. In his late 40sIt was for the sake of my name, he feels he is an old man already, alone with his memories of the wife and family he losttoo.Atalanta''|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224090097</amazonuk>}}Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yoko OgawaAmanthi Harris|title=The Housekeeper and the Professor Beautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I never really got on with maths at school. Or sport. So Padma, a book that seems to deal with both baseball and mathematics ought to fly young Sri Lankan, has returned to the bottom Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of my 'to read' pileher home country. However, this slim little Japanese novel slipped into my hands and into my heart as soon as I saw itThis is a place she spent her formative years. The premise It is very simple - not a young housekeeper is assigned to a job working for an elderlyplace she was born into, brain damaged professor but the one she thinks of mathematicsas home. He has only eighty minutes of short-term memory How she came to be at the Villa, so he doesn't remember how it became her from one day to the nexthome, but his memory pre-1975 remains intact and somehow he continues to function, living the machinations that have flowed through his obsession with numbers. Each morning he greets her at life ever since she first arrived there provide the door asking ''score'' for her birth date this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to escape her telephone number. He finds puzzles past and equations in much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything, including shoe sizes and baseball, and the housekeeper becomes fascinated as she and her son also begin to see the beauty and that happens at the poetry in numbersVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099521342</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Glen Duncan178563335X|title=A Day and a Night and a DaySea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Augustus Rose was brought up in New YorkWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, but not sitting in on a des res, in an altogether grittier part of PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the citychildren up. ' ... his childhood in East HarlemHer husband, Christopher, darkness framing the blistered stoopcollects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, the blinding asphaltJamie, the smell of garbage cans and urinewhilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner.' HeThelma's had an unfortunate start daughter-in life-law won't let her see her grandson. Mother, whiteHolthorpe, father (unknown) black so that makes on the young Augustus an in-betweenNorfolk coast, is a not-surelovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a neither-one-colour-nor-real bond with theparish -other. Today, and she's in awe of the 21st centuryvicar, no one would raise an eyebrowGail, bat an eyelidbut then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. But this novel is set in Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the 1960s where racial tensions aboundbeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. Yes, even in cosmopolitan cities such as New YorkAnd then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847394175</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Eleanor Thom1398515388|title=The Tin-KinBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Dawn is a single mother who has been avoiding a lot First of things for a long time. When her auntall, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, who raised Dawn as a daughterwhich created the tsunami and this, diesin turn, Dawn finds caused the key to a cupboard which she nuclear meltdown. The result was forbidden to look into as a childcomplete and utter devastation. Inside she finds clues to her family history The deaths were uncountable, links to 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 dog outside a Traveller Community, unearthing convenience store. He wasn't a journey dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that sees her finding her roots. We also witness her struggle he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to renew her complicated relationship with her family open his car door and her efforts to escape Tamon the ever-present memory of her abusive husbanddog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715639013</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Patricia Duncker0989715337|title=The Strange Case of Papa on the Composer and His JudgeMoon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen (oh, how I love that title!) will almost certainly not be to everyone's taste, but I confess that I loved its originality, boldness, sassy style and 'Some frogs had gotten into the humour of itwell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144612</amazonuk>}}''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Margaret ForsterDaisy Hildyard|title=Isa and MayEmergency
|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 The summary 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 this book doesn't want children. The more Isamay delves, come close to explaining what is done with the more she realises that there are secrets in Ian's past toopremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184663</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Kathryn StockettSally Oliver |title=The HelpWeight 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=Aatish Taseer is probably best known for his journalismEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, publishing regularly in a delight. I will agree with the Indian press, in Prospect, and first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps most prolifically using the expression in Time magazinea way I'm not familiar with. He has won acclaim for his memoir: Stranger I have to History confess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. From the little I have read (in which hetranslation, raised by his Indian Sikh mother, traces his absent Muslim father across I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the border in Pakistan fantastical – and also for his translations of the short stories of Saadat Hasan Mantomystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670918504</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom ConnollyJennifer Saint|title=The Spider TrucesElektra|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The title of this debut novel 'Elektra' by Tom Connolly is enigmatic, mysterious. It draws Jennifer Saint tells the reader story of three women who live in - just like a fly to a spider's webthe heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. And in fairness 'The Spider Truces' does exactly what it say on the tin as the main characterCassandra, EllisClytemnestra, is obsessed and terrified Elektra are all bit players in equal measure, the story of spiders. ..the Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and when you live in an old house, as the O'Rourke family does, there are plenty of spiders and other creepy crawlies aboutmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956251528</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mary Yukari Waters8409290103|title=The FavoritesIf Only|author=Matthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This story is set in Kyoto, Japan, starting in June 1978. Fourteen Twenty-one-year -old Sarah Rexford and her Japanese motherMalcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, YokoMr Patrick, have come back from to ensure that the young man got on board the US boat and thereafter Patrick was to stay with family for send him a few weeksmonthly allowance. Sarah was born Patrick sent the money regularly and brought a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up in Japan but between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has lived in the US with her mother and white American father for five yearsto say than Patrick. She is very conscious of the differences between life in Kyoto and in Fielder It wasn't that Lowry senior didn's Butte, California. Here in Kyoto, the women, including Sarah and her mum, go shopping every day t care for foodhis son, and the food is very different – it was that he didn't care to have him in an opening scene, Sarah is trying this country where he might be a danger to explain his wife and other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to her grandfather what she normally has for breakfast in the US, and becoming aware of get the gulf between her life in Japan and in Californiayoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847392334</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rose TremainAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=TrespassRed is My Heart|rating=43.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Set in the hills of Southern France, Trespass is a novel about sibling love [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and rivalry, disputed territory white and ultimately revengeread in my house. In the French corner are Aramon LunelAnd so was this one, resident of the Mas Lunelalthough I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, and his sister Audrun who lives in a cottage in the grounds. In the English corner are Victoria Verey, a garden designeris, black and white and her partnerred. Yes, he has an untalented watercolouristartistic collaborator on this piece, Kitty. The catalyst that brings these together is the arrival in France of Anthony Verey, Victoriaand I think it's sister whose exclusive antiques business in London is failing and who decides possible to follow his sister in finding a new life in France. Aramon is tempted to sell his family Mas by say not one page lacks the lure influence of 'foreign' money even if that means that his sister's house has to be destroyed to secure the dealsome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701177942</amazonuk>1913547183
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Castle FreemanB098FFFBH9|title=All That I HaveSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright
|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 Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a man very skilled in writing about competition entry to highlight the law rather than practicing it. In his latest novel Freeman tells an intriguing tale involving local Sheriff Lucian Wing and his practical yet low-key approach to maintaining order way in rural Vermont. Not for Wing which human beings exploit the gung ho approach to fighting crimeanimal world. He doesn't wear She gets a uniformgreat deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, he drives a battered old car rather than lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, Nick. Kate runs the standard issue sheriff's wagon and his gunfamily business, so ubiquitous a toy shop called Cornucopia in US law enforcementPutney, which 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 where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of doing businessinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715639021</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dan RhodesYancey Williams|title=Little Hands ClappingCrosshairs of the Devil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is late August 1982getting on in years and, the day when O level results come out. Michael Cartwright already knows he has failed despite his exams strenuous objections and is dreading thanks to his parents finding out. Hedaughter, his twin brother Kieran (who has done very well) and their younger sisters are on the family holidayfinds himself living - or imprisoned, staying with their motherfrom Eddie's parents point of view - in Kilross, County Cork. To escape boredom and his parents' anger, he wanders round room 315 of the villageGarden of Eden nursing home, where he meets Fergal Noonan, training to be with only a priesttrusty nursing aide, and lively Peggy O'Connor. He has his first kiss and a bit more with Peggy. The family soon goes home to CheltenhamJenkins, but their brief visit to Ireland will have far reaching significance.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330511726</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Laila Lalami |title=Secret Son|rating=3for palatable company.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=''Secret Son'' Nothing is the story of Youssef Elgoing to keep Eddie from his stock-Mekki, the slumin-dwelling teenage son trade of single mother Rachida. Youssef has always been told that his father is deadwriting though, so when he finds out here, for his mother has lied to conceal the fact that he was born out of wedlockreaders, he plunges headlong into an identity crisis. He tracks down are his real father, a wealthy businessman called Nabil Amrani who is surprisingly enthusiastic about wanderings through his illegitimate sonlife'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 wantedwork.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670918296</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Aravind Adiga0008421714|title=The White TigerMrs March|author=Virginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Balram Halwai, a Bangalore entrepreneur The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (of sortswe know her first name only on the last page) and a natural philosopher, hears that there is a planned visit from the Chinese leader seemed to India either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to learn the source of Indian entrepreneurial talent. Balram knows local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, ''but isn't this the story first time he will be told by the Indian leader will be 's based a long way from the true story of modern Indian life, and so resolvescharacter on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, over the course of seven nightsprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''. Perhaps this would not have mattered, to write to except for the Chinese premier with fact that Johanna is the story whore of his life and his own journey from Nantes - ''a poor son of a rickshaw driver to the head of his own businessweak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843547228</amazonuk>''
}}