Open main menu

Changes

no edit summary
[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jane BowlesMatthew Tree|title=Two Serious LadiesWe'll Never Know|rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=First published in 1943, this is the story of Christina Goering and Frieda Copperfield who are two strained and constrained women who want to break free, although it is not entirely clear what it is they want Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to break free be different from. Society? The conventions of heterosexuality? The boredom of their female lives? Anywayhis father, Christina is a wealthy spinster who takes a companion, Miss Gamelon, into her home where they settle into a routine drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being catty to each other. Soon Christina's male friend, Arnold, moves in with them too, exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and later when they all move to a falling-down house on an island they are joined there by Arnold's father who has walked out on his wife. Christina leaves the house, trying to improve herself in some manner perhaps, but becoming a sort had endless crises of prostitute, falling into relationships as a 'kept woman'self confidence. Mrs Copperfield, meanwhile, takes a trip So Tim applied himself to Panama with her husband. The couple drift apart as Frieda finds herself attracted to the seedy underworld of prostitutionhis studies, drinking in bars cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and brothels, falling for a prostitute named Pacifica and leaving her husband to move in with herset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956003850</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joanna KavennaB0C47LV1PC|title=The Birth of LoveFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The Birth of Love has four interwoven storylines about characters in different timesCan you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, pastis the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, present and future. would it land? The common theme catch is birththat the answer for both could well be.... no.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057124517X</amazonuk>''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tishani DoshiMosby Woods|title=The Pleasure SeekersA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Essentially 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 the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a love story between two people - Babo from Madras and Sian from small-town Walespush for climate action there. You could argue A feeling that two more disparate cultures nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be hard to imagine. Factor in that valuable, right? Perhaps the novel opens most valuable asset in the headyhistory. Imagine then, free love days of the 1960s and a very entertaining story starts that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to unfold. get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0747590923</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Yasmina Khadra0571379559|title=What the Day Owes the NightThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Nine year old Algerian Muslim Younes is devastated when his father's farm 'The House of Broken Bricks'' is destroyed and his family have to move to the slum story of Jenane Jatofour people. However, while the rest of his family struggle, this turns out to Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be something of a blessing in disguise for Youneshappier there,who is rescued by his wealthy unclebut instead, a pharmacist. Renamed Jonas, he moves to live with his uncle and aunt she lives in the vibrant European district house on the riverbank, built of Rio Saladobroken bricks. There Insubstantial as it might look, he meets new friends Jean-Christophe, Simon, and Fabrice. But what seems to be an unbreakable friendship is tested to its limits by it's stood the return to the area passage of the beautiful Emilietime, storms and the boys' problems increase as Algeria fights for its independence from Francefloods. The book is narrated by Jonas at a much older age Her husband, Richard, lookingback at struggles to grow his lifevegetables, although the epilogue brings us to complete the present day as he visits a grave.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434019933</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Barbara Trapido|title=Sex delivery rounds - and Stravinsky|rating=4to bring in sufficient money.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Josh and Caroline They have twin boys - Sonny and their daughter Zoe live on an old red bus in OxfordMax, even though both have quite well paid jobs as an academic and headteacher. Caroline has spent her adult life deferring her plans for the future in order to support her widowed mother who lives in a house nearby. Josh’s job in the drama department of Bristol University does offer him some opportunities to escape abroad though, this time to a conference in his native South Africarainbow twins.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408802325</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Samantha Hunt|title=The Seas|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Sonny's colouring reflects his mother'The Seas'' follows the story of a nameless nineteen-year old girl who is lonely and adrift in a cruel coastal town so far to the north of the USA that the roads only run souths Jamaican heritage. She misses her Max takes after his father, an absent alcoholic sailor, while her silence-loving mother, who grew up on an isolated island with deaf parents, worries deeply about her. Early on in the story we get the distinct impression People don't believe that our narrator is not deemed they'normal' by her peers, who call her all sorts of unflattering things. With nothing to do in her small townre related, much less twins and no one to do it there's an assumption when Max is out with, his mother that she spends her time pining for a local alcoholic called Jude who is fifteen years her senior, and who refuses her amorous advances on the grounds that it would be wrong. As the story unfolds, Jude and the girl's relationship grows and changes, sometimes in unexpected wayshis nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849013934</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lionel ShriverClaire North|title=We Need To Talk About KevinHouse of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Politicians continue to argue that the solution to social issues lies with the family, so it is timely that at the heart of Lionel Shriver's 2005 Orange Prize winning novel is the issue of nature vs nurture - what makes a person like he or she is'What could matter more than love? Is the eponymous Kevin born evil or is he influenced by his mother's coldness towards him. There are no clear answers and that's what gives this brave book, which tackles the taboos that some mothers don't bond with their children, such power.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687349</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Ben Okri|title=Tales of Freedom|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Tales of Freedom is The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a book few months after where we left off. In the palace of two halvesOdysseus, with a short story entitled Comic Destiny taking up 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 majority throne of the bookWestern Isles. Comic Destiny Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is made up on the brink of a series fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of short pieces that follow on from each other Orestes, King of Mycenae, and are probably best described as being closer to prose poetry than anything elsehis sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846041597</amazonuk>0356516075
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Fernando PessoaKay Chronister|title=The Book of DisquietDesert Creatures|rating=54|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=If you try to read 'The Book of Disquiet' from cover to coverWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is almost oppressively melancholic. Nothing much happensa robotic takeover, and what we have is a collection world devoid of reveries and thoughts - almost water or a diarynuclear holocaust, but not quite - of existential musings about life, loneliness and the human condition. It's so introspective that after this genre is a while the monotony of the writer's mundane existence starts way for humans to wear on the readercathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'But''' I would urge you not to read this book like that. Rather, dip into it at random and you will find by Kay Chronister is a new work of undeniable geniuspost-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It's quite simply is a masterpiece of modernist writingshocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687357</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Jeanne PetersonEric LaRocca|title=Falling to HeavenThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Emma Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and Gerald Kittredge are either very brave or very naiveprocess them. TheyMost horror fiction feature a 've made 'Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the long journey from America to Tibetend of the story, beatable. Hardly on the tourist trail and theyEric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There''re is not missionaries, so why are they there? This novel like that. It is a serious collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and sweeping narrative trying to answer humiliation. Horrors that very question - linger and many moreare harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>185168736X</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Carsten JensenMadelaine Lucas|title=We, the DrownedThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In 1848''Love, Laurids Madsen and other men of the smalltown of Marstal go I'd read, was supposed to war to fight the Germans, be a light and an explosionflings him up to heavenweightless feeling, as far as anyone can tell. But Lauridsreturns, claiming his sea boots were too heavy but I had always longed for him to stay upthere – only to be lost to Marstal anyway, as he abandons his familyto sail the high seas.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846550963</amazonuk>}}gravity''
{{newreview|author=Matthew Hooton|title=Deloume Road|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=A tinyTold from a retrospective view, rural community a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a handful of characters is at man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the heart of this novelsummer after. And Set against the thing that binds them all together is Deloume Road. Hooton gives over every chapter (and some are very short) to one backdrop of his characters an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24- Ireneyear-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, Andydepicting its all-consuming nature, the butcher. Each is very different from the otherhow it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224087657</amazonuk>0861546490
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Trevor ByrneMichael Grothaus|title=Ghosts and LightningBeautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Denny comes home to Dublin from Wales after his mum dies suddenly, ''But fearing something and hangs around drinking and taking drugs with his sister, her girlfriend and some of their mates, while he wonders what having it come to do with himself. There pass are some practical matters to sort out too, such as the nasty older brother who owns their house and wants his siblings out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847673309</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Helen Dunmore|title=The Betrayal|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Andrei is a perceptive and deeply conscientious doctor, a young rheumatologist and paediatrician working in a Leningrad hospital just after the terrible siege, during the last days of Stalin’s dictatorship. He is as quick to notice symptoms in his colleagues as in his young patients. When he is approached by Russov, a fellow physician, he registers his confrere’s pervading smell of fear. This is all part of the pathology of the times; life as it is lived under a tyrannical dictatorship. A dictatorship determined to pursue a purge – a vendetta directed against doctors, particularly Jewish doctors. The sweating Russov manages to inveigle Andrei Aleksayev into treating a very sick child, Gorya, the son of Volkhov, who is a tyrannical and high ranking secret police officer. Therapeutic failure, in all probability, could result in vengeance, arrest and devastating effects on Andrei’s loving wife Anna and her young adolescent brother, Kolya.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905490593</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mari Strachan|title=The Earth Hums in B Flat|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Choosing a child as the viewpoint character of a novel requires confidence and imagination. To succeed is to convince the reader of events at two levels – the child's world within the adult world surrounding herdifferent things. The very best novels about childhood, like say Harper Lee's classic, 'To Kill a Mockingbird', also reflect a wider cultural truth. In 'The Earth Hums in B FlatAnd I', a claustrophobic Welsh village is both protection and straitjacket as the characters struggle m willing to cope with their family secrets. If that sounds a bit tacky, bet most of what we fear not, because the viewpoint character, Gwenniwill never happen, is all whippet and sharp corners.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847673058</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Philip Sington|title=The Einstein Girl|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The two central characters are (and or we've come across can take steps to change it many times before) a psychiatrist (in this case Kirsch) and his patient (known as the Einstein Girl) and hence the novel's title. The case of this girl is intriguing, not least because both doctor and patient had accidentally met prior to her admission to hospital. Kirsch appears immediately smitten - which may be a problem. He's already spoken for. In a nutshell, the Einstein Girl has lost her memory. Kirsch finds more and more of his professional time given over to her recovery, back to mental well-being. It becomes a long and complicated journey, for both of them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535793</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Mitchell|title=The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='The belly craves food, the tongue craves water, the heart craves love, and the mind craves stories.'
This is ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the book to satisfy that last craving. It is rich in stories from the graphic opening chapter to the poignant closing lines. Everyone has a tale to tell question of identity and even minor characters are fleshed out with histories that amuse, horrify or enthralacceptance. Their stories made me think about how sometimes Of what at the time seems it means to be an insignificant choice can define the course of a lifehuman. Here Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the characters’ choices unleash a cascade development of consequencestechnology is exciting or frightening. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340921560</amazonuk>191458564X
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michelle LovricJennifer Saint|title=The Book of Human SkinAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=''Ye can't take the slither out ovva snake.''
 
So says Gianni, valet in a wealthy eighteenth century Venetian household. The master, a merchant, divides his time between Italy and Peru, where he deals in silver. But the merchant isn't the serpent - his son Minguillo is. On the night an earthquake ripped through Peru and deposited fanatical nun Sor Loreta at the convent in Arequipa, Minguillo was born - a serpent in his family's midst. His own mother couldn't bear to nurse him and his father went into denial, making more and more frequent trips to a South American home free of sociopathic progeny.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140880588X</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Elif Shafak
|title=The Forty Rules of Love
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This is a sixth novel from best-selling Turkish author''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, Elif ShafakI vowed. Set in twelfth century AnatoliaI would take my place, two famous characters from Islamic history meet not just in a gorgeously real worldthe name of the goddess. A delicate contemporary US love story is wrapped around It was for the richsake of my name, meaty historical fictiontoo. DonAtalanta''t be misled by the dodgy-sounding title!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918733</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Rebecca Goldstein|title=36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction |rating=2|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='Atheist with a Soul' Cass Seltzer has achieved sudden celebrity thanks to his new bestselling bookPrincess. This has led to a job offer from Harvard, and he waits for his girlfriend to return, while thinking back on past experiencesWarrior. Most of these experiences involved his old mentor Professor Klapper, an ex-lover, Roz Margolis, and a six year old genius mathematician AzaryaLover. The characters frustrate and amuse in roughly equal measure, while the plot meanders towards a sort-of-conclusion as Cass debates the existence of God with Nobel laureate Felix FidleyHero.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848871538</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Lorrie Moore|title=A Gate At The Stairs|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Bass-playingAbandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, 20 year-old Tassie Keltjin Atalanta is studying an eclectic range raised under the protective eye of subjects (Geologythe goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, British Literatureone who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, Sufisma fierce band of warriors, Soundtracks descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to War Movies fight in Artemis' name and Wine Tasting) carve out her own legendary place in post 9/11 USA when she lands a job as a child minder for chef, Sarah Bink who is adopting an African-American babyhistory. A Gate at the Stairs What follows is at times a very funny whirlwind of challenges and at others a sad reflection of growing up in modern Americadiscovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>057119530X</amazonuk>1472292154
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eleanor CattonAmanthi Harris|title=The RehearsalBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you are Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the type southern coast of person who wants their novels her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to start be at the beginningVilla, how it became her home, build character and plot before coming to a satisfying the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'they all lived happily ever after' ending, then avoid for this book at all costs. You will hate it. But I cannot remember when I last enjoyed a first time gentle and yet subtly violent novel as much as this one. It is ambitious, daring Padma's present fails to escape her past and complexmuch like the musical score of a film, and yet it works beautifullythat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847081398</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Barbara Kingsolver178563335X|title=The LacunaSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ten years ago, Barbara KingsolverWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's [[The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver|Poisonwood Bible]] revealed the grim politics a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the Congochildren up. The Lacuna has Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a similarly political themesobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, this time turning her focus on Mexico the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the USA in vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the 1940s job for more than thirty years. Rachel and 1950sChristopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057125263X</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Eagleman1398515388|title=Sum: Tales from The Boy and the AfterlivesDog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=For some reason I find myself unable to start First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this review, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. So I'll mention this book starts with the end, The result was complete and see where we go from thereutter devastation. Of courseThe deaths were uncountable, that's and the key – this book does just loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that – starts with many pets were separated from their owners came far down the end of our human life here on Earth (or wherever you happen to be reading this) and posits forty possibilities list of what happens thereafter, in priorities but - six months after the hereaftertsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. ItHe wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's not so much 'Five People You Meet comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in Heaven' as 'Forty Heavens you Might Meet People In'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847674283</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=M J Hyland0989715337|title=This Is HowPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Things weren't going too badly for Patrick Oxtoby. He's intelligent and did Some frogs had gotten into the 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 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 awful.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184767383X</amazonuk>}}'
{{newreview|author=John Buchan|title=Sick Heart River|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=This was a surprise ''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, naked except for mehis beaten leather hat. It’s rare for a book to come to my attention from the reviewing gods that’s a rerelease Long strands of a 1930s noveltheir eggs wove around him, and one that surfaced a couple sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of years ago now. But when it strikes me as startlingly Conradian, updated for the times, dogs leaned over the opening and perfectly able to stand alongside one barked down at the strange noise of literature’s greats, then it’s just a sign those reviewing gods are on the ballbuckets as he filled them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184697030X</amazonuk>}}''
{{newreview|author=Jim Crace|title=All That Follows|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Leonard Lessing How is a sofa socialist. He avoids corporate brands both in food and that for an opening? The style of this novel 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 form of thing. Onceinterconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, eighteen long years ago in Texas in 2006, he came very close to some real direct action. But he bottled itturning on a sixpence. And nowauthor Marco North, who has 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 Lermonmost wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he of Austin 2006 and no stranger means 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 Summitgo on. |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-YoneDaisy Hildyard|title=The Road to WantingEmergency|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We first meet Na Ga in her hotel room in Wanting, on the Chinese side The summary of the border with Na Ga's native Burma (or Myanmar for the more geographically pedantic, although Burma is used throughout this book). She is attempting doesn't come close to commit suicide, but explaining what is interrupted by news from the hotel receptionist who tells her that her guide across the border, Mr Jiang, has just committed suicide himself. You might by now have the impression that this is not a cheery kind of book, and you'd be right up to a point, although it's certainly not without its light touches. In fact it's often quite beautiful, which makes the exposure of done with the seedier side so much more shockingpremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184086</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Roddy DoyleSally Oliver |title=The Dead RepublicWeight 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=Henry left in 1922Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, after a delight. I will agree with the Irish Civil War. It is now 1951. After his long exile, nothing first – tremendous is as he expected. He revisits an old home to find no trace that understatement – but 'a house ever stood there. The project that has brought him back delight' is not as he expected. The Quiet Man will be a hugely successful film for John Ford, but perhaps using the life portrayed expression in it is a way I'm not Henry Smart's life, and the portrait familiar with. I have to confess my ignorance of Irish politics and everyday life in the film is not one he recognisesSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. In his late 40s From the little I have read (in translation, he feels he is an old man already, alone with his memories of I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the wife and family he lostmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224090097</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
 {{newreview|author=James Kelman|title=If it is Your Life|rating=3|genre=Short Stories|summary=''If This Is Your Life'' is not so much a collection of short stories as a collection of pieces of creative writing. Kelman doesn't really do 'stories'. In nineteen pieces of writing of varying length from just a single page to more lengthy pieces, such as the story 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 health.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241142423</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Yoko Ogawa|title=The Housekeeper and the Professor |rating=5|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 doesn'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 up in New York, but not in a des res, in an altogether grittier part of the city. ' ... his childhood in East Harlem, darkness framing the blistered stoop, the blinding asphalt, the smell of garbage cans and urine.' He's had an unfortunate start in life. Mother, white, father (unknown) black so that makes the young Augustus an in-between, a not-sure, a neither-one-colour-nor-the-other. Today, in the 21st century, no one would raise an eyebrow, bat an eyelid. But this novel is set in the 1960s where racial tensions abound. Yes, even in cosmopolitan cities such as New York.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847394175</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Eleanor Thom|title=The Tin-Kin|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Dawn is a single mother who has been avoiding a lot of things for a long time. When her aunt, who raised Dawn as a daughter, dies, Dawn finds the key to a cupboard which she was forbidden to look into as a child. Inside she finds clues to her family history, links to a Traveller Community, unearthing a journey that sees her finding her roots. We also witness her struggle to renew her complicated relationship with her family and her efforts to escape the ever-present memory of her abusive husband.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715639013</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Patricia Duncker|title=The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=It's rural France, and 2000 is barely begun, when hunters come across a spread of human corpses in the mountains. Several families, all in the same cult, seem to have killed themselves on their path to wherever. If so, this is a problem, for the last time it happened, in Switzerland a few years previous, nobody could work out why – and who was there to dispose of some of the evidence. This isn't a problem for the policeman involved, as he fell desperately in love with the investigative judge in collaborating on the initial case. Combining again, they see a link with everybody involved in both cases, a famous conductor /composer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408807041</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Marilyn Chin|title=Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen: A Manifesto in 41 Tales |rating=5|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 the humour of it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241144612</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paolo GiordanoJennifer Saint|title=The Solitude of Prime NumbersElektra
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='Elektra'The Solitude by Jennifer Saint tells the story of Prime Numbers'' follows three women who live in the lives heavily male dominated world of Alice and Mattia from childhood to middle ageAncient Greece. Alice is a wilful anorexicCassandra, Clytemnestra, scarred by a childhood skiing accident and an overbearing father. Mattia is an reclusive self-harmer trying to live with Elektra are all bit players in the guilt story of having been responsible for his disabled twin sister's deaththe Trojan War. Their paths cross at a school friend's party during a painful adolescence Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and their lives are destined to intertwine throughout the coming years, despite the chronic awkwardness of their courtshipmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552775983</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Juli Zeh8409290103|title=Dark MatterIf Only|author=Matthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Dark Matter'' is translated from German 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 nothing has been 'lost in translation' herethereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. The lives Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the two very bright academics are interwoven throughoutalthough we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. Students Sebastian and Oskar are the very best of friends; It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, itwas that he didn's almost as if they share the same heartbeatt care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and other children. However, as they grow into adulthood real life comes along and tends The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get in the young man on his way. Sebastian settles for domestic bliss. Their friendship cools off, becomes a little tense and strained.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846552087</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Margaret ForsterAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Isa and MayRed is My Heart|rating=43.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Isamay is a would-be academic [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and she's writing a thesis about grandmothers read in history, inspiredmy house. And so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one suspectswas, by her own grandmothersand is, Isa black and May. Her efforts are constantly diverted by the present needs of her grandmothers white and the secrets about their pasts which rise to the surface when she least expects them. There's another complication toored. Isamay is in her thirties and has never wanted a childYes, but reconsiders, despite the fact that her partner, Ian, is adamant that he doesn't want children. The more Isamay delveshas an artistic collaborator on this piece, the more she realises that there are secrets in Ianand I think it's past too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184663</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kathryn Stockett|title=The Help|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Jackson, Mississippi: 1960. The talk at the bridge club and the tennis club is of what Jackie Kennedy is wearing. They're white women, of course and they're free to play because a coloured woman will be looking after the children, doing the shopping and cleaning the house. They're trusted possible to bring the children up, but they're say not trusted to be honest about the silver. Aibileen is raising her seventeenth white child but something hardened in her heart when her son died whilst the white bosses looked the other way. They took his body to the coloureds' hospital and rolled it off one page lacks the back influence of the truck and leftsome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141039280</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Olga GrushinB098FFFBH9|title=The Concert TicketSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright
|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 Fourteen-year-old Rachel is probably best known for his journalism, publishing regularly 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 Indian pressanimal world. She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, in Prospecta lecturer at Imperial College, and perhaps most prolifically in Time magazine. He has won acclaim for his memoir: Stranger to History in which heLondon, raised by his Indian Sikh motherKate and her twin, traces his absent Muslim father across Nick. Kate runs the border family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Pakistan – and also for his translations Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of the short stories of Saadat Hasan Mantoinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918504</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom ConnollyYancey Williams|title=The Spider TrucesCrosshairs of the Devil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The title of this debut novel by Tom Connolly Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is enigmaticgetting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, mysterious. It draws the reader in finds himself living - just like a fly to a spideror imprisoned, from Eddie's web. And point of view - in fairness 'The Spider Truces' does exactly what it say on room 315 of the tin as the main characterGarden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, EllisJenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is obsessed and terrified going to keep Eddie from his stock-in equal measure-trade of writing though, of spiders. ... and when you live in an old houseso here, as the O'Rourke family doesfor his readers, there are plenty of spiders and other creepy crawlies abouthis wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956251528</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mary Yukari Waters0008421714|title=The FavoritesMrs March|author=Virginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This story is set in Kyoto, Japan, starting in June 1978The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Fourteen year old Sarah Rexford and Everyone but Mrs March (we know her Japanese mother, Yoko, have come back from first name only on the US last page) seemed to stay with family for a few weekseither be reading it or had already done so. Sarah Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was born and brought up in Japan wrapping the bread, ''but has lived in isn't this the US with her mother and white American father for five years. first time he's based a character on you?'' She is very conscious of mentioned that Johanna, the differences between life in Kyoto and in Fielderprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''s Butte, California. Here in Kyoto Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the womenwhore of Nantes - ''a weak, including Sarah and her mumplain, go shopping every day for fooddetestable, and the food is very different – in an opening scenepathetic, Sarah is trying to explain to her grandfather what she normally has for breakfast in the USunloved, and becoming aware of the gulf between her life in Japan and in Californiaunloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847392334</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreview|author=Rose Tremain|title=Trespass|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Set in the hills of Southern France, Trespass is a novel about sibling love and rivalry, disputed territory and ultimately revenge. In the French corner are Aramon Lunel, resident of the Mas Lunel, and his sister Audrun who lives in a cottage in the grounds. In the English corner are Victoria Verey, a garden designer, and her partner, an untalented watercolourist, Kitty. The catalyst that brings these together is the arrival in France of Anthony Verey, Victoria's sister whose exclusive antiques business in London is failing and who decides Move on to follow his sister in finding a new life in France. Aramon is tempted to sell his family Mas by the lure of 'foreign' money even if that means that his sister's house has to be destroyed to secure the deal.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701177942</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Castle Freeman|title=All That I Have|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Castle Freeman may sound like two thirds of a firm of provincial solicitors but thankfully this Castle Freeman is 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 and his practical yet low-key approach to maintaining order in rural Vermont. Not for Wing the gung ho approach to fighting crime. He doesn't wear a uniform, he drives a battered old car rather than the standard issue sheriff's wagon and his gun, so ubiquitous in US law enforcement, is safely tucked away in his bottom drawer. Everyone in the area knows the sheriff and by and large they respect him and his slightly unorthodox way of doing business.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715639021</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]