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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David SzalayMatthew Tree|title=SpringWe'll Never Know

|summary=Narrated Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a variety drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of points being exceptional at any of view, ''Spring'' relates the relationship of James his artistic passions all failed miserably and Katherine. He is an often failed entrepreneurial character who falls for the charms had endless crises of Katherine, currently working in a London luxury hotel as an interim job, and separated from her photographer-husbandself confidence. The problem for James is that Katherine is only interested in the pursuit of that perfect happiness scenario and so analyses her feelings constantly - much So Tim applied himself to the distress of James. But this is a lot more his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than a 'males don't understand females' talehis daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224091263</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Manuel RivasB0C47LV1PC|title=Books Burn BadlyFragility|author=Mosby Woods

|summary=I normally start with Can you make a brief summary of the novel I’m reviewing''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, but Rivas’ sprawling epic is close to impossible to do anything ‘brief’ with. While the question should you make it starts in 1881, it’s ? Or is the book burning witnessed by Hercules the boxer during the Spanish Civil War in 1936 which gives this novel its title and it floats through several other erasquestion if you did, eventually finishing more than a century after would it startedland? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... Along the way, we meet a young washerwoman who sees souls in the river, Olinda the matchgirl, Gabriel the stammerer, and the Judge of Oklahoma, star of a series of Western novels Gabriel’s father readsno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099520338</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Edward Hogan|title=The Hunger Trace|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=We're plunged into a crisis straight away. Some of the animals from the wildlife park have escaped and are now running amok. They are Maggie's responsibility and she has to try to round them up without danger to either human or themselves. ItFragility's a tough, physical duty so it's a good job she can rely on her neighbour Louisa is set as an extra pair the city of hands. Christopher is unreliable Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to say emerge from the least, he's never there when you need him. But is Louisa any better?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847371248</amazonuk>restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Guillaume MussoMosby Woods|title=Where Would I Be Without You?A Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=I love The West isn't the cover, which I think angles this book firmly towards womendominant force it once was. With that old Beach Boys hit from Nobody in the Sixties as the title, it encapsulates everything you need West is quite sure how to know when choosing mend this bookor even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. It's not really crime fictionA war here, in a push for climate action there. A feeling that it lacks a whodunnit aspect nobody is in favour of following the protagonistsactual charge. Imagine then, there was a French cop and a Scottish master criminal, through a romantic entanglement and into man with precognition. Imagine the jaws of death. The interest is strategic advantage in which of the two men this asset; a man who can tell you what will gain command happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the other – and who is really driving the action – when both their attentions are focused on the same girlmost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906040346</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Stephen Kelman0571379559|title=Pigeon EnglishThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=45

|summary=Eleven-year-old Harri ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the fastest boy story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Year 7Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. It Insubstantial as it might look, it's true. He won stood the race passage of time, storms and everythingfloods. Harri is quite new Her husband, Richard, struggles to London. Hegrow his vegetables, his mother to complete the delivery rounds - and his big sister Lydia to bring in sufficient money. They have come from Ghana to make a new life twin boys - Sonny and live on Max, the ninth floor of a tower block on a sink estaterainbow twins. Harri Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father . People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and little sister Agnes are still in Ghana, saving up the air fare, which there's an assumption when Max is taking quite a long time. Agnes is beginning to talk alreadyout with his mother that she's his nanny. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408810638</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Linden MacIntyreClaire North|title=The Bishop's ManHouse of Odysseus

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Duncan MacAskill (he eschews the title ''FatherWhat could matter more than love?'' whenever he can get away with it) is ostensibly dean of a Catholic university in Nova Scotia. It's a job he enjoys. Approaching fifty years of age, he is, in general, happy with his life.But the Catholic Church is strong on history and MacAskill cannot escape his own. The son of a bastard father and a foreign mother, he was lucky even to be able to follow his vocation and enter the church at all. For most of his career he has been "The Bishop's Man". |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224089722</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Aamer Hussein|title=The Cloud Messenger|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Mehran, growing up in Karachi, hears his father and sister speaking about London all the time, as if it were an exotic location. He ends up living there as an adult, but in the rainy, dreary climate he turns back to the poetry of his homeland, dreaming of other places. As he travels between Italy, India, Pakistan and London we watch his relationships grow and die and wonder if he will ever truly find a place where he'll feel that he belongs.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846590892</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=P G Wodehouse|title=The Crime Wave at Blandings|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Therefollow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca''s picks up a crime wave few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Blandings Castle Troy and bumbling Lord Emsworth is right at its centrethen by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. This is somewhat surprising as Emsworth (or 'Clarence!' Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to his sister Constance) is really only happy when heIthaca's reading his favourite bookshores, Whiffle's 'The Care Queen Penelope is on the brink of the Pig'a fragile peace. It frequently soothes where other restoratives fail. The problem began One that shatters however with an air rifle and an unwanted tutor, but before the afternoon was out most return of the inhabitants Orestes, King of Blandings Castle seemed to have shotMycenae, and his sister Elektra, been shot at or left. If it hadn't been written by P G Wodehouse it would all be most confusingseeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141196289</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ian McEwanKay Chronister|title=SolarDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Ian McEwan's Michael Beard With a world that is possibly the most ignoble Nobel prize winner there has ever been. He's gloriously obnoxious and hateful in becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost every waymasochistic thrill. Since winning his Nobel prize he has rested on his Nobel laurels and has traded on his reputation rather than his achievements in his specialist area Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of physics. When water or a nuclear holocaust, this book starts, he's on his fifth wife having managed genre is a way for humans to wreck all previous marriages by his compulsive infidelitycathartically experience their most existential fears. He's short, balding, ageing, obese, bigoted, and something of an opportunist, particularly if it means he can be lazy and get away with something. In short, which he is, he's morally vacant. But what makes Beard an effective creation, and what carries us along with him despite his obnoxiousness, is that he knows all these things about himself. HeDesert Creatures's rather like Shakespeare's Richard III by Kay Chronister is a new work of post- he's honest with apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the reader and himself about what he fears that exist for humanity today. It is doinga shocking novel that still manages to find hope. Sure he would like to change, but talking about it isn't doing it, is it?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099549026</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Lisa MooreEric LaRocca|title=FebruaryThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=When the phone rings in 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 process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the middle end of the nightstory, Helen thinks it must be bad news againbeatable. Nearly 27 years ago her oil rig worker husband died at sea on 14 February 1982 (ValentineEric LaRocca's Day), leaving her with three children and ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a fourth on collection of short stories more interested in the way. This timehorrors of illness, no one has died – her son John is travelling round the world but a woman he had a brief fling with is pregnant with his babygrief and humiliation. He was phoning from SingaporeHorrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''. What should he do?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546280</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sebastian FaulksMadelaine Lucas|title=Faulks on FictionThirst for Salt|rating=3.5

|summary=''Faulks on Fiction'' is effectively the book of the TV show of the book. Even more confusinglyLove, itI's a book of reviews of works of British fiction so this is really a review of a book of reviews. The TV show hasd read, at the time of writing, yet was supposed to air, but the concept is to talk, not so much about the books themselves, but of the characters within them, separated into four distinct character types; heros, lovers, snobs and villains. Even ignoring the fact that characters often don't fit wholly into these descriptions and that the concept might prove be a use for those strange Venn diagrams you learnt about at school light and have never found a use forweightless feeling, and the inevitable quibbles about which books and characters could also have been included that is the problem with lists, the result is strangely uneven. but I was left wondering if this might indeed work better as a TV series, but as a stand alone book, it is more one to be dipped into than read cover to cover.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846079594</amazonuk>}}had always longed for gravity''

{{newreview|author=Nathacha Appanah|title=The Last Brother|rating=4Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Raj and his two beloved brothers live on Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a Mauritian sugar plantationman twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. World War II rages far away and close too, but Raj is blissfully unaware Set against the backdrop of anything beyond his immediate surroundings. Life is poor and hard and Rajan isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's father takes out the privations of his life on his sons and his wife deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all- drunken beatings are a regular occurrence. But his mother is loving and kindconsuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and skilled at healing, familial relationships and his brothers are constant playmateshow it altered her irrevocably. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849164010</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreview|author=Bernhard Schlink and Carol Brown Janeway|title=The Reader|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=It's West Germany, 1958. A 15-year-old schoolboy, Michael Berg, is suffering a long bout 'Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of hepatitisidentity and acceptance. When he recovers he returns Of what it means to the flat of a tram conductor, 36-year-old Hanna Schmitz, to thank her for taking care of him the day he fell sickbe human. The two of them begin a secret affair that becomes a routine for months: after school Of what is real and work, Michael would read to herwhat is artificial, and then they would make love and bathe each other. Both whether the development of them fall in lovetechnology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0753804700</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anthony QuinnJennifer Saint|title=Half of the Human RaceAtalanta

|summary=At heart, 'Half of the Human Race' is a 'will they, won't they' love story featuring an upper class, emerging county cricketer, Will Maitland, and a middle class strong, educated, cricket-loving woman, Constance Callaway. But this is so much more than a question of will the cricketer bowl a maiden over? It's a novel about friendship, love, fighting for what you believe in and, also, surprisingly, about celebrity.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224087290</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=William Styron|title=The Suicide Run|rating=4|genre=Short Stories|summary=A WW2 naval soldier, guarding a prison island for those found guilty at courtmartials, is forced to wonder if he is winning his own battles against those arriving and leaving. A soldier remembers calming memories, and those causing tension, I was as worthy as he rests up before action. And for a highly-charged young man, there may be too much risk to be found in his high-octane downtime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532220</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Alon Hilu|title=The House any one of Rajani|rating=3them.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''The House of Rajani'' is set in Jaffa, Palestine in 1895-96. The narrative alternates between the two main charactersI would get on board that ship, both telling their stories in the first person. Luminsky and his wife travel from Europe to Jaffa to start a new life thereI vowed. Luminsky has studied agronomy in preparation for his new lifeI would take my place, and he and his wife have both been involved not just in the Zionist movement promoting an ideal name of the Jewish people returning to their homelandgoddess. He is looking forward to putting his studies to good use, but is soon disappointed when he arrives by both It was for the quality sake of the land occupied by Jewish colonists and their work ethic. Far from the ideal of self-sufficiencymy name, they are buying fruit, grain and vegetables from the Palestinianstoo. He is also frustrated by his wife’s lack of interest in having sex with him.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535998</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''

{{newreview|author=Jon McGregor|title=Even the Dogs|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I loved Jon McGregor's previous two novels, 'If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things' and 'So Many Ways to Begin'Princess. They're both lyrical, poetically observed works so I was really looking forward to reading his latest bookWarrior. It is, unfortunately, quite a different sort of storyLover.Hero..|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408809478</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Simon Thirsk|title=Not Quite White|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The story alternates between the two main characters: Welsh Gwalia (that's Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a sheson, by Atalanta is raised under the way) and English Jon Bull (and you get an idea protective eye of the fun Thirsk has with his names goddess Athemis and also characters) as fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the two meet up for opportunity comes – to join the first time. Lots Argonauts, a fierce band of Welsh names such as Gwenfer and Gwenlais warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and also lots of (mainly) unpronounceable carve out her own legendary place names including the glorious - wait for it - Llanchwaraetegdanygelynin history. Thirsk has also scattered Welsh vocabulary all over the place: but many What follows is a whirlwind of the words are easily understood (Anti for Auntie challenges and discovery and Yncl for Uncle etc) so you donthrough it, Atalanta must remember Artemis't really have to keep referring to the comprehensive Appendixfatal warning: that if she marries, unless you want toit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184851199X</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nigel FarndaleAmanthi Harris|title=The BlasphemerBeautiful Place|rating=3.5

|summary=Daniel Kennedy is Padma, a soon-young Sri Lankan, has returned to-be professor the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of zoology and her home country. This is a militant atheistplace she spent her formative years. With It is not a beautiful and successful dentist for a partnerplace she was born into, and an intelligent, precocious nine-year-old daughter, his life is what you might call gilded. Novels but the one she thinks of as they are, though, things soon begin to fall aparthome. On their way How she came to a holiday in be at the Galapagos IslandsVilla, how it became her home, Daniel and Nancythe machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score''s plane crashes into the sea. Daniel swims for miles to get help this gentle and, just as all seems lost and heyet subtly violent novel. Padma's on present fails to escape her past and much like the point musical score of drowninga film, a mysterious figure appears and guides him to that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the shore and rescueVilla. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552776173</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=F Scott Fitzgerald178563335X|title=The Great GatsbySea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor

|summary=When we first meet Rachel Bird she'No — Gatsby turned out all right at s a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the end; it children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is what preyed on Gatsbya lovely place, what foul dust floated but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the wake of his dreams job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that temporarily closed out my interest in a walk on the abortive sorrows and shortbeach would do them some good -winded elations of menit was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0140620184</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=1398515388|title=Faiza Guene The Boy and Sarah Ardizzonethe Dog|titleauthor=Bar BaltoSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=JoelFirst of all, 'The Rink'it was the earthquake, is deep in the owner of ocean floor, which created the local bar tsunami and this, in town and has been found murderedturn, stabbed caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and naked in a pool of bloodutter devastation. He's an opinionatedThe deaths were uncountable, racist, lecherous busy-body, so there's no shortage and the loss of suspectslivelihoods was widespread. Faiza Guene creates an intriguing, interesting murder-mystery as we hear The fact that many pets were separated from each suspect in their own voice and follow owners came far down the story through to its conclusion to discover who really murdered 'The Rink'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184221</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Salvatore Scibona|title=The End|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Salvatore Scibona is one list of a new breed of American authors who in his first book has decided to take on priorities but - six months after the great American literary novel. Has he succeeded? The End is tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a novel that while being dog outside a part of convenience store. He wasn't a modern burgeoning literary movement very much looks back at dog person but the great American literature tradition of the last century. In Scibonaconvenience store owner's beautifully crafted prose we see glimpses of Saul Bellow, the vibrancy of Kerouac comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the sensibilities of Updike, a heady mix to be suredog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224091492</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Santiago Roncagliolo and Edith Grossman0989715337|title=Red AprilPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North

|summary=The very first sentence concerns the sudden discovery of a body. Judging by its dreadful state, not only some form of foul play but also some form of torture has been used. No one locally knows anything at all. Looks like a tough investigation looms for local Prosecutor by the name of Chacaltana. He is the central character in the novel. He comes across as a bit of a plodder, a bit of a dullard, someone who is methodical to a ridiculous level in his line of work. His line of work is also low-level. But, even so, he is a man who takes pride in what he does. So when he becomes involved in this macabre body incident, he gives it his full concentration. It becomes obvious he will leave no stone unturned to try and solve this crime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843548313</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Charles Dickens|title=The Christmas Books|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I'd just like to say at the outset that after reviewing mainly contemporary authors, it's a refreshing change to have Some frogs had gotten into the chance to review one of 'the classics'. (I hope I do the great man justice). Personally, I love the classics and I've read a number of Dickens' - including 'Bleak House' and 'Hard Times' but I haven't actually read 'A Christmas Carolwell.' I couldn't help but smile when Michael Morpurgo (who writes the short introduction to this book) says 'It is very difficult to sit and read Dickens' Christmas Books in a Devon garden on a sunny day ...' Well, would you believe my luck when I say that, as I'm writing this review, it's snowing hard outside? Everything is, well, Christmassy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095626686X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Waguih Ghali|title=Beer in the Snooker Hall|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Waguih Ghali's only novel, first published in 1964, is set in 1950s Egypt where the English have just left and the country is in great social and political change, and is under Army rule. Ram is an English educated, Copt Egyptian of aristocratic background, but his side of the family are penniless and dependent on the good will of manipulative, rich aunts. Ram and his best friend Font (who works in the eponymous snooker club) struggle to come to terms with this emerging Egypt. These are the facts of the plot, such as it is, but in reality this book is as ambiguous as the situation in which Ram finds himself. The book is like a delicate soufflé; it appears light on the surface but is deeply measured and brings out a myriad of conflicting views.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668756X</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Chester Himes|title=If He Hollers Let Him Go|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=If He Hollers Let Him Go, first published ''Walter stood waist-deep in 1945the fragrant water, is written from the perspective naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of Robert Jonestheir eggs wove around him, an African-American working in the defence shipyards in Californiasticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. The book is full Two of anger about racial inequalities the dogs leaned over the opening and Himes pulls no punches in his depiction barked down at the strange noise of the life of a young black man in a white worldbuckets as he filled them. It must have been shocking at the time of publication, but how does it stand up in today's more racially integrated world?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687381</amazonuk>}}'

{{newreview|author=Charles Ellingworth|title=Silent Night|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=How is that for an opening? The front cover describes style of this book as 'astonishing' and has 'novel in the mark form of a classic.' We're introduced interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to one of the two female characterswistful and musing, Mimi: turning on a young, German womansixpence. It's 1944 in Eastern Germany and if I say that things are grimAnd author Marco North, I'm sure you'll appreciate that it is an understatement. Mimi is obviously an intelligent and curious individual and she's certainly not happy to be living in the back-of-beyond. But then again, things could be ten times worse for her. She could be living in Berlin picking through who has the rubble. Out most wonderful turn of the blue, she encounters a man - a French nationalphrase, starts as it happens and things change dramatically. We learn that along with his fellow countrymen, Mimi's husband is absent, not at home. So when she acknowledges her attraction for another man - and someone who is not German at that, she seems exhilarated, shocked and perhaps just a little repelled, all at the same timehe means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704372126</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elfriede JelinekDaisy Hildyard|title=The Piano TeacherEmergency

|summary=Erika is a single woman in her thirties, who, despite the best efforts of her mother, did not succeed as a concert musician, but instead works as a teacher at the Vienna Conservatory. I say best efforts, I mean outright pressure. Erika and her mother make for an unusual relationship - the older relying on the glory, company and complete obedience of the younger, the daughter sharing a bed with her mother even at this stage of her life. All this is until a young student at the school decides he will be a younger lover for Erika, and forces his will into the household. But who, should such a relationship actually form, is going to be the power-maker?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687373</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Maria Angels Anglada|title=The Auschwitz Violin|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=In Poland in the early 1990s, a violin sings. The maestro who owns it produces such a music from it, people are forced to take note. Theyof this book doesn'd be even more amazed if she could bring herself t come close to state exactly how explaining what is done with the instrument came to bepremise. For this was the work of Daniel, suffering in a subsidiary camp to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Stumbles, chances, half-lies, all conspire to allow Daniel to take time off his enforced labour and engage in his real-world career. But is there a price to pay in doing something you love, just for a man you can only hate?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849016437</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Antonio TabucchiSally Oliver |title=Pereira MaintainsThe 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

|summary=The summer of 1938 was particularly hot and oppressive in Lisbon and Dr Pereira was sufferingEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. He was overweight to start I will agree with and the situation wasnfirst – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight't helped by is perhaps using the amount of sugary lemonade which he drankexpression in a way I'm not familiar with. He was the cultural editor of an undistinguished newspaper and felt over-burdened by the amount of content he had I have to produce but this was better than the political side confess my ignorance of the paper as he was sure that he wanted nothing to do with European politicsSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. Something of a recluseFrom the little I have read (in translation, his closest, indeed only, confidante was a picture of his dead wife. All that was about I don't read Spanish) there does seem to change when he met Francesco Monteiro Rossi - be a strangely charismatic young man who would bring Pereira to tendency towards the fantastical – the point of committing an act of reckless rebellionmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847675719</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chloe AridjisJennifer Saint|title=Book of CloudsElektra

|summary=We first meet 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the main character (she's mentioned on almost every page) Tatiana as a newish resident story of Berlin. She's Mexican so quite a difference three women who live in cultures for her to deal with, as well as the weather aspectheavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Many episodes Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in her life seem to take place in a Berlin which is bitterly coldthe story of the Trojan War. Aridjis chooses Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and the first person for her novel, so we hear everything from Tatiana's perspectivemost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099539594</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Horace McCoy8409290103|title=They Shoot Horses, Don't They?If Only|author=Matthew Tree

|summary=Many of us will know of 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 release of young man got on board the film of the same title back in the 1960sboat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. I haven't seen Patrick sent the film so I started reading with no readymoney regularly and a correspondence - of sorts -made opinions about sprang up between the book. Likewise, I had no idea how the attention-grabbing title bore any relation to a book about dance. I was two although we hear more about what Lowry has to find outsay than Patrick. Itwasn't that Lowry senior didn's both arresting and simple. The book cover and also the inside front cover are littered with praise t care for this book. his son, it was that he didn'The first existentialist novel t care to have appeared him in America' says one writerthis country where he might be a danger to his wife and other children. 'Takes The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the reader into one of America's darkest corners young man on his way.}}{{Frontpage|author=Antoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Red is My Heart|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in my house.' from another source. SoAnd so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was expecting a terrific read, and is, black and white and red. But did Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and I get think it?'s possible to say not one page lacks the influence of some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184668739X</amazonuk>1913547183

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David VannB098FFFBH9|title=Caribou IslandSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright

|summary=Irene and Gary went to Alaska many years ago and somehow they stayed there, probably through inertia, and they raised two children. Rhoda loves animals and Fourteen-year-old Rachel is keen that her boyfriend, Jim the dentist, should marry her. She half knows that heschool's not that reliable but it's what animal rights project leader and she's set on. Irene and Gary's son, Mark, lives with his girlfriend, Karen and it seems that her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the only thing they're serious about is not taking life too seriouslyanimal world. It's probably understandable when you look She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Gary. He's self-involvedImperial College, London, selfish mother Kate and dishonest with himself. Irene has her problems tootwin, Nick. SheKate runs the family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's never really got over going home when she was ten years old and finding her mother hanging from the raftersmain (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>067091844X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lloyd JonesYancey Williams|title=Hand Me Down WorldCrosshairs of the Devil|rating=4.5

|summary=Ines – although it's a little while before we know her by that name – has quite a story Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to tellhis daughter, but we donfinds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie't hear it from her. We listen to s point of view - in room 315 of the stories told by people who knew her. They might have worked Garden of Eden nursing home, with her at only a hotel on the Arabian Sea or in Tunisia. They might have known her nametrusty nursing aide, Jenkins, but nothing quite so personal as her birthdayfor palatable company. She was a good worker, used Nothing is going to anticipating what the guests would need but otherwise being invisible. This might have gone on indefinitelykeep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though, but she met Jermayneso here, black like Inesfor his readers, who taught her to swim. He also gave her what she thought was love and a child, which he then abducted. Inesare his wanderings through his life' story is her journey to Berlin to retrieve her sons work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848544782</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Carey0008421714|title=Parrot and Olivier in AmericaMrs March|author=Virginia Feito

|summary=Olivier de Garmont is a young, French aristocrat who is drugged by The problem began just after the enigmatic Marquis de Tilbot, a close friend publication of OlivierGeorge March's monarchist mother, and dispatched most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the safety of the emerging United States last page) seemed to avoid the 1830 July Revolution, and the threat of the dreaded guillotine, in his native Franceeither be reading it or had already done so. At least nominally his task while there is Every day Mrs March went to prepare a report on the American penal system local patisserie to buy olive bread but on behalf of the French governmentthat particular morning, a task for which he has little interest or indeed talent. Tilbot also dispatches his servant, an older British manPatricia asked, John Larrit, known to everyone as Parrotshe was wrapping the bread, to act as Oliver's secretary, servant, translator and to spy on Olivier for both his mother and Tilbot. They are an ill-matched pair, from opposite sides of the social spectrum 'but in democratic America, isn't this relationship develops in ways that neither of them would expect. The story is told in alternating voices of these two main characters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571253296</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Emmanuel Carrere|title=A Russian Novel|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=We meet Carrere as part of the first time he's based a small film crew. One minute theycharacter on you?'re in France, the next they're in the midst of poverty, freezing temperatures and the utter desolation of a Russian town, miles from anywhere. Carrere back-pedals for the sake of his readers, explaining She mentioned that he has family connections with Russia. ButJohanna, as an intelligent and educated man, he also wonders what the hell heprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''s doing here. He's relinquished the comforts of his life in France Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for what - grey sheets and terrible food. He must be mad.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846680859</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Margaret Atwood|title=The Handmaid's Tale|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=In the near-future USA fact that they call Gilead, society has changed. For the worse, of course. The population Johanna is dying out, and people who are capable of breeding the next generation are given a cherished status whore of Handmaid Nantes - gifted to any male of enough esteem, called ''a Commanderweak, who balances the household with his wife and what is practically a walking womb. Other women get drudge workplain, or run horrid finishing schools for the Handmaidsdetestable, or are packed off to what are reported to be polluted hellholes abroadpathetic, for laborious work for life. Men are restricted too - Handmaids are off-limits to everybody but their Commanderunloved, and those households are patrolled carefully by other eunuch typesunloveable wretch. It's up to our nameless narrator and main character, however, to show us just how cherished the status of Handmaid feels.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099511665</amazonuk>'

{{newreview|author=Raymond Carver|title=Beginners|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories|summary= One thing you soon surmise from reading Raymond Carver is that he was an alcoholic. Carver's characters tend Move on to drink excessively, and his stories often examine the negative impact of drinking on his central character's relationships. But nowadays, what we talk about when we talk about Carver is the role of his editor, Gordon Lish.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540320</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]