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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Leila AboulelaMatthew Tree|title=Lyrics AlleyWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5

|summary=The front cover photograph is eye-catching and lovely and has the appeal of saying to potential readers - read me. The book's title is both poetic and enigmatic. I was keen Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to get reading but before I couldbe different from his father, I'm faced with a page listing the ''Principal Characters'' drunk and another page setting out the Abuzeid family tree. It did put me off slightly, I have to admit. I tend to think that with a modern, average-paged work chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of fiction a list his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of characters is well, a list too farself confidence. SoTim applied himself to his studies, yes, for the first couple of chapters I was constantly flicking back cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and forth to remind myself who everyone was. Not so good for those lazy readers out there, I'm thinkingset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0297860097</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shehan KarunatilakaB0C47LV1PC|title=Chinaman|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=After the 1996 World Cup, dying sports journalist WG Karunasena decides that the world needs 'a half decent documentary on Sri Lankan cricket'. He sets out to make the said documentary, focusing on the mysterious Pradeep Mathew, the 1980's spin bowler he considers to have been his country's greatest ever player. But Mathew disappeared some time ago and everywhere Karunasena turns he is faced with more complications as he tries to find out more on what happened to him…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022409145X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFragility|author=Tessa Hadley|title=The London TrainMosby Woods|rating=34

|summary=Part one focuses on Paul - Can you make a rather self obsessed and aimless character''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, who is less than honest with his family, using various friends to cover up his movements. He has several daughters, and on learning that one the question should you make it? Or is having problems, goes to visit her in London - and ends up staying with her, for several weeks, leaving both his (second) wife, and the mother of this daughter (first wife)question if you did, completely in the dark as to what would it land? The catch is happening. Initially we feel that he is acting in a protective manner towards his daughter, who is struggling to come to terms with her pregnancy - but in fact his motives are far less altruistic, thereby alienating the reader from his taleanswer for both could well be.. The squalor in which her daughter is living, would appal most parents - yet he seems to take it all in his stride, and attempts to join the hippy-style commune - yet more irritation with this deeply flawed character therefore emerges.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224090976</amazonuk>}}. no.

{{newreview|author=Emma Henderson|title=Grace Williams Says it Loud|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Grace, aged eleven, ''Fragility'' is sent to set as the Briar Mental Institute as her parents can no longer cope with her care. She is befriended there by a young boycity of Portland, DanielOregon, who is epileptic and also has no arms after a terrible accident. Together we see cautiously begins to emerge from the horrors of life in restrictions imposed during the Briar, and also their slowly growing love affair with each other.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144470401X</amazonuk>covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Roma TearneMosby Woods|title=The SwimmerA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=Ria, solitary, middle-aged poet, was idly watching the river one night when she saw a swimmer. It wasnThe West isn't just the time of day which dominant force it once was unusual, but . Nobody in the river was hardly clean – and then she heard a noise downstairs. In West is quite sure how to mend this remote part of Suffolk or even if mending it wasn't unusual to leave doors unlocked and is the following morning she realised that best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a loaf of bread had been stolenpush for climate action there. It was strange A feeling that she didn't really feel fearnobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, but when there was a man with precognition. Imagine the visits and minor thefts continued she waited up to catch the swimmer, strategic advantage in this asset; a man who stole small amounts can tell you what will happen given any set of food – and played circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the piano like an angelmost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007301596</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tea Obreht0571379559|title=The Tiger's WifeHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5

|summary=Téa Obreht's 'The TigerHouse of Broken Bricks's Wife' comes with a fair degree is the story of hype from four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the UShouse on the riverbank, and largely built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it lives up to might look, it's stood the passage of time, which is no small achievementstorms and floods. The main story is set in Yugoslavia and explores a young doctor Her husband, NataliaRichard, seeking for the truth about her grandfather's deathstruggles to grow his vegetables, while on a mission to deliver much needed medical aid complete the delivery rounds - and to an orphanage bring in the warsufficient money. They have twin boys -ravaged Balkans. But what sets this book apart is the intricate weaving of reality with the myths Sonny and stories of Max, the regionrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. In particular there are two myths Max takes after his father. People don't believe that represent a good chunk of the page count: the story of a tiger who has escaped from captivity after the World War two bombing of Belgrade they're related, much less twins and who has settled near a remote mountain village where Nataliathere's grandfather an assumption when Max is growing up, and who develops a strange relationship out with a deaf-mute girl who becomes known as 'the tigerhis mother that she's wife'; and a mysterious story of the 'Deathless Man' whom the grandfather encounters at various points in his life who appears to have the power to foresee others' death without being able to die himselfnanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297859013</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Graham SwiftClaire North|title=Wish You Were HereHouse of Odysseus

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I cannot tell you exactly how long after I finished this book that I sat, holding it, in stunned silence for - but it was light when I finished it and dark when I put it down. Some books can do that to you. This is one of them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330535838</amazonuk>}}''What could matter more than love?''

{{newreview|author=John Burnside|title=The Summer of Drowning|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The story is narrated in follow-up to the first person by the daughter excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a decade or so few months after where we left off. In the tragedy. Sopalace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, she has a healthy dose of hindsight which shows itself time who sailed to war at Troy and time again with sentiments such as ... if only I'd have known back then by divine intervention never returned home.As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles.. Having survived – politically and ...I thought it was a bit strange at physical – the time ... if you get my drift. Burnside takes his time chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to set Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the scene (spartan) and his characters (brink of a mere handful)fragile peace. His chosen location is One that shatters however with the arresting emptiness return of somewhere deep in the Arctic Circle so straight away he's caught my imagination - with Orestes, King of Mycenae, and hissister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>022406178X</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Edward St AubynKay Chronister|title=At LastDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=In ''At Last''With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, Edward St Aubyn returns to the Melrose familypost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, the subject a world devoid of both water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Some HopeDesert Creatures'' and by Kay Chronister is a new work of his Bookerpost-shortlisted [[Mother's Milk by Edward St Aubyn|Mother's Milk]]. I confess apocalyptic fiction that I have still not got around to reading the first aligns many of the trilogy, but loved ''Mother's Milk'' and found fears that I wasn't greatly disadvantaged by not having read the previous bookexist for humanity today. ''At Last'' could also be read as It is a stand-alone book, but I wouldn't advise this approach. You will miss out on so much shocking novel that if you are planning on reading it, you really should read at least ''Mother's Milk'' first. This isn't much of an inconvenience as it's a terrific bookstill manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330435906</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Deborah Kay DaviesEric LaRocca|title=True Things About MeThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Take one benefit office worker; boredHorror 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'', listlesswhether that is a home invader, a walking study in destructive human behaviour. Add monster or a recently releasedghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, jobless ex-con with beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a glint collection of short stories more interested in his eye and taste for masochism. Throw all caution to the wind and collide these two ingredients by means horrors of visceralillness, brutal grief and almost wordless sex in an underground car park humiliation. Horrors that linger and you have the opening chapters of Deborah Kay Daviesare harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''s debut novel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847678319</amazonuk>

 {{newreview|author=Geraldine Brooks|title=Caleb's Crossing|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Let's start, as Geraldine Brooks has, with a fact: in 1665 the first Native American, Caleb Cheeshateaumauk, graduated from Harvard College. Around this, Brooks has created a wholly fictional story (the known facts are so few that this is largely unavoidable). The stroke of genius here is to put the story into the words of the entirely fictitious Bethia Mayfield, the daughter of an English minister on what we now call Martha's Vinyard, where Caleb lived in the Wampanoag tribe. At various points in her life, Bethia sets down events concerning her early secret friendship with Caleb on the island, to accompanying him and her brother to Harvard and the subsequent events.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007333536</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=David LodgeMadelaine Lucas|title=Ginger, You're BarmyThirst for Salt|rating=4.5

|summary=Jonathan is a few days away from completing his National Service. Within the week he will dash off to Majorca with his girlfriend''Love, and who knowsI'd read, he might even do more than chastely cup her breast under her clothing. But it's was supposed to be a bittersweet week for Jonathan, as he looks back on the beginnings of his two years spent most reluctantly in the army, light and especially the time spent with his best companionweightless feeling, and his girlfriendbut I had always longed for gravity''s ex, Mike.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554135</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=David Lodge|title=A Man of Parts|rating=4Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The man of parts in question here is HG Wells in this fictionalised biography. He was indeed Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man of many talents and interests, although twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the parts that most exercise summer after. Set against the interest backdrop of David Lodge are an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the great author24-year-old narrator's private parts. You seedeepening relationship with her older lover, not only was HG a prolific writer of fiction that incorporated a staggering amount of visionary ideas (tanksdepicting its all-consuming nature, airborne warfare and atomic bombs) - although admittedly some of his ideas have yet to come to pass such as time machines how it changed her perspective on both romantic and Martian invasion - but he was also something of a political philosopher familial relationships and idealist, being a central figure for a while in the Fabian movement, and an ardent practitioner of the concept of free lovehow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846554969</amazonuk>0861546490

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=George Makana ClarkMichael Grothaus|title=The Raw ManBeautiful Shining People

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The Prologue opens bang up ''But fearing something and having it come to date: 2011pass are two different things. The language is poeticAnd I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, lilting, evocative but tinged with sadness and sets the tone for the rest of the bookor we can take steps to change it. Lots of unanswered questions hang in the air throughout. The location is South Africa and section headings such as 'The Earthworks of the Universe' and 'The Story-Ghost' give a flavour of its contents.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224090461</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Delphine de Vigan|title=Underground Time|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Mathilde is unhappy at work''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. More than just unhappy actually, because after expressing an opinion different Of what it means to her boss he has frozen her out of the team and bullied her mentally and emotionally for monthsbe human. Mathilde Of what is a woman on the edge of breaking point, feeling increasingly brow-beaten by both the demands of city life real and her awful boss. Meanwhile Thibault what is an emergency on-call doctorartificial, racing from one district to another through and whether the nightmares development of Parisian traffic, unhappy in his relationship and also struggling, mentally, to survivetechnology is exciting or frightening. Will today be the day that changes everything?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408811111</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Siri HustvedtJennifer Saint|title=The Summer Without MenAtalanta|rating=4.5

|summary=Sometime after Mia's husband 'I was as worthy as any one of thirty yearsthem. I would get on board that ship, Boris, suggests a marriage 'pause'I vowed. I would take my place, Mia goes mad and finds herself in a psychiatric hospital. Although this Brief Psychotic Disorder does not last long, she remains fragile and retreats to the town just in Minnesota where she was brought up and where her elderly mother still lives. While Boris cavorts with the Pause, she struggles through name of the summer, learning to live without himgoddess. She builds relationships with her mother's friends, with her neighbours and with a group It was for the sake of teenage girls who form her creative writing class. Written in the first person, the book catalogues her progress using these friendshipsmy name, her past, her reading and her shrink, Dr Stoo.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444710524</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''

{{newreview|author=Edward Docx|title=The Devil's Garden|rating=3Princess.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Set on a research station in an unnamed Amazonian country (although by the indigenous tribes mentioned, this is probably Peru), this first person narrative story is told by Dr Forle, who has come to the area to study ants - specifically the strange phenomenon of a type of ant that appear to destroy their own environmentWarrior. It's sort of ants on the deck in the jungle, if you likeLover. However the scientific study is interrupted by the arrival of an army colonel and a judge, who at least on the surface of things is there to organize the registration of the local tribes. However when the doctor witnesses a clear act of violence by the soldiers accompanying the colonel, he becomes more engaged with the local goings on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330463500</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mary Horlock|title=The Book of Lies|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Catherine Rozier is fifteen years old and she has a secretHero.

Secrets are Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a big thing on Guernseyson, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the small Channel Isle that is only three miles across at one point with a population goddess Athemis and fashioned into a little over 65formidable huntress,000 ione who longs for adventure.e. somewhat more than HerefordWhen the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, considerably less than Lincolna fierce band of warriors, or about half that of Norwich or Prestondescendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. Unlike any What follows is a whirlwind of those townschallenges and discovery and through it, Guernsey is an island. It is self-contained. It isnAtalanta must remember Artemis't just fatal warning: that everyone knows everyone else; they're almost certainly, quite closelyif she marries, relatedit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847678858</amazonuk>1472292154

  {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexi ZentnerAmanthi Harris|title=TouchBeautiful Place|rating=3.5

|summary=StephenPadma, an Anglican priest is writing a story of three generationsyoung Sri Lankan, a haunting tale of his childhood set in Sawgamet, an isolated clearing in has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the snowy forest expanse southern coast of North West Canadaher home country. It This is the evening before his mother's funeral. One loss brings up earlier losses; relating this deeply poignant tale he relates the disastrous event of his father's attempts to rescue his sister, Marie, when on a skating expedition place she falls through a dark hole in the thin ice at the turbulent confluence of two rivers. His terrified sister looks towards spent her father who plunges into the water and both perish in a catastrophe. Consequently, Stephen is to struggle with for many formative years to in some way to come to terms with this severe trauma. His grandfather, Jeannot, a resilient settler It is not a stalwart figure who keeps returning protectively place she was born into Stephen's life in order to resurrect his own lost love, Martine from but the hereafterone she thinks of as home. This love between Jeannot and Stephen's grandmother How she came to be at the Villa, Martinehow it became her home, and also the machinations that between Jeannothave flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's brother present fails to escape her past and future wife blossom through magical events involving much like the metamorphosis musical score of golda film, trees and mountains which move, and malevolent 'qualuplillumits' ogres from a richly various panoply of magical realismthat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701185465</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Yoko Ogawa178563335X|title=Hotel IrisSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=45

|summary=When I read [[The Housekeeper we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the Professor by Yoko Ogawa|The Housekeeper and the Professor]] by Ogawa I fell completely in love with the bookchildren up. It was gentleHer husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and beautifully writtenher elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won'Hotel Iris'' t let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is verya lovely place, very different and really ought but Rachel is struggling to have develop a warning label on real bond with the cover for those who simply recognise parish - and she's in awe of the authorvicar, Gail, but then she's name and pick it up hoping been doing the job for more! than thirty years. This is Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the story of a seventeen year old girl who is seduced by an old man in a sadistic, distressing mannerbeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548992</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Martin Amis1398515388|title=The Pregnant WidowBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=34.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=The bulk First of ''The Pregnant Widow'' is set in all, it was the summer of 1970 earthquake, deep in a beautiful Italian castle where the almost 21 year old Keith Nearingocean floor, an English Literature student, has come to spend which created the summer with his on/off girlfriend Lily tsunami and her more physically attractive best friend Scheherazade. Amongst the other attendees are a gay couplethis, a short Italian suitor to the ample chested Scheherezade who is waiting for the arrival of her boyfriend andin turn, critically for caused the story the ample bottomed Gloria nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and eventually her rich boyfriendutter devastation. If this all sounds like one of those enviously indulgent, middle class, sex filled summer of love stories, then partly it is The deaths were uncountable, but this being Martin Amis, there's a lot more depth and sadness attached to the storyloss of livelihoods was widespread. It's an investigation into The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the changing roles list of females and particularly their attitudes to sex, and for Keith in particular, priorities but - six months after the long term implications of this idyllic vacation are not going to be happy and Amis provides tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn'what happened nextt a dog person but the convenience store owner' s comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to bring each of open his characters up to present daycar door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099488736</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louise Welsh0989715337|title=Naming Papa on the BonesMoon|author=Marco North|rating=4.5

|summary=Murray Watson is a Doctor of English Literature embarking on a year-long sabbatical to pursue his long-held dream of writing the definitive biography of Archie Lunan and, as a specifically intended by-product, restore Lunan's poetry to its rightful place in 'Some frogs had gotten into the high canon of Scots creativitywell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847672566</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=Nicole Krauss|title=Great House|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Great House'' is unashamedly literary Walter stood waist-deep in style and while undoubtedly not everyone's cup of teathe fragrant water, it's hard not to admire the cleverness of Kraussnaked except for his beaten leather hat. It also covers such broad issues that it's not the easiest Long strands of books to sum up in a few words. Certainlytheir eggs wove around him, to enjoy this book you will need to have a tolerance for cerebral fictionsticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. You will also need to appreciate the role of the book in commenting on aspects Two of the human condition rather than just telling a good story. This is most certainly not a plot driven book. You should also be prepared that dogs leaned over the stories told are unremittingly dark, sad, opening and almost oppressively depressing. But while all of this sounds negative, barked down at the payoff is a book strange noise of exceptional cleverness and shot through with lovely and often beautifully observed writing about the human condition and in particular about memorybuckets as he filled them. It would be wrong to say that it's cerebral with no heart: there's plenty of emotional heart here, but unless you buy into the cerebral game, then it's a book that will infuriate you before you reach it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919322</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Ruta Sepetys|title=Between Shades of Gray|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The central character, a teenage girl called Lina: her younger brother and mother are being forced from their home. All How is confusion, suspicion and fear but they obey orders anyway. To disobey would be to lose their lives. Torture or murder - or both. Unthinkable. that for an opening? The small family unit style of three mix with many other families caught up in this situation. They collect novel in the streets form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and are rounded up - like sheep. It will be some time before any of them feel remotely like human beings. Their names are laconic to wistful and musing, turning on some sort of 'list'a sixpence. Even a young mother And author Marco North, who has just given birththe most wonderful turn of phrase, is manhandled starts as he means to go on to the waiting transport.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141335882</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Gail JonesDaisy Hildyard|title=Five BellsEmergency

|summary=It is a lovely sunny day in Circular Quay, a tourist hotspot in Sydney, Australia. This novel is about the thoughts and memories The summary of four people, three women and a man who visit the place that day. None are locals. Ellie and James were teenage lovers in Western Australia, and are meeting up again after not seeing each other for years. Catherine has recently this book doesn't come close to the city from Ireland. Pei Xing is a Chinese immigrant, now settled in Sydney. The novel explaining what is full of descriptive visual imagery from the first page onwards, and it is significant that three of the four characters are seeing Circular Quay for done with the first timepremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846554020</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Philippe Claudel Sally Oliver |title=The 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 Euan Cameronvolume. 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=Monsieur Linh and His ChildThis World Does Not Belong To Us

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=From Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a war-ravaged country delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a bit like a Vietnam or a Cambodia an old man carries delight' is perhaps using the fragile frame of his granddaughter aboard expression in a refugeeway I's ship, staring at m not familiar with. I have to confess my ignorance of the receding horizon all the weeks it takes to arrive at a city a bit like a Seattle or a New YorkSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. He and she are given From the basics of a new life together but itlittle I have read (in translation, I don's up t read Spanish) there does seem to him, Monsieur Linh, to find friendship, which he does, accepting uncomprehendingly be a tendency towards the fantastical – the chatty company of a fellow mourner called Barkmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906694990</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kathleen WinterJennifer Saint|title=AnnabelElektra

|summary=The back cover blurb has praise for this debut novel from two of my favourite authors: [[:Category:Joseph O'Connor|Joseph OElektra'Connor]] and [[:Category:A L Kennedy|A L Kennedy]] so things were definitely off to a good start. The front cover is rather unsettling (as it's meant to be) - some may say disturbing: it's by Jennifer Saint tells the story of an adolescent, but neither three women who live in the heavily male nor female but rather a fusion dominated world of the two sexesAncient Greece. And the question is right up there before I've even opened the book - how would such an individual (and family members and society as a whole) deal and interact with such a person. It's not an easy question to answerCassandra, if I'm honest.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224091271</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Karen Russell|title=Swamplandia!|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ava Bigtree is a teenage alligator wrestler. Her older sister Ossie is in love with a ghost. They have grown up on a Florida island theme park with their parentsClytemnestra, their grandfather and their big brother Kiwi. Now though, Elektra are all they have known is threatened. Their mother Hilola was the star attraction, but she died a few months before, not bit players in the jaws story of an alligator but of ovarian cancerthe Trojan War. As well as being Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the glamorous figure on billboards who everyone came to see, she ran the show and did all silent women have the jobs that needed to be done, most compelling stories and the family is lost without hermost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>070118602X</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Allen Ginsberg8409290103|title=Howl: A Graphic NovelIf Only|author=Matthew Tree

|summary=In this engaging novelTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, Tim Pears tackles many challenging themescotton-broker AO Lowry: sibling rivalryhe asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, time and change in to ensure that the countryside, facing terminal illness, reflections young man got on board the isolation of academic life boat and undertaking risky financial investmentthereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. This is not Patrick sent the money regularly and a portrayal correspondence - of a rural idyll sorts - sprang up between the two although much of the most lyrical writing concerns the colours of the Shropshire countryside and this is strengthened by reference we hear more about what Lowry has to the layers of the archaic past say than Patrick. It wasn't that underlies this disputed borderland territory. In attempting such a multi-layered narrative in a relatively short novelLowry senior didn't care for his son, it is not surprising was that for instance, the traumatic shocks he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the epic tale are diminished by random, experimental shifts in the tone of the narrativeyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434020818</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Denis KehoeAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Walking on Dry LandRed is My Heart

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ana has grown up mostly in Portugal, but now lives [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in Dublin where she teaches film studies and is writing her PHDmy house. HoweverAnd so was this one, she although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was born in Anglola (then a Portuguese colony), the result of an extra-marital relationship of her fatherand is, who then adopted her with his wifeblack and white and red. When her adopted mother, Helena, dies, she decides to trace her birth mother in Angola, where her brother now livesYes, but he has nothing much to go an artistic collaborator on but a photocopy of a photograph of two Angolan girlsthis piece, and I think it's possible to say not one page lacks the influence of which may, or may not, be her mother, and a name: Solange Mendes. We follow Ana as she attempts to trace her real mother while in alternating chapters exploring her parents' developing relationship and ultimately how her unusual past evolvedsome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687810</amazonuk>1913547183

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Camilla GibbB098FFFBH9|title=The Beauty of Humanity MovementSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright|rating=4.5

|summary=The novel opens with an elderly man as he scrapes a meagre living in Vietnam. He Fourteen-year-old Rachel is really dirt-poor but I could tell that he still had his pride. Heher school's not afraid of hard work. In fact, gruelling days of labour animal rights project leader and she and very early risings have been her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the norm for him since he was a young boy. His passion is cooking. Nothing is too much trouble way in order to create his famous Vietnamese noodle soupwhich human beings exploit the animal world. And there's She gets a terrific line on the back cover which says 'They say that the history great deal of Vietnam can be found in support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a bowl of pho and Old Man Hu'ng makes the best in all Hanoi'. We get some background on Hu'ng and discover that his life has been hardlecturer at Imperial College, very hard. But he doesn't complainLondon, it's simply not in his nature. Such is the pull mother Kate and the draw of Gibb's lovelyher twin, lyrical writing that I was drawn right into the life of this enchanting elderly man right from the start of the bookNick. Gibb feeds us tiny morsels about Vietnam on a regular basis: Kate runs the culturefamily business, the peoplea toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, the troubled history for example, but itwhich is where we's written in such effortless prose that itll meet Rachel's a joy to read. And her descriptions are so apt, so poetic and so original main (but without being in your faceif unsuspected) that it all shines on the page. I gobbled it all upsource of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848877935</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=David SzalayYancey Williams|title=SpringCrosshairs of the Devil

|summary=Narrated from a variety of points of view, ''Spring'' relates the relationship of James and Katherine. He is an often failed entrepreneurial character who falls for the charms of Katherine, currently working in a London luxury hotel as an interim job, and separated from her photographerAward-husband. The problem for James winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is that Katherine is only interested getting on in the pursuit of that perfect happiness scenario years and so analyses her feelings constantly - much to the distress of James. But this is a lot more than a 'males don't understand females' tale.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224091263</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Manuel Rivas|title=Books Burn Badly|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I normally start with a brief summary of the novel I’m reviewing, but Rivas’ sprawling epic is close despite his strenuous objections and thanks to impossible to do anything ‘brief’ with. While it starts in 1881his daughter, it’s 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 eras, eventually finishing more than a century after it started. Along the way, we meet a young washerwoman who sees souls in the river, Olinda the matchgirl, Gabriel the stammerer, and the Judge of Oklahomafinds himself living - or imprisoned, star of a series of Western novels Gabriel’s father reads.|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. ItEddie's a tough, physical duty so it's a good job she can rely on her neighbour Louisa as an extra pair point of hands. Christopher is unreliable to say the least, he's never there when you need him. But is Louisa any better?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847371248</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Stephen Kelman|title=Pigeon English|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Elevenview -year-old Harri is the fastest boy in Year 7. It's true. He won room 315 of the race and everything. Harri is quite new to London. HeGarden of Eden nursing home, his mother and his big sister Lydia have come from Ghana to make with only a new life and live on the ninth floor of a tower block on a sink estate. Harri's father and little sister Agnes are still in Ghanatrusty nursing aide, saving up the air fareJenkins, which is taking quite a long timefor palatable company. Agnes Nothing is beginning going to talk already. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408810638</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Linden MacIntyre|title=The Bishop's Man|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Duncan MacAskill (he eschews the title ''Father'' whenever he can get away with it) is ostensibly dean of a Catholic university keep Eddie from his stock-in Nova Scotia. It's a job he enjoys. Approaching fifty years -trade of agewriting though, he isso here, in general, happy with his life.But the Catholic Church is strong on history and MacAskill cannot escape for his own. The son of a bastard father and a foreign motherreaders, he was lucky even to be able to follow are his vocation and enter the church at all. For most of wanderings through his career he has been "The Bishoplife's Man"work. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224089722</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Aamer Hussein0008421714|title=The Cloud MessengerMrs March|author=Virginia Feito|rating=34.5

|summary=MehranThe problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, growing up in KarachiPatricia asked, hears his father and sister speaking about London all as she was wrapping the bread, ''but isn't this the first timehe's based a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, as if it were an exotic locationthe principal character had 'her mannerisms''. He ends up living there as an adultPerhaps this would not have mattered, but in except for the rainy, dreary climate he turns back to fact that Johanna is the poetry whore of his homelandNantes - ''a weak, dreaming of other places. As he travels between Italyplain, detestable, pathetic, Indiaunloved, Pakistan and London we watch his relationships grow and die and wonder if he will ever truly find a place where heunloveable wretch.''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=There's a crime wave at Blandings Castle and bumbling Lord Emsworth is right at its centre. This is somewhat surprising as Emsworth (or 'Clarence!' Move on to his sister Constance) is really only happy when he's reading his favourite book, Whiffle's 'The Care of the Pig'. It frequently soothes where other restoratives fail. The problem began with an air rifle and an unwanted tutor, but before the afternoon was out most of the inhabitants of Blandings Castle seemed to have shot, been shot at or left. If it hadn't been written by P G Wodehouse it would all be most confusing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141196289</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]