Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__ {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=WhateverMatthew Tree|authortitle=Michel HouellebecqWe'll Never Know|rating=34.5

|summary=Interviewed by BBC film critic Mark Kermode shortly before Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his 60th birthdayfather, Woody Allen gave the bequiffed one this somewhat startling piece a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of advice, ''You get to my age, you realise that when you die you're really not losing that muchself confidence.'' Those words sprang So Tim applied himself to mind while reading ''Whatever'', first novel by Michel Houellebecq. The main protagonist in ''Whatever'' may be only half the age of the film directorhis studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but the outlook on life shared by both men seems strikingly similarachievable ambitions. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687845</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B0C47LV1PC|title=Sag HarborFragility|author=Colson WhiteheadMosby Woods

|summary=Colson Whitehead wanted to write something personal for his fourth bookCan you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, so he chose an autobiographical novelis the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, based on his experiences as a vacationing youngsterwould it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be... Sag Harbor really does exist - at the far end of Long Island and next to the up-market Hamptons. It has a history of whaling and an association with John Steinbeckno. Within easy reach  ''Fragility'' is set as the city of New YorkPortland, in 1985 it was an affluent black enclave within a largeOregon, white middle-class holiday area.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099531887</amazonuk>cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Carlos AlbaMosby Woods|title=The Songs of Manolo EscobarA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=Antonio 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 second-born son to Spanish parentsbest course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, living a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in Glasgowactual charge. He's embarrassed to be anything other than ScottishImagine then, and he tries everything to hide his family background from friends at school, refusing to speak Spanish there was a man with his parents and struggling to forge his own identity precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in lifethis asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. In his middle ageThat man would be valuable, he suddenly finds his life falling apart around him as his marriage begins to fail and his increasingly frail father becomes obsessed with right? Perhaps the proper burial of his parents back most valuable asset in Spainhistory. Antonio continues to play a rather emotionally distant part in his parents' lives, but Imagine then finds himself drawn further and further into the truth about his father's past which, ultimately, leads him that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to question his own past and the path his future might take.get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184697173X</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ann Patchett0571379559|title=State The House of WonderBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|summary=Anders Eckman ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is deadthe story of four people. The news has been delivered Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the form an aerogram – remember those blue paper-cum-envelope things we used house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to use grow his vegetables, to write complete the delivery rounds - and to foreign penbring in sufficient money. They have twin boys -pals when Sonny and Max, the notion of befriending a person yourainbow twins. Sonny'd never met in a foreign country still seemed exotic?  This flimsy piece of paper was delivered to Eckmans colouring reflects his mother's employersJamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. After all it was them People don't believe that had sent him down to the Brazilian Amazon to find the enigmatic and evasive Dr Annik Swensonthey're related, much less twins and more precisely find there's an assumption when Max is out exactly how she was getting on with developing the drug his mother that was costing the firm so much of their research budgetshe's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408818590</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Jean Rhys|title=Wide Sargasso Sea|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the late eighteen thirties the father palace of an English gentleman conspires Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to marry him off rule without her husband, who sailed to a landed Jamaican Creole as a means war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of giving his second son an estate and stopping him being a burden on the familyWestern Isles. Written in Having survived – politically and physical – the nineteen sixties, 'Wide Sargasso Sea' was inspired by Rochesterchaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's first wife in ''Jane Eyre''shores, and Queen Penelope is an impressionistic, hallucinatory account on the brink of that woman's alienation and subsequent descent into madness that can be read as a prequel to the Bronte novelfragile peace. The book covers Antoinette's childhood in Jamaica and her honeymoon on a small Caribbean island One that shatters however with her new husband and their domestic servantsthe return of Orestes, and the point King of view shifts between Antoinette Mycenae, and her husbandhis sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241951550</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Douglas KennedyKay Chronister|title=The MomentDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=After I'd read the blurb on the back cover I gave With a bit of world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a shrug as if to say, wellrobotic takeover, I've read quite a number world devoid of books recently where undying love has been found in war-torn Europewater or a nuclear holocaust, so was this book going to be different, or better? Thomas Nesbitt, middle-aged, disillusioned with love and more than genre is a tad world-weary is trying way for humans to move on in his lifecathartically experience their most existential fears. His marriage of more than twenty years is dissolving before his very eyes. But rather than being upset, he's feeling as if a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. He and his wife were never really 'Desert Creatures'in love'' in the true sense by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the phrase, despite having a daughter togetherfears that exist for humanity today. And there's It is a very good reason as shocking novel that still manages to why Thomas is like this and the rest of the book tells us why, warts and allfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091795842</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Aminatta FornaEric LaRocca|title=The Memory of LoveTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=The setting for this story 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 hospital in Freetownhome invader, a monster or a ghost, Sierra Leoneit usually something tangible and, soon after by the government has declared an end to an 11 year civil warof the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. How can people come to terms with It is a collection of short stories more interested in the terrible things horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that have happened? Actually, can they come linger and are harder to terms with those things?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408809656</amazonuk>defeat than any ''Big Bad''.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jenn AshworthMadelaine Lucas|title=Cold LightThirst for Salt

|summary=''Cold LightLove, I'' is the story of three teenage girls who become involved in a predatory adult world. As the story opens we're looking back on what happened from a decade later and we know that one of the girls, Chloëd read, died in a Valentine's Day suicide pact. The town council has finally decided on a memorial to Chloë – it's was supposed to be a summerhouse at the side of the pond where she drownedlight and weightless feeling, although itbut I had always longed for gravity's difficult to understand quite why anyone would want to sit there. The ground-breaking ceremony is being televised when it becomes obvious that something has gone terribly wrong. But Lola, our narrator, knows that they've found a body. She also knows who it is.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444721445</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Alain Mabanckou|title=Broken Glass|rating=3Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=In Overlaid with later wisdom, the Congolese bar of Credit Gone West, narrator relives the owner Stubborn Snail wants affair with a record of man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the lives of those who drink theresummer after. The man he chooses to write it? Disgraced schoolteacher Broken Glass, who fills up a notebook with Set against the stories backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the bar’s patrons – or at least their versions of those tales24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184668675X</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreview|author=David Bezmozgis|title=The Free World|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It's 'Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the late 1970's question of identity and a family of Latvian Jews, the Krasnanskys, are emigrating from the Soviet Unionacceptance. They're made Of what it means to stay in Rome whilst they apply to live in the States be human. Of what is real and they find themselves trapped in a strange migratory limbowhat is artificial, belonging nowhere and tied to no-one but each otherwhether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670920053</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer EganSaint|title=A Visit From the Goon SquadAtalanta

|summary=Apparently there's a saying 'I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that 'time's a goon' - noship, I'd never heard of it and to be fairvowed. I would take my place, neither had the first character to whom it is said not just in Jennifer Egan's 'A Visit from the Goon Squad', but together with a pair name of epigraphs from Proust, it's clear that time is very definitely what is being explored herethe goddess. Egan's subject area is all loosely based around It was for the music world. Her central charactersake of my name, if one can be said to exist, is Bennie Salazar, a music mogul who we encounter both directly and tangentially at various stages of his up and down careertoo. Atalanta''Goon Squad'' is also the title of an Elvis Costello track, continuing the music theme as Egan uses the music industry as a lens to examine time.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849010331</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Lauren Liebenberg|title=The West Rand Jive Cats Boxing Club|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Best friends Tommy and Chris are 12 years oldPrincess. It is 1958 and they are growing up in a small mining town near Johannesburg, South AfricaWarrior. They are learning to box and to dance to rock and roll musicLover. Hero.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844084892</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=James Frey|title=The Final Testament of the Holy Bible|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The Rabbis say that all the signs are there from the Abandoned at birth of Ben Zion Avrohom that he for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the Messiah. That's a lot protective eye of anyone to cope with the goddess Athemis andfashioned into a formidable huntress, like Jesus, there's much of Ben's early life that is untold hereone who longs for adventure. When he is involved in an horrific accident on the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a building site that he miraculously survives, albeit with terrible scaringfierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the prophecies appear chance to be truefight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. He develops What follows is a form whirlwind of epilepsy during which he appears to speak to God. He is fluent in ancient languages despite never learning themchallenges and discovery and through it, knows all the Holy books by heart and yet distains all forms of religionAtalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, instead spreading his message of love to all who meet him in modern day New Yorkit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848543174</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreview|author=Mirza Waheed|title=The Collaborator|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The Collaborator of the title is our narrator, a sensitive bookish young man. He is the son of the headman of a small village in a side valley of the Kashmir. The heritage of the people is that of nomads. The village has been settled for less than a generation. Everything they have has been built by the sheer hard graft of the people themselves… including the recently completed mosque.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918954</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alan WarnerAmanthi Harris|title=The Stars in the Bright SkyBeautiful Place|rating=45

|summary=In 1999Padma, Alan Warner introduced us a young Sri Lankan, has returned to a wonderful set of characters in 'The Sopranos' when a school choir from a backwater town in Scotland went the Villa Hibiscus on a trip to the big citysouthern coast of her home country. Much debauchery ensued This is a place she spent her formative years. 'The Stars in It is not a place she was born into, but the Bright Sky' once again reunites most one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the original gang Villa, how it became her home, and there is no need to the machinations that have read the flowed through her life ever since she first book to pick up on arrived there provide the diverse characters''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Now though, they Padma've grown up (or at least got older!) s present fails to escape her past and are gathered much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at Gatwick Airport to set off on a girls' holidaythe Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009946182X</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Elia Barcelo and David Frye (Translator)178563335X|title=The Goldsmith's Secret|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='The Goldsmith's Secret' has a wonderfully romantic beginning; alone on a snowy night in New York, the craftsman is puzzling over how to tell his story, and how to separate reality from the overwhelming memories in his mind. The romance continues as the story unfolds, with the goldsmith taking us back to the town and time of his youth, and the chance meeting that led him to find the love of his life. Telling the tale of romance from many perspectives, we learn the town of Villasanta has labelled his love, the mysterious Celia, as 'a marked woman' and the 'black widow'. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050052</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSea Defences|author=Peter Salmon|title=The Coffee StoryHilary Taylor

|summary=Teddy EverettWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, head of Everett sitting in on a PCC meeting and Sons Coffee is dyingwondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, slowly collects six-year-old Hannah and painfullyher elder brother, of cancerJamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. The Coffee Story is his story, told Thelma's daughter-in his own (very descriptive) words-law won't let her see her grandson. It goes from (although not necessarily in this order) his childhood in EnglandHolthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, his adolescence in Ethiopia and then his life in but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the USA parish - and Cuba. Itshe's his time in Cuba which has put him where he is now – in prison. For his crimes he would normally have suffered awe of the death penaltyvicar, Gail, but his sentence was commuted because of his illness and now then she's been doing the doctors try to save himjob for more than thirty years. Or perhaps Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it's that was probably what they're trying to persuade Teddy that they're trying to save him – whether he wants to be saved or notneeded. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444724703</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrew Miller1398515388|title=Pure|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I've read Miller's ''Oxygen'' and ''The Optimists'' so I was looking forward to reading this novel. The story opens in the opulence of the Palace of Versailles. We are given vivid descriptions of both the scale of the palace Boy and its grandeur. Jean-Baptiste Baratte, the young engineer, seems completely over-awed by the whole occasion. Even although he's not entirely sure what is expected of him in Paris, he accepts. He needs to eat, after all.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444724258</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDog|author=Anne Enright|title=The Forgotten WaltzSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Anne Enright's 2007 Booker prize winning [[The Gathering by Anne Enright|The Gathering]] addressed First of all, it was the gloomy subjects of earthquake, deep in the three D's; deathocean floor, depression which created the tsunami and dysfunctional families. Her latest bookthis, ''The Forgotten Waltz'', set in Dublin in 2009turn, sees her turning her attentions to a love affaircaused the nuclear meltdown. A more uplifting subject you might think The result was complete and utter devastation. Well only up to a point The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The affair in question you see is fact that of her narrator, Gina, who is already married to many pets were separated from their owners came far down the generally good, if undynamic, Connor, while on the other end, the subject list of priorities but - six months after the affair is tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the older, Seán, also married and neighbour of Ginaconvenience store owner's sister. In case your moral compass isn't stretched quite enough by this, Seán comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and his wife Aileen, also have a young daughter who suffers from epilepsyTamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022408903X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Leila Aboulela0989715337|title=Lyrics AlleyPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North

|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 to get reading but before I could, I'm faced with a page listing the ''Principal Characters'' and another page setting out Some frogs had gotten into 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 of fiction a list of characters is well, a list too far. So, yes, for the first couple of chapters I was constantly flicking back and forth to remind myself who everyone was. Not so good for those lazy readers out there, I'm thinking.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297860097</amazonuk>}}'

{{newreview|author=Shehan Karunatilaka|title=Chinaman|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=After ''Walter stood waist-deep in the 1996 World Cupfragrant water, dying sports journalist WG Karunasena decides that the world needs 'a half decent documentary on Sri Lankan cricket'naked except for his beaten leather hat. He sets out to make the said documentaryLong strands of their eggs wove around him, focusing on sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the mysterious Pradeep Mathew, dogs leaned over the 1980's spin bowler he considers to have been his country's greatest ever player. But Mathew disappeared some time ago opening and everywhere Karunasena turns he is faced with more complications barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he tries to find out more on what happened to him…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022409145X</amazonuk>}}filled them.''

{{newreview|author=Tessa Hadley|title=The London Train|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Part one focuses on Paul - a rather self obsessed and aimless character, who How is less than honest with his family, using various friends to cover up his movements. He has several daughters, and on learning that one 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 an opening? The style of this daughter (first wife), completely novel in the dark as form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to what is happeningwistful and musing, turning on a sixpence. Initially we feel that he is acting in a protective manner towards his daughterAnd author Marco North, who is struggling to come to terms with her pregnancy - but in fact his motives are far less altruistic, thereby alienating has the reader from his tale. The squalor in which her daughter is livingmost wonderful turn of phrase, would appal most parents - yet starts as he seems means to take it all in his stride, and attempts to join the hippy-style commune - yet more irritation with this deeply flawed character therefore emergesgo on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224090976</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Emma HendersonDaisy Hildyard|title=Grace Williams Says it LoudEmergency

|summary=Grace, aged eleven, is sent to the Briar Mental Institute as her parents can no longer cope with her care. She is befriended there by a young boy, Daniel, who is epileptic and also has no arms after a terrible accident. Together we see the horrors of life in the Briar, and also their slowly growing love affair with each other.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144470401X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Roma Tearne|title=The Swimmer|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ria, solitary, middle-aged poet, was idly watching the river one night when she saw a swimmer. It wasn't just the time of day which was unusual, but the river was hardly clean – and then she heard a noise downstairs. In this remote part of Suffolk it wasnbook doesn't unusual come close to leave doors unlocked and the following morning she realised that a loaf of bread had been stolen. It was strange that she didn't really feel fear, but when the visits and minor thefts continued she waited up to catch the swimmer, who stole small amounts of food – and played explaining what is done with the piano like an angelpremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007301596</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Tea ObrehtSally Oliver |title=The Tiger's WifeWeight of Loss |rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Téa Obreht's 'The Tiger's Wife' comes with a fair degree Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of hype from the USher sister, and largely it lives up she awakes to itfind strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which is no small achievement. The main story is set steadily increase in Yugoslavia size and explores a young doctorvolume. Her GP, Natalia, seeking for diagnosing the truth about odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her grandfather's deathgrief, while on a mission to deliver much needed medical aid recommends she go to stay at Nede, an orphanage experimental new treatment centre in the war-ravaged BalkansWales. But what sets this book apart Yet something strange is the intricate weaving of reality with the myths happening to Marianne and stories of the region. In particular there are two myths that represent a good chunk of the page countother patients at Nede: the story of a tiger who has escaped from captivity after the World War two bombing metamorphosis of Belgrade and who has settled near a remote mountain village where Nataliakind. As Marianne's grandfather is growing upmemories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and who develops pain—but only at a strange relationship with a deaf-mute girl who becomes known as 'the tiger's wife'; and a mysterious story terrible price: that 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 himselfidentity itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0297859013</amazonuk>086154112X }} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Graham SwiftNatalia Garcia Freire|title=Wish You Were HereThis World Does Not Belong To Us

|summary=I cannot tell you exactly how long after I finished Early comments on this book that I satdebut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, holding it, in stunned silence for - but it was light when a delight. 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>}} {{newreview|author=John Burnside|title=The Summer of Drowning|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The story is narrated in will agree with the first person by the daughter – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a decade or so after delight' is perhaps using the tragedy. So, she has expression in a healthy dose of hindsight which shows itself time and time again way I'm not familiar with sentiments such as ... if only I'd have known back then ... and ...I thought it was a bit strange at to confess my ignorance of the time ... if you get Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my driftgeneralisation here. Burnside takes his time to set From the scene little I have read (spartanin translation, I don't read Spanish) and his characters (there does seem to be a mere handful). His chosen location is tendency towards the arresting emptiness of somewhere deep in fantastical – the Arctic Circle so straight away he's caught my imagination - with hismystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>022406178X</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Edward St AubynJennifer Saint|title=At LastElektra

|summary=In 'Elektra'At Last'', Edward St Aubyn returns to by Jennifer Saint tells the Melrose family, story of three women who live in the subject heavily male dominated world of both ''Some Hope'' Ancient Greece. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in the story of his Booker-shortlisted [[Mother's Milk by Edward St Aubyn|Mother's Milk]]the Trojan War. I confess Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that I often the silent women have still not got around to reading the first of the trilogy, but loved ''Mother's Milk'' most compelling stories and found that I wasn't greatly disadvantaged by not having read the previous book. ''At Last'' could also be read as a stand-alone book, but I wouldn't advise this approach. You will miss out on so much 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 bookmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330435906</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Deborah Kay Davies8409290103|title=True Things About MeIf Only|author=Matthew Tree

|summary=Take Twenty-one benefit office worker; bored-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, listlessMr Patrick, to ensure that the young man got on board the boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a walking study in destructive human behaviourmonthly allowance. Add Patrick sent the money regularly and a recently releasedcorrespondence - of sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, jobless ex-con with it was that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a glint in danger to his eye wife and taste for masochismother children. Throw all caution The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the wind and collide these two ingredients by means of visceral, brutal and almost wordless sex in an underground car park and you have the opening chapters of Deborah Kay Davies's debut novelyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847678319</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Geraldine BrooksAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Caleb's CrossingRed is My Heart|rating=43.5|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=Let's start, as Geraldine Brooks has, with a fact[[:Category: Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in 1665 the first Native American, Caleb Cheeshateaumauk, graduated from Harvard Collegemy house. Around And so was thisone, Brooks has created a wholly fictional story (the known facts are so few although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, and is largely unavoidable), black and white and red. The stroke of genius here is to put the story into the words of the entirely fictitious Bethia MayfieldYes, the daughter of he has an English minister artistic collaborator on what we now call Marthathis piece, and I think it'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, possible to accompanying him and her brother to Harvard and say not one page lacks the subsequent eventsinfluence of some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007333536</amazonuk>1913547183

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David LodgeB098FFFBH9|title=Ginger, You're BarmySnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright

|summary=Jonathan Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a few days away from completing his National Servicecompetition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. Within the week he will dash off to Majorca with his girlfriendShe gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and who knowsher twin, he might even do more than chastely cup her breast under her clothingNick. But it's Kate runs the family business, a bittersweet week for Jonathan, as he looks back on the beginnings of his two years spent most reluctantly toy shop called Cornucopia in the armyPutney, and especially the time spent with his best companion, and his girlfriendwhich is where we'll meet Rachel's ex, Mikemain (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554135</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=David LodgeYancey Williams|title=A Man Crosshairs of Partsthe Devil

|summary=The man of parts in question here Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is HG Wells getting on in this fictionalised biography. He was indeed a man of many talents years and, despite his strenuous objections and intereststhanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, although the parts that most exercise the interest of David Lodge are the great authorfrom Eddie's private parts. You see, not only was HG a prolific writer of fiction that incorporated a staggering amount point of visionary ideas (tanks, airborne warfare and atomic bombs) view - although admittedly some of his ideas have yet to come to pass such as time machines and Martian invasion - but he was also something of a political philosopher and idealist, being a central figure for a while in the Fabian movement, and an ardent practitioner room 315 of the concept Garden of free love.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846554969</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=George Makana Clark|title=The Raw Man|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The Prologue opens bang up to date: 2011. The language is poeticEden nursing home, lilting, evocative but tinged with sadness and sets the tone for the rest of the book. 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 only 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. More than just unhappy actuallytrusty nursing aide, Jenkins, because after expressing an opinion different to her boss he has frozen her out of the team and bullied her mentally and emotionally for monthspalatable company. Mathilde Nothing is a woman on the edge of breaking point, feeling increasingly browgoing to keep Eddie from his stock-in-beaten by both the demands trade of city life and her awful boss. Meanwhile Thibault is an emergency on-call doctorwriting though, racing from one district to another through the nightmares of Parisian trafficso here, unhappy in for his relationship and also strugglingreaders, mentally, to surviveare his wanderings through his life's work. Will today be the day that changes everything?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408811111</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Siri Hustvedt0008421714|title=The Summer Without MenMrs March|author=Virginia Feito

|summary=Sometime The problem began just after Miathe publication of George March's husband of thirty years, Boris, suggests a marriage 'pause', Mia goes mad and finds herself in a psychiatric hospitalmost successful novel to date. Although this Brief Psychotic Disorder does not Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last long, she remains fragile and retreats page) seemed to the town in Minnesota where she was brought up and where her elderly mother still liveseither be reading it or had already done so. While Boris cavorts with Every day Mrs March went to the Pauselocal patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she struggles through was wrapping the summerbread, learning to live without him. ''but isn't this the first time he's based a character on you?'' She builds relationships with mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'her mothermannerisms''s friends, with her neighbours and with a group of teenage girls who form her creative writing class. Written in Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the first personfact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - ''a weak, plain, the book catalogues her progress using these friendshipsdetestable, her pastpathetic, her reading and her shrinkunloved, Dr Sunloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444710524</amazonuk>''

{{newreview|author=Edward Docx|title=The Devil's Garden|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Set Move 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 environment. It's sort of ants on the deck in the jungle, if you like. 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 secret.  Secrets are a big thing on Guernsey, the small Channel Isle that is only three miles across at one point with a population a little over 65,000 i.e. somewhat more than Hereford, considerably less than Lincoln, or about half that of Norwich or Preston. Unlike any of those towns, Guernsey is an island. It is self-contained. It isn't just that everyone knows everyone else; they're almost certainly, quite closely, related.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847678858</amazonuk>}}  {{newreview|author=Alexi Zentner|title=Touch|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Stephen, an Anglican priest is writing a story of three generations, a haunting tale of his childhood set in Sawgamet, an isolated clearing in the snowy forest expanse of North West Canada. It 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 she falls through a dark hole in the thin ice at the turbulent confluence of two rivers. His terrified sister looks towards her father who plunges into the water and both perish in a catastrophe. Consequently, Stephen is to struggle with for many years to in some way to come to terms with this severe trauma. His grandfather, Jeannot, a resilient settler is a stalwart figure who keeps returning protectively into Stephen's life in order to resurrect his own lost love, Martine from the hereafter. This love between Jeannot and Stephen's grandmother, Martine, and also that between Jeannot's brother and future wife blossom through magical events involving the metamorphosis of gold, trees and mountains which move, and malevolent 'qualuplillumits' ogres from a richly various panoply of magical realism.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701185465</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]