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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jamil AhmadMatthew Tree|title=The Wandering FalconWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5

|summary="In the tangle of crumblingTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, weather-beaten a drunk and broken hills, where the borders chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of Iran, Pakistan his artistic passions all failed miserably and Afghanistan meet, is a military outpost…" Thus begins the tale who had endless crises of Tor Baz, the Black Falconself confidence. To this desolate place come two wanderersSo Tim applied himself to his studies, a man cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and a woman seeking refuge.  Refuge is denied them, since it places duties that the fort commander cannot accept, set himself high but instead he offers them shelter from the wind of a hundred and twenty days. For as long as they want it. Shelter, and foodachievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241145155</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anthony BurgessB0C47LV1PC|title=A Clockwork OrangeFragility|author=Mosby Woods

|summary=A Clockwork Orange comes under Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the heading of "books question should you feel make it? Or is the question if you ought to have read by now"did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no. Mostly these are books that you don ''Fragility''t necessarily want to readis set as the city of Portland, Oregon, but are considered such classics that an inability cautiously begins to pass any kind of comment upon them suggests a gaping hole in your education.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241951445</amazonuk>emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anna GavaldaMosby Woods|title=Breaking AwayA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=Garance The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is on her way quite sure how to a family weddingmend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. In the car with her brother and his wife she thinks about all her siblings, what's happened in their lives and who they have all becomeGovernments are flailing. Throughout the journey she finds herself bickering constantly with her sister-in-law who always rubs her up the wrong wayA war here, and a push for the first time Garance senses some tension from her brother too who climate action there. A feeling that nobody is usually calm and collected at all timesin actual charge. Is everything okay in his life or is his wife finally beginning to wear his patience thin? They take a detour en route to pick up another siblingImagine then, much to Carine's annoyance, and then on reaching the wedding there's was a surprise man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in store for all this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of them as circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the four siblings find themselves on an unplanned escape, together once again, rediscovering their youthful selves most valuable asset in a funhistory. Imagine then, brief break from their real livesthat this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906040400</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Haley Tanner0571379559|title=Vaclav and LenaThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|summary=Vaclav and Lena ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are both children of Russian immigrantsin Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, growing up she lives in Brooklynthe house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Vaclav dreams Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of becoming a fantastic magiciantime, with his friend Lena as his assistantstorms and floods. Her husband, and as children they practise their routine togetherRichard, making lists of the things they'll needstruggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the costumes they will wear delivery rounds - and the tricks they will performto bring in sufficient money. Vaclav is confident They have twin boys - Sonny and happyMax, but Lena is quiet, withdrawn and struggles with speaking Englishthe rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Yet Vaclav believes, always, People don't believe that they are destined to be together. Even 're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Lena disappears one day and Max is gone from out with his life for many years still he hopes mother that, somehow, he will find her againshe's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434020443</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Neil Jordan|title=Mistaken|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The front cover photograph and follow-up to the blurb on the back cover give this book excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a misty, floaty, ethereal feelfew months after where we left off. The story starts at In the endpalace of Odysseus, if you get my drift. The adult Kevin attends a local funeral but he's careful with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to remain low-keyrule without her husband, hidden almostwho sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. Why is As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that? And whose funeral is it anyway? As early as page 6, JordanClytemnestra brought to Ithaca's poetic and atmospheric style shores, Queen Penelope is apparent in lines such as ' on the brink of a fragile peace... close to One that shatters however with the line return of yew treesOrestes, were the massed umbrellas King of the mournersMycenae, retreatingand his sister Elektra, like so many mushrooms come alive in a fairy-tale forestseeking refuge.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848544197</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Helen HumphreysKay Chronister|title=The Reinvention of LoveDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Historical Dystopian Fiction|summary='The Reinvention of Love' is one of those stories With a world that is so bizarre and strange that it could only be based on factual eventsbecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Essentially Whether it is a goodrobotic takeover, old-fashioned love triangle set mostly in Paris in the period from the 1830s to the 1860s; a world where fighting duels is devoid of water or a commonplace event. The triangle features the great French literary writer Victor Hugonuclear holocaust, his wife Adèle and the altogether strange critic Charles Saint-Beuve who narrates much of this story, with brief breaks genre is a way for Adèlehumans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures''s side by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of events and some letters written by the Hugo's youngest daughter, also called Adèle (but let's call her, as she was known to her family, Dédé fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to avoid confusion)find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687985</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Wesley StaceEric LaRocca|title=Charles Jessold, Considered as a MurdererThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=3.5|genre=CrimeHorror|summary="Nothing in recent 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 prepared me for the power feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and , by the polish of this subtle tale end of English music in the makingstory, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a chiller wrapped collection of short stories more interested in an enigma [New Statesman]"  "His handling of dry comic dialogue and cynical affectation is reminiscent the horrors of P G Wodehouse… an intelligentillness, fun grief and thoughtful piece of fiction [Independent on Sunday]"  Just two of the previous reviews humiliation. Horrors that adorn the back cover of linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad'Charles Jessold…'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546574</amazonuk>.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Roy Jacobsen, Don Bartlett (translator) and Don Shaw (translator)Madelaine Lucas|title=Child WonderThirst for Salt

|summary=1961 was a year of change, a time, as Jacobsen puts it, ''when men became boys and housewives women'Love, I'. At the outset Finn and his mother are leading a quietd read, rather timorous life in was supposed to be a working class Oslo suburb. Then change overwhelms them, not through world eventslight and weightless feeling, but in the form of a mysterious child who is FinnI had always longed for gravity's half sister. Linda is not like other children and Finn's attempt to deal with her impact on his family is the central thread in this quintessential story of growing up.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050184</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Salman Rushdie|title=Luka and the Fire of Life|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Back in 1990Told from a retrospective view, Salman Rushdie followed up his controversial 'Satanic Verses' with a book dedicated to his then nine young woman unravels the year old son-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, Zafar, called 'Haroun and the Sea of Stories'. Now, his second son, Milan, finally gets narrator relives the affair with a book of his own, although he had man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to wait until he was 13 for his father to get around to itits sorrowful end the summer after. 'Luka and Set against the Fire backdrop of Lifean isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt' is very much a follow up to 'Haroundetails the 24-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 is certainly helpful, although not necessary, if you have read that book as many of the events in the first book are referred to herealtered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099555328</amazonuk>0861546490

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Manuel de Lope and John Cullen (Translator)Michael Grothaus|title=The Wrong BloodBeautiful Shining People

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Although de Lope has written over a dozen novels, this is the first to be translated into English. The cover is as pretty as a picture and screams 'Spanish.' So far, so goodBut fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. But And I have 'm willing to admit that on the whole bet most of the European novels I've read over the last year what we fear will never happen, or so, have fallen short of the mark for mewe can take steps to change it. Will this one prove to be different?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551853</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=Aravind Adiga|title=Last Man In Tower|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Following a Man Booker winning book like [[The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga|The White Tiger]] is always going to be a daunting challenge for any writer, let alone one when that book was the author's first novel. In 'Last Man in TowerBeautiful Shining People'' Adiga perhaps sensibly turns revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to a proven structure that allows his story-telling skills to flourishbe human. Gone are clever structural ideasOf what is real and what is artificial, like 'The White Tiger's' letter format and instead we get a straightforward engaging story set in modern day Mumbai where a rich builder whether the development of technology is seeking to force residents of an old apartment block to sell their flats to enable redevelopmentexciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848875169</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christos TsiolkasJennifer Saint|title=LoadedAtalanta|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ari is just nineteen, of Greek descent but living in Melbourne with his family. He's gay, unemployed and not in education. He wants to get away from the traditional Greek life of his parents and their friends but has no idea how to do it. He falls back on the only life that he knows: clubs, parties, anonymous sex, a cocktail of drugs and alcohol. But will even this be enough to dull the pain? Told vividly in the first person and sexually explicit it's a short book – a novella – which grabs you and has no intention of letting you go until it spits you out at the other end.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099757710</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Alain Mabanckou|title=Memoirs of a Porcupine|rating=4

|summary=The protagonist of this novel is an ordinary Congolese porcupine until Papa Kibandi performs an ancient ritual involving a hallucinogenic cocktail called ''mayamvumbi'', and transforms him into his son's harmful doubleI was as worthy as any one of them. The insecure younger Kibandi becomes more and more embittered as his life goes I would get on, and sends his porcupine to 'eat' anybody he feels the least bit threatened by, a process whereby board that person's life essence is sucked outship, killing them instantlyI vowed. Over one hundred victims later and following his master's death at I would take my place, not just in the hands name of a vengeful baby, our narrator retires to the hollow goddess. It was for the sake of a baobab tree where he writes this confessionalmy name, too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687675</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''

{{newreview|author=Julie Myerson|title=Then|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The front cover is graphic and tellingPrincess. A frozen London with its skyscrapers emitting black smoke and random fires across a desolate landscapeWarrior. As early as the second paragraph we see that something is wrong, something cataclysmic has happened with the lines ''People are eating the birds Lover.Hero.. fighting over a handful of scorched sparrows.'' The story is told in the first person by the central character which gives it immediacy and draws the reader straight in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224093754</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|title=Whatever|author=Michel Houellebecq|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Interviewed by BBC film critic Mark Kermode shortly before his 60th birthdayAbandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Woody Allen gave Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the bequiffed goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one this somewhat startling piece who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a fierce band of advicewarriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis''You get to my agename and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, you realise that when you die youAtalanta must remember Artemis're really not losing fatal warning: that much.'' Those words sprang to mind while reading ''Whatever''if she marries, first novel by Michel Houellebecq. The main protagonist in ''Whatever'' may it will be only half the age of the film director, but the outlook on life shared by both men seems strikingly similarher undoing. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687845</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreview|title=Sag Harbor|author=Colson Whitehead|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Colson Whitehead wanted to write something personal for his fourth book, so he chose an autobiographical novel, based on his experiences as a vacationing youngster. 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 Steinbeck. Within easy reach of New York, in 1985 it was an affluent black enclave within a large, white middle-class holiday area.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099531887</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Carlos Alba|title=The Songs of Manolo Escobar|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Antonio is the second-born son to Spanish parents, living in Glasgow. He's embarrassed to be anything other than Scottish, and he tries everything to hide his family background from friends at school, refusing to speak Spanish with his parents and struggling to forge his own identity in life. In his middle age, he suddenly finds his life falling apart around him as his marriage begins to fail and his increasingly frail father becomes obsessed with the proper burial of his parents back in Spain. Antonio continues to play a rather emotionally distant part in his parents' lives, but then finds himself drawn further and further into the truth about his father's past which, ultimately, leads him to question his own past and the path his future might take.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184697173X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ann PatchettAmanthi Harris|title=State of WonderBeautiful Place

|summary=Anders Eckman is dead. The news Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has been delivered in returned to the form an aerogram – remember those blue paper-cum-envelope things we used to use to write to foreign pen-pals when Villa Hibiscus on the notion southern coast of befriending a person you'd never met in a foreign her home country still seemed exotic?  . This flimsy piece of paper was delivered to Eckman's employersis a place she spent her formative years. After all it It is not a place she was them that had sent him down to born into, but the Brazilian Amazon one she thinks of as home. How she came to find be at the enigmatic and evasive Dr Annik SwensonVilla, how it became her home, and more precisely find out exactly how she was getting on with developing the drug machinations that was costing have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the firm so ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of their research budgeta film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408818590</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jean Rhys178563335X|title=Wide Sargasso SeaDefences|author=Hilary Taylor

|summary=In the late eighteen thirties the father of an English gentleman conspires to marry him off to When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a landed Jamaican Creole as trainee vicar, sitting in on a means of giving his second son an estate PCC meeting and stopping him being a burden on wondering why they're held when you need to pick the familychildren up. Written in the nineteen sixties Her husband, 'Wide Sargasso Sea' was inspired by Rochester's first wife in ''Jane Eyre''Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and is an impressionisticher elder brother, Jamie, hallucinatory account of that woman's alienation and subsequent descent into madness that can be read as whilst Rachel holds a prequel to the Bronte novelsobbing parishioner. The book covers Antoinette Thelma's childhood daughter-in Jamaica and -law won't let her see her honeymoon grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a small Caribbean island lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with her new husband the parish - and their domestic servantsshe's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the point of view shifts between Antoinette and her husbandbeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241951550</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Douglas Kennedy1398515388|title=The MomentBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=After I'd read the blurb on the back cover I gave a bit First of a shrug as if to sayall, wellit was the earthquake, I've read quite a number of books recently where undying love has been found deep in war-torn Europethe ocean floor, so was which created the tsunami and this book going to be different, or better? Thomas Nesbittin turn, middle-aged, disillusioned with love and more than a tad world-weary is trying to move on in his lifecaused the nuclear meltdown. His marriage of more than twenty years is dissolving before his very eyesThe result was complete and utter devastation. But rather than being upsetThe deaths were uncountable, he's feeling as if a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. He and his wife were never really ''in love'' in the true sense loss of the phrase, despite having a daughter togetherlivelihoods was widespread. And there's a very good reason as to why Thomas is like this and the rest of the book tells us why, warts and all.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091795842</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Aminatta Forna|title=The Memory of Love|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The setting for this story is a hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone, soon after the government has declared an end to an 11 year civil war. How can people come to terms with the terrible things fact that have happened? Actually, can they come to terms with those things?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408809656</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jenn Ashworth|title=Cold Light|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Cold Light'' is many pets were separated from their owners came far down the story list of three teenage girls who become involved in a predatory adult world. As priorities but - six months after the story opens we're looking back on what happened from tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a decade later and we know that one of the girls, Chloë, died in dog outside a Valentine's Day suicide pactconvenience store. The town council has finally decided on a memorial to Chloë – itHe wasn's to be t a summerhouse at dog person but the side of the pond where she drowned, although itconvenience store owner's difficult to understand quite why anyone would want to sit there. The ground-breaking ceremony is being televised when it becomes obvious comment 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=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=In the Congolese bar of Credit Gone West, the owner Stubborn Snail wants a record of the lives of those who drink there. The man he chooses would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to write it? Disgraced schoolteacher Broken Glass, who fills up a notebook with the stories of the bar’s patrons – or at least their versions of those tales.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668675X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Bezmozgis|title=The Free World|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It's the late 1970's open his car door and a family of Latvian Jews, the Krasnanskys, are emigrating from Tamon the Soviet Union. They're made to stay in Rome whilst they apply to live in the States and they find themselves trapped dog jumped in a strange migratory limbo, belonging nowhere and tied to no-one but each other.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670920053</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jennifer Egan0989715337|title=A Visit From Papa on the Goon Squad|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Apparently there's a saying that 'time's a goon' - no, I'd never heard of it and to be fair, neither had the first character to whom it is said in Jennifer Egan's 'A Visit from the Goon Squad', but together with a pair of epigraphs from Proust, it's clear that time is very definitely what is being explored here. Egan's subject area is all loosely based around the music world. Her central character, 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 career. ''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>}} {{newreviewMoon|author=Lauren Liebenberg|title=The West Rand Jive Cats Boxing ClubMarco North

|summary=Best friends Tommy and Chris are 12 years old''Some frogs had gotten into the well. It is 1958 and they are growing up in a small mining town near Johannesburg, South Africa. They are learning to box and to dance to rock and roll music.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844084892</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=James Frey|title=The Final Testament of ''Walter stood waist-deep in the Holy Bible|rating=3fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The Rabbis say that all the signs are there from the birth Long strands of Ben Zion Avrohom that he is the Messiahtheir eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. That's a lot Two of anyone to cope with the dogs leaned over the opening and, like Jesus, there's much barked down at the strange noise of Ben's early life that is untold here. When he is involved in an horrific accident on a building site that he miraculously survives, albeit with terrible scaring, the prophecies appear to be true. He develops a form of epilepsy during which buckets as he appears to speak to God. He is fluent in ancient languages despite never learning filled them, knows all the Holy books by heart and yet distains all forms of religion, instead spreading his message of love to all who meet him in modern day New York.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848543174</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=Mirza Waheed|title=How is that for an opening? The Collaborator|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The Collaborator style of the title is our narrator, a sensitive bookish young man. He is the son of the headman of a small village this novel in a side valley of the Kashmir. The heritage form of the people is that of nomads. The village has been settled for less than interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a generationsixpence. Everything they have And author Marco North, who has been built by the sheer hard graft most wonderful turn of the people themselves… including the recently completed mosquephrase, starts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918954</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alan WarnerDaisy Hildyard|title=The Stars in the Bright SkyEmergency

|summary=In 1999, Alan Warner introduced us to a wonderful set of characters in 'The Sopranos' when a school choir from a backwater town in Scotland went on a trip to the big city. Much debauchery ensued. 'The Stars in the Bright Sky' once again reunites most summary of the original gang and there is no need to have read the first this book to pick up on the diverse characters. Now though, theydoesn've grown up (or at least got older!) and are gathered at Gatwick Airport t come close to set off on a girls' holiday.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009946182X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Elia Barcelo and David Frye (Translator)|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 explaining what 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, done 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'premise. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857050052</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Peter SalmonSally Oliver |title=The Coffee StoryWeight 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=Teddy Everett, head of Everett and Sons Coffee is dying, slowly and painfullyEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, of cancera delight. The Coffee Story I will agree with the first – tremendous is his story, told in his own (very descriptive) words. It goes from (although not necessarily in this order) his childhood in England, his adolescence in Ethiopia and then his life in the USA and Cuba. Itno understatement – but 'a delight's his time in Cuba which has put him where he is now – perhaps using the expression in prisona way I'm not familiar with. For his crimes he would normally I have suffered the death penalty, but his sentence was commuted because to confess my ignorance of his illness and now the doctors try to save himSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. Or perhaps itFrom the little I have read (in translation, I don's that they're trying t read Spanish) there does seem to persuade Teddy that they're trying to save him be a tendency towards the fantastical – whether he wants to be saved or notthe mystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444724703</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andrew MillerJennifer Saint|title=PureElektra

|summary=I've read MillerElektra's ''Oxygen'' and ''The Optimists'' so I was looking forward to reading this novel. The by Jennifer Saint tells the story opens of three women who live in the opulence heavily male dominated world of the Palace of VersaillesAncient Greece. We Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are given vivid descriptions of both all bit players in the scale story of the palace and its grandeurTrojan War. Jean-Baptiste Baratte, Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the young engineer, seems completely over-awed by most compelling stories and the whole occasion. Even although he's not entirely sure what is expected of him in Paris, he accepts. He needs to eat, after allmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444724258</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anne Enright8409290103|title=The Forgotten WaltzIf Only|author=Matthew Tree|rating=4.5

|summary=Anne Enright's 2007 Booker prize winning [[The Gathering Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by Anne Enright|The Gathering]] addressed the gloomy subjects of the three D's; deathhis father, depression and dysfunctional families. Her latest bookcotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, ''The Forgotten Waltz''Mr Patrick, set in Dublin in 2009, sees her turning her attentions to a love affair. A more uplifting subject you might think. Well only up to a point. The affair in question you see is ensure that of her narrator, Gina, who is already married to the generally good, if undynamic, Connor, while young man got on board the other end, boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. Patrick sent the subject money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the affair is the older, Seán, also married and neighbour of Ginatwo although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn's sister. In case your moral compass isnt that Lowry senior didn't stretched quite enough by this, Seán and care for his wife Aileenson, also it was that 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 young daughter who suffers from epilepsyman on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022408903X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Leila AboulelaAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Lyrics AlleyRed is My Heart|rating=43.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The front cover photograph is eye-catching [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and lovely white and has the appeal of saying to potential readers - read mein my house. The book's title is both poetic and enigmatic. I And so was keen to get reading but before this one, although I could, I'm faced with a page listing the ''Principal Characters'' and another page setting out the Abuzeid family tree. It did put me off slightly, I have to admit. I tend to think spelled that with a modernmore accurately – this one was, average-paged work of fiction a list of characters and is well, a list too farblack and white and red. SoYes, yeshe has an artistic collaborator on this piece, 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, Ithink it'm thinkings possible to say not one page lacks the influence of some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0297860097</amazonuk>1913547183

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shehan KarunatilakaB098FFFBH9|title=ChinamanSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright|rating=4.5

|summary=After Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the 1996 World Cup, dying sports journalist WG Karunasena decides that way in which human beings exploit the animal world needs '. She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a half decent documentary on Sri Lankan cricket'lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, Nick. He sets out to make Kate runs the said documentaryfamily business, focusing on the mysterious Pradeep Mathewa toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, the 1980which is where we's spin bowler he considers to have been his countryll meet Rachel's greatest ever playermain (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys. 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>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tessa HadleyYancey Williams|title=The London TrainCrosshairs of the Devil|rating=34.5

|summary=Part one focuses on Paul Award- a rather self obsessed and aimless character, who winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is less than honest with his family, using various friends to cover up his movements. He has several daughters, and getting on learning that one is having problems, goes to visit her in London - years and ends up staying with her, for several weeks, leaving both despite his (second) wife, strenuous objections and the mother of this daughter (first wife), completely in the dark as thanks to what 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 finds himself living - but in fact his motives are far less altruisticor imprisoned, thereby alienating the reader from his tale. The squalor in which her daughter is living, would appal most parents Eddie's point of view - yet he seems to take it all in his strideroom 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, and attempts to join the hippy-style commune - yet more irritation with this deeply flawed character therefore emerges.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224090976</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Emma Henderson|title=Grace Williams Says it Loud|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Graceonly a trusty nursing aide, aged elevenJenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is sent going to the Briar Mental Institute as her parents can no longer cope with her care. She is befriended there by a young boykeep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though, Danielso here, who is epileptic and also has no arms after a terrible accident. Together we see the horrors of for his readers, are his wanderings through his life in the Briar, and also their slowly growing love affair with each other's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>144470401X</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roma Tearne0008421714|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 wasn't unusual 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 the piano like an angel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007301596</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMrs March|author=Tea Obreht|title=The Tiger's WifeVirginia Feito

|summary=Téa Obreht's 'The Tigerproblem began just after the publication of George March's Wife' comes with a fair degree of hype from most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the US, and largely it lives up last page) seemed to either be reading it, which is no small achievementor had already done so. The main story is set in Yugoslavia and explores a young doctor Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, NataliaPatricia asked, seeking for as she was wrapping the truth about her grandfatherbread, ''but isn's death, while on a mission to deliver much needed medical aid to an orphanage in the war-ravaged Balkans. But what sets t this book apart is the intricate weaving of reality with the myths and stories of the region. In particular there are two myths 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 and who has settled near a remote mountain village where Nataliafirst time he's grandfather is growing up, and who develops based a strange relationship with a deaf-mute girl who becomes known as character on you?'the tiger's wife'; and a mysterious story of She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'Deathless Manher mannerisms' 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 himself.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297859013</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Graham Swift|title=Wish You Were Here|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I cannot tell you exactly how long after I finished Perhaps this book that I satwould not have mattered, holding it, in stunned silence except for - but it was light when I finished it and dark when I put it down. Some books can do the fact that to you. This Johanna is one the whore 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 the first person by the daughter Nantes - ''a decade or so after the tragedy. Soweak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, she has a healthy dose of hindsight which shows itself time and time again with sentiments such as .unloveable wretch.. if only I'd have known back then ... and ...I thought it was a bit strange at the time ... if you get my drift. Burnside takes his time to set the scene (spartan) and his characters (a mere handful). His chosen location is the arresting emptiness of somewhere deep in the Arctic Circle so straight away he's caught my imagination - with his.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022406178X</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Edward St Aubyn|title=At Last|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=In ''At Last'', Edward St Aubyn returns Move on to the Melrose family, the subject of both ''Some Hope'' and of his Booker-shortlisted [[Mother's Milk by Edward St Aubyn|Mother's MilkNewest Paranormal Reviews]]. I confess that I have still not got around to reading the first of the trilogy, but loved ''Mother's Milk'' 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 book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330435906</amazonuk>}}