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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kenzaburo OeMatthew Tree|title=The Silent Cry|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Featuring rioting and looting of corporate supermarkets and anger against immigrants, this is a timely re-issue of Nobel Prize for Literature winner’s Kenzaburo Óe’s 1967 classic ''The Silent Cry'We' which was cited by the Nobel committee as his key work.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846688078</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Hector Tobar|title=The Barbarian Nurseriesll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The Torres-Thompsons seem Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to have it all. A beautiful homebe different from his father, two healthy boys and enough money not to have to worry about practical matters. The cherry on the cake is their employment of their maid Araceli. She works like a trouper and keeps the large house spick and span. She is lucky enough to have her own private quarters (if small drunk and rather basic) in the back garden area. She knows within herself that she should be grateful, should really be jumping up and down with glee and thanking her lucky stars to have this job. She's managed to escape the poverty and violence chronic underachiever whose dreams of Mexico after all. But as she goes about her daily housekeeping duties she feels like some alien living on another plant. Planet America. Araceli is young, single and childless and being exceptional at times she misses the hustle and bustle any of her old life. And here Tobar gives an excellent account of the affluent part of LA where the Torres-Thompson's live - ' ... in this house on a hill high above the ocean, on a cul-de-sac absent of pedestrians or playing children, absent of traffic ...'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444726757</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Alistair MacLeod|title=No Great Mischief|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=No Great Mischief is a novel which captures the essence of belonging his artistic passions all failed miserably and the need to be a part who had endless crises of one's historyself confidence. This is the story of a small part of Clann Calum Ruadh, the people of Red Calum, emigrants So Tim applied himself to Canada. It sweeps from contemporary Toronto to evoke Cape Breton in the fifties and back to the clearances of Scottish history. MacLeod tells the tale with the dignity and stature of an ancient mythhis studies, holding up to our gaze what it means to be a part of a race, a family cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and a placeset himself high but achievable ambitions. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099283921</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=William GiraldiB0C47LV1PC|title=Busy MonstersFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=
Charles Homar loves his Gillian. He's proved it to us, if not to her, by going after her possessive, jealous state trooper of an ex with the intent to kill - if only ended up rescuing a cat instead. But lo and behold, she's declared she's off to discover the real love of her life - the giant squid. Failing to stop this, Charlie spends too long with a Nessie obsessive, then goes on a hunt of his own - for Bigfoot, all the while, chapter by chapter, sending his narrative of the same to a magazine as essays for one of those autobiographical, frivolous columns.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393079627</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Colson Whitehead
|title=Zone One
|rating=4
|genre=Horror
|summary=To start, for once, with the book's style - this has probably the least dialogue of any book you'll read this year. There are some comments from characters, but they're few and far between - as are those characters that can actually speak. For we're in a devastated New York, later this century, and our three main protagonists are cleaning up after a worldwide plague of zombies. The active ones have mostly been gunned down by the military, but there are a few still locked away in hidden corners - as well as inactive ones, called stragglers, who seem stuck in one instant, whether finishing off their last office job for the millionth time, or like a ghost haunting a place relevant to them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846555981</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Michela Murgia and Silvester Mazzarella (Translator)
|title=Accabadora
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This beautiful, slim volume has won no less than six literary prizes. Murgia paints an early and evocative picture of the young central characterCan you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, Maria as she makes mud tarts. But this innocent activity is about to come to an abrupt halt. Her birth mother struggles to feed and clothe all her children (Maria is the fourth child and question should you make it? Or is really a nuisance) so when an opportunity arises which 'solves the problem of Maria' question if you likedid, then she grabs would it with land? The catch is that the answer for both handscould well be. Maria is quickly and rather unceremoniously adopted by an older woman who just happens to be a widow. She has no children of her own and seems to lead a rather lonely, insular life. She is old enough to be a grandmother, let alone a mother. Will she be able to cope with a noisy youngster under her roof? You wonder why she'd want to take in a raggedy child, or any child for that matter, in the first placeno. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050451</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Khaled Hosseini|title=The Kite Runner (Graphic Novel)|rating=4|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=A confession. If there's one book I'm not likely to read, itFragility''s that which everyone else is reading. If it turns into a hugely popular film for all set as the left-wing chattering classes to rave overcity of Portland, Oregon, then that's just more grist cautiously begins to my mill – I'll always have a chance to catch up on it later on, even if I never take that opportunity. I'm not alone in acting like this – see a friend and colleague's similar admission when reviewing [[White Teeth by Zadie Smith]]. But at least, through the medium of emerge from the graphic novel, restrictions imposed during the book reviewing gods have conspired to let me see just what I'm missing, with this adaptation, by Italian artists, of a hugely successful – and therefore delayable – novel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408815257</amazonuk>covid pandemic
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jaimy GordonMosby Woods|title=Lord of MisruleA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The West Virginia, 1970. Weisn're at a rundown race track, of t the dusty kind rundown horses and their rundown owner/trainers fetch up living dominant force it once was. Nobody in, with the occasional race West is quite sure how to interrupt mend this or even if mending it is the boredombest course of action. Into things comes a young upstart hoping to surprise all with his four unknown quantities and make a packet before fleeingGovernments are flailing. His girlfriend is A war here too to help out, and naively eager a push for success and knowledgeclimate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, but old hands like Medicine Ed have seen it all beforethere was a man with precognition. Also Imagine the strategic advantage in the background are some small-time gangsters who are not too keen at for once not knowing this asset; a man who is doing can tell you what and how races are going to will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be run and wonvaluable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857386697</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joan Leegant0571379559|title=Wherever You GoThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Religion kicks off this book''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, even before she lives in the first pagehouse on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. The title is from a Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage from the Book of Ruthtime, storms and floods. The only female central characterHer husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, Yona is travelling from her home to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in America to visit her sister sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and large familyMax, the rainbow twins. SheSonny's not really looking forward to it. Shecolouring reflects his mother's nervousJamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. The two sisters live very different lives People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and haventhere's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she't seen each other for a decade. Leegant tells us all about the massive rift in their relationships his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393339890</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
{{newreview|author=Charles Frazier|title=Nightwoods|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=If you have read Charles FrazierThe follow-up to the excellent ''s Ithaca'Cold Mountain'picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, or indeed seen the filmwith delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then you'll have a fair idea what to expect from his latest offering - 'Nightwoods'by divine intervention never returned home. As with 'Cold Mountain', ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the landscape throne of the Appalachians is Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the dominant characterchaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, this time set in Queen Penelope is on the 1950sbrink of a fragile peace. He even manages to get his requisite bear into One that shatters however with the story although thankfully it fares rather better than the unfortunate beast in his first book. The darkreturn of Orestes, oppressing majesty and beauty King of the mountains Mycenae, and woods pervades the whole storyhis sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444731246</amazonuk>0356516075
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shuichi YoshidaKay Chronister|title=VillainDesert Creatures|rating=3.54|genre=CrimeDystopian Fiction|summary=WellWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, I suppose I'd better begin with the bad which was there were moments at the start of this novel when I thought I couldn't possibly read post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it right to the end. It's written in such is a stiltedrobotic takeover, factual style with details about the road networks a world devoid of the local area and exactly how much anyone pays for anything they eat water or buy or rent! Faceda nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for example, with the paragraph humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures''cars setting out from Nagasaki by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that take aligns many of the pass road to save money take the Nagasaki Expressway from Nagasaki to Omura, then to Higashi-Sonogi and Takeo, and get off at the Saga Yamato interchangefears that exist for humanity today. Intersecting this east-west Nagasaki Expressway at the interchange It is Route 263'' I thought I'd never manage a shocking novel that still manages to read more than a couple of lines before falling asleep! Still, I persisted and actually, I'm glad I didfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099526654</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Mike FrenchEric LaRocca|title=The Ascent of Isaac StewardTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=35|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Isaac Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is married used as a way to Rebekahreflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. They have sonsMost horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', Esau whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and Jacob, naturallyby the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There '' is not like that. It is a half-brother Ishmael and a back-story collection of marital betrayal and short stories more interested in the out-casting horrors of sonsillness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956881017</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=A PortsmouthMadelaine Lucas|title=The Beautiful Torment of a DreamThirst for Salt|rating=35
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This is a beautifully presented book with its enigmatic front cover and equally enigmatic title. After reading the blurb on the back cover ''Love, I 'd read, was left with supposed to be a light and weightless feeling of wishy-washiness however, as regards the storyline. Unfortunately, the contents confirmed this but I had always longed for me.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956493602</amazonuk>}}gravity''
{{newreview|author=Kevin Wilson|title=The Family Fang|rating=4Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Annie Fang and Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her brother Buster are back living at home with their parents - where they never thought they'd ever be again. But it has come senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to this - her film actress career is on its sorrowful end the rocks with summer after. Set against the kind backdrop of selfan isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-destruction so much enjoyed by tabloid writers, and he year- well, heold narrator's here because of a jumbo spud gun. Neither want life back at homedeepening relationship with her older lover, as throughout their childhood they were used by their parents depicting its all- without much planningconsuming nature, without any consideration of feelings, or consent - in a whole career of performance art pieces, designed to enact a point of life or just cause havochow it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447202384</amazonuk>0861546490
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Michael Grothaus
|title=Beautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.''
{{newreview|author=Philip Roth|title=Nemesis|rating=4''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=1944, Newark, New JerseyOf what it means to be human. Summer. Hot. Bucky Cantor, a young Jewish man, Of what is gym teacher real and playground attendant-cum-sports instructor for the district, helping all those interested become fit young men, able to do what his eyesight prevents him from doing - serving in the forces. Things would be fine if his girlfriend were closer at hand, if it were cooler, and if there were no polio epidemic happening. But there isartificial, and nobody knows what whether the development of technology is causing itexciting or frightening. Is it flies? Is it a gang of taunting Italian kids spreading it from neighbourhood to neighbourhood? Is it blacks, germs on money - is it in fact Cantor himself, draining all the youthful vigour from his charges under a blistering sun?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099542269</amazonuk>191458564X
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom WolfeJennifer Saint|title=A Man in FullAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I'll hold my hands up right now and say that no, 'I haven't read Wolfe's much-acclaimed [[The Bonfire was as worthy as any one of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe|The Bonfire of the Vanities]]them. I've heard a lot about itwould get on board that ship, over the years, in newspapers etc that I almost feel that vowed. I ''have'' read itwould take my place, mind younot just in the name of the goddess. So I'm really pleased to have It was for the chance to read this much-awaited novelsake of my name, too. At a stonking 700+ pages most of which are packed tight with WolfeAtalanta's particular style of prose, It's a veritable feast for readers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554771</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=J M Coetzee|title=Scenes From Provincial Life|rating=4Princess.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='Scenes from Provincial Life' is a compilation of JM Coetzee's three fictionalised memoirs: 'Boyhood' first published in 1997, 'Youth' published in 2002 and [[Summertime by J M Coetzee|Summertime]] published in 2009Warrior. In one sense they clearly belong together in this single edition and yet they were initially published separatelyLover. What strikes the reader of this compilation is the change in style and focus of the third book in the seriesHero.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846554853</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Henning Mankell|title=Daniel|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=A young Hans Bengler has decided to leave his homeland of Sweden and make an expedition across the inhospitable Kalahari Desert. Brave - or extremely foolish. I'm sticking with the latter. My reasons are that Bengler is portrayed by Mankell as Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather dullthan a son, insular and unimaginative young man. He doesn't really get along with his family (such as they are) nor does he seem to have many friends. It's also plain that he's desperate to leave his cold Sweden for warmer climes. But at what cost?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009948143X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mohammed Hanif|title=Our Lady Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of Alice Bhatti|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Alice is nervous. She's being interviewed for a job at the local hospital. Even although her nursing skills are far from ideal, she believes she's in with a shout. She presents herself at her charming best goddess Athemis and it seems to work. She's now employed and earning some much-needed money. She knows she'll have to work really hard and probably long hours too. The hospital in question is in downtown Karachi: fashioned into a seething mass of patients many of whom have no choice but to lie in corridors etcformidable huntress, one who longs for adventure.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224082051</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Evelio Rosero|title=Good Offices|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Here is a church in Bogota nobody seems When the opportunity comes – to want to leave. In part one it is a large group of join the elderlyArgonauts, given a weeklyfierce band of warriors, tasteless meal descendent from the charitable funds, but bitterly refusing Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to quit the fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place, making our main character Tancredo fear for his passivityin history. In part two it What follows is the congregation, as a rare need for a stand-in priest seems to be a blessing. And in part three whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it is , Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that priest himselfif she marries, stuck among the household of Tancredo, the girl who loves him, and chorus of three weird old womenit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857050672</amazonuk>1472292154
}}
 {{newreview|author=Barry Unsworth|title=The Quality of Mercy|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='The Quality of Mercy' picks up the story of the author's Booker Prize-winning 'Sacred Hunger' although if you haven't read the first book, you won't be greatly disadvantaged as the relevant story lines are explained. What you might miss out on is some of the feeling for a few of the main characters, most notably the Irish fiddler, Sullivan who, when this book picks up in spring 1767, has just escaped from prison where the remaining shipmates of the slave ship, the 'Liverpool Merchant' await their trial of piracy. Slavery and abolition thereof remains a central theme of this sequel, but the book draws some poignant similarities with those in bondage due to poverty, and particularly those working in the coal mines of County Durham.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091937124</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Zadie SmithAmanthi Harris|title=White TeethBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Some books sneak up Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on youthe southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. Others are thrown at you from every corner It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of the media as home. How she came to be at the extent that you almost make a conscious decision NOT to read themVilla, or at leasthow it became her home, not and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yetsubtly violent novel. Let Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the furore die down. If they're still around in musical score of a few yearsfilm, your subconscious whispers, maybe we'll go see what all that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the fuss was aboutVilla. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241954576</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael Ondaatje178563335X|title=The Cat's TableSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=For When 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 first half or so of this bookchildren up. Her husband, Christopher, which sees an 11 collects six-year -old boy called Michael (or Mynah to his friends) leave his home of Ceylon to travel to school in EnglandHannah and her elder brother, Jamie, I wasn't really sure if it even had whilst Rachel holds a plotsobbing parishioner. Focusing on his journey in the 1950 Thelma's aboard the ship to England, although occasionally leaping forward to his later life where he gives us tantalising glimpses as to what happened to his fellow passengers after the voyage, this originally seems to be nothing more than a series of incredibly welldaughter-in-drawn character sketcheslaw won't let her see her grandson. In fairness Holthorpe, I should say that ''nothing more'' is rather harsh in this case – on the menNorfolk coast, women and children Ondaatje creates, from a supposedly cursed rich man seeking is a curelovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a friendly thief, to Michaelreal bond with the parish - and she's beautiful cousin Emilyin awe of the vicar, are so beautifully conjured that I could have lived without a plot perfectly happily. HoweverGail, we eventually realise therebut then she's a little been doing the job for more to this narrative, than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that this skilful author has been foreshadowing a walk on the events at the novel's climax all alongbeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224093614</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Patrick McGuinness1398515388|title=The Last Hundred DaysBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary='The Last Hundred Days' First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in question here are the final days of Ceausescu's Romania ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in late 1989. Narrated by an unnamed young British expat who has a job offer from the English department of Bucharest Universityturn, despite never having interviewed for caused the jobnuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, we get an insight into and the life under communist rule as Eastern bloc countries all around start to open up after loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the fall list of priorities but - six months after the Berlin Walltsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. We are told He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that McGuinness lived in Romania in the years leading up he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the revolution, and this is no surprise as there is an authenticity here that could only have come from some level of inside knowledgedog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115413</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jane Rogers0989715337|title=The Testament of Jessie LambPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The subject matter of 'The Testament of Jessie Lamb' ensures that this is not a comfortable readSome frogs had gotten into the well. Set '' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the near futurefragrant water, Rogers has imagined a truly terrifying virus that affects pregnant women, known as Maternal Death Syndrome or MDSnaked except for his beaten leather hat. Everyone carries this illness but the effects, a cross between AIDS and CJDLong strands of their eggs wove around him, ensure that all pregnant mothers will die - without exceptionsticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Scientists have found a way to save some Two of the unborn children, but only by placing their mothers in a chemically induced coma from which they won't recover. Now though, dogs leaned over the scientists have also discovered a way of immunising frozen, pre-MDS embryos which, if they can be placed in a willing volunteer, may ultimately allow opening and barked down at the survival strange noise of the human racebuckets as he filled them. However, the volunteers need to be under 16½ or the likely success rates are too low. Step forward one Jessie Lamb.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905207581</amazonuk>}}''
{{newreview|author=Sebastian Barry|title=On Canaan's Side|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Each chapter of 'On Cannan's Side' represents a day after the death of the narrator, Lilly Bere's, grandson, Bill. Initially the reader How is bombarded by a stream that for an opening? The style of half thoughts but soon Lilly begins to outline her own life story from being the daughter of a police officer this novel in Ireland at the end form of the First World War, her subsequent flight interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to the USAwistful and musing, to ultimately living in retirement as a domestic cook to turning on a wealthy Americansixpence. It's a remarkable storyAnd author Marco North, full who has the most wonderful turn of tragic eventsphrase, but for all its hardships, Lilly is from a time when such things are starts as he means to be endured rather than dwelt go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571226531</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chuck PalahniukDaisy Hildyard|title=DamnedEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary='Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison'. I'm a spunky, lively tweenage girl, except I'm a dead one, and I'm in Hell, to my surprise. While I'm here I'll find out just where it is all those cold-calling telegraphers ring you from just while you're settling down to your evening meal, and where the world's wasted sperm and discarded toenail clippings fetch up. I'll have very hairy encounters with demons of Satan's and mankind's making, and with some superlative plotting and flashbacks I'll find a clearer approach to why I was put here in the first place.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224091158</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Alison Pick
|title=Far to Go
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=At the risk The summary of sounding trite, a story set in 1938 Czechoslovakia on the eve of Nazi occupation, centred on a Jewish family is always going to put the reader through an emotional journey. Add in a young child and itthis book doesn's almost certain that you are going t come close to be reaching for the Kleenex at some point. But Alison Pick makes some interesting creative choices that add more layers to this story. Some will surprise the reader but the overall impact explaining what is a wonderfully moving story done with wholly believable charactersthe premise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755379411</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Madeline MillerSally Oliver |title=The Song Weight of AchillesLoss |rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Before I started Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the bookdeath of her sister, she awakes to find strange, I looked out my copy thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of Homer's ''The Iliad'' her spine which steadily increase in size and skim-read its one page introduction (yesvolume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, yet another book an experimental new treatment centre in my 'must-read' pile but it's been on it for about ahem, ten years)Wales. Having said that, it Yet something strange is rather dry happening to Marianne and scholarly which didnthe other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As Marianne't really inspire me s memories threaten to get on with overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this book as I wasn't really looking for cycle of memory and pain—but only at a 'heavy' read, especially on a nice summer's day. Onwards ..terrible price: that of identity itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408816032</amazonuk>086154112X }} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tiziano ScarpaNatalia Garcia Freire|title=Stabat MaterThis World Does Not Belong To Us|rating=35
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Translated by Shaun Whiteside Early comments on this debut novel from Scarpa's 2008 Italian originalEcuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'Stabat Matera delight' is set perhaps using the expression in a Venetian orphanage for girls run by nuns in what would way I'm not familiar with. I have been around to confess my ignorance of the 1700sSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. The girls at From the 'Ospedale' are trained as musicians and singers who play from a hidden gallery little I have read (in the adjoining church for the patrons of the Instituto della Pietà. Howevertranslation, this is I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a highly stylised little book, bordering on the almost poetic, narrated from tendency towards the point of view of one of fantastical – the orphans, a young violinist named Cecilia who goes on to tell of the impact of the appointment of a new in-house composer, one Don Antonio, or Vivaldi as most of us know himmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687691</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
 {{newreview|author=Christien Gholson|title=A Fish Trapped Inside the Wind|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The front cover is lovely with its blue and turquoise suggesting languid waters. The author of 'The Jane Austen Book Club' (which I've read incidentally) 'fell in love with this novel.' High praise indeed. I'm hoping to do the same. Everything about this book stinks (and I use the word explicitly). All of the chapters have the word 'fish' somewhere or other and there's a quote right at the beginning which gives the book its quirky and unusual title. (As I'm a fishy Piscean does that bode well for a good or sympathetic review, I wonder).|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906998906</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Patrick deWittJennifer Saint|title=The Sisters BrothersElektra
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Invariably, the Booker Prize longlist contains one book that is more on the side of light reading than the more worthy and overtly literary fare that it is usually associated with. 'The Sisters BrothersElektra' is by Jennifer Saint tells the 2011 choice. Set story of three women who live in the US in 1851, it details the adventures heavily male dominated world of two brothers, Eli and Charlie Sisters, who are hired hands for a mysterious boss known only as the CommodoreAncient Greece. Narrated by Eli, who has slightly more of a conscience than his older brother, the story starts with the Commodore ordering a hitCassandra, for reasons unknownClytemnestra, on a certain Hermann Kermit Warm.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847083188</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Alan Hollinghurst|title=The Stranger's Child|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Alan Hollinghurst's Booker-nominated and long-awaited 'The Stranger's Child' is without doubt, as one might expect from this writer, beautifully written. Almost every page offers something to smile about either Elektra are all bit players in terms of the comments story of his characters or, more often, the wry descriptions that the author offers. The structure of the book is episodic, split into five parts covering pre-World Trojan War One, the 1920s, the 1960s, the 1980s and finally the early 2000s. It offers a thoughtful and well observed picture of changes in society and culture over this period and in particular of attitudes to homosexual relationships, although admittedly Hollinghurst's subjects tend to fall into a narrow band of well educated, artistic and Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often aristocratic members of society. Writers, poets and artists are the subject matter rather than the man on the street. His male characters are invariably homosexual while his females mostly either remain unmarried or silent women have dysfunctional marriages.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330483242</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lisa See|title=Dreams of Joy|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=It's the late 1950s, most compelling stories and America's teenagers (the very idea a brand new concept) are beginning to live the all-American dream. For some of them however it isn't all 'Happy Days' diners and rock'n'roll. For the second generation Chinese immigrants there's an alternative: back 'home' there's a brave new world being forged, a world where 'we'd work in the fields and sing songs. We'd do exercises in the park. We'd help clean the neighbourhood and share mealsmost extreme furies. We wouldn't be poor and we wouldn't be rich. We'd all be equal.' |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408822296</amazonuk>1472273915
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christine Dwyer Hickey8409290103|title=The Cold Eye of HeavenIf Only|author=Matthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I reviewed Hickey's [[Last Train From Liguria Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by Christine Dwyer Hickey| Last Train From Liguria]] so his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the young man got on board the boat and thereafter Patrick was keen to see if I'd enjoy this book toosend him a monthly allowance. The front cover says that Farley ''unravels Patrick sent the warp money regularly and weft of his life'' which is a great phrase correspondence - wish I'd though of itsorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. Hickey lives in Dublin so I It wasn't that Lowry senior didn'm kind of expecting good characterization (as the bookt care for his son, it was that he didn's location is Dublin) t care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and a nice line in put-me-down witother children. But will I The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get it? Time to find out ..the young man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857890301</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Leon JennerAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=BricksRed is My Heart|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Let me start on a positive[[:Category: Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in my house. And so was this slim volume one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, and is exquisitely presented , black and has a lovely 'traditional' feel about it. Very covetable for book lovers. The front cover is also a bit of a paradox - what with the workmanlike one-word title ''Bricks'' white and the almost mystical/biblical-esque graphicsred. Will Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this all help to draw the reader in, wellpiece, and Ithink it'm s possible to say not too sureone page lacks the influence of some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444706284</amazonuk>1913547183
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David AlmondB098FFFBH9|title=The True Tale of the Monster Billy DeanSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school''This tale is told by 1 that died at birth by 1 that came into s animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the world way in days of endles war & at which human beings exploit the moment of disasteranimal world... I am not cleva, so forgiv my folts and my mistayks. I am Billy Dean. This is the truth. This is my tale.'' The Monster Billy Dean tells the story She gets a great deal of Billysupport from her family: father Pip Harrison, a boy born into the dystopia of a war-torn town and the product of an illicit liaison between a young woman lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her priesttwin, Nick. His birth coincided with an apocalyptic bombing and his parents have hidden him away from Kate runs the ruins and the catastrophe family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in a single roomPutney, both out which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of shame and in the belief that his coming into the world and surviving at such a violent moment signifies a sacred futureinformation: five soft toys. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919055</amazonuk>
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andrew KaufmanYancey Williams|title=The Tiny WifeCrosshairs of the Devil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It all begins with a bank robbery. Only this isn't your typical sort of bank robbery since the robber demands not money but instead each person Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in the bank must give him the item of most sentimental value that they have with them. These range from photographs and a key through to a calculator...years and on taking these items he says he is also taking fifty percent of their souls, despite his strenuous objections and it is up thanks to the victims to find the way to get their souls backhis daughter, finds himself living - or to die trying.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007429258</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Yvvette Edwards|title=A Cupboard Full of Coats|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''He just knockedimprisoned, that was all, knocked and the front door and waited, like the fourteen years since Ifrom Eddie'd killed my mother hadn't happened...'' Jinx is cold and she knows it. She cleans obsessively s point of view - a largely pointless task, since there is little mess to clean since her husband and young son, tired in room 315 of her frigidity, moved out. She cooks beautifully balanced meals that look aesthetic on the plate. But her food offers sustenance, not comfort. In factGarden of Eden nursing home, Jinx feels most at home amongst the dead people she works with as only a funeral home cosmetologisttrusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851688382</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Claudie Gallay|title=The Breakers|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The book Nothing is in the first person, told by a woman who is a relative newcomer going to this tiny village, no more than a cluster of homes and a few basic amenities. The story opens keep Eddie from his stock-in the lead-up to a horrendous storm. The narrator has seen nothing like it before and is both afraid and excited. The locals take it all in their stride. They're a hardy bunch trade of disparate individuals and we get to know more themwriting though, so here, one by onefor his readers, as the story developsare his wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906694710</amazonuk>0986031658
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 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Susan Hill0008421714|title=The Woman in Black|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Arthur Kipps is a young solicitor working in a fog-bound London and soon to be married. All looks rosy for Arthur until one day he is called into his boss' office where he is tasked with the affairs of the deceased recluse Alice Drablow. Alice Drablow had lived in the melancholy village of Crythin Gifford in an isolated house on the remote Eel Marsh, a house only accessible by a strange causeway when the tide is out. It is here Arthur must travel to firstly represent his firm at her funeral and then to sift through Mrs Drablow's house to ensure all her legal paperwork is in order. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685621</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMarch|author=Julian Barnes|title=The Sense of an EndingVirginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='The Sense of an Ending' is almost more problem began just after the publication of a novella - itGeorge March's a slim volume most successful novel to date. Everyone but exquisitely written, as you might expect from Julian BarnesMrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. It starts off describing Every day Mrs March went to the relationships between four friends at schoollocal patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, narrated by one of as she was wrapping the friends, Tony Websterbread, ''but quickly it becomes clear that isn't this is written many years later. Barnes has long been the first time he's based a terrific observer of character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, the English middle classes and his style invariably contains satire and dry humourprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''. And Perhaps this being Barneswould not have mattered, this school clique except for the fact that Johanna is intellectual in interestthe whore of Nantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, as the narrator recalls English and History teachers and student philosophisingunloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224094157</amazonuk>''
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{{newreview|author=Adam Levin|title=The Instructions|rating=2.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Now, I know that size isn't everything, but the first thing that strikes you about 'The Instructions' is that it is a brick of a book. It comes in at a wrist-challenging 1030 pages that almost encourages me Move on to invest in an e-reader. It's also hugely ambitious for a first time writer not least that the book's action takes place over just a few days and the narrator is a ten year old child. While it starts encouragingly, it too rapidly becomes repetitive and dull and I found it a slog to get through. There are some great passages but these get too easily lost in this huge tome.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857861360</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]