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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Susan HillMatthew Tree|title=In the Springtime of the YearWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ben Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and Ruth who had been married for just a year when he was killed in a tragic accidentendless crises of self confidence. One of the other foresters came So Tim applied himself to tell Ruth about what had happenedhis studies, but in truth she had known before he arrived. From feeling deliriously happy she had descended within moments into the depths of despair and felt so ill that she could barely move. The confirmation was just that - cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and Ruth was bereft. She couldn't share her feelings with Ben's family. It's politic to say that they were dealing with their grief in their own way set himself high but more truthful to admit that they had never liked her and were disinclined to extend more than the socially-required gestures now that Ben was deadachievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099570483</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roopa FarookiB0C47LV1PC|title=The Flying ManFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Can you make a ''The Flying ManYo birthing person'' opens with joke? And if you could, is the now elderly Maqil Karam writing a letter in his budget hotel in question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the South of France and facing deathanswer for both could well be... His story takes in many locations, from his native Punjab, to New York, Cairo, London, Paris and Hong Kong. In each location, Maqil adopts a different name, including Mike Cram, Mehmet Kahn, Miguel Caram and Mikhail Leeno. Often he acquires a different wife ''Fragility'' is set as wellthe city of Portland, CarineOregon, Samira and Bernadette, although he doesn't go cautiously begins to emerge from the bother of divorcing them, he just simply walks away. He is a chancer and a gambler, avoiding attachment, responsibility and commitment throughout his life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755383389</amazonuk>restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Cynthia OzickMosby Woods|title=Foreign BodiesA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Bea NightingaleThe West isn's brother Marvin wants her - t the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is haranguing her - quite sure how to retrieve his errant son Julian from post-mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war Parishere, to where he has decamped a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in an effort to escape parental controlactual charge. BeaImagine then, there was a New York high school teacher, is an unlikely candidate for man with precognition. Imagine the role strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of rescuer - she and her brother have been estranged for circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the best part of twenty yearsmost valuable asset in history. But she capitulates to his demands and sets off on a journey in which her presence will affect not only JulianImagine then, but his sister who also runs off to Paris, his girlfriend, a displaced Eastern European Jew, his mother (also escaping Marvin, but that this man loses this time in a psychiatric facility) and Bea's own ex-husband Leoability. What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848877366</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jane Harris0571379559|title=Gillespie and IThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The House of Broken Bricks'I' in is the title story of Jane Harrisfour people. Tess Hembry's ''Gillespie and I'' is Harriet Baxter. Now elderly and residing roots are in London in 1933Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she is finally telling her events of what happened lives in the early 1880s in Glasgow and her relationship with house on the Gillespie family. At the timeriverbank, a spinster built of independent meansbroken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, she arrived in Glasgow to visit it's stood the International Exhibition and became a champion passage of and friend to a young Scottish paintertime, Ned Gillespie storms and his young familyfloods. We know from early on that tragedy struck the Gillespie family leading Her husband, Richard, struggles to Ned destroying grow his careervegetables, but Harriet wants to set complete the record straight with regard delivery rounds - and to her involvement bring in eventssufficient money. You may or may not They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe her storythat they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571238300</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anna StothardKay Chronister|title=The Pink HotelDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=The phone call came when she was 17With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Her mother had died; the mother who had just been Whether it is a robotic takeover, a flimsy memory world devoid of water or a touchnuclear holocaust, an impression and this genre is a faded photographway for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. Not satisfied with her father and grandma's biased recollections of 'the slutDesert Creatures', she steals her step-mother's credit card and catches by Kay Chronister is a flight to the funeral in Los Angeles. Unfortunately she arrives too late for the funeral, but finding the pink hotel her mother owned, she walks in on the wake. Rooms full new work of drunken, drugpost-sodden eyes stare at her whilst she makes her way through apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the building to what must have been her mother's bedroomfears that exist for humanity today. It's then she decides, as her step-father lies, semi-consciousness, on the bed. She takes some of her mother's clothes, shoes and letters. Once she has is a chance to read them, she realises they're cards and love letters from men who may be able shocking novel that still manages to build her a picture of the woman who gave her life but not a lot elsefind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846881757</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Karin AltenbergEric LaRocca|title=Island of WingsThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=5|genre=Historical FictionHorror|summary=Rev Neil MacKenzie has been assigned to the Hebridian island of St KildaHorror taps into something primeval within us. His mission It is used as a way to bring the locals back to the Victorian idea of God reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and proprietyprocess them. He Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and his pregnant wife Lizzie not only have to fight , by the elements but also centuries end of superstition that have trickled into the islandersstory, beatable. Eric LaRocca' Christian faiths ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. Life It is made harder for Neil by a secret guilt emanating from collection of short stories more interested in the death horrors of a friend years agoillness, grief and humiliation. However, the going becomes Horrors that linger and are harder still for Lizzie, isolated by an inability to speak the local language and the burgeoning fear engendered by Neildefeat than any ''Big Bad''s behaviour and attitudes.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857382322</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Georgina HardingMadelaine Lucas|title=Painter of SilenceThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We learn from the prologue that the narrator, Oxford educated lawyer, Alex's wife has been murdered. We also know that Alex knew little of his wife'Love, RachelI's pastd read, particularly of the time that they spent together at Worcester College. This is critical in understanding who may have killed herwas supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, and why. What follows is Alex learning about this hidden past. ''Every Contact Leaves a Tracebut I had always longed for gravity'' is partly a thriller and partly a whodunnit although the structure adopted by Elanor Dymott is somewhat unusual.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224094033</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sadie JonesMichael Grothaus|title=The Uninvited GuestsBeautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=On a spring evening in 1912 preparations were being made for a supper party to celebrate the twentieth birthday of Emerald Torrington. It was taking place at Sterne, the much-loved home of the family, although finances were uncertain ''But fearing something and no one was quite sure how much longer they would be able having it come to stay in the housepass are two different things. EmeraldAnd I's mother had hopes that she would be able m willing to marry Emerald off to John Buchananbet most of what we fear will never happen, a local entrepreneur, but Emerald was far from convinced. Her step-father was in Manchester trying or we can take steps to raise the funds to keep the house going but Emerald and her brother Clovis, Patience Sutton and her brother Ernest along with Buchanan and the household staff prepared for what they hoped would be a delightful eveningchange it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186712</amazonuk>}}''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rachel JoyceJennifer Saint|title=The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold FryAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Harold and Maureen Fry were unremarkable: ''I was as worthy as any one long marriageof them. I would get on board that ship, one adult offspring and a long retirement stretching out I vowed. I would take my place, not just in front the name of them like a prison sentencethe goddess. It was for the sake of my name, too. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. One morning everything changedHero. The catalyst was Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a letter from Queenieson, an ex-colleague Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of Harold's. He knew he needed to respond the goddess Athemis and thought that posting fashioned into a letter would sufficeformidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. HoweverWhen the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a chat with a girl at fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the local petrol station made him realise that chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a letter couldnwhirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis't fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be enough. He had to provide Queenie with hope... he had to walkher undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857520644</amazonuk>1472292154
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=John LanchesterAmanthi Harris|title=CapitalBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=With Padma, a gentle nod young Sri Lankan, has returned to the great commentator Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of London life her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the pastVilla, how it became her home, John Lanchester sets his wonderfully entertaining state of and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the nation book around Pepys Road''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. With a huge cast Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of characters, he looks as a cross section of London life and while in some ways not quite perfectfilm, it comes pretty darn closethat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0571234607</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Russell Banks178563335X|title=Lost Memory of SkinSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Some readers may understandably be deterred from reading Russell BanksWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they''Lost Memory of Skin'' due re held when you need to its controversial subject matter pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and thereher elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's no doubt that itdaughter-in-law won's a morally complex readt let her see her grandson. The main character Holthorpe, known only to us at 'on the Kid' Norfolk coast, is a young man who is a convicted sex offender. Set in south Floridalovely place, he but Rachel is forced struggling to reside, develop a real bond with other offenders the parish - and his pet Iguana, under a causeway. While living hereshe's in awe of the vicar, he encounters a huge and enigmatic manGail, known only as but then she's been doing the Professor' from the local university who is apparently studying homelessness amongst sex offenders job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the two form an uneasy friendshipbeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685761</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anne Tyler1398515388|title=The Beginner's GoodbyeBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Aaron's wifeFirst of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, Dorothyin turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was killed in an accidentcomplete and utter devastation. An oak tree fell on their homeThe deaths were uncountable, demolishing and the sun porch where Dorothy happened to be at the timeloss of livelihoods was widespread. He worried The fact that if he had done things differently (a matter many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of some biscuits and priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a television set) Dorothy might not have been where she was and might still be alive and for dog outside a while he camped out in the wrecked house until further damage forced him to move in with his sisterconvenience store. It was then that he realised that Dorothy He wasn't really dead - well, not dead as we understand it - as she materialised in odd places, wearing a dog person but the clothes she used convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to wear open his car door and eventually staying with Aaron for longer periods of time. And gradually they began to bicker, just like a long-married couple..Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701187190</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christopher Burns0989715337|title=A Division of Papa on the LightMoon|author=Marco North|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Gregory Pharoah is a professional photographer whose genre is sometimes photojournalism, but more commonly portraiture or nudes. Like his job, his nature is towards ''Some frogs had gotten into the superficialwell. One day, returning from photographing a bishop (for clarity, this is a portrait assignment and not a nude!) he is the only witness to a street robbery where Alice Fell is the victim. Alice is a fatalist who believes in some kind of divine plan that means there is a reason for everything. She's enigmatic, by nature and by design as this is a quality that she enjoys cultivating. Thus these two different characters become part of the same story and what happens in the following six months is ultimately surprising and even shocking.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857386352</amazonuk>}}'
}}
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jon Bauer's first novel, ''Rocks in the Belly'The summary of this book doesn', is an emotional journey. The narrator is a man in his late 20s who has returned from Canada t come close to visit his mother who has cancer of the brain. The narrator himself explaining what is emotionally damaged from the relationship that he had with his mother from childhood when she and her husband fostered children and, interspersed done with the narrative, is the voice of narrator at eight years old and in particular telling the experience of one foster boy, Robert, who we know from early on in the book suffered a significant tragedy while in their care. What that event was will be revealed in due course, but it is clear that the young boy suffered hugely from jealousy of his mother's love for these foster childrenpremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846688450</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Adam JohnsonSally Oliver |title=The Orphan MasterWeight 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 Sonmemories 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
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The Orphan Master's Son'' follows the adventures of Jun Do who has been born without any say in his future. For Early comments on this is North Korea, where all is organised for the good of the state or at the whim of the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il. Jun Do starts his adult life as a member of a state-sanctioned kidnap squad before joining a fishing boat as a 'listener'debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, basically a spy monitoring and translating foreign radio trafficdelight. His troubles start when he discovers that being a good citizen isn't enough and sometimes a person needs something else to believe in and fight for. This I will agree with the first – tremendous is an incredibly hard book to sum up, no understatement – but I also realise this will be an awfully short review if I don't try, so here goes... |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857520555</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Gerbrand Bakker|title=The Detour|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Gerbrand Bakker's Dutch novel, ''The Detour'a delight' translated by David Colmer, is a very odd story indeed. Mostly set perhaps using the expression in Snowdonia, the book tells the story of a Dutch woman, who gives her name as Emilie, who rents a remote farm. Sheway I's clearly on the run from something, perhaps an affair m not familiar with a student at the university where she was researching the works of Emily Dickinson, but it increasingly becomes clear that this is only part of the story. Certainly her husband and parents back in the Netherlands I have no clue where she has gone - or why. Once these details are established, the book takes a turn to the seriously odd which is more confess my ignorance of a full blooded journey rather than a mere 'detour'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846556392</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Angela Carter|title=Burning Your Boats|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary='Burning your Boats' brings together Carter's early works and her uncollected short stories, alongside the collections 'Fireworks', 'The Bloody Chamber', 'Black Venus' and 'American Ghosts'Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. Carter's ability to take From the everyday and transform it into the fantastic is evident little I have read (in stories that range from a cautionary tale of a musician in love with his instrument translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a lost motorist whose journey ends in nightmarish circumstances in tendency towards the fantastical – the Snow Pavilionmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099592916</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ada WilsonJennifer Saint|title=Red Army Faction BluesElektra
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ada Wilson admits that his fascination with 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the period is what drove his work on this novel, and it is the wealth story of detail and background that strikes one when reading his account of Peter Urbach, the undercover agent whose role was to act as an agent provocateur to the Red Brigade. Urbach is revealed from three women who live in the outset as a plant, an undercover operative who needs to keep all events heavily male dominated world of the group 'noted and filed' for his mastersAncient Greece. And throughout the first half of the novel we see Urbach recording the changes and developmentsCassandra, the complex web of political ideologyClytemnestra, naivety and Elektra are all bit players in the pure egocentricity of youth which created the happening story of the Baader-Meinhof gang.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1901927482</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Matthew Green|title=Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Max is 8 years oldTrojan War. He likes Lego and Star Wars and playing with toy soldiers. He can tell you 102 words Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that rhyme with tree. He scarfs down grilled cheese sandwiches often the silent women have the most compelling stories and chicken and rice. He does not like physical contact. He lives with his mum and dad who argue about what is best for him and why he’s not normal like other boys and girlsthe most extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0751547875</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shalom Auslander8409290103|title=Hope: a TragedyIf Only|author=Matthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet Solomon KugelTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, who is almost universally known by cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his surname. He is about accountant, Mr Patrick, to join ensure that the young man got on board the list of kvetching Jewish heroes of comedy fiction, boat and at thereafter Patrick was to send him a very esteemed position in that listmonthly allowance. He's Patrick sent the money regularly and a man who worries that by having had a kid he's betraying correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the boytwo although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn's soul by bringing it into a world such as this. Het that Lowry senior didn's forced to live with t care for his motherson, who continually expects a second Holocaust and complains about suffering from the first, although she it was not born then. Hethat he didn's faced with the eternal dilemma of not finding gluten-free matzo bread for t care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his observanceswife and other children. He's moved The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to a rural location, and found houses like his are get the young man on the hit-list of an arsonist, but his new home has an even more unusual secret..way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447207653</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Grace McCleenAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=The Land of DecorationRed is My Heart|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Grace McCleen's debut novel, ''The Land of Decoration'' paints an original, unsettling, sometimes dark [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and generally rather wonderful pictureread in my house. Narrated by ten year old JudithAnd so was this one, raised by her father who is a fundamental religious follower of the end of the world is nigh varietyalthough I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, it looks at bullying, both at school and in more general societyis, faith black and the possible rejection thereof white and the strength of childhood imaginationred.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>070118681X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Dasa Drndic and Ellen Elias-Bursac (translator)|title=Trieste|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Haya TedeschiYes, he has an 82 year old woman, sits alone in Italy, waiting. She waits for the adult son she hasn't seen since he was a baby. As Haya waitsartistic collaborator on this piece, she goes through her red basket of photographs and memorabilia, hanging I think it''out her life on an imaginary washing line''. She then takes s possible to say not one page lacks the reader back in time, back to her life as a Catholicised Jew, before, during and after World War II in an area called Triesteinfluence of some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857050222</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Charles DickensB098FFFBH9|title=The Mystery of Edwin DroodSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you have never come across Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school'Drood' before, there s animal rights project leader and she and her friend are certain significant factors producing a competition entry to highlight the way in which make this human beings exploit the animal world. She gets a 'must read'. It is Dickens' last workgreat deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, and he died without completing it. Given that this is a detective storylecturer at Imperial College, one of the very first in that traditionLondon, it is doubly intriguing, because although we are clearly being fed clues mother Kate and hints throughouther twin, at the point where the text ends we aren't even fully sure even if a crime has been committedNick. So as Kate runs the basis for endless speculation about what really happens this novel could hardly be bettered. We certainly have potential villains and victimsfamily business, but we also have a number of likely red herrings; complex threads of romantic interesttoy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, but again it which is by no means clear exactly which way these will resolve; and a shadowy detective figure, whose speculations certainly have no sense where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of conclusioninformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849904278</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexander MacLeodYancey Williams|title=Light Lifting|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=Short stories may not be everyone's cup of tea. Sometimes, particularly with first time authors, there is an annoying tendency to be overly experimental. Not so with Alexander MacLeod's stunningly assured debut. True he has genetic 'form' in that he is the son of novelist and short story writer [[:Category:Alistair MacLeod|Alistair MacLeod]], but even so, the quality of this collection, is remarkable. The collection Crosshairs of seven stories is not overly themed, although certain issues and concerns do reappear, but what binds the stories together is a very human approach to adversity.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224093940</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Terri Armstrong|title=Standing Water|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Dom has made the long flight from London to Australia and he's shattered, physically and emotionally. He's been busy getting on with his shiny new life in cosmopolitan London and has barely spared a thought for the folks back home. He's not relishing meeting up again with his brother Neal. Neal took over the family farm and land when their father died. The two brothers are like chalk and cheese. They had nothing in common as young boys growing up and when Dom left for Europe, Neal was relieved. But there is still an unsolved issue between them and it's a biggy. Now that they're older and hopefully wiser, will they manage to talk about it and even resolve it. Time will tell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908136006</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Andrea Gillies|title=The White LieDevil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=One scorching hot summerAward-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's afternoon Ursula Salter hurls herself into the drawing point of view - in room 315 of her parents' house and delivers the devastating news that she's killed her nephewGarden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, MichaelJenkins, and that he's in the lochfor palatable company. But Nothing is this what's happened? Ursula might be going to keep Eddie from his stock-in her late twenties but she has the mind and understanding -trade of a child and – crucially – therewriting though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's no body to be found. There are contradictions and inconsistencies in what Ursula says – and evidence from someone else who might have this own agenda – all of which allows the Salters to close ranks and construct a version of what happened designed to protect Ursula and allow themselves to avoid the truthwork.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780720394</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Patrick Flanery0008421714|title=AbsolutionMrs March|author=Virginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If Patrick FlaneryThe problem began just after the publication of George March's South African-set debut most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, ''but isn't this the first time he'Absolutions based a character on you?'' is anything to go by She mentioned that Johanna, he could well be one of the next big names in literary fictionprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''. It Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - ''s complex and at times challenginga weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, but ultimately an extremely rewarding reading experienceunloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857892002</amazonuk>''
}}