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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Evelyn EatonMatthew Tree|title=Go Ask the RiverWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In ninth century ChinaTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, Hung Tu was almost unique as a woman breaking into the restricted male preserve drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of education, particularly the fields being exceptional at any of poetry his artistic passions all failed miserably and calligraphy, and becoming a highly respected and renowned writerwho had endless crises of self confidence. Eaton constructs a fascinating narrative around her poems, imagining Hung Tu’s idyllic childhood which turns So Tim applied himself to potential chaos as she is sold into prostitutionhis studies, followed by her rise to Official Hostess for the Governorcultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848190921</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bruno PortierB0C47LV1PC|title=This Flawless Place BetweenFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If Can you fancy reading something make a bit different''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, writer and filmmaker Bruno Portier may have written just would it land? The catch is that the bookanswer for both could well be.... no.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Naomi BenaronMosby Woods|title=Running the RiftA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jean Patrick Nkumba has a sheltered, comparatively privileged upbringing in RwandaThe West isn't the dominant force it once was. Although far from opulent, life Nobody in the school compound where his father West is headmaster quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is safe and Jean Patrick the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is loved and encouraged by his family to aim high both at school and in his passion for runningactual charge. Despite being of the Tutsi tribe, he has also been encouraged to think of himself as Rwandan firstImagine then, there was a nationality and ethos encompassing the rival Hutusman with precognition. However not all feel Imagine the same and strategic advantage in this asset; a series man who can tell you what will happen given any set of tragic events lead to world news and personal hellcircumstances. For this is That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the land where, most valuable asset in 1994history. Imagine then, 800,000 people that this man loses this ability. What would be killed during a mere 100 days.governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1851689214</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexandra Singer0571379559|title=Tea at the Grand TaziThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Seeking solitude''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, peace to paintbut instead, and solace from a failed relationship, Maia finds a job assisting she lives in the house on the Historianriverbank, a shadowy academicbuilt of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, in return for life in it's stood the centre passage of Marrakeshtime, storms and floods. And with her duties light Her husband, Richard, she sets off struggles to explore her surroundingsgrow his vegetables, attempting to examine complete the women delivery rounds - and to bring in this culturesufficient money. But as a European female she is treated as an item of sexual prey by They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the menrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and ostracised by the women, so there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she finds herself isolated and alone's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908248238</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=M L StedmanClaire North|title=The Light Between OceansHouse of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Thomas Sherbourne returns to Australia after World War I. Internally scarred like many of his generation, he chooses the solitary life of a lighthouse keeper on remote Janus Rock to escape the world and its conflict. However, he soon learns that there is one part of the world he can't live without – the sassy, beautiful Izzy Graysmark, a local from the nearest port and country town of Partaguese. They have a happy marriage in all respects apart from one: they're haunted by their inability to have children. Therefore, one day, when a boat washes up onto Janus bearing a dead man and a crying baby, apparent salvation arrives too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857521004</amazonuk>}}What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ros BarberKay Chronister|title=The Marlowe PapersDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=''StopWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Pay attention. Hear Whether it is a robotic takeover, a dead man speak'' These are the attention grabbing words that Ros Barber addresses to the reader at the start world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this unique tale. Marlowe was a playwright with genre is a reputation not only way for his plays but also for his lifestylehumans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. His gory death from ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a stab wound through new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the eye fears that exist for humanity today. It is one of the many contentious points in a brief but very lively lifeshocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444737384</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Erin KellyEric LaRocca|title=The Sick RoseTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeHorror|summary=Paul had the passion and academic grades Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to become a teacher. However, his plans started the slow slide away from his grasp after his father died reflect our darkest emotions and he how we as humans react and his mother were forced to move to the roughprocess them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', Grays Reach Estate and an even rougher school. It seemed whether that his days as bully's target had ended when Danielis a home invader, a monster or a ghost, illiterate it usually something tangible and street-wise, stepped in as protectorby the end of the story, beatable. All Paul had to do was cover for DanielEric LaRocca's disability ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in class..the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. at least Horrors that was all he needed linger and are harder to do at firstdefeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444703854</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer EganMadelaine Lucas|title=The Invisible Circus|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Set in 1978, 18-year old Phoebe is living with her mother in San Francisco. Her father died some years ago, before her elder sister, Faith, a charismatic idealist and true child of the 1960s left Thirst for Europe where she died in 1970. Faith was always her father's favourite, While Phoebe's older brother, Barry, is now a computer millionaire, on leaving high school Phoebe decides on a whim to follow her sister's path to Europe in the hope of finding what happened in Italy and to finally understand her beloved sister's actions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780331223</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lauren Groff|title=ArcadiaSalt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Back in the seventies a group of idealists (well, hippies) founded a commune in the grounds of Arcadia House, a decaying mansion in western New York State. In the early days the renovation of the house and the funding of the commune was hopeful, ''energisingLove, I'' - the American dream encapsulated in bricks, crops and hard work - but as with many, if not mostd read, such enterprises it was not supposed to last. Power corrupted, personalities changed be a light and commitment waivered. We see the commune and the people who made it through the earlyweightless feeling, hard-working days to its precarious peak and into its inevitable decline.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434019623</amazonuk>}}but I had always longed for gravity''
}}
{{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.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Stephen MayJennifer Saint|title=Life! Death! Prizes!Atalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Billy's mum is dead. Billy is 19 years old when his mum resists a mugger; this is the last thing she ever does, leaving Billy with 6 year old Oscar to face life together. They'll be fine. For a start, their life isn't I was as bad worthy as the 'Life! Death! Prizes!' type magazines at supermarket check-outsany one of them. Billy has a job at the local history museumI would get on board that ship, Oscar's doing ok at school, so, despite their Aunt Toni, despite Oscar's recently reappearing fatherI vowed. I would take my place, despite not just in the PTA mothers at name of the school gates... and social services..goddess. and It was for the fact that the mugger is a local lad that Billy sees aroundsake of my name, too... yep, theyAtalanta''ll be fine.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408819139</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Cynthia OzickAmanthi Harris|title=Foreign BodiesBeautiful Place|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Bea Nightingale's brother Marvin wants her - is haranguing her - to retrieve his errant son Julian from post-war ParisPadma, a young Sri Lankan, to where he has decamped in an effort returned to escape parental controlthe Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. Bea, This is a New York high school teacher, is an unlikely candidate for the role of rescuer - place she and spent her brother have been estranged for the best part of twenty formative years. But It is not a place she capitulates to his demands and sets off on a journey in which her presence will affect not only Julianwas born into, but his sister who also runs off the one she thinks of as home. How she came to Parisbe at the Villa, his girlfriendhow it became her home, a displaced Eastern European Jew, his mother (also escaping Marvin, but and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this time in a psychiatric facility) gentle and Beayet subtly violent novel. Padma's own ex-husband Leopresent fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848877366</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jane Harris178563335X|title=Gillespie and ISea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The 'IWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she' s a trainee vicar, sitting in the title of Jane Harris's ''Gillespie on a PCC meeting and Iwondering why they'' is Harriet Baxterre held when you need to pick the children up. Now elderly Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and residing her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in London in 1933, she is finally telling -law won't let her events of what happened in the early 1880s in Glasgow and see her relationship with the Gillespie familygrandson. At Holthorpe, on the timeNorfolk coast, is a spinster of independent meanslovely place, she arrived in Glasgow but Rachel is struggling to visit develop a real bond with the International Exhibition parish - and became a champion she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and friend to Christopher hoped that a young Scottish painter, Ned Gillespie and his young family. We know from early walk on that tragedy struck the Gillespie family leading to Ned destroying his career, beach would do them some good - it was stormy but Harriet wants to set the record straight with regard to her involvement in eventsit was probably what they needed. You may or may not believe her story And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571238300</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anna Stothard1398515388|title=The Pink HotelBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=The phone call came when she was 17. Her mother had died; the mother who had just been a flimsy memory First of a touchall, an impression and a faded photograph. Not satisfied with her father and grandma's biased recollections of 'it was the slut'earthquake, she steals her step-mother's credit card and catches a flight to the funeral deep in Los Angeles. Unfortunately she arrives too late for the funeralocean floor, but finding which created the pink hotel her mother ownedtsunami and this, she walks in on turn, caused the wakenuclear meltdown. Rooms full of drunkenThe result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, drug-sodden eyes stare at her whilst she makes her way through and the building to what must have been her mother's bedroomloss of livelihoods was widespread. It's then she decides, as her stepThe fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but -father lies, semisix months after the tsunami -consciousness, on the bedKazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. She takes some of her motherHe wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's clothes, shoes and letters. Once she has a chance comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to read them, she realises they're cards open his car door and love letters from men who may be able to build her a picture of Tamon the woman who gave her life but not a lot elsedog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846881757</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Karin Altenberg|title=Island of Wings|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Rev Neil MacKenzie has been assigned to the Hebridian island of St Kilda. His mission is to bring the locals back to the Victorian idea of God and propriety. He and his pregnant wife Lizzie not only have to fight the elements but also centuries of superstition that have trickled into the islanders' Christian faith. Life is made harder for Neil by a secret guilt emanating from the death of a friend years ago. However, the going becomes harder still for Lizzie, isolated by an inability to speak the local language and the burgeoning fear engendered by Neil's behaviour and attitudes.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857382322</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|authorisbn=Georgina Harding0989715337|title=Painter of Silence|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=A young, anonymous, vagrant collapses Papa on the steps of a hospital in Romania. He doesn't speak and remains a mystery to the staff that tries to treat his obvious symptoms but can't seem to reach the silent person beneath. However, Safta, a nurse, suggests that he may be deaf and produces drawing materials. Coincidentally, the man is able to draw beautifully, but this is no coincidence to Safta. There are reasons why she can't disclose it, but she knows this man. They grew up together in pre-war Romania, a whole world away when the country had a king, beautiful cities untouched by bombing and being able to read a foreign language wasn't punishable by imprisonment in work camps... or worse.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408821125</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMoon|author=Elanor Dymott|title=Every Contact Leaves a TraceMarco North
|rating=4
|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, Rachel's past, particularly of Some frogs had gotten into the time that they spent together at Worcester College. This is critical in understanding who may have killed her, and why. What follows is Alex learning about this hidden pastwell. ''Every Contact Leaves a Trace'' is partly a thriller and partly a whodunnit although the structure adopted by Elanor Dymott is somewhat unusual.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224094033</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Etgar KeretDaisy Hildyard|title=Suddenly, a Knock on the Door Emergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Harold and Maureen Fry were unremarkable: one long marriage, one adult offspring and a long retirement stretching out in front of them like a prison sentence. One morning everything changed. The catalyst was a letter from Queenie, an ex-colleague summary of Haroldthis book doesn's. He knew he needed t come close to respond and thought that posting a letter would suffice. However, a chat explaining what is done with a girl at the local petrol station made him realise that a letter couldn't be enough. He had to provide Queenie with hope... he had to walkpremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857520644</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=John LanchesterSally Oliver |title=CapitalThe Weight of Loss |rating=4 |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and 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
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=With Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a gentle nod to delight. I will agree with the great commentator of London life of first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the past, John Lanchester sets his wonderfully entertaining state expression in a way I'm not familiar with. I have to confess my ignorance of the nation book around Pepys RoadSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. With a huge cast of characters From the little I have read (in translation, he looks as I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a cross section of London life and while in some ways not quite perfect, it comes pretty darn closetendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0571234607</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Russell BanksJennifer Saint|title=Lost Memory of SkinElektra
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Some readers may understandably be deterred from reading Russell Banks's Elektra''Lost Memory by Jennifer Saint tells the story of Skin'' due to its controversial subject matter and there's no doubt that it's a morally complex read. The main character, known only to us at 'three women who live in the Kid' is a young man who is a convicted sex offenderheavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Set in south FloridaCassandra, he is forced to resideClytemnestra, with other offenders and his pet Iguana, under a causewayElektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. While living here, he encounters a huge and enigmatic man, known only as 'Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the Professor' from silent women have the local university who is apparently studying homelessness amongst sex offenders most compelling stories and the two form an uneasy friendshipmost extreme furies. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846685761</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anne Tyler8409290103|title=The Beginner's GoodbyeIf Only|author=Matthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Aaron's wifeTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, DorothyMr Patrick, was killed in an accident. An oak tree fell to ensure that the young man got on their home, demolishing board the sun porch where Dorothy happened boat and thereafter Patrick was to be at the timesend him a monthly allowance. He worried that if he had done things differently (Patrick sent the money regularly and a matter correspondence - of some biscuits and a television set) Dorothy might not have been where she was and might still be alive and for a while he camped out in sorts - sprang up between the wrecked house until further damage forced him two although we hear more about what Lowry has to move in with his sistersay than Patrick. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, it was then that he realised that Dorothy wasndidn't really dead - well, not dead as we understand it - as she materialised care to have him in odd places, wearing the clothes she used this country where he might be a danger to wear his wife and eventually staying with Aaron for longer periods of timeother children. And gradually they began The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to bicker, just like a long-married couple..get the young man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701187190</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christopher BurnsAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=A Division of the LightRed is My Heart
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in my house. And so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, and is, black and white and red. Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and I think it's possible to say not one page lacks the influence of some striking visual ideas.
|isbn=1913547183
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B098FFFBH9
|title=Snowcub
|author=Graham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Gregory Pharoah Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a professional photographer whose genre is sometimes photojournalism, but more commonly portraiture or nudes. Like his job, his nature is towards competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the superficialanimal world. One day She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, returning from photographing a bishop (for claritylecturer at Imperial College, London, this is a portrait assignment mother Kate and not a nude!) he is her twin, Nick. Kate runs the only witness to a street robbery where Alice Fell is the victim. Alice is family business, a fatalist who believes toy shop called Cornucopia in some kind of divine plan that means there Putney, which is a reason for everything. Shewhere we'll meet Rachel's enigmatic, by nature and by design as this is a quality that she enjoys cultivating. Thus these two different characters become part main (if unsuspected) source of the same story and what happens in the following six months is ultimately surprising and even shockinginformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857386352</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage|author=Yancey Williams|title=Crosshairs of the Devil|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Award-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 point of view - in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's work.|isbn=0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chochana Boukhobza0008421714|title=The Third DayMrs March|author=Virginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Set in Jerusalem in The problem began just after the late 1980s, an elderly, Jewish, celebrated cellist Elisheva is visiting Israel with publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her protégé, Rachel, ostensibly first name only on the last page) seemed to give a concert performanceeither be reading it or had already done so. It quickly becomes apparent Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that Elisheva survived the Nazi camps by playing her music for the feared camp commanderparticular morning, Patricia asked, known as she was wrapping the Butcher of Majdanekbread, and while ''but isn't this the first time he's based a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, the surface she survived principal character had 'her mannerisms''. Perhaps this ordeal wellwould not have mattered, it except for the fact that Johanna is clear that she has the whore of Nantes - ''a darker intent with her three day visit. Through an underground network of Nazi huntersweak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, she has managed to lure the Butcher from his home in Venezuela to visit Israelunloveable wretch. Will they meet and what will happen when they do? |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050966</amazonuk>''
}}
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