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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mark HaddonMatthew Tree|title=The Red HouseWe'll Never Know

|summary=Richard and Angela - brother and sister - are reunited at their mother's funeral. Richard is well-Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to-do and recently remarried with be different from his father, a teenage stepdaughter. Angela is the main breadwinner in her family as her husband scrapes a wage by working in Waterstones drunk and somehow they and their three children get by. Richard is aware that he hasn't much left in the way chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of family his artistic passions all failed miserably and tries to build some bridges with Angela by way who had endless crises of offering that the eight of them should have a week's holiday in a cottage on the Welsh bordersself confidence. SoTim applied himself to his studies, there's four adults, four children and a lot of emotional baggage. Oh, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and there's Karen - Angela's stillborn daughter who would have been eighteen that weekset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224096400</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Knud Romer and John Mason (translator)B0C47LV1PC|title=Nothing But FearFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=54

|summary=The Danish writer/actor Knud Romer has Can you make a gallery of fascinating relatives which collectively feature in ''Nothing But FearYo birthing person''. This biographical novel joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is a collection of memories from his grandparents' erathe question if you did, moving forward, to would it land? The catch is that of his parents, including World War II and his own childhood in 1960s and 70s small town Denmarkthe answer for both could well be.. The vignettes aren't in chronological order but that's because memories normally aren't. The stories are narrated almost as if they're fresh from the mind, ensuring a natural flow. The interesting thing is that no matter how fascinating his other relatives are my mind's eye always seemed to return to one: his mother, Hildegard.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687144</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Gwendoline Riley|title=Opposed Positions|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=There is a reason why Gwendoline Riley has something of a cult following. She is technically innovative and very good at what she does, but the subject matter is invariably dark and downbeat which prevents mass market appeal. In that respect Opposed Positions ''Fragility'' is very much business set as usual then. The subject matter most evident here is misogyny and the damaging impact it has both directly and indirectly on people. It's painful to read at times; it feels as if the narratorcity of Portland, an occasional novelistOregon, Aislinn Kelly, is picking at cautiously begins to emerge from the scab of her life and her family in a way that feels shocking and, for all restrictions imposed during the wry observations, remains uncomfortable to read.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224094238</amazonuk>covid pandemic

 {{newreview|author=Evelyn Eaton|title=Go Ask the River|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=In ninth century China, Hung Tu was almost unique as a woman breaking into the restricted male preserve of education, particularly the fields of poetry and calligraphy, and becoming a highly respected and renowned writer. Eaton constructs a fascinating narrative around her poems, imagining Hung Tu’s idyllic childhood which turns to potential chaos as she is sold into prostitution, followed by her rise to Official Hostess for the Governor.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848190921</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bruno PortierMosby Woods|title=This Flawless Place BetweenA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=If you fancy reading something a bit different, writer and filmmaker Bruno Portier may have written just The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the bookbest course of action. Americans Anne and her partnerGovernments are flailing. A war here, Evana push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, leave Anne's small daughter there was a man with precognition. Imagine the grandparents so that the couple strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can go on a 3 week motorbike tour tell you what will happen given any set of Tibetcircumstances. Whilst awayThat man would be valuable, things go awry for right? Perhaps the two holidaymakers and so ''The Flawless Place Between'' traces their respective onward journeysmost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1851688501</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Naomi Benaron0571379559|title=Running the RiftThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|summary=Jean Patrick Nkumba has a sheltered, comparatively privileged upbringing in Rwanda''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Although far from opulentTess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, life she lives in the school compound where his father is headmaster is safe and Jean Patrick is loved and encouraged by his family to aim high both at school and in his passion for running. Despite being of house on the Tutsi triberiverbank, he has also been encouraged to think built of himself broken bricks. Insubstantial as Rwandan firstit might look, a nationality and ethos encompassing the rival Hutus. However not all feel it's stood the same and a series passage of tragic events lead to world news time, storms and personal hellfloods. For this is the land whereHer husband, in 1994Richard, 800struggles to grow his vegetables,000 people would be killed during a mere 100 days.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851689214</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Alexandra Singer|title=Tea at to complete the Grand Tazi|rating=3delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Seeking solitude, peace to paint, They have twin boys - Sonny and solace from a failed relationshipMax, Maia finds a job assisting the Historian, a shadowy academic, in return for life in the centre of Marrakeshrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. And with her duties light, she sets off to explore her surroundings, attempting to examine the women in this cultureMax takes after his father. But as a European female she is treated as an item of sexual prey by the men 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

|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?''

{{newreview|author=Ali Smith|title=There but for The follow-up to the|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=If you are excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the type palace of reader Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who thinks that the mark of a good book is a plot, sailed to war at Troy and then step away from this book: you'll hate itby divine intervention never returned home. Ali Smith's intricately clever and often funny ''There but As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the'' is very much at the literary end throne of the fiction spectrumWestern Isles. Not in terms of the language used though - Smith uses simple language, Having survived – politically and a '''LOT''' of puns, and if anything, as physical – the title suggests, shechaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's more interested in the little words. It's playful and strangely affectingshores, while at Queen Penelope is on the same time brink of a little affected and often slightly irritatingly free flowing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241143403</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ros Barber|title=The Marlowe Papers|rating=4fragile peace.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Stop. Pay attention. Hear a dead man speak''  These are the attention grabbing words One that Ros Barber addresses to shatters however with the reader at the start return of Orestes, King of this unique tale. Marlowe was a playwright with a reputation not only for Mycenae, and his plays but also for his lifestyle. His gory death from a stab wound through the eye is one of the many contentious points in a brief but very lively lifesister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444737384</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Erin KellyKay Chronister|title=The Sick RoseDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeDystopian Fiction|summary=Paul had the passion and academic grades to With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a teacher. Howeverrobotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, his plans started the slow slide away from his grasp after his father died and he and his mother were forced this genre is a way for humans to move to the rough, Grays Reach Estate and an even rougher schoolcathartically experience their most existential fears. It seemed that his days as bully's target had ended when Daniel, illiterate and street'Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-wise, stepped in as protector. All Paul had to do was cover apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for Daniel's disability in classhumanity today... at least It is a shocking novel that was all he needed still manages to do at firstfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444703854</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Jennifer EganEric LaRocca|title=The Invisible CircusTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=3.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Set in 1978, 18-year old Phoebe Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is living with her mother in San Franciscoused as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Her father died some years agoMost horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', before her elder sisterwhether that is a home invader, Faitha monster or a ghost, a charismatic idealist it usually something tangible and true child , by the end of the 1960s left for Europe where she died in 1970story, beatable. Faith was always her fatherEric LaRocca's favourite, While Phoebe's older brother, Barry, 'The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is now a computer millionaire, on leaving high school Phoebe decides on a whim to follow her sister's path to Europe collection of short stories more interested in the hope horrors of finding what happened in Italy illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to finally understand her beloved sisterdefeat than any ''Big Bad''s actions.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780331223</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lauren GroffMadelaine Lucas|title=ArcadiaThirst for Salt

|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''

{{newreview|author=Francesca Kay|title=The Translation of Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the Bones|rating=4year-long relationship that once defined her.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''The Translation of Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the Bones'' revolves around four women, all connected affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the Church of summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the Sacred Heart, Batterseasummer after. Mary Margaret, not Set against the sharpest knife in backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the box, lives between two poles. When she isn't in church, she24-year-old narrator's caring for deepening relationship with her flatolder lover, depicting its all-bound, morbidly obese mother, Fidelma. Alice Armitageconsuming nature, happily married to Larry, counts the days until their son will be home from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. The fourth woman, Stella, lives in a loveless marriage to MP Rufus and spends how it changed her time wishing the days away till she can collect her 10 year old son from boarding school. Father Diamond ministers to these women perspective on both romantic and the church community in general, but whilst worrying about his own adequacy familial relationships and faith. However, their problems thus far are nothing compared to the devastation to comehow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0297865080</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreview|author=Noah Hawley|title=The Good Father|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=Dr Paul Allen is more than happy with his life. His second wife, Fran, is efficient, a good manager, a good mother to their young twins ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and not overly emotional as Ellen (Wife Noacceptance. 1) was. In fact you could say that his life runs like clockwork, which is just how he likes Of what it. Paul hates chaos and the unexpected, but he's about means to be visited by bothhuman. As the Allens sit in horror watching news footage of the charismatic presidential front-runner being gunned down, there's a knock at the door. Their Of what is real horror and what is beginning; artificial, and whether the FBI believes the son he had with Ellen development of technology is the guy who pulled the triggerexciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444730363</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Stephen MayJennifer Saint|title=Life! Death! Prizes!Atalanta

|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>}}

{{newreview|author=Susan Hill|title=In the Springtime of the Year|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ben and Ruth had been married for just a year when he was killed in a tragic accidentPrincess. One of the other foresters came to tell Ruth about what had happened, but in truth she had known before he arrivedWarrior. From feeling deliriously happy she had descended within moments into the depths of despair and felt so ill that she could barely moveLover. The confirmation was just that - and Ruth was bereftHero. 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 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 dead.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099570483</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Roopa Farooki|title=The Flying Man|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''The Flying Man'' opens with the now elderly Maqil Karam writing Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a letter in his budget hotel in son, Atalanta is raised under the South protective eye of France the goddess Athemis and facing death. His story takes in many locations, from his native Punjab, to New York, Cairo, London, Paris and Hong Kong. In each location, Maqil adopts fashioned into a different name, including Mike Cram, Mehmet Kahnformidable huntress, Miguel Caram and Mikhail Leeone who longs for adventure. Often he acquires a different wife as well, Carine, Samira and Bernadette, although he doesn't go When the opportunity comes – to join the bother Argonauts, a fierce band of divorcing themwarriors, he just simply walks awaydescendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. He What follows is a chancer whirlwind of challenges and discovery and a gamblerthrough it, avoiding attachmentAtalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, responsibility and commitment throughout his lifeit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755383389</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Cynthia OzickAmanthi Harris|title=Foreign BodiesBeautiful Place|rating=45

|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

|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)

|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 the wake. Rooms full of drunkenturn, drug-sodden eyes stare at her whilst she makes her way through caused the building to what must have been her mother's bedroomnuclear meltdown. It's then she decides, as her step-father lies, semi-consciousness, on the bed. She takes some of her mother's clothes, shoes The result was complete and lettersutter devastation. Once she has a chance to read themThe deaths were uncountable, she realises they're cards and love letters from men who may be able to build her a picture of the woman who gave her life but not a lot else.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846881757</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Karin Altenberg|title=Island loss of Wings|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Rev Neil MacKenzie has been assigned to the Hebridian island of St Kildalivelihoods was widespread. His mission is to bring the locals back to The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the Victorian idea list of God and propriety. He and his pregnant wife Lizzie not only have to fight the elements priorities but also centuries of superstition that have trickled into - six months after the islanders' Christian faith. Life is made harder for Neil by a secret guilt emanating from the death of tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered 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|author=Georgina Harding|title=Painter of Silence|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=A young, anonymous, vagrant collapses on the steps of dog outside a hospital in Romaniaconvenience store. He doesnwasn't speak and remains a mystery to dog person but the staff convenience store owner's comment that tries he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to treat open his obvious symptoms but can't seem to reach the silent person beneath. However, Safta, a nurse, suggests that he may be deaf car door and produces drawing materials. Coincidentally, Tamon 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 dog jumped 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>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Elanor Dymott0989715337|title=Every Contact Leaves a TracePapa on the Moon|author=Marco North

|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>}}

{{newreview|author=Andrew Motion|title=Silver: Return to Treasure Island|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Even if you have not read Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 classic ''Treasure Island'', or you have read it a long time ago, the chances are that you will be broadly familiar with the story and Walter stood waist-deep in particular some of the rich characters he created because they have entered into the culture of our image of piratesfragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Before Johnny Depp convinced us that pirates looked like Keith Richards, it was the terrifying image of Long John Silver and his parrot, squawking 'pieces strands of eight'their eggs wove around him, double dealing his way to buried treasure and the innocence of young narrator Jim Hawkins that conjures up what we think of in terms of pirate adventuresticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. But Stevenson left some tantalizing threads to his tale, not least the fact that Silver made off with only the majority Two of the treasure and left dogs leaned over the remaining silver behind together with three marooned pirates to fend for themselves. Setting the story 40 years after these events, Andrew Motion picks up the tale opening and has barked down at the offspring strange noise of Hawkins, in the form of his son also called Jim and Long John Silverbuckets as he filled them.'s daughter Natty returning to collect the remaining bounty. Of course, it's never going to be that simple.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224091190</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Sadie Jones|title=How is that for an opening? The Uninvited Guests|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=On a spring evening style of this novel in 1912 preparations were being made for a supper party to celebrate the twentieth birthday form of Emerald Torrington. It was taking place at Sterne, the much-loved home of the family, although finances were uncertain interconnected short stories goes from succinct and no one was quite sure how much longer they would be able laconic to stay in the house. Emerald's mother had hopes that she would be able to marry Emerald off to John Buchananwistful and musing, turning on a local entrepreneursixpence. And author Marco North, but Emerald was far from convinced. Her step-father was in Manchester trying to raise who has the funds most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means 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 eveninggo on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186712</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Etgar KeretDaisy Hildyard|title=Suddenly, a Knock on the Door Emergency

|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

|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

|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

|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

|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

|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>''