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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anne SwardMatthew Tree|title=BreathlessWe'll Never Know|rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There are those 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 who say that, on an individual level, books are like Marmite: you love it or you hate it. Oh, if only it were so easyhad endless crises of self confidence. ''Breathless'' is one of those that I neither love nor hateSo Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and yet am not totally uninspired by eitherset himself high but achievable ambitions. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051032</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0C47LV1PC
|title=Fragility
|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Martin KohanMosby Woods|title=School for PatriotsA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=ThereThe West isn's a fair chance that t the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if you pick up a South American novel, mending it's going to score quite highly on is the 'seriously odd' scalebest course of action. Governments are flailing. Martín Kohan's School A war here, a push for Patriots, translated by Nick Caistor, doesn't disappoint climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in that regardactual charge. The main characterImagine then, María Teresa, is an innocent, shy teaching assistant at there was a Buenos Aires school that is run on military academy style disciplineman with precognition. The running of Imagine the school is itself something of strategic advantage in this asset; a surprise but that's not man who can tell you what makes this strangewill happen given any set of circumstances. What ramps up That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the 'odd' factor here is that she spends vast amounts of this short novel hiding most valuable asset in the boys' loohistory. Imagine then, ostensibly to catch young boys smoking despite there being no evidence that any student has contravened this rule in man loses this locationability. One might say she has nothing What would governments do to go on. Then again, best not in the circumstances. get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687438</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alonso Cueto and Frank Wynne (translator)0571379559|title=The Blue HourHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Adrian Ormache''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, middle class Peruvian lawyerbut instead, has a beautiful wifeshe lives in the house on the riverbank, two daughters built of the sort to make any parent proud and a comfortable lifestylebroken bricks. His parents divorced when he was small so, Insubstantial as he lived with his motherit might look, he has fragmented memories it's stood the passage of a grufftime, distant dadstorms and floods. Despite Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his father's aloofvegetables, dictatorial manner, Adrian has always comforted himself with to complete the fact he played a useful role as a landdelivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys -bound naval officerSonny and Max, fighting Senderista terrorists for the good of Perurainbow twins. After the death of Sonny's colouring reflects his mother everything changes's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Adrian finds documents People don't believe that lead him away from they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his beliefs, towards a truth mother that will shatter more than his fathershe's imagehis nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434019410</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Fiona McGregorKay Chronister|title=Indelible InkDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Once wealthy, middle class Australian suburbanite Marie King never thought she'd be starting With a new life at 59 but here she world that isbecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, divorced and having to sell the marital homepost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Unfortunately, attached to the marital home Whether it is the marital garden into which Marie didn't only give life but also pour her own life. Howevera robotic takeover, Marie tries to be positive and decides that if she's going to be a new personworld devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, she may as well go the whole this genre is a wayfor humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. This means tattoos (much to her offsprings' horror) and an unlikely friendship with tattooist Rhys. With 'Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that comes aligns many of the realisation fears that the privileged suburb of Mossman isn't all there exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to Sydney. There's much more to the city, and indeed herself, than she first thoughtfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857894129</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Jude MorganEric LaRocca|title=The Secret Life of William ShakespeareTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Historical FictionHorror|summary=Books about Shakespeare vary hugely both in terms of approach Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and qualityprocess them. Some focus on historical factMost horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, while others play rather more loosely with by the romance end of his life. Fortunately for readersthe story, Jude Morgan's books are rather more reliably excellentbeatable. WhatEric LaRocca's more, he has a track record of fiction that concerns great writers, having previously tackled the Brontës (''The Taste of SorrowTrees Grew Because I Bled There'') is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and the romantic poets (''Passion'')humiliation. So my expectations were already quite high coming into his Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''The Secret Life of William ShakespeareBig Bad'' - expectations that he has again surpassed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755358228</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David VannMadelaine Lucas|title=DirtThirst for Salt|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We're back in the mid-nineteen-eighties in a suburb of Sacramento and Galen lives with his mother on the family walnut farm. The farm's not what it wasLove, largely having been left to its own devices since the death of GalenI's abusive grandfather some years before. Galen's ''father'' is something of an unknown quantity - his mother won't even discuss who he d read, was or tell Galen anything about himsupposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but then sheI had always longed for gravity's able to shut her mind to most things which she finds unpleasant. ''Her'' mother has been moved from the farm to a nursing home - she's still quite active but her memory is going. Suzie-Q's sister, Helen is determined to get her hands on the family money for the benefit of her seventeen-year-old daughter, Jennifer.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434021962</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{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=Marcello FoisJennifer Saint|title=Memory of the AbyssAtalanta|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We are ''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on Sardiniaboard that ship, over a hundred years agoI vowed. It is a land of legendI would take my place, where storytellers can see a different nature to not just in the moon each night and convey that in their earthly stories. It's a world name of wonder, where sheep can fall from the skies for more than one reasongoddess. It's a poor land, where lads are expected to be responsible shepherds by was for the time they are ten. As a result people look after each other - exceptsake of my name, while returning from a Christening Samuele and his father are refused basic hospitalitytoo. Later when the boy runs away one night the land falls away beneath him - yet he finds a girl to ground him to this earth. Which is most relevant when he goes to war, and particularly when he comes back and finds himself a wronged man, and in need of vengeance...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906694001</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kathleen MacMahonAmanthi Harris|title=This Is How It EndsBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This is an incredibly gentle (and gently funny) love story set in Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the winter southern coast of 2008 when the Irish economy was booming and the US were about to elect their first black presidenther home country. Hugh ( This is a deliciously grumpy surgeon) and his currently unemployed architect daughter Addie lived happily in an Irish seaside townplace she spent her formative years. Ok, he'd broken both his wrists tripping over Addie's dog and Addie found it hard It is not to cry sometimesa place she was born into, but they were alright. Then the one day, out she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the blueVilla, they receive a voicemail message from Brunohow it became her home, a distant American relative whoand the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the 's just popped over the ocean to say 'Hi!score' Remembering the last US relative who came to visit (it didn't go well), Addie for this gentle and Hugh decide yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to ignore the phone... and the front door... escape her past and much like the occupant musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the bench seat across the road... He's bound to go home eventuallyVilla. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847445462</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Carolyn Jess-Cooke178563335X|title=The Boy Who Could See DemonsSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=ItWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's the time for the tall mainland men to come a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the island to tradechildren up. Her husband, Christopher, so 16 collects six-year -old Mary preparesHannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. She brings out her handmade Thelma'broideriess daughter-in-law won' and hides Barneyt let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, her little brotheron the Norfolk coast, in is a cupboard. This lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a necessary preparation born real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of fearthe vicar, Gail, for the island boys have but then she's been vanishing, taken by doing the tradersjob for more than thirty years. On this particular day Mary's broideries go, Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but so does Barneyit was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144473783X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ginny Baily1398515388|title=Africa JunctionThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Adele has made a mess First of her life and she knows all, it. Working with was the stresses of being a teacher as well as a single mother and having shrugged off a disastrous relationshipearthquake, her life seems to be set on self-destruct. Part of deep in the problem is that ocean floor, which created the past won't leave her alone. Adele is haunted by the memory of Ellena, a friend from her childhood in Senegal, Africa. With one unthinking, childish action, Adele inadvertently devastated Ellena's family sotsunami and this, in order to go forwardturn, Adele must go back to caused the continent where it all begannuclear meltdown. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552728</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Laszlo Krasznahorkai|title=Satantango|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=A small community in rural Hungary is unsettled The result was complete and utter devastation. One man has too much control over the place, with too much influence on the work done there The deaths were uncountable, and over all the lives lived thereloss of livelihoods was widespread. His effect is still felt, even though he has been dead for over The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a yearconvenience store. So whether you are the man itching to finish He wasn't a swindle and leave with dog person but the proceedings, or the doctor, confined by will convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to a chair at open his window, making car door and Tamon the most personal, immaculate notes about the whole existence of the community, or the housewife whose loins still mourn the influence of said man, you are unsettled - especially when the dead man is said to be returning..dog jumped in. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848877641</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Carey0989715337|title=The Chemistry of TearsPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As he has done before on several occasions, Peter Carey offers us two parallel stories in his intriguingly titled 'The Chemistry of Tears'. The two elements of Some frogs had gotten into the title reflect that this is a book about grief, but also about sciencewell. It's also a book about human's relationship with machines and dependence that we have grown to have on them, and the ugliness of life and the beauty of, at least some, machines. In one strand of the story, Catherine is a modern day horologist working in a London museum whose world is shattered by the death of a married colleague with whom she was having an affair. Put to work on restoring a mysterious clockwork bird, she discovers the journals of Henry Brandling, the nineteenth century wealthy man who commissioned the construction of the toy for his consumptive son.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057127997X</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jacques ChessexDaisy Hildyard|title=The TyrantEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jean Calmet, teacher of Latin in a lycee of the 1960s in Switzerland, is confronting his father's death. He can hardly be said to be coming to terms with it, for Calmet pere was and remains a crushing force in Jean's life, and although the death would in many similar novels be a release, here his father's cremation serves to batter Jean into a beaten state. His relations with his work, his lover, his students are all suffused with not a sense of loss but a sense of continuing and growing dominance by the ghost of his father. The authoritian presence seems to grow as a spectre rather than diminish through his death.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>190473894X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kitty Aldridge|title=A Trick I Learned from Dead Men|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Kitty Aldridge's ''A Trick I Learned from Dead Men'' is a touchingly written, quirky story set in the world of funeral homes. The narrator is twenty-something Lee Hart. Hethis book doesn's not the sharpest tool in the box, but his life has been tough. His father left when he was young and his mother has recently died of cancer leaving him, his step-father, a sofa-bound television make-over show addict and his deaf and wayward younger brother, Ned t come close to fend for themselves. Lee lands a job as a trainee at the local funeral home helping Derek prepare the dead for burial or cremation. Far from being a dead end job though, it explaining what is here that he learns, ironically, about life and love, in the form of the delivery girl from done with the local floristspremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224096435</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Roland VernonSally Oliver |title=The Good Wife's CastleWeight of Loss |rating=54 |genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction |summary=We start with 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 fatherphysical 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 suicidememories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a child watching as he steps terrible price: that of the chair in the milking room with the noose around his neck. A father who died for shameidentity itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0552775533</amazonuk>086154112X
}}
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In ninth century ChinaEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, Hung Tu was almost unique as a woman breaking into delight. I will agree with the restricted male preserve of education, particularly first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the fields of poetry and calligraphy, and becoming expression in a highly respected and renowned writerway I'm not familiar with. Eaton constructs a fascinating narrative around her poems, imagining Hung Tu’s idyllic childhood which turns I have to potential chaos as she is sold into prostitutionconfess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. From the little I have read (in translation, followed by her rise I don't read Spanish) there does seem to Official Hostess for be a tendency towards the fantastical – the Governormystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848190921</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bruno PortierJennifer Saint|title=This Flawless Place BetweenElektra
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you fancy reading something a bit different, writer and filmmaker Bruno Portier may have written just 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the bookheavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Americans Anne and her partnerCassandra, EvanClytemnestra, leave Anne's small daughter with and Elektra are all bit players in the story of the grandparents so Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the couple can go on a 3 week motorbike tour of Tibet. Whilst away, things go awry for silent women have the two holidaymakers most compelling stories and so ''The Flawless Place Between'' traces their respective onward journeysthe most extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1851688501</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Naomi Benaron8409290103|title=Running the RiftIf Only|author=Matthew Tree|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jean Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick Nkumba has a sheltered, comparatively privileged upbringing in Rwanda. Although far from opulent, life in to ensure that the young man got on board the school compound where his father is headmaster is safe boat and Jean thereafter Patrick is loved and encouraged by his family was to aim high both at school and in his passion for runningsend him a monthly allowance. Despite being Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the Tutsi tribetwo although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, it was that he has also been encouraged didn't care to think of himself as Rwandan first, have him in this country where he might be a nationality danger to his wife and ethos encompassing the rival Hutusother children. However not all feel the same and a series of tragic events lead The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to world news and personal hell. For this is get the land where, in 1994, 800,000 people would be killed during a mere 100 daysyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851689214</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexandra SingerAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Tea at the Grand TaziRed is My Heart
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Seeking solitude, peace to paint, [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and solace from a failed relationship, Maia finds a job assisting the Historian, a shadowy academic, in return for life read in the centre of Marrakeshmy house. And with her duties lightso was this one, she sets off to explore her surroundingsalthough I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, and is, attempting to examine the women in this cultureblack and white and red. But as a European female she is treated as Yes, he has an item of sexual prey by the menartistic collaborator on this piece, and ostracised by I think it's possible to say not one page lacks the women, so she finds herself isolated and aloneinfluence of some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908248238</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=M L StedmanB098FFFBH9|title=The Light Between Oceans|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>}} {{newreviewSnowcub|author=Ali Smith|title=There but for theGraham Fulbright|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you are the type of reader who thinks that the mark of a good book Fourteen-year-old Rachel is a plot, then step away from this book: you'll hate it. Ali Smithher school's intricately clever animal rights project leader and she and often funny ''There but for her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the'' is very much at the literary end of way in which human beings exploit the fiction spectrumanimal world. Not in terms She gets a great deal of the language used though - Smith uses simple languagesupport from her family: father Pip Harrison, and a '''LOT''' of punslecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and if anythingher twin, as Nick. Kate runs the title suggestsfamily business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, shewhich is where we's more interested in the little words. Itll meet Rachel's playful and strangely affecting, while at the same time a little affected and often slightly irritatingly free flowingmain (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241143403</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ros BarberYancey Williams|title=The Marlowe PapersCrosshairs 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''Stop. Pay attention. Hear a dead man speak'' These are the attention grabbing words that Ros Barber addresses to s point of view - in room 315 of the reader at the start Garden of this unique tale. Marlowe was a playwright Eden nursing home, with only a reputation not only trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his plays but also stock-in-trade of writing though, so here, for his lifestyle. His gory death from a stab wound readers, are his wanderings through the eye is one of the many contentious points in a brief but very lively his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444737384</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Erin Kelly0008421714|title=The Sick RoseMrs March|author=Virginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Set in 1978, 18-year old Phoebe is living with The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her mother in San Franciscofirst name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Her father died some years ago, before her elder sister Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, FaithPatricia asked, a charismatic idealist and true child of the 1960s left for Europe where as she died in 1970. Faith was always her fatherwrapping the bread, ''but isn's favourite, While Phoebet this the first time he's older brother, Barry, is now based a computer millionairecharacter on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, on leaving high school Phoebe decides on a whim to follow the principal character had 'her sistermannerisms''s path to Europe in . Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the hope whore of finding what happened in Italy and to finally understand her beloved sisterNantes - ''s actionsa weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780331223</amazonuk>''
}}