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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Emma BeckerMatthew Tree|title=MonsieurWe'll Never Know|rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=She is a twenty-year old student, with an average cleavage and a big bum. He is 45Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a married cosmetic surgeon, drunk and a friend chronic underachiever whose dreams of the family, having worked with her uncle for years. They might be an unlikely couple – being exceptional at least outside the realms any of erotic fiction they are – but as she puts it, she wants him his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to ''show me what a man was likehis studies, a real man, a man who could fill my body '''cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and''' my mind''. The consequences are in this novelset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780334761</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.
''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Thomas KeneallyMosby Woods|title=The Daughters of MarsA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Expectations ahead of Thomas Keneally's 'The Daughters of MarsWest isn' are understandably hight the dominant force it once was. He regularly features on the Booker shortlist and has won the prize Nobody in the past with ''Shindler's Ark''. While his subject matter, World War I, West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is hardly the most originalbest course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, his slant on the story a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody isin actual charge. Imagine then, and this is there was a book that deserves to sit man with precognition. Imagine the very best strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of the many books on that subjectcircumstances. That man would be valuable, including ''All Quiet on right? Perhaps the Western Front'' and ''Birdsong''most valuable asset in history. It's Imagine then, that good and that powerfulthis man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340951877</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joseph O'Connor0571379559|title=Where Have You Been?The House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Irish novelist Joseph O'Connor has had quite a 2012'The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Earlier Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the year he joined house on the ranks riverbank, built of such authors broken bricks. Insubstantial as Edna Oit might look, it'Briens stood the passage of time, [[:Category:Roddy Doyle|Roddy Doyle]] storms and Seamus Heaney when he became a recipient of the PEN award for his outstanding contribution to Irish literaturefloods. What could possibly top that for a sense of achievement? Well thisHer husband, Richard, struggles to grow his first book of short stories in 20 yearsvegetables, must come pretty close to at least equalling itcomplete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, amply illustrating the reasons for the panelrainbow 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 there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's decisionhis nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846556899</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Diana McCaulayKay Chronister|title=HuracanDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=1986 – 30With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-year-old Leigh McCaulay (''White gal!'') apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is returning to Jamaicaa robotic takeover, the land a world devoid of her birth. Her mother water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is dead and there is an estate a way for humans to be settledcathartically experience their most existential fears. Her estranged father ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is somewhere on a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the islandfears that exist for humanity today. Her brother It is in England. This isn't the closest of grieving families. Leigh doesn't even know how her mother died. Indeed, she's a bit surprised shocking novel that still manages to find out she'd gone back to Jamaica. The residual family had left the island not long after the father's desertionhope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1845231961</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Helene Gremillon and Alison Anderson (translator)Eric LaRocca|title=The ConfidantTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=45|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Horror taps into something primeval within us. Itis used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad''s 1975 and Camille, having lost her father whether that is a home invader, a while agomonster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, is now coming to terms with by the recent death end of her motherthe story, beatable. After plucking up courage and strength, she goes through the condolence cards but thereEric LaRocca's one item in the correspondence pile that's out of place. It's addressed to her but from Louis (whom she doesnThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There't know) about Annie (of whom she's never heard)is not like that. As Louis pours out his story, reminiscing about his youth It is a collection of short stories more interested in wartime Francethe horrors of illness, Camille is convinced it's a mistake; she shouldn't have received itgrief and humiliation. However the envelope is definitely addressed Horrors that linger and are harder to her and, whatdefeat than any ''s more, this wonBig Bad't be the last instalment of Louis' sad memoir that comes through the post.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908313293</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elizabeth HayMadelaine Lucas|title=Alone In The ClassroomThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='Other children were out picking that morning'Love, but she passed them by in her I'd read, was supposed to be a light-blue dress and sandals... she weightless feeling, but I had an empty kettle in each hand and was alone, despite having three sisters.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=Kevin PowersJennifer Saint|title=The Yellow BirdsAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Daniel Murphy ('Murph') is 18, in the American army and about to embark on his first tour I was as worthy as any one of duty in Iraqthem. By his side is John BartleI would get on board that ship, three years older and more experienced in the army. However neither of them has any notion of the sort of life or job they will face when they get thereI vowed. The fighting is dirtyI would take my place, unpredictable and not set out just in any text book. Their commanding officer, Sergeant Sterling, is sadistic and without any apparent humanity. But everything will be alright: Bartle has made a promise to Murph's mother, a promise that will ricochet from the US to Iraq and back again.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444756125</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ian McEwan|title=Sweet Tooth|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ian McEwan's ''Sweet Tooth'' is part spy novel but more a love story and a tale name of deception and half truthsthe goddess. It's also, more subtly, a book about the power, role and importance of fiction. Set in was for the 1970s, with frequent musical and political references to the UK at that time, Serena Frome is a beautiful, Cambridge-educated daughter of an Anglican bishop with a taste for unsuitable romances. From an early affair with a man who turns out to be homosexual, to an affair with an older lecturer she moves on to a surprise job at MI5 where she had a crush on one of her bosses, again and awkward, repressed and unattractive individual before encountering talented author Tom Haley as part sake of her job with whom she once again falls in love. Few of these men are what they seemmy name, and neither for that matter is Serena when she has to hide her job from Haleytoo.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224097377</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Fuminori NakamuraAmanthi Harris|title=The ThiefBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jake Arnott sees to be one of those authors - like [[:Category:Will Self|Will Self]] whom you'll love or loathe. OccasionallyPadma, a young Sri Lankan, you'll swing from one extreme has returned to the other and I'll confess to being a little nervous when I opened Villa Hibiscus on the booksouthern coast of her home country. We really weren't ''that'' keen when we read [[The Devil's Paintbrush by Jake Arnott|The Devil's Paintbrush]]This is a place she spent her formative years. Using It is not a place she was born into, but the deck one she thinks of Tarot cards as home. How she came to be at the structure of Villa, how it became her home, and the book we look at the twentieth century machinations that have flowed through the her life of Larry Zagorski. Imagine history being gently folded together like a cake mixture with episodes sliding against each other, flavouring that which they touch. Imagine ever since she first arrived there provide the real - Aleister Crowley (reprising his appearance in ''The Devilscore's Paintbrush'for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma'), Rudolf Hess, Ian Fleming, Cyril Connolly, Jim Jones s present fails to escape her past and L Ron Hubbard blended with much like the musical score of a transexual prostitutefilm, a British pop singer and Larry, who writes pulp science fictionthat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340922729</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alison Moore178563335X|title=The LighthouseSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When we first meet Futh heRachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a North Sea ferry on his way PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a walking holiday in Germanysobbing parishioner. ThereThelma's no sense of enthusiasm or anticipation: Futhdaughter-in-law won's middle aged and recently separatedt let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, seemingly without friends or family. He always wanted is a doglovely place, but keeps stick insects. The holiday seems Rachel is struggling to be something whichdevelop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, when it is overGail, he will have done it and will but then return to his new flatshe's been doing the job for more than thirty years. It begins Rachel and will end at Hellhaus, Christopher hoped that a guesthouse run by Bernard and his wife Ester. He gets walk on well enough with Ester the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but is at a loss to understand a rather hostile encounter with Bernardit was probably what they needed. He sets out the following morning for a week of walking, thinking and remembering. Meanwhile Ester - untouched by her meeting with Futh - continues her lonely life punctuated by the occasional casual sexual encounter which she barely hides from BernardAnd then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773177</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nicola Barker1398515388|title=The YipsBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Gordon and Georgina Kingdom spent years being like many other couples. They had jobsFirst of all, friendsit was the earthquake, holidaysdeep in the ocean floor, a springer spaniel named Kipling which created the tsunami and a life togetherthis, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. Then Georgina became ill The result was complete and Gordon took early retirement to nurse her betterutter devastation. He treats retirement with the same methodical efficiency he employed at work. He records Georgina's careThe deaths were uncountable, her progress and shares her waking moments, feeding her and sitting with herthe loss of livelihoods was widespread. However, as she spends a lot The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of time asleep, Gordon is left to entertain himself and so, priorities but - six months after the same man who led the local Neighbourhood Watch, watches his neighbours, noting points of interest and visible activities in alphabetically filed dossierstsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. TheyHe wasn're all there: Don across t a dog person but the road who borrows garden tools on a more permanent basis than Gordon convenience store owner's comment that he would like, art award winner young Benny who paints with call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his eyes shut, the lady next car door who throws footballs over the fence and Tamon the new woman across the road, Angelica. Except, when Angelica moves into the street, Gordon's interest becomes more focused than usualdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>190877598X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Will Self0989715337|title=UmbrellaPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=2.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Will Self's 'Some frogs had gotten into the well.''Umbrella '' spans a century taking three interwoven Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands. One features Audrey Dearthof their eggs wove around him, who in 1918 is a munitions worker who falls ill sticky gray pearls with encephalitis lethargica, a brain disease that spread tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over Europe after the Great War rendering many opening and barked down at the strange noise of its victims speechless and motionlessthe buckets as he filled them. She '' How is incarcerated in Friern hospital where, that for an opening? The style of this novel in the early 1970s a psychiatristform of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, Zach Busner wakes her from her stupor using turning on a new drugsixpence. In the final threadAnd author Marco North, in 2010 the asylum who has closed and the now retired Busner travels across north London seeking the truth about his encounter with his former patient. While that sounds like a fascinating story in its own rightmost wonderful turn of phrase, be warned. Self's approach is ambitiously modernistic making this a very heavy going tome even by Self's standardsstarts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408820145</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=JR CrookDaisy Hildyard|title=Sleeping PatternsEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Mette JakobsenSally Oliver |title=The Vanishing ActWeight 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=Minou lives Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a sparsely occupied, temperate islanddelight. In fact I will agree with the only occupants apart from Minou and her Papa are Priest (first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the Priest), Boxman (expression in a maker of magical boxes) and a dog called No Nameway I'm not familiar with. Minou’s mother used I have to live there tooconfess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. She arrived on a boat with a bowl containing a peacock From the little I have read (in translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a real live one called… yes… Peacock). But then one day Mama disappeared completely apart from one shoe. Minou misses her and tendency towards the way that she encouraged Minou’s imagination, completely at odds with her father’s logical philosophical outlook. Papa doesn’t believe that Mama will return and so has symbolically buried fantastical – the shoe but Minou thinks differently: Mama will come backmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099572478</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ned BeaumanJennifer Saint|title=The Teleportation AccidentElektra
|rating=4
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=It's hard to know where to start Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in reviewing Ned Beauman's Booker long-listed ''The Teleportation Accident''. Reading it, you feel like the parent heavily male dominated world of an ADHD-suffering childAncient Greece. At times it is lovableCassandra, brilliant and entertainingClytemnestra, at others you just want to reach for the Ritalin and tell it to sit Elektra are all bit players in a corner quietly while it composes itself. A clue to both the brilliance and frustration story of Beauman is in the vast range of writers to whom he has been compared in both this and his first novel [[Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman|Boxer, Beetle]]Trojan War. There are hints of people as wide ranging as [[:Category:David Mitchell|David Mitchell]], [[:Category:P G Wodehouse|P G Wodehouse]], [[:Category:Douglas Adams|Douglas Adams]], Raymond Chandler even [[:Category:Angela Carter|Angela Carter]] to name just a few. Beauman takes a huge range of styles Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and genres and pushes them and bends them often to glorious effect, but it can be a challenge keeping up with him at timesthe most extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340998423</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Deborah Levy8409290103|title=Swimming HomeIf Only|author=Matthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=JoeTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, a poet and Isabelcotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, his war-correspondent wife and their teenage daughter Nina rent a luxurious villa in to ensure that the young man got on board the South of France boat and invite their friends Laura and Mitchell thereafter Patrick was to join themsend him a monthly allowance. On their first day there Nina finds what appears to be a naked body floating in Patrick sent the swimming pool, but it's Kitty Finch. She pleads money regularly and a mixcorrespondence - of sorts -sprang up over booking dates and when told that all between the local hotels are fully booked for some days Isabel offers her the use of the spare bedroom at the villatwo although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. There It wasn't that Lowry senior didn's no obvious reason t care for why she does thishis son, but what does become clear is it was that Kitty suffers from depression - he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and she's stopped taking her medicationother children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the young man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276029</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Manu JosephAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=The Illicit Happiness of Other PeopleRed is My Heart
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Meet what the first chapter calls ''the underdog family''[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in my house. Tamil immigrants to MadrasAnd so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, they are below the breadline due to Ousep's constant drinkingand is, black and by him being a failed writer white and mediocre journalistred. His wife Mariamma Yes, he has, shall we say, problems, their younger son is fixated an artistic collaborator on the beautiful girl next door. But their other son Unni is a ''cartoonist hottie'' - a handsome prodigy of the comic strip world - or he was until he took a nosedive off their roof three years agothis piece, aged 17. Ousep is still tracking through his sonand I think it's friends and output, trying possible to seek the cause of this suicide, and what we have here is say not one page lacks the journey influence of the family as he struggles towards the truthsome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848543093</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Naomi AldermanB098FFFBH9|title=The Liars' GospelSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school''The Liars' Gospel'', Naomi Alderman gives s animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the perspective of four people on way in which human beings exploit the recent death animal world. She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a Jewish man named Yehoshuahlecturer at Imperial College, who is more commonly known these days by the anglicized name of Jesus. These perspectives include Miryam (Mary)London, the teacher's motherKate and her twin, Iehuda of Qeriot (Judas Iscariot)Nick. Kate runs the family business, a one time follower of the man, Caiaphas, the High Priest of the great Temple toy shop called Cornucopia in Jerusalem and finally Bar-AvoPutney, Barabbas, a rebel who which is determined to bring down the occupying Roman presence. What makes this such a remarkable book is the sheer visceral nature where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of the story telling. Each story is vividly told, and Alderman evokes the time and place to such a level that you half expect to have developed a sun tan while reading the bookinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>067091990X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Pat BarkerYancey Williams|title=Toby's RoomCrosshairs of the Devil|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Elinor Brooke Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and her brother Toby had always been close but one day their relationship became more intimate than is acceptable. The trick then, as Toby saiddespite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, was to get back to how their relationship was before. Toby concentrated on calling her 'sisfrom Eddie's point of view - in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, whilst Elinor was never quite certain how they could turn the clock back to with only a time when they were more innocent. But looking backtrusty nursing aide, the summer of 1912 would seem idyllic: in 1917 Toby was reported 'MissingJenkins, Believed Killed'for palatable company. Elinor was determined Nothing is going to find out how Toby died and her one route to this knowledge was Kit Neville who was a fellow student keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of hers at the Slade School of Art and who was in the fox hole when Toby met writing though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his fatelife's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241144574</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeanette Winterson0008421714|title=The Daylight GateMrs March|author=Virginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=FantasyLiterary Fiction|summary=1610s Lancashire, and Alice Nutter is The problem began just after the best landowner you could wish forpublication of George March's most successful novel to date. Single, rich and connected, she takes no sides in Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the religious schisms James I has inherited, and takes no bull from those trying last page) seemed to oppress the poor, putting them up and feeding them when no-one else willeither be reading it or had already done so. But those poor are seen as sinful by others - amoralEvery day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, dirty in mindPatricia asked, body and spiritas she was wrapping the bread, and in league with ''but isn't this the devil. And people are beginning to question Alicefirst time he's attitudesbased a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, choice of company - and ageless beautythe principal character had 'her mannerisms''. This, thenPerhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the basedwhore of Nantes -on-truth story of how Alice Nutter got to be one of the accused in the Pendle Witch trials''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099561859</amazonuk>''
}}