Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yan LiankeMatthew Tree|title=LeninWe's Kissesll Never Know

|summary=Yan Lianke's 2004 novel, ''Lenin's Kisses'', newly and beautifully translated by Carlos RojasTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, is a rare drunk and fascinating example, not just of Chinese fiction from a writer living and working in China, but also a book that has won literary awards (the prestigious Chinese ''Lao She Literary Award''), now available in English. In many respects, the fact that this book won such a literary prize is somewhat surprising - not I hasten to add because chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any lack of quality - but because Lianke, his artistic passions all failed miserably and who has previously sailed too close to the political wind for Chinese censors, here presents a not altogether flattering view had endless crises of Chinese politicsself confidence. It's a book that is literary with a capital LSo Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and while the core of the plot is relatively simple, what makes this book so interesting is the structure and way the story is toldset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701188073</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jan-Philipp SendkerMosby Woods|title=A Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= 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 best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?|isbn=B0C9SNG8R1}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0571379559|title=The Art House of Hearing HeartbeatsBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5

|summary=Sendker is German-born (Hamburg 1960) and worked as American correspondent for ''SternThe House of Broken Bricks'' (1990 to 95) and then as its Asian correspondent from '95 to '99is the story of four people. He now Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in Berlinthe house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. This probably gives him enough global insight Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to write about a UScomplete the delivery rounds -born high flyer with an Asian heritage heading off and to Burma to find out bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the truth of her fatherrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's disappearanceJamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. It probably also gives him the language skills to do it in English without recourse to a translatorPeople 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 his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184697240X</amazonuk>

The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=George Bernard ShawKay Chronister|title=Cashel ByronDesert Creatures|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|isbn=1803364998}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Eric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= 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 process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's Profession''The Trees 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 humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.}}{{Frontpage|author=Madelaine Lucas|title=Thirst for Salt|rating=35

|summary=''Cashel Byron’s ProfessionLove, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity' is the fourth of five 'Novels of My Nonage' Told from a retrospective view,written by George Bernard Shaw in 1882a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. In Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the preface of affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the book, Shaw heavily criticises these early works, which were rejected by summer after. Set against the publishing houses backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the time24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, blaming his immaturity depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and lack familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|isbn=0861546490}}{{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 experience in lifewhat we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it. He was clearly unhappy about '' ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the way he had written some question of his characters, stating that: 'identity and acceptance.Of what it means to be human..he has not in his nonage Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the satisfaction development of knowing that his guesses at life are truetechnology is exciting or frightening.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848547471</amazonuk>191458564X

Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing.|isbn=1472292154}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chris WomersleyAmanthi Harris|title=The Low RoadBeautiful Place|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present 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.|isbn=1784631930}}{{Frontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=Sea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=45

|summary=Wild is When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a man trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the runchildren up. In a slowHer husband, Christopher, underhand collects six-year-old Hannah and underwhelming way he is leaving behind dangerher elder brother, mistakes and unhappiness in his pastJamie, and has fetched up whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in a nondescript motel-law won't let her see her grandson. However this Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is only the beginninga lovely place, for he but Rachel is quickly ordered struggling to put his medical training to good use develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the case of Leevicar, Gail, when but then she's been doing the latter is dumped into his care with a gunshot woundjob for more than thirty years. Lee, too, is Rachel and Christopher hoped that a man walk on the run beach would do them some good - from danger, mistakes and unhappiness in his futureit was stormy but it was probably what they needed. But this pairing are not the only people running in this pitch black thrillerAnd then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780870574</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Claudie Gallay1398515388|title=In The Boy and the Gold of TimeDog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=A young father (I'm not sure we ever know his name) leaves his Montreuil apartment First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and takes his wife this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and their seven-year-old twin daughters on the annual holiday to the coastutter devastation. They have a houseThe deaths were uncountable, La Téméraire, overlooking and the sea a few kilometres south loss of Dieppelivelihoods was widespread. They'd bought The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the house just list of priorities but - six months after the girls were born and go there every summer, and maybe for tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a weekend or two in the Springconvenience store. Never He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in winter.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051261</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Philippe Claudel0989715337|title=The InvestigationPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North

|summary=And you think you ''Some frogs had it badgotten into the well. Our hero gets off a train at the right station, but doesn't get collected by those he's working on behalf of, can ''t have his order at Walter stood waist-deep in the bar fulfilledfragrant water, cannot get to the place naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of work on timetheir eggs wove around him, then cannot find sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the hotel almost opposite without a major trek through a snowy, unsavoury but completely empty city. And when he gets to dogs leaned over the hotel - well that opening and barked down at the strange noise of the other people buckets as he meets there are a whole new category filled them.'' How is that for an opening? The style of odd. Is this how things are supposed novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to be - is this limbowistful and musing, turning on a nightmare or just a novel our hero is trapped in?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051547</amazonuk>sixpence. And author Marco North, who has the most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to go on.

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Jenn AshworthSally Oliver |title=The Friday GospelsWeight 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=There are five in Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I will agree with the Leeke family. Martin first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the father and he works expression in a way I'm not familiar with. I have to confess my ignorance of the mail sorting officeSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. ThereFrom the little I have read (in translation, I don's not t read Spanish) there does seem to be a lot of ''pleasuretendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism. |isbn=0861541901}}{{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Saint|title=Elektra|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in Martin's lifethe heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, but if you were making a list you'd put Bovril at and Elektra are all bit players in the top story of itthe Trojan War. She's a labrador Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and Martin's obsessed with her trainingthe most extreme furies.|isbn=1472273915}}{{Frontpage|isbn=8409290103|title=If Only|author=Matthew Tree|rating=4. Well5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he's partly obsessed with asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the young man got on board the boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. Patrick sent the training money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the training is partly an excuse two 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 didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and other obsessionchildren. Nina owns two labradors The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the young man on his way.}}{{Frontpage|author=Antoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Martin sees them Jane Aitken (he translator)|title=Red is My Heart|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and Ninaread 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=Fourteen-year- not he old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the labs) as having animal world. She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a future togetherlecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, Nick. It would be easy Kate runs the family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.}}{{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 be criticalhis daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, but Martinfrom Eddie's wife is point of view - in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a wheelchairtrusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. PaulineNothing 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 been unwell since work.|isbn=0986031658}} {{Frontpage|isbn=0008421714|title=Mrs March|author=Virginia Feito|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The problem began just after the birth publication of their youngest childGeorge March's most successful novel to date. She's not quite doubly incontinent, Everyone but accidents are frequent and embarrassingMrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. SheEvery day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, ''but isn't this the first time he's also got based a penchant character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'her mannerisms''. Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for spending on home improvements - despite the fact that there Johanna is the whore of Nantes - ''reallya weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.'' isn't the money for them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444707728</amazonuk>