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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jude CookMatthew Tree|title=Byron EasyWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Byron Easy is Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a 30-year-old poet drunk and product chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of a his artistic passions all failed marriage miserably and who, in turn, has a failed marriage had endless crises of his ownself confidence. He works in a shop whilst waiting So Tim applied himself to be discovered as a poet. How did his depression-tinted life reach this point? Once there was hopestudies, love and many good times and, as he sits on a train travelling to cultivated his abilities rather than his mother's for Christmas with a bag full of money, he reflects and ponders while trying to escape something more tangible daydreams and dangerous than the pastset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434021938</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=Andrea EamesMosby 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 White ShadowHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As a general principle I am a little tired ''The House of books that start at Broken Bricks'' is the endstory of four people. I want Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to argue for a return grow his vegetables, to good old fashioned narrative where stories start at complete the beginningdelivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, go on until the endrainbow 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 then stopthere's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099565420</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
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=I J KayChronister|title=Mountains Desert 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 Moonfears 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 ''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=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The story starts harshly''Love, I'd read, with was supposed to be a release light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from prison, a bail hostelretrospective view, a refuge for people with mental health problems as a better-than-nothing-lied-to-beyoung woman unravels the year-obtained kind of a sanctuary and a slow easing back into societylong relationship that once defined her. If you can call a housing association flatOverlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a decorating voucher and no furniture, only occasional power and annoying neighbours man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'society'details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099554739</amazonuk>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 what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.''
''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|isbn=191458564X}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennie RooneyJennifer Saint|title=Red JoanAtalanta|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It is very obvious where Jennie Rooney has taken the idea for her novel ''Red Joan'' fromI was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. As she acknowledges fullyI would take my place, it has its origin not just in the 1999 story name of Melita Norwood whose espionage the goddess. It was for the Russians wasnsake of my name, too. Atalanta''t discovered until she was in her late 80s, but while Norwood was Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a dyed in the wool communist, Rooney offers daughter rather than a more complex back story to her characterson, Joan. The result Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a very different type of spy novel than normalformidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. JoanWhen the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a widowed grandmotherfierce band of warriors, is going about her day descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to day life when MI5 come knocking on her door to ask about her past. The narrative switches between their questions to her fight in Artemis' name and carve out her recollections of her time at Cambridge own legendary place in the late 1930s where communist feelings were, by some, given history. What follows is a more sympathetic ear. When Joan falls for Leo, the cousin whirlwind of her Russian born friend Sonyachallenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she gets dragged into a world that is dangerous and morally complexmarries, it will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701187573</amazonuk>1472292154
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jason HinojosaAmanthi Harris|title=The Conception of Zachary MuseBeautiful Place|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Evangeline Muse gives birth Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to Zachary alone in the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her special lagoon… but that's starting at the endhome country. In the beginning, Thomas Greene This is a tutor and Will Archer a talented wood carver who both accept employment from Michael Museplace she spent her formative years. What they don't realise at that moment It isnot a place she was born into, once they meet his beautiful daughterbut the one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the Villa, Evangelinehow it became her home, nothing will and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever be since she first arrived there provide the same again ''score'' for any this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of thema film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>9380905440</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrew Cowan178563335X|title=Worthless MenSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you read When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a lot of fiction about World War Onetrainee vicar, itsitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they's tempting re held when you need to imagine prepick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-war England as an idyl of peace old Hannah and innocenceher elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Andrew Cowan Thelma's daughter-in-law won''Worthless Men'' depicts a much more gritty and earthy Englandt let her see her grandson. Set in 1916 in an industrial and market town Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, it weaves together several narratives that combine to depict is a hard life even before the outbreak of war. In factlovely place, its easier but Rachel is struggling to imagine develop a real bond with the lure parish - and she's in awe of adventure that the war initially offered as a change from the harsh realities of life at homevicar, Gail, although by the time Cowanbut then she's novel begins, been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the grim reality of beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what is involved has dampened much of this enthusiasmthey needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144475940X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Meike Ziervogel1398515388|title=MagdaThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Meet a woman whoFirst of all, despite praying to remain virginalit was the earthquake, had seven children. Meet a woman whose mother thought her ''hoity-toity''deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and spoiltthis, and who thought she should go to work in a factory at school age to know her place better. Meet a woman of whom her oldest daughter would write 'I don't care what Mother saysturn, caused the nuclear meltdown. Mother isn't always rightThe result was complete and utter devastation. NoThe deaths were uncountable, she definitely isn'tand the loss of livelihoods was widespread.' All three women are, The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of course, one and priorities but - six months after the same, and theytsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn're Magda Goebbels, t a dog person but the woman who epitomised more than anyone convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the Nazi wifedog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773401</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shani Boianjiu0989715337|title=The People of Forever are not AfraidPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Yael, Lea and Avishag go through their final years at high school in a little Israeli town on the Lebanese border and then on to the inevitable: the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). Gender is immaterial, all Israeli citizens must serve at least two years and for these girls ''Some frogs had gotten into the moment arrives after graduationwell. Yael's posting seems futile as she guards a training base against marauding lads, sneaking across the border to pinch perfume from pockets rather than pose any real security threat. Lea's assignment on a border checkpoint searching the daily line of immigrant workers is riddled with routine. Avishag joins up with her own demons, her brother Dan having died after his national service. She knows how it happened but continues to struggle with why; something she must handle alone. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781090092</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Daisy Hildyard
|title=Emergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=
The summary of this book doesn't come close to explaining what is done with the premise.
|isbn=1913097811
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Sarah ButlerSally Oliver |title=Ten Things IThe 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've Learnt About Loves 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=General Literary Fiction|summary=Alice returns home to spend time Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I will agree with her dying father. Shethe first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight's been travelling in Mongolia, finding temporary escape from is perhaps using the issues that had haunted her life expression in London but now, on her return, events bring the pain she thought was behind her into sharp focusa way I'm not familiar with. Meanwhile Daniel is an elderly vagrant who calls I have to confess my ignorance of the streets of London homeSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. He seeks his lost childFrom the little I have read (in translation, leaving I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a trail of random items across tendency towards the city in fantastical – the hope of reunion like someone occupying a verse of ''Eleanor Rigby''. Disparate lives, seeking love and acceptance in a world that seems to exclude itmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447222490</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yan LiankeJennifer Saint|title=Lenin's KissesElektra|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Yan Lianke's 2004 novel, ''Lenin's Kisses'Elektra', newly and beautifully translated by Carlos Rojas, is a rare and fascinating example, not just Jennifer Saint tells the story of Chinese fiction from a writer living and working three women who live in Chinathe heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, but also a book that has won literary awards (the prestigious Chinese ''Lao She Literary Award'')Clytemnestra, now available and Elektra are all bit players in English. In many respects, the fact that this book won such a literary prize is somewhat surprising - not I hasten to add because story of any lack of quality - but because Lianke, who has previously sailed too close to the political wind for Chinese censors, here presents a not altogether flattering view of Chinese politicsTrojan War. It's a book Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that is literary with a capital L, and while often the core of silent women have the plot is relatively simple, what makes this book so interesting is the structure most compelling stories and way the story is toldmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701188073</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jan-Philipp Sendker8409290103|title=The Art of Hearing HeartbeatsIf Only|author=Matthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Sendker is GermanTwenty-born (Hamburg 1960) and worked as American correspondent for ''Stern'' (1990 one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to 95) ensure that the young man got on board the boat and then as its Asian correspondent from '95 thereafter Patrick was to '99send him a monthly allowance. He now lives in Berlin. This probably gives him enough global insight to write about Patrick sent the money regularly and a UScorrespondence - of sorts -born high flyer with an Asian heritage heading off sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to Burma to find out the truth of her father's disappearancesay than Patrick. It probably also gives wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, it was that he didn't care to have him the language skills in this country where he might be a danger to do it in English without recourse his wife and other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to a translatorget the young man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184697240X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=George Bernard ShawAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Cashel Byron's ProfessionRed is My Heart|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Cashel Byron’s Profession'' is the fourth of five 'Novels of My Nonage',written by George Bernard Shaw [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in 1882my house. In the preface of the bookAnd so was this one, Shaw heavily criticises these early worksalthough I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, which were rejected by the publishing houses of the timeand is, blaming his immaturity black and lack of experience in lifewhite and red. He was clearly unhappy about the way Yes, he had written some of his charactershas an artistic collaborator on this piece, stating that: and I think it'...he has s possible to say not in his nonage one page lacks the satisfaction influence of knowing that his guesses at life are truesome striking visual ideas.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848547471</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chris WomersleyB098FFFBH9|title=The Low RoadSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Wild Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a man on competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the runanimal world. In She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a slowlecturer at Imperial College, underhand and underwhelming way he is leaving behind dangerLondon, mistakes mother Kate and unhappiness in his pasther twin, and has fetched up in a nondescript motelNick. However this is only Kate runs the beginningfamily business, for he is quickly ordered to put his medical training to good use a toy shop called Cornucopia in the case of LeePutney, when the latter which is dumped into his care with a gunshot wound. Lee, too, is a man on the run - from danger, mistakes and unhappiness in his future. But this pairing are not the only people running in this pitch black thrillerwhere we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780870574</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Claudie GallayYancey Williams|title=In Crosshairs of the Gold of TimeDevil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A young father (I'm not sure we ever know his name) leaves Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his Montreuil apartment strenuous objections and takes thanks to his wife and their sevendaughter, finds himself living -yearor imprisoned, from Eddie's point of view -old twin daughters on in room 315 of the annual holiday to the coast. They have Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a housetrusty nursing aide, La TéméraireJenkins, overlooking the sea a few kilometres south for palatable company. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of Dieppe. They'd bought the house just after the girls were born and go there every summerwriting though, so here, and maybe for a weekend or two in the Spring. Never in winterhis readers, are his wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051261</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Philippe Claudel0008421714|title=The InvestigationMrs March|author=Virginia Feito|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=And you think you The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had it badalready done so. Our hero gets off a train at Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the right stationbread, ''but doesnisn't get collected by those this the first time he's working based a character on behalf of, canyou?''t have his order at the bar fulfilled She mentioned that Johanna, cannot get to the place of work on time, then cannot find the hotel almost opposite without a major trek through a snowy, unsavoury but completely empty cityprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''. And when he gets to Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the hotel - well fact that and Johanna is the other people he meets there are a whole new category whore of odd. Is this how things are supposed to be Nantes - is this limbo''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, a nightmare or just a novel our hero is trapped in?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051547</amazonuk>unloveable wretch.''
}}
