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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__{{Frontpage|author=Matthew Tree|title=We'll Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=Literary fictionFiction|summary=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 had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn=B0CVFXPGP8__NOTOC__}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Philip SingtonB0C47LV1PC|title=The Valley of UnknowingFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In the mid-to-late eighties the German Democratic Republic looked like enduring. Bolstered by Can you make a system of ''MitarbeiterYo 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. ''fellow workersFragility'' is a much more amenable term than ''informers'') set as the Stasi kept their populace in check. Western media was easy city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to censor in those days. Border controls were brutal. People were shot on a regular basis trying to cross emerge from the no-man's-land into West Berlin and along restrictions imposed during the other inner German borders.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535823</amazonuk>covid pandemic
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert WalserMosby Woods|title=The Walk and other storiesA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The publication of West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this collection of around forty short stories affords or even if mending it is the English speaking public a unique opportunity; that best course of reading Walseraction. Governments are flailing. A war here, possibly the leading modernist writer of Swiss German in the last centurya push for climate action there. He has received high praise in 'A Place feeling that nobody is in the Country'actual charge. Imagine then, W G Sebald's recently published posthumous collection and he is well-known as being there was a significant influence on Franz Kafka. His work here dates from 1907 to 1929 and along with his poetry won him recognition man with Berlin's avant gardeprecognition. He combines lyrical delicacy with detailed observationImagine the strategic advantage in this asset; reflective melancholy with criticism a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of brash commercialismcircumstances. The fine writing That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this volume strives to achieve a hard won integrity together with an experimental capacity for reflectionman loses this ability. It challenges the reader and provokes him What would governments do to new insights.get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846689589</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya0571379559|title=The WatchHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Nizam pushes a barrow up to a fortified US army base in Afghanistan''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. What is Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she doing might be happier there? , but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. How will Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the soldiers react? passage of time, storms and floods. What do they believe: their experienceHer husband, Richard, their trainingstruggles to grow his vegetables, their gut reaction or a young girl amputee to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the middle of the desert who may be the last thing rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they ever see?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099565773</amazonuk>'re related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.
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{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jenni FaganKay Chronister|title=The PanopticonDesert Creatures|rating=54|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Imagine reading With a book set in world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a Scottish children’s care home. It’s about robotic takeover, a violent and world devoid of water or a deeply disturbed fifteen year old drug addict whonuclear holocaust, when she was eleven, found her prostitute foster mother murdered in the bathtubthis genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. That’s the set-up of Jenni Fagan’s ''The PanopticonDesert Creatures'', and that’s what it’s about – but by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the funny thing fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that whatever you’re picturing in your head right now, and what I was imagining before I sat down to read it, bears absolutely no resemblance still manages to the book Fagan has actually writtenfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099558645</amazonuk>1803364998
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{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Jess RichardsEric LaRocca|title=Cooking with BonesThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary= Sisters Amber Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and Maya run away from how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a homeinvader, the city of Paradona monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and arrive in a small village. Finding an old cottage, by the girls settle in comfortably, hidden from the locals' sight while joining in with their customs as Amber backs honey cakes each night from the ingredients left daily outside the cottage and the instructions end of the former occupantstory, beatable. Eric LaRocca's cookery books. Now they've moved away from their old life Amber tries to encourage Maya to stand on her own two feet which isn't easyThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. For Maya It is a formwanderercollection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, engineered grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to reflect otherdefeat than any ''Big Bad's wants; a role in which it's difficult to exist normally, let alone while trying to adjust to change… and, indeed, unexpected death.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444738038</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kate AtkinsonMadelaine Lucas|title=Life After LifeThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Spanning the period from just before World War One to the end of World War Two, Kate Atkinson's ''Life After Life'' tells the story of Ursula Todd. Or more accuratelyLove, it tells the potential stories of Ursula Todd. If youI've seen the movie ''Sliding Doors'' then you will have some idea of the concept Atkinson explores; that of small changes in life leading to different outcomesd read, many of which lead to tragic endings but strangely the book manages was supposed to be a celebration of the spirit of Ursula light and is often quite uplifting. Itweightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity's a book that sounds like it is going to be much more confusing than it is though and the result is a very special book indeed. It's that rare thing of a book that has a strong literary style but which is also very readable.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385618670</amazonuk>}}
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{{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.''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Therese Anne FowlerJennifer Saint|title=Z: A Novel of Zelda FitzgeraldAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As Therese Anne Fowler points out in her acknowledgements, views on the relationship between F Scott Fitzgerald and his wife and muse, Zelda, tend to split into 'Team Scott' and 'Team Zelda'. The former believe that it I was Zelda's instability and possessiveness that limited Scott's creative output while the latter argue that it was Scott's debauched behaviour that led to Zelda's mental problemsas worthy as any one of them. ''Z'' takes a more balanced view - the truth of the matter is I would get on board that they needed each other but were tragicallyship, mutually destructiveI vowed. Getting the fact-based fiction tone right is always a challengeI would take my place, and this is exacerbated when not just in the author gives a writer name of the narrative voice, and Zelda goddess. It was a talented writer in her own right as well as a dancerfor the sake of my name, artist and general social phenomenontoo. However Fowler pulls it off with aplomb in what is a sensitive and engrossing story of Zelda - Atalanta'the First Flapper'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444761404</amazonuk>}}
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|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Kweku SaiPadma, fathera young Sri Lankan, husband and doctor, awakes early one morning and wanders outside into his Ghanaian gardenhas returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. As he gazes back at his house, he suffers This is a fatal heart attack and, during his last moments reflects on his life and a family fragmentedplace she spent her formative years. On hearing It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of his deathas home. How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, his children and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first wife Folasade look back on what they were before arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and, thanks in part to Folasadeyet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to escape her past and Kweku's actionsmuch like the musical score of a film, what they've becomethat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670919861</amazonuk>1784631930
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michele Roberts178563335X|title=IgnoranceSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Michèle RobertsWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's ''Ignorance'' is a beautifully writtentrainee vicar, lyrical story about life sitting in wartime Franceon a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Narrated mainly by two characters Her husband, Christopher, Jeanne and Mariecollects six-year-Angèle, it jumps back old Hannah and forward in time and is an enthralling mixture of guilther elder brother, faithJamie, and survival. The two girls could not be more differentwhilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Marie-Angèle is the grocer Thelma's daughter while Jeanne -in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is the daughter of a Jewish mother who washes clothes for lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a living. The two girls together go to real bond with the village convent for their education but come from different ends parish - and she's in awe of the social spectrum. When the German occupation arrivesvicar, Gail, the two girls' experiences are very different but both are then she'ignorant' of each others plight and their judgements are repeatedly shown to be wide of s been doing the markjob for more than thirty years. In fact Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the book could just as well have been titled 'Judgement'beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. Just when you think you know one through the eyes of the other, you get the opposite view of things And then Hannah went missing. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408831155</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Carrie Tiffany1398515388|title=Mateship with BirdsThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Edie Middlestein almost has First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the American dream within her graspocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. She trained as a lawyerThe result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, has and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. 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 husband, dog outside a daughter who followed her professional footsteps and a son married to an ambitious wife who provided him with two high-achieving childrenconvenience store. There are just two flies in He wasn't a dog person but the ointment preventing the dreamconvenience store owner's arrival: 1. Edie is so morbidly obese comment that she has he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to undergo surgery; open his car door and 2. this is Tamon the moment her husband chooses to leave herdog jumped in. Apart from that…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846689325</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Mikhail Shishkin and Andrew Bromfield (translator)0989715337|title=The Light and Papa on the DarkMoon|author=Marco North|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Two lovers write letters to each other about their love, their dreams and their separate lives; lives that they hope will one day merge once again to become one. For Sasha life is the everyday grind with work and demanding loved ones along with ''Some frogs had gotten into the challenges they engenderwell. For Volodenka, it's life in the Russian army and his eventual posting to China. However their love is more complicated than most as more than geography and circumstance stands between them: they're also separated by the decades… many, many decades.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780871058</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andrea EamesDaisy Hildyard|title=The White ShadowEmergency|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=I J KaySally Oliver |title=Mountains The 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 Moonbones 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=The story starts harshlyEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a release from prison, delight' is perhaps using the expression in a bail hostel, a refuge for people way I'm not familiar with mental health problems as a better-than-nothing-lied-. I have toconfess my ignorance of the Spanish-be-obtained kind of a sanctuary and a slow easing back into societylanguage literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. If you can call a housing association flat From the little I have read (in translation, with I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a decorating voucher and no furniture, only occasional power and annoying neighbours ''society''tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099554739</amazonuk>0861541901
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|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Evangeline Muse gives birth to Zachary alone 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in her special lagoon… but that's starting at the endheavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. In the beginningCassandra, Clytemnestra, Thomas Greene is a tutor and Will Archer a talented wood carver who both accept employment from Michael MuseElektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. What they don't realise at Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that moment is, once they meet his beautiful daughter, Evangeline, nothing will ever be often the silent women have the most compelling stories and the same again for any of themmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>9380905440</amazonuk>1472273915
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrew Cowan8409290103|title=Worthless MenIf Only|author=Matthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you read Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the young man got on board the boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a lot monthly allowance. Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of fiction sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about World War One, it's tempting what Lowry has to imagine pre-war England as an idyl of peace and innocencesay than Patrick. Andrew Cowan's ''Worthless Men It wasn't that Lowry senior didn' depicts a much more gritty and earthy England. Set in 1916 in an industrial and market townt care for his son, it weaves together several narratives was that combine he didn't care to depict have him in this country where he might be a hard life danger to his wife and other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before the outbreak of war. In fact, its easier Patrick managed to imagine get the lure of adventure that the war initially offered as a change from the harsh realities of life at home, although by the time Cowan's novel begins, the grim reality of what is involved has dampened much of this enthusiasmyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144475940X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Meike ZiervogelAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=MagdaRed is My Heart|rating=43.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Meet a woman who, despite praying to remain virginal, had seven children. Meet a woman whose mother thought her ''hoity-toity'', [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and spoilt, white and who thought she should go to work read in a factory at school age to know her place bettermy house. Meet a woman of whom her oldest daughter would write 'And so was this one, although I don't care what Mother says. Mother isn't always right. Nocould have spelled that more accurately – this one was, and is, she definitely isn'tblack and white and red.' All three women areYes, of coursehe has an artistic collaborator on this piece, one and the same, and theyI think it're Magda Goebbels, s possible to say not one page lacks the woman who epitomised more than anyone the Nazi wifeinfluence of some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907773401</amazonuk>1913547183
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shani BoianjiuB098FFFBH9|title=The People of Forever are not AfraidSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Yael, Lea Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and Avishag go through their final years at high school in her friend are producing a little Israeli town on the Lebanese border and then on competition entry to highlight the inevitable: way in which human beings exploit the Israeli Defense Force (IDF)animal world. Gender is immaterialShe gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, all Israeli citizens must serve a lecturer at least two years Imperial College, London, mother Kate and for these girls the moment arrives after graduationher twin, Nick. Yael's posting seems futile as she guards Kate runs the family business, a training base against marauding ladstoy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, sneaking across the border to pinch perfume from pockets rather than pose any real security threat. Leawhich is where we'll meet Rachel's assignment on a border checkpoint searching the daily line main (if unsuspected) source 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 aloneinformation: five soft toys. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781090092</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Barbara PymYancey Williams|title=A Glass Crosshairs of Blessingsthe Devil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Wilmet Forsyth Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is a married womangetting on in years and, childless despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living a life of leisure. She and her friend Rowena met their husbands - both Majors - in Italyor imprisoned, where they served as Wrens during the war. Rowena now has three children and her husband David might just be developing a wandering eye. Wilmetfrom Eddie's husband, Rodney, is still ''Noddy'' to his mother with whom they live. Unburdened by children or domestic responsibility Wilmet lunches or shops and becomes involved point of view - in room 315 of the social life Garden of the local churchEden nursing home, St Luke's. But it's her relationship with Piersonly a trusty nursing aide, Rowena's somewhat wayward brotherJenkins, which might pose the biggest threat for palatable company. Nothing is going to her comfortable, if rather boring existence.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844085805</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Toni Jordan|title=Nine Days|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Christopher 'Kip' Westaway lives keep Eddie from his stock-in a suburb -trade of Melbournewriting though, Australia with mother Jeanso here, sister Connie and for his twinreaders, Francis. Kip's mother considers him a layabout who doesn't deserve the special privileges of are his wanderings through his educationally elite brother and so he works at the big house next door for the Hustings, caring for their horses. One day Mr Husting presents Kip with a shilling; their little secret. As its 1939, thatlife's a fair amount of money so Kip hides it away, not realising how special that coin will become as the decades passwork.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444763555</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sarah Butler0008421714|title=Ten Things I've Learnt About Love|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Alice returns home to spend time with her dying father. She's been travelling in Mongolia, finding temporary escape from the issues that had haunted her life in London but now, on her return, events bring the pain she thought was behind her into sharp focus. Meanwhile Daniel is an elderly vagrant who calls the streets of London home. He seeks his lost child, leaving a trail of random items across the city in 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 it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447222490</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMrs March|author=Yan Lianke|title=Lenin's KissesVirginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Yan LiankeThe problem began just after the publication of George March's 2004 most successful novelto date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. 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 bread, ''but isn'Lenint this the first time he's Kissesbased a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, newly and beautifully translated by Carlos Rojas, is a rare 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 principal character had ''Lao She Literary Awardher mannerisms''), now available in English. In many respects Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that this book won such a literary prize Johanna is somewhat surprising - not I hasten to add because the whore of any lack of quality Nantes - but because Lianke''a weak, plain, who has previously sailed too close to the political wind for Chinese censorsdetestable, here presents a not altogether flattering view of Chinese politics. It's a book that is literary with a capital Lpathetic, and while the core of the plot is relatively simpleunloved, what makes this book so interesting is the structure and way the story is toldunloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701188073</amazonuk>''
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