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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]{{adsense2}}__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Suzanne RindellMatthew Tree|title=The Other TypistWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The Other Typist is set in 1920s New York CityTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, with Prohibition at its height a drunk and Rose Baker, an orphaned young woman, working as a police typist. While she has no real friends, she's good chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at her job any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and seems to have the respect who had endless crises of the Sergeant, whom she admires and the Lieutenant Detective, whom she's less keen onself confidence. Then a perfect storm comes into their lives, in the shape of the enchanting OdalieSo Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and nothing will be the same againset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241002885</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ioanna Bourazopoulou and Yannis Panas (Translator)B0C47LV1PC|title=What Lot's Wife SawFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Science Literary Fiction|summary= ItCan you make a ''Yo birthing person''s been over 20 years since The Overflow camejoke? And if you could, flooding half of Europe. Around is the same time Violet Salt, a new multi-functional mineral, appeared, its production now governed globally by question should you make it? Or is the mysteriousquestion if you did, all-powerful Consortium. Meanwhile back in Europe would it land? The Colony, a haven for those escaping floods and indeed justice, catch is ruled by Governor Bera and six officials, that the 'Purple Stars'answer for both could well be... All seems to be well in a despotic, lawless way until the six wake up to the realisation that the Governor has died mysteriously in the night. The Consortium needs answers so choose the greatest crossword compiler of the age, Phileas Book, to investigate, whether he wants to or notno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845025474</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rachel KushnerMosby Woods|title=The FlamethrowersA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Set mainly in New YorkThe West isn's art district t the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the late 1970s, Rachel Kushner's ''The Flamethrowers'' tells West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the story best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a young girlpush for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, known only to there was a man with precognition. Imagine the reader as Reno, after the city she comes from. She's strategic advantage in this asset; a girl man who loves motorbikes and photography, but struggles to find her place in the New York art scenecan tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. When she falls for the estranged son, SandroThat man would be valuable, of right? Perhaps the Italian motorbike manufacturer Valero, himself an artist most valuable asset in New Yorkhistory. Imagine then, Reno finds herself in situations she cannot controlthat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846557917</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roland Watson-Grant0571379559|title=SketcherThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Nine-year-old Skid Beaumont ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives with his three brothers, father Alrick and mother Valerie in the swamps beyond house on the New Orleans city limitsriverbank, built of broken bricks. Life is hard Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and home is a rundown shack with no running water but they're only there temporarily; a 'temporarily' that is rather longfloods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds -termand to bring in sufficient money. Alrick moved them from their nice home in New Orleans because the land was cheap They have twin boys - Sonny and soon Max, the city would build out to envelop themrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Years later People don't believe that they're still waiting for that to happen. Life isn’t exactly mundane though; related, much less twins and there are rumours 's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that when Skidshe's brother Frico draws left-handed, strange things seem to happenhis nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846882427</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=Francesco PacificoKay Chronister|title=The Story of My PurityDesert Creatures|rating=2.54|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=In Francesco Pacifico's translated Italian novel 'The Story of My Purity'With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, Piero Rosini post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a 30 year oldrobotic takeover, ultraconservative Catholic working for a radical Catholic publishing house. His marriage is world devoid of physical contactwater or a nuclear holocaust, and he yearns for his virginal sister-in-law. Largely to escape these longings, he heads this genre is a way for Paris, never the first choice of one seeking humans to preserve cathartically experience their purity, where he most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is further tempted by a slightly unlikely group new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of girls, and one in particular, which is further complicated for him by the fact fears that she exist for humanity today. It is Jewish. Almost living a separate life in his head, he cannot escape either the intellectual or physical constraints of his old life in Romeshocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241145058</amazonuk>1803364998
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{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Philip SingtonEric LaRocca|title=The Valley of UnknowingTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=45|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=In the mid-Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to-late eighties the German Democratic Republic looked like enduringreflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Bolstered by Most horror fiction feature a system of ''MitarbeiterBig 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 ''fellow workersThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a much collection of short stories more amenable term interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''informersBig Bad'') the Stasi kept their populace in check. Western media was easy to censor in those days. Border controls were brutal. People were shot on a regular basis trying to cross the no-man's-land into West Berlin and along the other inner German borders.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535823</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert WalserMadelaine Lucas|title=The Walk and other storiesThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The publication of this collection of around forty short stories affords the English speaking public a unique opportunity; that of reading Walser, possibly the leading modernist writer of Swiss German in the last century. He has received high praise in 'A Place in the Country'Love, W G SebaldI's recently published posthumous collection and he is well-known as being d read, was supposed to be a significant influence on Franz Kafka. His work here dates from 1907 to 1929 light and along with his poetry won him recognition with Berlinweightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''s avant garde. He combines lyrical delicacy with detailed observation; reflective melancholy with criticism of brash commercialism. The fine writing in this volume strives to achieve a hard won integrity together with an experimental capacity for reflection. It challenges the reader and provokes him to new insights.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846689589</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Michael Grothaus
|title=Beautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jenni FaganJennifer Saint|title=The PanopticonAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Imagine reading a book set in a Scottish children’s care home''I was as worthy as any one of them. It’s about a violent and a deeply disturbed fifteen year old drug addict whoI would get on board that ship, when she was elevenI vowed. I would take my place, found her prostitute foster mother murdered not just in the bathtubname of the goddess. That’s It was for the set-up sake of Jenni Fagan’s 'my name, too. Atalanta'The Panopticon'', and that’s what it’s about – but the funny thing is 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 to the book Fagan has actually written.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099558645</amazonuk>}}Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kate AtkinsonAmanthi Harris|title=Life After LifeBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Spanning Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the period from just before World War One to Villa Hibiscus on the end southern coast of World War Twoher home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, Kate Atkinson's ''Life After Life'' tells but the story one she thinks of Ursula Toddas home. Or more accurately How she came to be at the Villa, how it tells became her home, and the potential stories of Ursula Todd. If you've seen machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the movie ''Sliding Doorsscore'' then you will have some idea of the concept Atkinson explores; that of small changes in life leading to different outcomes, many of which lead to tragic endings but strangely the book manages to be a celebration of the spirit of Ursula for this gentle and is often quite upliftingyet subtly violent novel. It Padma's a book that sounds like it is going present fails to be escape her past and much more confusing than it is though and like the result is musical score of a very special book indeed. It's film, that rare thing of a book strand weaves its way through everything that has a strong literary style but which is also very readablehappens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0385618670</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Emily Perkins178563335X|title=The ForrestsSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= This is the chronicle of the Forrest family during When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the life of daughter Dorothychildren up. They move ('they' being DorothyHer husband, father FrankChristopher, mother Lee collects six-year-old Hannah and siblings Michaelher elder brother, Evelyn and little Ruthie) from New York to New Zealand at the age of seven years old. Frank hopes the migration will signal Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a change in his luck as well as a new life for his familysobbing parishioner. HeThelma's right daughter-in that changes follow -law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but there are as many Rachel is struggling to shake their stability as to still it develop a real bond with the parish - and the past remains with each she's in awe of them as well as the vicar, Gail, but then she''de'' ''facto'' adoptee Daniels been doing the job for more than thirty years. Indeed, Dorothy grows to realise Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the past is a garment that's worn in beach would do them some form throughout an entire lifetimegood - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140883149X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Elif Shafak1398515388|title=HonourThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5|genre=CrimeGeneral Fiction|summary=Jamila and Pembe are twins whoFirst of all, growing up among it was the Kurdish earthquake, deep in Turkeythe ocean floor, are as wrapped in which created the customs of their Muslim faith tsunami and heritage as they are this, in turn, caused the love of their familynuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. Jamila develops a talent that will make her The deaths were uncountable, and the hub loss of her communitylivelihoods was widespread. Pembe's destiny lies over The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the sea as she migrates to England with her husband Adem in search list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a better lifeconvenience store. However, He wasn't a dog person but the destiny they travel towards is oh so different from convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the destiny of which they dreamdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670921165</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Therese Anne Fowler0989715337|title=Z: A Novel of Zelda FitzgeraldPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=54
|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 was Zelda's instability and possessiveness that limited Scott's creative output while Some frogs had gotten into the latter argue that it was Scott's debauched behaviour that led to Zelda's mental problems. ''Z'' takes a more balanced view - the truth of the matter is that they needed each other but were tragically, mutually destructive. Getting the fact-based fiction tone right is always a challenge, and this is exacerbated when the author gives a writer the narrative voice, and Zelda was a talented writer in her own right as well as a dancer, artist and general social phenomenon. However Fowler pulls it off with aplomb in what is a sensitive and engrossing story of Zelda - 'the First Flapper'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444761404</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nikolai Leskov, Richard Pevear (translator) and Larissa Volokhonsky (translator)Daisy Hildyard|title=The Enchanted Wanderer and Other StoriesEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This is a collection of 17 Nikolai Leskov stories as mixed in subject matter as they are in length. From the very short ''Spirit The summary of Madame de Genlis'this book doesn', warning of the dire consequences of selecting literature for a mollycoddled princess, t come close to explaining what is done with the novella-length ''The Enchanted Wanderer'' telling the tale of the apparently immortal monk who prayed for suicide victims, Leskov (aided greatly by the talented translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky) unlocks the mores, traditions, religion and superstitions of 19th century Russia for a modern readershippremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099577356</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Taiye SelasiSally Oliver |title=Ghana Must GoThe 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'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=Kweku SaiEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, father, husband and doctor, awakes early one morning and wanders outside into his Ghanaian gardena delight. As he gazes back at his house, he suffers I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a fatal heart attack and, during his last moments reflects on his life and delight' is perhaps using the expression in a family fragmentedway I'm not familiar with. On hearing I have to confess my ignorance of his death, his children and first wife Folasade look back on what they were before and, thanks the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. From the little I have read (in part to Folasade's and Kweku's actionstranslation, what theyI don've becomet read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670919861</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michele RobertsJennifer Saint|title=IgnoranceElektra|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Michèle Roberts's ''Ignorance'Elektra' is a beautifully written, lyrical story about life in wartime France. Narrated mainly by two characters, Jeanne and Marie-Angèle, it jumps back and forward in time and is an enthralling mixture of guilt, faith, and survival. The two girls could not be more different. Marie-Angèle is Jennifer Saint tells the grocer's daughter while Jeanne is the daughter story of a Jewish mother three women who washes clothes for a living. The two girls together go to live in the village convent for their education but come from different ends heavily male dominated world of the social spectrumAncient Greece. When the German occupation arrivesCassandra, Clytemnestra, the two girls' experiences are very different but both are 'ignorant' of each others plight and their judgements Elektra are repeatedly shown to be wide all bit players in the story of the markTrojan War. In fact Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the book could just as well silent women have been titled 'Judgement'. Just when you think you know one through the eyes of most compelling stories and the other, you get the opposite view of thingsmost extreme furies. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408831155</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Carrie Tiffany8409290103|title=Mateship with BirdsIf Only|author=Matthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In the early nineteen fifties a lonelyTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, middlecotton-aged farmer observed broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the birds young man got on his land board the boat and recorded what he saw in the blank pages of his milk ledgerthereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. His animals and Patrick sent the birds were his family money regularly and his land a correspondence - difficult though it could be of sorts - a part of him. Whilst Harry watched and recorded, his neighbour, Betty, watched Harry and recorded sprang up between the childhood illnesses and accidents of her two childrenalthough we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. By day she worked in a nursing home where she was a lunchtime It wasn'wifet that Lowry senior didn', sitting at the bedside of some of the old men in her t care. Her daughterfor his son, Hazel, kept a nature notebook which it was completely factual and accepting of birth and death that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a way that can only be achieved by those who live with livestock - danger to his wife and deadstock - other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the young man on a daily basishis way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447219864</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anouk MarkovitsAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=I Am ForbiddenRed is My Heart|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The date is 1939 [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and the place is what we know as Romania white and Hungaryread in my house. Young Zalman Stern is stopped by soldiers and for a moment he feels And so was this is his last moment on Earth. Meanwhileone, not too far awayalthough I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, one moment 5 year old Josef Lichtenstein and is playing with his baby sister, the next his childhood is deleted by the same bigotry black and white and blood that deletes herred. One day their paths will meet. This is the story of ZalmanYes, Josef, their descendants; their struggleshe has an artistic collaborator on this piece, their beliefs; the cost of escape and I think it's possible to say not one page lacks the cost influence of remainingsome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099571943</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jami AttenbergB098FFFBH9|title=The Middlesteins|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Edie Middlestein almost has the American dream within her grasp. She trained as a lawyer, has a husband, a daughter who followed her professional footsteps and a son married to an ambitious wife who provided him with two high-achieving children. There are just two flies in the ointment preventing the dream's arrival: 1. Edie is so morbidly obese that she has to undergo surgery; and 2. this is the moment her husband chooses to leave her. Apart from that…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846689325</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSnowcub|author= Mikhail Shishkin and Andrew Bromfield (translator)|title=The Light and the DarkGraham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Two lovers write letters to each other about their love, their dreams Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and their separate lives; lives that they hope will one day merge once again her friend are producing a competition entry to become one. For Sasha life is highlight the everyday grind with work and demanding loved ones along with way in which human beings exploit the challenges they engenderanimal world. For VolodenkaShe gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, it's life in the Russian army mother Kate and his eventual posting to Chinaher twin, Nick. However their love Kate runs the family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is more complicated than most as more than geography and circumstance stands between themwhere we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: they're also separated by the decades… many, many decadesfive soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780871058</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Maggie O'FarrellYancey Williams|title=Instructions for a HeatwaveCrosshairs of the Devil|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In London, Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in July 1976 it hadn't rained for months. Gardens - if you could call them that any longer - were thick with aphids years and what water there was, which was despite his strenuous objections and thanks to be consumed his daughter, finds himself living - or used for washingimprisoned, came from Eddie's point of view - in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a standpipetrusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. Robert Riordan told Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his wifestock-in-trade of writing though, Grettaso here, that he was going round the corner to buy a newspaper. This was what he did every morningfor his readers, but this time he didnare his wanderings through his life't come backs work. The police weren't interested as the closer they looked the more it was obvious that there was an intention to disappear. Gretta turned to her three adult children for help. But how much help would they - could they - be?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755358783</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jude Cook0008421714|title=Byron EasyMrs March|author=Virginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Byron Easy is a 30-year-old poet and product The problem began just after the publication of a failed marriage who, in turn, has a failed marriage of his ownGeorge March's most successful novel to date. He works in a shop whilst waiting Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be discovered as a poetreading it or had already done so. How did his depression-tinted life reach this point? Once there was hopeEvery day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, love and many good times andPatricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, ''but isn't this the first time he sits 's based a character on a train travelling to his motheryou?'' She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'her mannerisms''s . Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for Christmas with the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - ''a bag full of moneyweak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, he reflects and ponders while trying to escape something more tangible and dangerous than the pastunloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434021938</amazonuk>''
}}