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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]{{adsense2}}__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Russian StoriesMatthew Tree|authortitle=Francesc SeresWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=This brilliant and varied collection of short stories is the product of a current academic interest in cross-cultural translation. Francisco Guillen Serés is a Catalan professor of Art History Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from Aragon. A Russophilehis father, he has travelled widely to collect stories from those writing during the past hundred years of Russian history. These have been translated into Catalan a drunk and then into English. These unusual and delightful stories, some twenty one chronic underachiever whose dreams of them written by five writers read fluently and engagingly. They form an informative tapestry being exceptional at any of Soviet his artistic passions all failed miserably and post-Soviet life, moving back in time with the older, earlier writers like Bergchenko, who died in the siege had endless crises of Stalingrad, at the endself confidence. Ranging over mythic and symbolic tales So Tim applied himself to realistic portrayals of personal relationships; love trysts in St Petersburghis studies, ferocious bears in the deep heart of the Taiga to the perils of becoming lost in continuous orbit in space. All aspects are impressively recountedcultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>085705158X</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B0C47LV1PC|title=The ParrotsFragility|author=Filippo BolognaMosby Woods

|summary=When confronted with the topic of parrots, most people would describe them as tamed tropical birds that are taught to repeat simple phrases, having no particular intelligence to engender an originality of their own. Filippo Bologna has not in fact written Can you make a book about birds''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, but about writers - in fact, three writers. Just as is the Neo-Pagans have a liking of question should you make it? Or is the Triple Goddesses of The Maidenquestion if you did, The Mother and The Crone, our three writers are similarly split into The Beginner, The Writer, and The Master. All three of these novelists are battling would it out for land? The Prize, a prestigious award catch is that would revitalise the career of The Master, legitimize the efforts of The Beginner and assure The Writer a place in the annals of history. The setting of Rome is utilised to provide answer for both a stunning backdrop and one that is sympathetic to the mood of our characters. The stories of our three protagonists are interwoven in a delightfully clear fashion; Bologna's prose is delicate and descriptive, but not at the sacrifice of pacing. The stage is set; the characters have learned their linescould well be. There is just one problem... out of the three writers, none of them deserves to win The Prizeno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908968192</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|title=In The Dutch Mountains|author=Cees Nooteboom|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Often, when asked if what I’m reading ''Fragility'' is a good book I hesitate before answering, trying to decide what set as the asker really means. Do they mean is it exciting? Funny? Full city of interesting characters? RecentlyPortland, someone asked me that and when I hesitated they gave me this as a clarifier: “Are you better off for having read it?”. In this instanceOregon, yes. I think I am. However, despite coming away cautiously begins to emerge from this book with a strong positive feeling about it, it’s also left me a little befuddled.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782067191</amazonuk>the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Every PromiseMosby Woods|authortitle=Andrea BajaniA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=Italian writer, Andrea Bajani's ''Every Promise'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 narrated by Pietrothe best course of action. Governments are flailing. His partner, Sara, has left him due to their inability to have a babyA war here, but soon she finds herself pregnant after a one night stand and reliant on Pietro's mother push for adviceclimate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Meanwhile Pietro meets OlmoImagine then, an elderly there was a man who lives with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in their old family apartment, this asset; a man who reminds Pietro can tell you what will happen given any set of his own Grandfathercircumstances. That man would be valuable, Mario, who, like Olmo, served right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in Mussolini's ill-fated Russian campaignhistory. Olmo persuades Pietro to go to Russia to visit the scenes of some of the photographs he has to try to come to terms with the past. It's a story about the pastImagine then, the present and the future and the struggle for one that this man to make sense of loses thisability. It's packed with surpassingly detailed imagery and Bajani is at times breathtakingly unflinching in exposing the vulnerability of his narrator. However, it is very much a slow burn of a book and What would governments do to get it's not always an easy book to read.back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051466</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Andrew Porter0571379559|title=In Between DaysThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=3.5

|summary=After Chloe Harding ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is forced the story of four people. 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 leave her East Coast collegegrow his vegetables, for reasons she refuses to explain complete the delivery rounds - and to her recently divorced parents or older brother Richardbring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, her familythe rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's lives start to unravelJamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Will the rest of them ever find out what caused her fall from grace People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and can they solve their own problems?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224089838</amazonuk>there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.

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=Ivy PochodaKay Chronister|title=Visitation StreetDesert 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 ''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

|summary=Red Hook''Love, Brooklyn and it is blisteringly hot. Two fifteen year old girls decide the best and most exciting way to cool off is to take a small inflatable raft on to the river. The next morning one of the girls is found unconscious and washed ashore with no memory of what happened in the river and the other girl is nowhere I'd read, was supposed to be found. This becomes a big local story light and the survivorweightless feeling, saviour and community have to deal with the loss in their different ways.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444778242</amazonuk>}}but I had always longed for gravity''

{{newreview|author=Marlen Haushofer|title=Nowhere Ending Sky|rating=4Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Little Meta is growing up in Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a childhood paradise with two parents who love man twenty years her and a younger brother to tease and train senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to do all its sorrowful end the things that Meta wants him tosummer after. However Set against the world outside Metabackdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's paradise will soon change beyond deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all recognition as the Austria -consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and Germany of the 1920s makes way for the Austria familial relationships and Germany of the 1930show it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0704373130</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreview|author=Lea Carpenter|title=Eleven Days|rating=4''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Sara raised Jason alone; even when she was with his father Of what it felt as if she was a lone parent. Jason's father always seemed means to be away doing something indefinable abroad; then he disappeared leaving her completelyhuman. Two years later Jason's father was dead. However Jason Of what is real and what is a lad to be proud ofartificial, never giving Sara a moment's trouble and now a member whether the development of the elite US Navy SEALS. Now he's missing in action… Now she has to hang on and hopetechnology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444776231</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lucy CruickshanksJennifer Saint|title=The Trader of SaigonAtalanta

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=In the Saigon ''I was as worthy as any one of the 1980s the Vietnam War is over but the traces remainthem. Alexander has deserted from the US army and makes a comfortable living selling girls to local business men. Phuc used to be a business manI would get on board that ship, complete with mansion and the means to keep his wife and three children in affluence. Now his family live in a shanty hut, afraid of the ruling government that spies through the eyes of childrenI vowed. At last he finds a way outI would take my place, his luck not just needs to hold. Hanh also lives in poverty, desperately trying to help her sick mother with the pittance she earns from cleaning one name of the city's many open latrinesgoddess. Then one day she meets someone who offers so much more. His It was for the sake of my name is Alexander, too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782063218</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''

{{newreview|author=Manuel Rivas|title=All Is Silence|rating=3Princess.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The small community of Noitía is a place where everyone knows each other and each other’s business, which considering most of the adults are involved in the one business, smuggling, is potentially dangerous knowledgeWarrior. We follow a small group of three young friends growing up in the area as they play and learn and even experience a little of the black market dealingsLover. They stumble across a stash of smuggled whisky and are caught by the charismatic king pin responsible for the trafficking, who teaches them that silence is the most important lesson to learn when growing up in NoitíaHero.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184655568X</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Ryu Murakami|title=From The FatherlandAbandoned 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, With Love|rating=4one who longs for adventure.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=From The FatherlandWhen the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, With Love is a 2005 Japanese novel set in fierce band of warriors, descendent from the then-near future of 2011. Fatherland (as I will abbreviate it) explores Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the social chance to fight in Artemis' name and political ramifications carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of one speculative scenariochallenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: what that if North Korea invaded Japan?she marries, it will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908968451</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Suzanne RindellAmanthi Harris|title=The Other TypistBeautiful Place

|summary=The Other Typist is set in 1920s New York CityPadma, with Prohibition at its height and Rose Baker, an orphaned a young womanSri Lankan, working as has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a police typistplace she spent her formative years. While It is not a place she has no real friendswas born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she's good came to be at the Villa, how it became her job home, and seems to the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the respect of the Sergeant, whom she admires ''score'' for this gentle and the Lieutenant Detective, whom sheyet subtly violent novel. Padma's less keen on. Then a perfect storm comes into their lives, in present fails to escape her past and much like the shape musical score of the enchanting Odaliea film, and nothing will be that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the same againVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241002885</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ioanna Bourazopoulou and Yannis Panas (Translator)178563335X|title=What Lot's Wife Saw|rating=4|genre=Science Fiction|summary= It's been over 20 years since The Overflow came, flooding half of Europe. Around the same time Violet Salt, a new multi-functional mineral, appeared, its production now governed globally by the mysterious, all-powerful Consortium. Meanwhile back in Europe The Colony, a haven for those escaping floods and indeed justice, is ruled by Governor Bera and six officials, the 'Purple Stars'. 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 not.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845025474</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSea Defences|author=Gabriel Weston|title=Dirty WorkHilary Taylor

|summary=#There are two women When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in an operating theatre on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when one starts bleeding heavily you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six- fatally year- the other freezesold Hannah and her elder brother, unableJamie, despite all whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her training and undoubted skills, to do anything at allsee her grandson. Whatever Holthorpe, on the outcome it cannot pass unnoticedNorfolk coast, is a lovely place, unreported and surgeon Nancy Mullion but Rachel is called struggling to appear before develop a tribunal appointed by real bond with the General Medical Council. Over a period parish - and she's in awe of weeks the vicar, Gail, but then she's forced to confront been doing the effect of being a doctor who has killed as well as curedjob for more than thirty years. You're probably making assumptions now Rachel and nodding wisely. Don't Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - because you are almost certainly going to be wrongit was stormy but it was probably what they needed. This will not be the story which you are expecting and it was certainly not the story which Nancy's hospital wanted to hearAnd then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022409128X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rachel Kushner1398515388|title=The FlamethrowersBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Set mainly First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in New York's art district the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the late 1970snuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, Rachel Kushner's ''and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The Flamethrowers'' tells fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the story list of a young girl, known only to the reader as Reno, priorities but - six months after the city she comes fromtsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. She He wasn's t a girl who loves motorbikes and photography, dog person but struggles the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to find her place in the New York art scene. When she falls for the estranged son, Sandro, of open his car door and Tamon the Italian motorbike manufacturer Valero, himself an artist in New York, Reno finds herself dog jumped in situations she cannot control.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846557917</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roland Watson-Grant0989715337|title=SketcherPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=54

|summary= Nine-year-old Skid Beaumont lives with his three brothers, father Alrick and mother Valerie in the swamps beyond ''Some frogs had gotten into the New Orleans city limitswell. Life is hard and home is a rundown shack with no running water but they're only there temporarily; a 'temporarily '' that is rather longWalter stood waist-termdeep in the fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Alrick moved Long strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them from their nice home in New Orleans because . Two of the dogs leaned over the land was cheap opening and soon barked down at the city would build out to envelop strange noise of the buckets as he filled them. Years later they're still waiting for that to happen. Life isn’t exactly mundane though; there are rumours that when Skid's brother Frico draws left-handed, strange things seem to happen.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846882427</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Francesco Pacifico|title=How is that for an opening? The Story style of My Purity|rating=2.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=In Francesco Pacifico's translated Italian this novel 'The Story of My Purity', Piero Rosini is a 30 year old, ultraconservative Catholic working for a radical Catholic publishing house. His marriage is devoid of physical contact, and he yearns for his virginal sister-in-law. Largely to escape these longings, he heads for Paris, never the first choice form of one seeking interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to preserve their puritywistful and musing, where he is further tempted by turning on a slightly unlikely group of girls, and one in particularsixpence. And author Marco North, which is further complicated for him by who has the fact that she is Jewish. Almost living a separate life in his headmost wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he cannot escape either the intellectual or physical constraints of his old life in Romemeans to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241145058</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philip SingtonDaisy Hildyard|title=The Valley of UnknowingEmergency

|summary=In the mid-to-late eighties the German Democratic Republic looked like enduring. Bolstered by a system The summary of this book doesn''Mitarbeiter'' (''fellow workers'' t come close to explaining what is a much more amenable term than ''informers'') 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 done with the other inner German borderspremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099535823</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Robert WalserSally Oliver |title=The Walk 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 storiespatients 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=The publication of Early comments on this collection of around forty short stories affords the English speaking public debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a unique opportunity; that of reading Walser, possibly the leading modernist writer of Swiss German in the last centurydelight. He has received high praise in 'A Place in I will agree with the Countryfirst – tremendous is no understatement – but ', W G Sebalda delight's recently published posthumous collection and he is well-known as being perhaps using the expression in a significant influence on Franz Kafkaway I'm not familiar with. His work here dates from 1907 I have to 1929 and along with his poetry won him recognition with Berlin's avant garde. He combines lyrical delicacy with detailed observation; reflective melancholy with criticism confess my ignorance of brash commercialismthe Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. The fine writing From the little I have read (in this volume strives translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem to achieve be a hard won integrity together with an experimental capacity for reflection. It challenges tendency towards the fantastical – the reader and provokes him to new insightsmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846689589</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joydeep Roy-BhattacharyaJennifer Saint|title=The WatchElektra|rating=54

|summary= Nizam pushes a barrow up to a fortified US army base 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in Afghanistanthe heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. What is she doing there? How will the soldiers react? What do they believe: their experienceCassandra, their trainingClytemnestra, their gut reaction or a young girl amputee and Elektra are all bit players in the middle story of the desert who may be Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and the last thing they ever see?most extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099565773</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anthony Cartwright8409290103|title=How I Killed Margaret ThatcherIf Only|author=Matthew Tree|rating=34.5

|summary=What motivates someone to become a killer? When the reader first meets Sean BullTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he is nine years oldasked his accountant, Mr Patrick, living to ensure that the young man got on board the boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a seemingly carefree monthly allowance. Patrick sent the money regularly and happy existence surrounded by his family and friends in a closecorrespondence - of sorts -knit community in Dudley, West Midlandssprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. He loves Star Wars and playing football with his school friends and adores It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his teenage uncle Johnnyson, who tells it was that he didn't care to have him stories in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and creates other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the most wonderful pieces of artyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781251576</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jenni FaganAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=The PanopticonRed is My Heart|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Imagine reading a book set [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in a Scottish children’s care homemy house. It’s about a violent and a deeply disturbed fifteen year old drug addict whoAnd so was this one, when she although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was eleven, found her prostitute foster mother murdered in the bathtuband is, black and white and red. That’s the set-up of Jenni Fagan’s ''The Panopticon''Yes, and that’s what it’s about – but the funny thing is that whatever you’re picturing in your head right nowhe has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and what I was imagining before I sat down to read think it, bears absolutely no resemblance 's possible to say not one page lacks the book Fagan has actually writteninfluence of some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099558645</amazonuk>1913547183

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jess RichardsB098FFFBH9|title=Cooking with BonesSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright

|summary= Sisters Amber Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and Maya run away from home, the city of Paradon, she and arrive in her friend are producing a small village. Finding an old cottage, competition entry to highlight the girls settle way 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 of which human beings exploit the former occupant's cookery booksanimal world. Now they've moved away She gets a great deal of support from their old life Amber tries to encourage Maya to stand on her own two feet which isn't easyfamily: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, Nick. For Maya is a formwandererKate runs the family business, engineered to reflect other's wants; a role toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which itis where we'll meet Rachel's difficult to exist normally, let alone while trying to adjust to change… and, indeed, unexpected deathmain (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444738038</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kate AtkinsonYancey Williams|title=Life After LifeCrosshairs of the Devil|rating=4.5

|summary=Spanning the period from just before World War One Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to the end of World War Twohis daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, Kate Atkinsonfrom Eddie's ''Life After Life'' tells the story point of Ursula Todd. Or more accurately, it tells the potential stories view - in room 315 of Ursula Todd. If you've seen the movie ''Sliding Doors'' then you will have some idea Garden of the concept Atkinson explores; that of small changes in life leading to different outcomesEden nursing home, many of which lead to tragic endings but strangely the book manages to be with only a celebration of the spirit of Ursula and is often quite upliftingtrusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. It's a book that sounds like it Nothing is going to be much more confusing than it is keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though and the result is a very special book indeed. It, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's that rare thing of a book that has a strong literary style but which is also very readablework.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0385618670</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Emily Perkins0008421714|title=The ForrestsMrs March|author=Virginia Feito|rating=4.5

|summary= This is The problem began just after the chronicle publication of the Forrest family during the life of daughter DorothyGeorge March's most successful novel to date. They move Everyone but Mrs March ('they' being Dorothy, father Frank, mother Lee and siblings Michael, Evelyn and little Ruthiewe know her first name only on the last page) from New York seemed to New Zealand at the age of seven years oldeither be reading it or had already done so. Frank hopes Every day Mrs March went to the migration will signal a change in his luck as well as a new life for his family. He's right in local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that changes follow but there are as many to shake their stability as to still it and the past remains with each of them as well particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, ''debut isn't this the first time he's based a character on you?' ' She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'factoher mannerisms'' adoptee Daniel. IndeedPerhaps this would not have mattered, Dorothy grows to realise except for the fact that Johanna is the past is whore of Nantes - ''a garment thatweak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.''s worn in some form throughout an entire lifetime.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140883149X</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Elif Shafak|title=Honour|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=Jamila and Pembe are twins who, growing up among the Kurdish in Turkey, are as wrapped in the customs of their Muslim faith and heritage as they are in the love of their family. Jamila develops a talent that will make her the hub of her community. Pembe's destiny lies over the sea as she migrates to England with her husband Adem in search of a better life. However, the destiny they travel towards is oh so different from the destiny of which they dream.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670921165</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Therese Anne Fowler|title=Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald|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 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 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>}} {{newreview|author=Sheila Heti|title=How Should A Person Be?|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Much has been made in the media about the similarity in approach of Sheila Heti's fictionalised autobiographical ''How Should A Person Be?'' and Lena Dunham's HBO television series ''Girls''. They certainly share a similarly bleak and introspective view of life, both are apparently based Move on the writer's own experience, both have a somewhat knowingly shock factor particularly when it comes to sex and both leave me somewhat depressed and sad. And both have been critical successes in the US. Indeed, ''How Should A Person Be?'' also features on the 2013 long list for the [[Women's Prize for Fiction 2013|Women's Prize for FictionNewest Paranormal Reviews]], although it's not easy to assess where the fiction starts and the reality stops. In fact, the conceit is also somewhat similar to the scripted reality shows that dominate certain television channels. The effect is something that is interesting as a concept and exercise but less than enjoyable to read.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846557542</amazonuk>}}