132,585
edits
Changes
no edit summary
[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__{{adsense2Frontpage|author=Matthew Tree|title=We'll Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|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__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B0C47LV1PC|title=Unfaithfully YoursFragility|author=Nigel WilliamsMosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=When Nigel Williams first really burst on to Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the best-seller list, a couple of decades agoquestion if you did, would it was with a book set in Wimbledon land? The catch is that really quite tickled a younger me – and my mother. But then he produced two more in the same series, and we soon decided he was a bit of a one-trick pony, and answer for both could never well be sure how much of the trilogy we'd read, or be too eager to read more. Flash forward, and Williams has certainly branched out – his setting this time is Putney. Wimbledon Common is now Putney Heath, and so on. But here he provides an epistolatory novel – and if there's one kind of novel to make me prick up my ears it is one built from letters. It is the blatant two-and-fro timing of the narrative, and the succinctness that characters are formed with, that strike me as obvious benefits of such a book – and Unfaithfully Yours has those and many moreno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472106741</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The ParrotsMosby Woods|authortitle=Filippo BolognaA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When confronted with The West isn't 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 owndominant force it once was. Filippo Bologna has not in fact written a book about birds, but about writers - Nobody in fact, three writers. Just as the Neo-Pagans have a liking of West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the Triple Goddesses best course of The Maiden, The Mother and The Crone, our three writers action. Governments are similarly split into The Beginner, The Writer, and The Masterflailing. All three of these novelists are battling it out for The PrizeA war here, a prestigious award push for climate action there. A feeling that would revitalise the career of The Masternobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, legitimize the efforts of The Beginner and assure The Writer there was a place in the annals of historyman with precognition. The setting of Rome is utilised to provide both a stunning backdrop and one that is sympathetic to Imagine the mood of our characters. The stories of our three protagonists are interwoven strategic advantage in this asset; a delightfully clear fashion; Bologna's prose is delicate and descriptive, but not at the sacrifice man who can tell you what will happen given any set of pacingcircumstances. The stage is set; That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the characters have learned their linesmost valuable asset in history. There is just one problemImagine then, that this man loses this ability... out of the three writers, none of them deserves What would governments do to win The Prize.get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908968192</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0571379559|title=In The Dutch MountainsHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Cees NooteboomFiona Williams|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Often''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, when asked if what I’m reading is a good book I hesitate before answeringbut instead, trying to decide what she lives in the house on the asker really meansriverbank, built of broken bricks. Do they mean is Insubstantial as it might look, it exciting? Funny? Full 's stood the passage of interesting characters? Recentlytime, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, someone asked me that to complete the delivery rounds - and when I hesitated they gave me this as a clarifier: “Are you better off for having read it?”to bring in sufficient money. In this instance They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, yesthe rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. I think I amMax takes after his father. However People don't believe that they're related, despite coming away from this book much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with a strong positive feeling about it, it’s also left me a little befuddledhis mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782067191</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|titleauthor=Every PromiseKay Chronister|authortitle=Andrea BajaniDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Italian writerWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, Andrea Bajani's ''Every Promise'' post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is narrated by Pietro. His partnera robotic takeover, Sara, has left him due to their inability to have a babyworld devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, but soon she finds herself pregnant after this genre is a one night stand and reliant on Pietro's mother way for advicehumans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. Meanwhile Pietro meets Olmo, an elderly man who lives in their old family apartment, who reminds Pietro ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of his own Grandfather, Mario, who, like Olmo, served in Mussolini's illpost-fated Russian campaign. Olmo persuades Pietro to go to Russia to visit the scenes of some apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the photographs he has to try to come to terms with the past. It's a story about the past, the present and the future and the struggle fears that exist for one man to make sense of thishumanity today. 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 it's not always an easy book shocking novel that still manages to readfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051466</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Andrew PorterEric LaRocca|title=In Between DaysThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=3.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=After Chloe Harding Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is forced used as a way to leave her East Coast collegereflect 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, for reasons she refuses to explain to her recently divorced parents a monster or older brother Richarda ghost, her familyit usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's lives start to unravel''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. Will It is a collection of short stories more interested in the rest horrors of them ever find out what caused her fall from graceillness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and can they solve their own problems?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224089838</amazonuk>are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ivy PochodaMadelaine Lucas|title=Visitation StreetThirst for Salt|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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''
}}
{{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=Lucy CruickshanksJennifer Saint|title=The Trader of SaigonAtalanta
|rating=5
|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''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Suzanne RindellAmanthi Harris|title=The Other TypistBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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 a police typist. While she has no real friends, she's good at her job and seems returned to have the respect Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of the Sergeant, whom her home country. This is a place she admires and the Lieutenant Detective, whom she's less keen onspent her formative years. Then It is not a perfect storm comes place she was born into their lives, in but the shape one she thinks of the enchanting Odalie, and nothing will be the same againas home.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241002885</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ioanna Bourazopoulou and Yannis Panas (Translator)|title=What Lot's Wife Saw|rating=4|genre=Science Fiction|summary= It's been over 20 years since The Overflow How she came, flooding half of Europe. Around to be at the same time Violet SaltVilla, a new multi-functional mineralhow it became her home, appeared, its production now governed globally by and 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, machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the 'Purple Stars'score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. All seems Padma's present fails to be well in escape her past and much like the musical score of a despoticfilm, lawless that strand weaves its way until the six wake up to the realisation through everything that happens at 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 notVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1845025474</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gabriel Weston178563335X|title=Dirty WorkSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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)
|rating=4.5
|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
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philip SingtonDaisy Hildyard|title=The Valley of UnknowingEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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>
}}