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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alison MacLeodMatthew Tree|title=Unexploded|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It's 1940 and Britain lives in fear of a Nazi invasion that could happen any day. In case the worst happens, EvelynWe's husband Geoffrey has buried a little something for her and their young son Philip in the garden. He tells her the tin contains a bit of money and his favourite photo of them. As she digs it up from impulse rather than necessity, she discovers that there's no photo but what there is instead makes Evelyn doubt that she knows the man she married. The events that follow make Evelyn realise that indeed she doesn't. Meanwhile the war continues and a German does invade their lives, but not in the way that either of them could envisage.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241142636</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Hannah Kent|title=Burial Rites|rating=4.5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=Fridrik, Agnes and Sigridur are accused of murdering two men one Icelandic night in 1829 before setting fire to their home. Now Agnes awaits execution, imprisoned in the farm of a lowly local family who, rumour has it, wouldn't be too great a loss if the prisoner becomes dangerous. Margrit Jonsdottir (the farmer's wife) doesn't feel threatened and sets the shocked, malnourished Agnes to work. Gradually Agnes reveals the events of that night to Margrit and Toti, a young priest. Her version seems to be a little different from what everyone else concluded, predictably… Or perhaps not so predictably.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447233166</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Harvest|author=Jim Cracell Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As harvest comes inTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a village finds itself under threat. Invaded by a series of unfamiliar visitors, it will find itself utterly transformed over a short but apocalyptic seven days. We watch through the eyes drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of Walter Thirsk as three vagabonds escaping the enclosure being exceptional at any of their fields are blamed for the trangressions of others, as the chartmaker Mr Quill enumerates the common land, his artistic passions all failed miserably and as Master Kent's benevolent rule is overtaken by a new owner, who comes with enforcers in the name had endless crises of ''profitself confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, progress cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and enterprise'' - or sheep farming as Walter quickly realisesset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330445669</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Meg WolitzerB0C47LV1PC|title=The InterestingsFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Back in 1974 six teenagers met at summer camp and did all those things which Can you get to do when your parents are not around to stop make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you. They smoked potcould, drank vodka and Tangs - and talked way into is the question should you make it? Or is the night about anything and everything. Plays were put onquestion if you did, animations were perfected, but most importantly friendships were made would it land? The catch is that would last the answer for years - for some it would both could well be a lifetime. Back in 1974, as Nixon left the White House under a particularly heavy cloud, ... no. ''Fragility'The Interestings', is set as one the city of their number called themPortland, knew that they could achieve anything they set their minds to. For three summers they returned Oregon, cautiously begins to Spirit-in-emerge from the-Woods and then they faced restrictions imposed during the real world.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701188278</amazonuk>covid pandemic
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Charlotte MendelsonMosby Woods|title=Almost EnglishA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In the late nineteen eighties sixteen year old Marina is a border at Combe school, destined - as she and all about her know - for Cambridge and The West isn't the medical profession. After her first term she's wonders if she's made a mistake as it's definitely not like dominant force it once was at Ealing Girls. There, a girl whose mother Nobody in the West is emotionally fragile doesn't stand out, even if the mother gets quite sure how to sleep on the sofa in her in-laws' flat because their son - her husband - upped and left her and their daughter. You would still fit in mend this or even if the family you're living with mending it is Hungarian and hasn't entirely left the ways best course of the old country behindaction. Governments are flailing. At Combe A war here, a push for climate action there's too much about Marina . A feeling that she could be mocked for - or could get her nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a cruel nicknameman with precognition. Marina simply doesn't fit Imagine the strategic advantage inthis asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, but right? Perhaps the family have sacrificed everything so most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that she can go therethis man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>144721997X</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0571379559|title=1Q84: The Complete TrilogyHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Haruki MurakamiFiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The ''1Q84The House of Broken Bricks'' trilogy is, without doubt, an impressive book. In many ways, the trilogy almost has to be read in this way as the three component books make little sense on their ownstory of four people. The first book Tess Hembry's roots are in the series in particular is almost completely baffling if taken in isolation. It doesJamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, though, demand a degree of dedicationbut instead, and if the prospect of a 1300 page novel in which not a huge amount happens she lives in terms of plot and in which there is a significant level of repetition leaves you cold, then this might not be the best entry point into house on the wonderful world riverbank, built of Haruki Murakamibroken bricks. As often with Murakami though Insubstantial as it might look, it's possible to read this book at a number stood the passage of levelstime, storms and floods. On Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the surface it's a love story set in a slightly fantastical setting with a little bit of crime thrown delivery rounds - and to bring insufficient money. At a deeper level They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, he explores the thin lines between imagination and reality, life and death and what you might call yin and yangrainbow twins. It Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's a novel where balance and vacuums play a big partJamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. It seems counter-intuitive to call a book of this magnitude People don'delicatet believe that they're related, but much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother thatshe's just how the story appearshis nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099578077</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexander MaksikKay Chronister|title=A Marker to Measure DriftDesert Creatures|rating=54|genre=CrimeDystopian Fiction|summary=Jacqueline roams the beaches of the Greek islands offering massages With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for money to ward off starvationhumanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. It helps but hunger Whether it is always with hera robotic takeover, lurking alongside the memory a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a former life in Liberia and the mindway for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures''s ear voice by Kay Chronister is a new work of her motherpost-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. Jacqueline It is at least alive and existing, but at what cost?a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848548052</amazonuk>1803364998
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{{newreviewfrontpage|titleisbn=Familiar1803363002|author=J Robert LennonEric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionHorror|summary=Is there Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a greater change in the life of a middle-aged woman than the death of her teenage son? Elisa might have thought not, having been forced way to bury fifteen year old Silas, reflect our darkest emotions and try and move on with her husband Derek how we as humans react and the year-older son, Samprocess them. But Most horror fiction feature a greater change occurs on the way back from her annual''Big Bad'', solo pilgrimage to his grave – something very weird happens to the universe. She pops from one car to anotherwhether that is a home invader, from under a cloudless sky to monster or a slightly greyer one – ghost, it usually something tangible and from her self as Elisa to a world where people call her Lisa, where she by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is plumper, in a different job, stiil married to Derek collection of short stories more interested in the same home – but still the mother horrors of two young men…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846689473</amazonuk>illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Madelaine Lucas
|title=Thirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, 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|titleauthor=The SonJennifer Saint|authortitle=Philipp MeyerAtalanta|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Philipp Meyer's second novel, ''The SonI was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship,'' is an epicI vowed. I would take my place, multi-generational saga of Texas life. Tracing the McCullough family from not just in the middle name of the nineteenth century to goddess. It was for the present day, Meyer joins those writing today's masterpieces sake of American 'dirty realism': Ron Rash, [[:Category:David Vann|David Vann]]my name, Richard Ford and especially Cormac McCarthytoo. Like McCarthy's ''Blood Meridian,'Atalanta' ''The Son'' is a gory Western that transcends a simplistic cowboys-versus-Indians dichotomy to draw broader conclusions about the universality of violence in a nihilistic world.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857209426</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Natasha SolomonsAmanthi Harris|title=The Gallery of Vanished HusbandsBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=On her thirtieth birthday Juliet Montague went out Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to buy a fridge for the princely sum Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of twenty-one guineasher home country. She'd saved hard for it - and This is a place she spent her parents had given her the final few pounds - but then Juliet did something impulsiveformative years. Instead of buying It is not a fridge place she was born into, but the one she commissioned a portrait thinks of herself and so began her involvement in the post-war art sceneas home. Juliet wasn't - by any stretch of How she came to be at the imagination - an artistVilla, but how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she had a startling ability to spot a first arrived there provide the ''goodscore'' picturefor this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. It was simply something which she ''knew' Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, much as she had known for certain that her husband had left for good on strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the day he didn't return home as expectedVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444736345</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=IndiscretionSea Defences|author=Charles DubowHilary Taylor|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Charles DubowWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's debut novel promises a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to be pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a modern day Great Gatsbysobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. It too Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is set amongst the rich and famous outside New Yorka lovely place, it too but Rachel is narrated by struggling to develop a character seemingly on real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the outsidevicar, Gail, Maddybut then she's childhood friend Walterbeen doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007501307</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=Unfaithfully YoursThe Boy and the Dog|author=Nigel WilliamsSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When Nigel Williams first really burst on to the best-seller list, a couple First of decades agoall, it was with a book set in Wimbledon that really quite tickled a younger me – and my mother. But then he produced two more the earthquake, deep in the same seriesocean floor, which created the tsunami and we soon decided he was a bit of a one-trick ponythis, in turn, and could never be sure how much of caused the trilogy we'd read, or be too eager to read morenuclear meltdown. Flash forward, The result was complete and Williams has certainly branched out – his setting this time is Putneyutter devastation. Wimbledon Common is now Putney HeathThe deaths were uncountable, and so onthe loss of livelihoods was widespread. 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 The fact that many pets were separated from letters. It is their owners came far down the blatant twolist of priorities but -andsix months after the tsunami -fro timing of Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the narrative, convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the succinctness that characters are formed with, that strike me as obvious benefits of such a book – and Unfaithfully Yours has those and many moredog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472106741</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=Russian Stories0989715337|author=Francesc Seres|ratingtitle=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=This brilliant and varied collection of short stories is Papa on the product of a current academic interest in cross-cultural translation. Francisco Guillen Serés is a Catalan professor of Art History from Aragon. A Russophile, he has travelled widely to collect stories from those writing during the past hundred years of Russian history. These have been translated into Catalan and then into English. These unusual and delightful stories, some twenty one of them written by five writers read fluently and engagingly. They form an informative tapestry of Soviet and post-Soviet life, moving back in time with the older, earlier writers like Bergchenko, who died in the siege of Stalingrad, at the end. Ranging over mythic and symbolic tales to realistic portrayals of personal relationships; love trysts in St Petersburg, ferocious bears in the deep heart of the Taiga to the perils of becoming lost in continuous orbit in space. All aspects are impressively recounted.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>085705158X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=The ParrotsMoon|author=Filippo BolognaMarco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When confronted with ''Some frogs had gotten into 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 ownwell. Filippo Bologna has not in fact written a book about birds, but about writers '' ''Walter stood waist- deep in factthe fragrant water, three writersnaked except for his beaten leather hat. Just as the Neo-Pagans have a liking Long strands of the Triple Goddesses of The Maidentheir eggs wove around him, The Mother and The Crone, our three writers are similarly split into The Beginner, The Writer, and The Mastersticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. All three Two of these novelists are battling it out for The Prize, a prestigious award that would revitalise the career of The Master, legitimize dogs leaned over the efforts of The Beginner and assure The Writer a place in the annals of history. The setting of Rome is utilised to provide 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 opening and descriptive, but not barked down at the sacrifice strange noise of pacing. The stage is set; the characters have learned their lines. There is just one problem... out of the three writers, none of buckets as he filled them deserves to win The Prize.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908968192</amazonuk>}}''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Every PromiseDaisy Hildyard|authortitle=Andrea BajaniEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Italian writer, Andrea Bajani's ''Every Promise'' is narrated by Pietro. His partner, Sara, has left him due to their inability to have a baby, but soon she finds herself pregnant after a one night stand and reliant on Pietro's mother for advice. Meanwhile Pietro meets Olmo, an elderly man who lives in their old family apartment, who reminds Pietro The summary of his own Grandfather, Mario, who, like Olmo, served in Mussolinithis book doesn's ill-fated Russian campaign. Olmo persuades Pietro to go to Russia to visit the scenes of some of the photographs he has to try to t come close to terms explaining what is done with the past. It's a story about the past, the present and the future and the struggle for one man to make sense of this. 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 to readpremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051466</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Andrew PorterSally Oliver |title=In Between DaysThe Weight of Loss |rating=34 |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=After Chloe Harding Early 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 delight' is forced perhaps using the expression in a way I'm not familiar with. I have to leave her East Coast college, for reasons she refuses to explain to her recently divorced parents or older brother Richardconfess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. From the little I have read (in translation, her familyI don's lives start t read Spanish) there does seem to unravelbe a tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism. Will the rest of them ever find out what caused her fall from grace, and can they solve their own problems?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224089838</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Little Meta is growing up 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in a childhood paradise with two parents who love her and a younger brother to tease and train to do all the things that Meta wants him toheavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. However the world outside Meta's paradise will soon change beyond Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all recognition as bit players in the Austria and Germany story of the 1920s makes way for Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the Austria silent women have the most compelling stories and Germany of the 1930smost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0704373130</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lea Carpenter8409290103|title=Eleven DaysIf Only|author=Matthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Sara raised Jason alone; even when she was with Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father it felt as if she , 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 lone parentmonthly allowance. Jason's father always seemed Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to be away doing something indefinable abroad; then he disappeared leaving her completelysay than Patrick. Two years later Jason It wasn't that Lowry senior didn's father t care for his son, it was dead. However Jason is a lad that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be proud of, never giving Sara a moment's trouble danger to his wife and now a member of the elite US Navy SEALSother children. Now he's missing in action… Now she has The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to hang get the young man on and hopehis way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444776231</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lucy CruickshanksAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=The Trader of SaigonRed is My Heart|rating=3.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=In the Saigon of the 1980s the Vietnam War is over but the traces remain[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in my house. Alexander has deserted from the US army And so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, and makes a comfortable living selling girls to local business men. Phuc used to be a business manis, complete with mansion black and the means to keep his wife white and three children in affluencered. Now his family live in a shanty hutYes, afraid of the ruling government that spies through the eyes of children. At last he finds a way outhas an artistic collaborator on this piece, his luck just needs and I think it's possible to hold. Hanh also lives in poverty, desperately trying to help her sick mother with say not one page lacks the pittance she earns from cleaning one influence of the city's many open latrines. Then one day she meets someone who offers so much more. His name is Alexandersome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782063218</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Manuel RivasB098FFFBH9|title=All Is SilenceSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright|rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The small community of Noitía Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a place where everyone knows each other and each other’s business, which considering most of competition entry to highlight the adults are involved way in which human beings exploit the one business, smuggling, is potentially dangerous knowledgeanimal world. We follow She gets a small group great deal of three young friends growing up in the area as they play support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and learn and even experience a little of her twin, Nick. Kate runs the black market dealings. They stumble across family business, a stash of smuggled whisky and are caught by the charismatic king pin responsible for the traffickingtoy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, who teaches them that silence which is the most important lesson to learn when growing up in Noitíawhere we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184655568X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ryu MurakamiYancey Williams|title=From The Fatherland, With LoveCrosshairs of the Devil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=From The FatherlandAward-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's point of view - in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, With Love Jenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is a 2005 Japanese novel set going to keep Eddie from his stock-in the then-near future trade of 2011writing though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's work. Fatherland (as I will abbreviate it) explores the social and political ramifications of one speculative scenario: what if North Korea invaded Japan?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908968451</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Suzanne Rindell0008421714|title=The Other TypistMrs March|author=Virginia Feito|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The Other Typist is set in 1920s New York City, with Prohibition at its height and Rose Baker, an orphaned young woman, working as a police typist. While she has no real friends, sheproblem began just after the publication of George March's good at most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her job and seems first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to have the respect of the Sergeantlocal patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, whom as she admires and was wrapping the Lieutenant Detectivebread, whom she''but isn't this the first time he's less keen based a character onyou?'' She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'her mannerisms''. Then a perfect storm comes into their lives Perhaps this would not have mattered, in except for the fact that Johanna is the shape whore of the enchanting OdalieNantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, and nothing will be the same againunloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241002885</amazonuk>''
}}
