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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alice McDermottMatthew Tree|title=SomeoneWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Marie is growing up in 1920s Brooklyn Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and, although not financially rich she's the secure, cared for child chronic underachiever whose dreams of Irish parents from one being exceptional at any of the many waves his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of immigration which the US has promised to welcomeself confidence. Marie's friend Pegeen is from Irish/Syrian stock and is dying for romantic love So Tim applied himself to come her way. Marie's brother Gabe is singled out for Catholic seminary his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and priesthood. Marie thinks the future is as safe as the loved ones around her set himself high but the future is an unknown country and her journey towards it hasn't finished yetachievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408847248</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B0C47LV1PC|title=The Ice-Cold HeavenFragility|author=Mirko BonneMosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=From Can you make a space of 25 years''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, our narrator looks back on what happened when he was 12 years old. Twenty five years that had to elapse, because that was is the promise that he made. He question should you make it? Or is now happythe question if you did, happy to have kept the secret as he promised Sarma he would, and happier it land? The catch is that he can now tell the story: he can tell us of everything that happened in his childhood that year on the shores of the oldest lake in the world, Lake Baikalanswer for both could well be.... no.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704373246</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Angela YoungMosby Woods|title=Speaking of LoveA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=For some people The West isn't the dominant force it's impossible once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to tell another person that they love them and both mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are damagedflailing. Iris could not tell her daughter, VivieA war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that she loved her and Matthewnobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, Vivie's childhood friend, neighbour and would-be lover could not tell her how he feltthere was a man with precognition. For all three Imagine the result was years strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of separation with Vivie feeling that she was fundamentally unloveable and circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the whole situation was further complicated by Iris's mental disintegration and her treatment removing most of her memories of Vivie's childhoodvaluable asset in history. If that sounds depressing and soul-destroying Imagine then I am doing ''Speaking of Love'' an injustice because it's also a story of trust, reconciliation and learning that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to speak about your feelings.get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00G4401G4</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0571379559|title=Call The House of the UndertowBroken Bricks|author=Linda CracknellFiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you read a lot ''The House of books, then Broken Bricks'' is the fact story of your life is that you four people. Tess Hembry's roots are always part-way through at least one in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of thembroken bricks. You read all Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of the time, storms and floods. Over breakfastHer husband, in the bathRichard, waiting for trainsstruggles to grow his vegetables, on trains, between trainsto complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. You make a cup of tea in order to They have an excuse to sittwin boys -Sonny and-read for half an hourMax, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. But even soPeople don't believe that they're related, most of your reading is done in stolen moments – often in moments much less twins and there's an assumption when a nagging voice from the gremlin-centre of your brain Max is reminding you out with his mother that you ''should'she' be doing something elses his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908754303</amazonuk>
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{{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=Crow BlueKay Chronister|authortitle=Adriana LisboaDesert Creatures|rating=3.54|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Having lost her mother at the age of thirteen, Evangelina embarks on With a quest to not only find her biological father, but to delve into the past and discover things about her mother she never knew. Set predominantly in North America and Brazil, this novel explores Vanja's journeys, both physical and emotional, as well as her relationships with key characters, in particular, world that of her Mother's ex husbandis becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, Fernandopost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Uprooting herself when barely Whether it is a teenagerrobotic takeover, Vanja leaves her home country a world devoid of Brazil to live with Fernando in Coloradowater or a nuclear holocaust, the only connection she has at her disposal to enable her this genre is a way for humans to trace her roots and biological familycathartically experience their most existential fears. Narrated beautifully in the first person, the reader ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is propelled into the thoughts and feelings a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the young but courageous, determined and, at times, very wise, adolescent girlfears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408838303</amazonuk>1803364998
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{{newreviewfrontpage|titleisbn=Close Your Eyes1803363002|author=Ewan MorrisonEric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=1981: Emma remembers driving through a blizzardHorror taps into something primeval within us. That It is, her mother was driving, she was just used as a childway to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. She remembers her mother singing. Throughout everythingMost horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', what she rememberswhether that is a home invader, what everyone remembersa monster or a ghost, is how her mother sang. Actuallyit usually something tangible and, she remembers lots by the end of other things about her mother. Snippets mostlythe story, beatable. Then she remembers losing her… being dropped in London at her DadEric LaRocca's, who didn't really seem 'The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the dad she remembered… then horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''the SocialBig Bad'' taking her away.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099565757</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The CommitmentsMadelaine Lucas|authortitle=Roddy DoyleThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It's the mid to late 1980s, and Outspan, Derek and Ray have just formed a band. The trio is three days old, with 'Ray on the Casio and his little sister's glockenspielLove, Outspan on his brotherI's acoustic guitard read, [was supposed to be a light and] Derek on nothing', as he can't afford a bass. They already feel directionless. They don't mind Depeche Modeweightless feeling, but Derek and Outspan draw the line at The Human League, which is one of RayI had always longed for gravity's favourite groups. Such musical differences are already darkening the band's conception. There is also a problem with their name: And And And. Ray believes they should have an explanation mark after the second And, as it would 'look deadly on the posters'. Outspan, however, thinks Ray's an idiot, and tells him where to stick his second exclamation mark. But Outspan has a plan. They need to find Jimmy Rabbitte, for when it comes to music, Jimmy knows.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009958753X</amazonuk>}}
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|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The eleven-year-old boy, his father, grandfather ''But fearing something and Tom, a family friend, were on their annual hunting trip having it come to the family's 640-acre ranch in northern Californiapass are two different things. Strictly the boy wasnAnd I't old enough m willing to hunt but family lore said that this time he would be allowed bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to kill his first buckchange it. On the way to their camp they spotted a poacher and the boy's father set up his rifle and loaded it - hoping that shooting the bolt would tell the poacher that he'd been spotted. The boy - we never know his name - was allowed to look through the rifle site, but he pulled the trigger. Nothing would ever be the same again. For any of them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434021989</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Peter Stjernstrom and Rod Bradbury (translator)Jennifer Saint|title=The Best Book in the WorldAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Titus Jensen may not have written many great novels for a while (if ever) but his festival readings of others' works are renowned. Why, his rendition of ''The Diseases I was as worthy as any one of the Swedish Monarchs from Gustavas Vasa to Gustav V'' has been compared favourably to his offerings from ''Handbook for Volvo 245''them. HoweverI would get on board that ship, one drunken night he and romantic poet Eddie X agree that their fame on the festival circuit I vowed. I would be insignificant by comparison if they could write the best book take my place, not just in the world; a combination name of all genres, appealing to all tastes and making all the best seller categoriesgoddess. They start work on it It was for the next day butsake of my name, rather than collaborate, each wants the lone glorytoo. The race (or should that be battle?) to the publishing date is on!Atalanta''|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843914808</amazonuk>}}Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Her Privates WeAmanthi Harris|authortitle=Frederic ManningBeautiful Place|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ernest Hemingway called Frederic Manning's ''Her Privates We'' 'The finest and noblest book of men in war' he had ever read. But Hemingway wasn't Padma, a very trustworthy manyoung Sri Lankan, so we tend has returned to defer judgementthe Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. He This is, however, useful for contrast. Hemingway's tales of war (such as ''A Farewell to Arms'' and ''For Whom the Bell Tolls'') usually involve macho misfits and trite love stories, feats of derring-do and filmic dialogue; all the things, in fact, that have no a place in Manning's First World War novelshe spent her formative years. Why It is this? Well, by the time Hemingway started driving not a Red Cross ambulance on the Italian front (1918), Manning's service place she was already over. Neverthelessborn into, unlike but the illustrious (and self-mythologising) Hemingway, Manning spent his war deep in the trenches one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the SommeVilla, mixing how it with became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the proletarian soldiery. As such, ''Her Privates Wescore'' is a brutal for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel concerning . Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the 'subterranean, furtive, twilight life' musical score of the average Tommy, a work of startling powerfilm, and one that completely eclipses the war novels of strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the romantic HemingwayVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184668787X</amazonuk>1784631930
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ruth Ozeki178563335X|title=A Tale for the Time BeingSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Ruth finds When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they'Hello Kitty' bag washed re held when you need to pick the children up on the shore of Whaletown. Her husband, Christopher, the small Canadian island that she collects six-year-old Hannah and her husband Oliver call homeelder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. As Ruth opens it and begins reading Holthorpe, on the diary safely protected insideNorfolk coast, she learns about Naois a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a teenager real bond with the parish - and she's in Japanawe of the vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Through her writing Nao becomes real Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the tales of her varied life, struggles at school and fascinating relatives compels Ruth to search for her, or at least to discover her fatebeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857867970</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sebastian Faulks1398515388|title=A Possible LifeThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Geoffrey swaps a career as a public school master for an existence as an English officer behind German lines during WWIIFirst of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, an experience that will take a lifetime to expungecaused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. Billy is a child sent to The deaths were uncountable, and the workhouse to give his family a chance loss of survivallivelihoods was widespread. Elena has to come to terms with an adopted brother, Jeanne The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the French nursemaid lives in the shadow list of a onepriorities but -off encounter and Jack? He bears six months after the indelible heart print of tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a girl who travels with dog outside a guitarconvenience store. Five lives, five stories, one human, emotional threadHe wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099549220</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tash Aw0989715337|title=Five Star BillionairePapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=China is a booming economy for people in a position to take advantage; people like Gary the pop star who once won a talent show, Yinghui the lingerie magnate or her childhood friend and property developer Justin who feels the weight of his family's expectations. Then there's Phoebe, moving to Shanghai from Some frogs had gotten into the country on a promise and a belief that to attract success one must act as if one already has itwell. Life will bring them into each other's orbit but it won't leave any of them the same as when they started.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007494157</amazonuk>}}
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{{Frontpage
|author=Daisy Hildyard
|title=Emergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=
The summary of this book doesn't come close to explaining what is done with the premise.
|isbn=1913097811
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Sally Oliver |title=The LuminariesWeight 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=Eleanor CattonNatalia Garcia Freire|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Eleanor Catton's ''The Luminaries'' Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is set in the New Zealand gold rush of the late 1860s. Itno understatement – but 's a story about greed, power, gold, dreams, opium, secrets, betrayal and identity, but most of all, itdelight's a celebration of is perhaps using the art of story telling, both expression in terms of Cattona way I's book and the stories her characters m not familiar with. I have to tellconfess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. It's From the kind of book that is perfect escapism and which wraps you up little I have read (in its world. If you like bigtranslation, chunky books that you can get lost in for hours, then this is one for youI don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847084311</amazonuk>0861541901
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Four New Words for LoveJennifer Saint|authortitle=Michael CannonElektra|rating=34
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Christopher meets Gina on Waterloo Bridge. He is newly widowed, she is newly homeless; he's an elderly Londoner, sheElektra's a young Glaswegian. It is a defining event in both their lives, but that only becomes clear by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the futureheavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Of pressing concern Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in the present is story of the rather rude policeman looking to move Gina on. The situation is nearing crisis. Sensing her desperation, Christopher impulsively asks her to come home with him, a proposal she tentatively acceptsTrojan War. Yet it is this one benevolent act Jennifer Saint shows us that gives birth to an odd often the silent women have the most compelling stories and platonic friendship, a relationship based on silences and lacunas, and one which Michael Cannon's fourth novel, ''Four New Words for Love'', looks to delicately unravelthe most extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908754249</amazonuk>1472273915
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Eve Harris8409290103|title=The Marrying of Chani KaufmanIf Only|author=Matthew Tree|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=After waiting till all her elder sisters' weddings were done and dusted in true ultraTwenty-orthodox Jewish style, it's now 19one-year-old Chani's turnMalcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the young man got on board the boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. ShePatrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn's only met Barucht care for his son, her fiancé, four times and it was that he hasndidn't even seen her elbows but the match is made care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and the day eventually arrivesother children. Baruch secretly studies forbidden gentile literature and Chani has an inquisitive streak often perceived as rebellious so God knows what The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the future holdsyoung man on his way. Perhaps they should take the Rabbi's marriage as an example? Or perhaps not…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908737433</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alison MacLeodAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=UnexplodedRed is My Heart|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It's 1940 [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and Britain lives read in fear of a Nazi invasion my house. And so was this one, although I could have spelled that could happen any daymore accurately – this one was, and is, black and white and red. In case the worst happensYes, Evelyn's husband Geoffrey he 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 an artistic collaborator on this piece, and his favourite photo of them. As she digs I think 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 possible to say not in one page lacks the way that either influence of them could envisagesome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241142636</amazonuk>1913547183
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hannah KentB098FFFBH9|title=Burial RitesSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime (Historical)Literary Fiction|summary=Fridrik, Agnes Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and Sigridur her friend are accused of murdering two men one Icelandic night producing a competition entry to highlight the way in 1829 before setting fire to their homewhich human beings exploit the animal world. Now Agnes awaits executionShe gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, imprisoned in the farm of a lowly local family wholecturer at Imperial College, rumour has itLondon, wouldn't be too great a loss if the prisoner becomes dangerous. Margrit Jonsdottir (the farmer's wife) doesn't feel threatened mother Kate and sets the shockedher twin, malnourished Agnes to workNick. Gradually Agnes reveals Kate runs the events of that night to Margrit and Totifamily business, a young priest. Her version seems to be a little different from what everyone else concludedtoy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, predictably… Or perhaps not so predictablywhich is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447233166</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=HarvestYancey Williams|authortitle=Jim CraceCrosshairs of the Devil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As harvest comes Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on inyears and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, a village finds itself under threat. Invaded by a series of unfamiliar visitorshimself living - or imprisoned, it will find itself utterly transformed over a short but apocalyptic seven days. We watch through the eyes from Eddie's point of Walter Thirsk as three vagabonds escaping the enclosure view - in room 315 of their fields are blamed for the trangressions Garden of othersEden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, as the chartmaker Mr Quill enumerates the common landJenkins, and as Master Kent's benevolent rule for palatable company. Nothing is overtaken by a new owner, who comes with enforcers going to keep Eddie from his stock-in the name -trade of ''profitwriting though, so here, for his readers, progress and enterpriseare his wanderings through his life'' - or sheep farming as Walter quickly realisess work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330445669</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Meg Wolitzer0008421714|title=The InterestingsMrs March|author=Virginia Feito|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Back in 1974 six teenagers met at summer camp and did all those things which you get The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to do when your parents are not around to stop youdate. They smoked pot, drank vodka and Tangs - and talked way into Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the night about anything and everythinglast page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Plays were put Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but onthat particular morning, animations were perfectedPatricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, ''but most importantly friendships were made that would last for years - for some it would be isn't this the first time he's based a lifetime. character on you?'' Back in 1974She mentioned that Johanna, as Nixon left the White House under a particularly heavy cloud, principal character had 'her mannerisms'The Interestings'. Perhaps this would not have mattered, as one of their number called them, knew except for the fact that they could achieve anything they set their minds to. For three summers they returned to Spirit-in-Johanna is thewhore of Nantes -Woods and then they faced the real world''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701188278</amazonuk>''
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