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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kate ClanchyMatthew Tree|title=Meeting the EnglishWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Struan Robertson was just seventeen, but set Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to go to Aberdeen to study dentistrybe different from his father, when his English teacher passed him a short advertisement. A literary giant needed a carer. Why not take a gap year? Struan had never been to ‘’England’’ before drunk and he would be living in Hampstead. On the plus side he’d been working in a care home to earn money chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and he could do the work. Soon - almost too soon - Struan was the main carer for Phillip Prys, rendered dumb and paralysed by a massive stroke. His family couldn’t take care who had endless crises of him - the young (very young) third wife was too busy with her paintingself confidence. His sonSo Tim applied himself to his studies, Jake, had other things - anything else - to do cultivated his abilities rather than be in his father’s presence. Juliet had never been her father’s favourite daydreams and set himself high but she wasn’t ‘’exactly’’ stable when it came to helpingachievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330535277</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0C47LV1PC
|title=Fragility
|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer JohnstonMosby Woods|title=A Sixpenny SongWhirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=34
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=AnnieThe West isn's father is dead. She's not particularly upset as t the dominant force it's a decade or so since they've had any contactonce was. Dada (he preferred Nobody in the West is quite sure how to be called 'Father') had wanted her to go into mend this or even if mending it is the family business, to make moneybest course of action. Governments are flailing. She'd wanted to go to Trinity College in Dublin to read English LiteratureA war here, but instead she'd packed a suitcase and left push for London, where she still climate action there. A feeling that nobody is - working in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a bookshopman with precognition. Her mother died when she was young - Dada had sent Imagine the child off to boarding school and did his best to ensure that her mother's name was never referred to again - and it wasn't too long before he remarriedstrategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. His death brought Annie back to Ireland and she found that That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the money had been left to wife number two (as he was confident most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that she this man loses this ability. What would know how governments do to look after get it) but the house now belonged to Annie.back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1472209222</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alex Kovacs0571379559|title=The Currency House of PaperBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Maximilian Sacheverell Hollingsworth was - as ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the name story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might suggest - of aristocratic birthbe happier there, but had broken off all contact with his family and in consequence found himself labouring for forty hours a week in a printing works instead, she lives in Dagenham. He came upon the idea of planning out his entire life and this he did in house on the course riverbank, built of a single afternoon whilst enjoying a little illicit sick leave in a pub in Bloomsburybroken bricks. He would first become a counterfeiter - on a massive scale - and then a sculptorInsubstantial as it might look, filmmaker, collector it's stood the passage of artefactstime, sound artist storms and mysticfloods. Circumstances would also turn him into a recluseHer husband, except on certain well-ordered occasionsRichard, most of which would occur - somewhat struggles to grow his initial surprise vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - later and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his lifenanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1564788571</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alice McDermottKay Chronister|title=SomeoneDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary= Marie With a world that is growing up in 1920s Brooklyn andbecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, although not financially rich she's the securepost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, cared for child a world devoid of Irish parents from one of the many waves of immigration which the US has promised to welcome. Marie's friend Pegeen water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is from Irish/Syrian stock and is dying a way for romantic love humans to come her waycathartically experience their most existential fears. Marie's brother Gabe 'Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is singled out a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for Catholic seminary and priesthoodhumanity today. Marie thinks the future It is as safe as the loved ones around her but the future is an unknown country and her journey towards it hasn't finished yeta shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408847248</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|titleisbn=The Ice-Cold Heaven1803363002|author=Mirko BonneEric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=45|genre=Historical FictionHorror|summary=They say 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 if you fall off is a horse you should get back on one right awayhome invader, but even so… I don't think many people who had only just left their first love – a shopgirl in their village – for their second – exploring the world on sailing cargo ships – would leap to monster or a further voyage having been wrecked ghost, it usually something tangible and stranded off , by the coast end of South America for well over a weekthe story, beatable. But Merce here does – he wants to follow his best friend on to a ship called Eric LaRocca's ''The EnduranceTrees Grew Because I Bled There'' and head with Shackleton to the Antarcticis not like that. But Merce It is only seventeena collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and is rejected – causing him are harder to stow away onto one of the worlddefeat than any ''Big Bad''s worst ever journeys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715645846</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Year of Miracle and GriefMadelaine Lucas|authortitle=Leonid BorodinThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=From a space of 25 years''Love, our narrator looks back on what happened when he was 12 years old. Twenty five years that had to elapseI'd read, because that was the promise that he made. He is now happy, happy supposed to have kept the secret as he promised Sarma he would, be a light and happier 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 worldweightless feeling, Lake Baikal.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704373246</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|titleauthor=Call of the UndertowJennifer Saint|authortitle=Linda CracknellAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you read a lot of books, then the fact of your life is that you are always part-way through at least ''I was as worthy as any one of them. You read all of the timeI would get on board that ship, I vowed. Over breakfastI would take my place, not just in the bath, waiting for trains, on trains, between trainsname of the goddess. You make a cup of tea in order to have an excuse to sit-and-read It was for half an hour. But even so, most of your reading is done in stolen moments – often in moments when a nagging voice from the gremlin-centre sake of your brain is reminding you that you my name, too. Atalanta''should'' be doing something else.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908754303</amazonuk>}}Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Close Your EyesAmanthi Harris|authortitle=Ewan MorrisonBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=1981: Emma remembers driving through Padma, a blizzard. That isyoung Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her mother was driving, she was just a childhome country. She remembers This is a place she spent her mother singingformative years. Throughout everything, what It is not a place she remembers, what everyone remembers, is how her mother sang. Actuallywas born into, but the one she remembers lots thinks of other things about her mother. Snippets mostlyas home. Then How she remembers losing her… being dropped in London came to be at the Villa, how it became her Dad'shome, who didn't really seem like and the dad machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she remembered… then first arrived there provide the ''the Socialscore''for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma' taking s present fails to escape her awaypast and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099565757</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=The CommitmentsSea Defences|author=Roddy DoyleHilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=ItWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's the mid to late 1980s, and Outspan, Derek and Ray have just formed a band. The trio is three days oldtrainee vicar, with 'Ray sitting in on the Casio a PCC meeting and his little sisterwondering why they's glockenspielre held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, Outspan on his collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother's acoustic guitar, [and] Derek on nothing'Jamie, as he can't afford whilst Rachel holds a basssobbing parishioner. They already feel directionless. They don Thelma's daughter-in-law won't mind Depeche Modelet her see her grandson. Holthorpe, but Derek and Outspan draw on the line at The Human LeagueNorfolk coast, which is one of Ray's favourite groups. Such musical differences are already darkening the band's conception. There a lovely place, but Rachel is also struggling to develop a problem real bond with their name: And And And. Ray believes they should have an explanation mark after the second And, as it would parish - and she'look deadly on s in awe of the posters'. Outspanvicar, howeverGail, thinks Raybut then she's an idiot, been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and tells him where to stick his second exclamation mark. But Outspan has Christopher hoped that a planwalk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. They need to find Jimmy Rabbitte, for when it comes to music, Jimmy knows And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009958753X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=The Madonna on the Moon1398515388|author=Rolf Bauerdick|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summarytitle=Things are certainly strange in the small rural town of Baia Luna; all the stereotypes one would suspect in a newly-Communist mountain village are turned on their head. People vocally feel free to dismiss the Soviet changes and technology, but secretly at the dead of night enter the fields to try and hear the sounds of Sputnik blipping its orbit overhead. Gypsy men willingly get baptised into the ways and religions of their ''gajo'' neighbours. The most forceful character is a teenager called Fritz, best friend of narrator Pavel, Boy and son to an ethnic German photographer. Part of Fritz's power seems to rest on him knowing a lot more than others about the village schoolteacher – enough, perhaps, for her to disappear overnight?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848875045</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDog|author=Aimee Bender|title=The Color MasterSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short StoriesGeneral Fiction|summary=Another parade First of fascinatingall, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, unusual personalities and oddevents from the author loss of [[Willful Creatures by Aimee Bender|WillfulCreatures]]livelihoods was widespread. This time out [[:Category:Aimee Bender|Aimee]]introduces us to people like Hans The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the fake Nazi, young William to whomall people look list of priorities but - six months after the same and Janet who decides to spice up herlovetsunami -life with detrimental resultsKazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. Among other things we alsowitness He wasn't a less-than-altruistic anti-war demonstration dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and an oddoccurrence Tamon the dog jumped in an orchard showing how odd an apple-only diet could makeus.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091953898</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Vann0989715337|title=Goat MountainPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The eleven-year-old boy, his father, grandfather and Tom, a family friend, were on their annual hunting trip to ''Some frogs had gotten into the familywell.'' 's 640'Walter stood waist-acre ranch deep in northern California. Strictly the boy wasn't old enough to hunt but family lore said that this time he would be allowed to kill fragrant water, naked except for his first buckbeaten leather hat. On Long strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the way to their camp they spotted a poacher and dogs leaned over the boy's father set up his rifle opening and loaded it - hoping that shooting barked down at the bolt would tell strange noise of the poacher that buckets as hefilled them.'d been spotted. ' How is that for an opening? The boy - we never know his name - was allowed style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to look through the rifle sitewistful and musing, but he pulled the triggerturning on a sixpence. Nothing would ever be And author Marco North, who has the same again. For any most wonderful turn of themphrase, starts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434021989</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Over My Dead BodyDaisy Hildyard|authortitle=Hazel McHaffieEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The mother summary of a patient in dire need of a heart, and a pair of lungs, ceases to pray for the survival of her son for the following uncomfortable reason: this book doesn'Feels like you're asking for somebody else t come close to die.' Though merely an extra in explaining what is done with the main plot of McHaffie's ''Over My Dead Body'', the situation of this mother quite successfully conveys just how complex the ethics of organ donation arepremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0992623103</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Peter Stjernstrom and Rod Bradbury (translator)Sally Oliver |title=The Best Book Weight of Loss |rating=4 |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself.|isbn= 086154112X }} {{Frontpage|author=Natalia Garcia Freire|title=This WorldDoes Not Belong To Us
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Titus Jensen may not have written many great novels for Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a while (if ever) delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but his festival readings of others' works are renowned. Why, his rendition of a delight''The Diseases of is perhaps using the Swedish Monarchs from Gustavas Vasa to Gustav V'' has been compared favourably to his offerings from ''Handbook for Volvo 245'expression in a way I'm not familiar with. However, one drunken night he and romantic poet Eddie X agree that their fame on the festival circuit would be insignificant by comparison if they could write the best book in the world; a combination I have to confess my ignorance of all genres, appealing to all tastes and making all the best seller categoriesSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. They start work on it From the next day butlittle I have read (in translation, rather than collaborate, each wants the lone glory. The race (or should that be battle?I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the publishing date is on!fantastical – the mystical realism. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1843914808</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adriaan van DisJennifer Saint|title=BetrayalElektra|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Dutchman Mulder renews his acquaintance with his old friend Donald as he returns to South Africa, a land he knew well 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the days heavily male dominated world of apartheidAncient Greece. Life may have moved on Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and apartheid ceased but some things have worsenedElektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. Have Mulder and Donald made any difference at all? As they recall their shadier youth, they Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have one more chance to struggle for someone's freedom against all odds the most compelling stories and a violent societythe most extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051849</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=8409290103|title=Her Privates WeIf Only|author=Frederic ManningMatthew Tree
|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 Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had ever read. But Hemingway wasn't a very trustworthy manbeen sent abroad by his father, so we tend to defer judgement. He iscotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, howeverMr Patrick, 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, ensure that have no place in Manning's First World War novel. Why is this? Well, by the time Hemingway started driving a Red Cross ambulance young man got on board the Italian front (1918), Manning's service boat and thereafter Patrick was already overto send him a monthly allowance. Nevertheless, unlike Patrick sent the illustrious (money regularly and selfa correspondence -mythologising) Hemingway, Manning spent his war deep in the trenches of sorts - sprang up between the Somme, mixing it with the proletarian soldierytwo although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. As such, It wasn't that Lowry senior didn'Her Privates We'' is a brutal novel concerning the 'subterraneant care for his son, furtive, twilight lifeit was that he didn' of the average Tommy, t care to have him in this country where he might be a work of startling power, danger to his wife and one that completely eclipses other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the war novels of the romantic Hemingwayyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668787X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ruth OzekiAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=A Tale for the Time BeingRed is My Heart|rating=43.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Ruth finds a 'Hello Kitty' bag washed up on the shore of Whaletown[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in my house. And so was this one, the small Canadian island although I could have spelled that she more accurately – this one was, and her husband Oliver call homeis, black and white and red. As Ruth opens it and begins reading the diary safely protected insideYes, she learns about Naohe has an artistic collaborator on this piece, a teenager in Japan. Through her writing Nao becomes real and I think it's possible to say not one page lacks the tales influence of her varied life, struggles at school and fascinating relatives compels Ruth to search for her, or at least to discover her fatesome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857867970</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sebastian FaulksB098FFFBH9|title=A Possible LifeSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Geoffrey swaps a career as a public Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school master for an existence as an English officer behind German lines during WWII, an experience that will take 's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a lifetime competition entry to expungehighlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. Billy is She gets a child sent to the workhouse to give his great deal of support from her family : father Pip Harrison, a chance of survival. Elena has to come to terms with an adopted brotherlecturer at Imperial College, London, Jeanne the French nursemaid lives in the shadow of a one-off encounter mother Kate and Jack? her twin, Nick. He bears Kate runs the indelible heart print of family business, a girl who travels with a guitar. Five livestoy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five stories, one human, emotional threadsoft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099549220</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tash AwYancey Williams|title=Five Star Billionaire|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 the country on a promise and a belief that to attract success one must act as if one already has it. Life will bring them into each other's orbit but it won't leave any Crosshairs of them the same as when they started.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007494157</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jhumpa Lahiri|title=The LowlandDevil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Subhash Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and Udayan Mitra are brothers growing up in an India growing into its post, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living -independence status. Subhash goes along with Udayan's ideas but it's Udayan whoor imprisoned, from Eddie's point of view - in room 315 of the radicalGarden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, fighting against the injustices of an elitism that remains once the British have left India. Eventually they go their separate waysJenkins, one studying abroad to avoid conflict and the other becoming more deeply embroiledfor palatable company. Life can't go on like this forever and it doesn't but the reverberations seem Nothing is going tokeep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though, so here, affecting generation after generation as Subhash realises that the search for peace isnhis readers, are his wanderings through his life't always an external things work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408828111</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Colum McCann0008421714|title=TransAtlanticMrs March|author=Virginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Christopher meets Gina on Waterloo Bridge. He is newly widowed, she is newly homeless; heThe problem began just after the publication of George March's an elderly Londoner, she's a young Glaswegianmost successful novel to date. It is a defining event in both their lives, Everyone but that Mrs March (we know her first name only becomes clear in on the futurelast page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Of pressing concern in the present is Every day Mrs March went to the rather rude policeman looking local patisserie to move Gina buy olive bread but on. The situation is nearing crisis. Sensing her desperationthat particular morning, Christopher impulsively asks her to come home with himPatricia asked, a proposal as she tentatively accepts. Yet it is was wrapping the bread, ''but isn't this one benevolent act that gives birth to an odd and platonic friendship, the first time he's based a relationship based character on silences and lacunasyou?'' She mentioned that Johanna, and one which Michael Cannonthe principal character had 's fourth novel, her mannerisms''Four New Words . Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for Lovethe fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - ''a weak, looks to delicately unravelplain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908754249</amazonuk>''
}}
