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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Pamela ErensMatthew Tree|title=The VirginsWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Set in 1979-80 in an elite boarding school on the east coast of the USA ''The Virgins'' tells the story of two young people. The story is mainly narrated by Bruce Bennett-Jones who would have liked Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to have be different from his father, a close relationship with Aviva Rossner but her unlikely choice was Seung Jung. They're not shy about flaunting their relationship drunk and it's the talk chronic underachiever whose dreams of Auburn Academy, but whilst the watchers believe that the relationship is one being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of unalloyed passionself confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, the truth is cultivated his abilities rather different than his daydreams and the couple are set on a path to an inevitable tragedyhimself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848549873</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=Amy Grace LoydMosby Woods|title=The Affairs of OthersA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Five years ago Celia CassillThe West isn's husband died leaving her t the owner of dominant force it once was. Nobody in the Brooklyn apartment block in which she lives. She's fastidious as West is quite sure how to whom she lets and mend this or even if mending it is understandably hesitant when George (one the best course of her longstanding tenants) wants to temporarily sub-let to action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a friend while he goes abroadpush for climate action there. Celia eventually agrees and so A feeling that nobody is in moves Hopeactual charge. Imagine then, there was a lady man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who has just left her husband and for whom life is as complicated as she makes Celia'scan tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0297871188</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Donal Ryan0571379559|title=The Thing About DecemberHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Johnsey Cunliffe was always a nice boy''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but a little slow - instead, she lives in the one that house on the other kids picked on and riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's much stood the same in adult lifepassage of time, storms and floods. If you were Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and to ask Johnsey he'd say that he was a gombring in sufficient money. Even if you've never met They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the word before you know what it meansrainbow twins. It wasnSonny't too bad whilst Daddy was there - he was a man with a certain presence and even when it was just Johnsey and s colouring reflects his mother he had some support's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. But after her death Johnsey was dependant on small kindnesses from other people People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and at the mercy of those for whom he was there's an easy target. His life might have continued in this rather unsatisfactory way for some time but for the collision of two eventsassumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781620091</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|author=James McBrideKay Chronister|title=The Good Lord BirdDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Historical Dystopian Fiction|summary=Henry With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''The OnionDesert Creatures' Shackleford lives as Henrietta (or just plain Onion) until he's 17 due to by Kay Chronister is a misunderstanding new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that may prove too dangerous exist for him humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to correctfind hope. |isbn=1803364998}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Eric LaRocca|title= The reason Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that the person under this misapprehension is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the fiercely well-meaning slavery abolitionist (with the emphasis on end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's 'fiercely') John Brown. As Onion accompanies him on his quest to free every slave they encounter, he discovers that BrownThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There's philanthropy only stretches so far. Meanwhile it's is not like that time . It is a collection of short stories more interested in the 19th century when a shadow spreads over Americahorrors of illness, one that will cause a historic scar almost as great as grief and humiliation. Horrors that of slavery but Brown is oblivious linger and are harder to this. He doesndefeat than any ''Big Bad''t; want to start a civil war, just an armed slave revolt.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1594486344</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ashley HayMadelaine Lucas|title=The Railwayman's WifeThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Mackenzie and Anikka Lachlan have all they could possibly want. They live in Thirroul''Love, a close New South Wales coastal communityI'd read, are parents was supposed to be a lovely little girl light and now, in 1948weightless feeling, Mac has come through the war years unscathed due to his job at home on the railways. However in a single moment all their luck changes and Anikka becomes a widow, another grieving shadow. Alongside her neighbours (a war poet who canbut I had always longed for gravity't write now he's home and the local GP who experienced hell while not being able to bring anyone back from its grasp) Anikka must learn the most difficult lesson: how to go on living.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1743318014</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{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=Sathnam SangheraJennifer Saint|title=Marriage MaterialAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=On the morning after his father's funeral Arjan Banga 'I was surprised to see his mother opening up the family shopas worthy as any one of them. She was in her sixtiesI would get on board that ship, recovering from cancer and besides, Bains Stores wasn't exactly thrivingI vowed. You could even be forgiven for wondering if it was ''open''I would take my place, with not just in the advert for a bar name of chocolate discontinued in 1994 having pride of place in the window and goddess. It was for the security shutter stuck at a quarter open. Much as he might wish otherwise Arjan has no choice but to stay in Wolverhampton to help his mother, leaving his job as a graphic designer and his girlfriendsake of my name, Freya, in limbotoo. They were supposed to be getting married in December, but that looked increasingly unlikely.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434021903</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kate ClanchyAmanthi Harris|title=Meeting the EnglishBeautiful Place|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Struan Robertson was just seventeenPadma, a young Sri Lankan, but set has returned to go to Aberdeen to study dentistry, when his English teacher passed him a short advertisementthe Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. A literary giant needed This is a carerplace she spent her formative years. Why It is not take a gap year? Struan had never been place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to ‘’England’’ before and he would be living in Hampstead. On at the plus side he’d been working in a care Villa, how it became her home to earn money , and he could do the work. Soon - almost too soon - Struan was machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the main carer ''score'' for Phillip Prys, rendered dumb this gentle and paralysed by a massive strokeyet subtly violent novel. His family couldn’t take care Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of him - a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the young (very young) third wife was too busy with her painting. His son, Jake, had other things - anything else - to do rather than be in his father’s presence. Juliet had never been her father’s favourite but she wasn’t ‘’exactly’’ stable when it came to helpingVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330535277</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michele Forbes178563335X|title=Ghost MothSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Belfast 1949: Katherine is about When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to become engaged to fireman George Bedford when she meets Tom McKinleypick the children up. He's bright fun Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and makes her feel more alive than dependableelder brother, Jamie, boring George ever couldwhilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. The weight of the decision Katherine eventually makes will haunt Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her for a lifetimegrandson. We fast forward Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to Belfast 1969 develop a real bond with the parish - and as she's in awe of the troubles in Northern Ireland exacerbatevicar, Gail, as do the cracks in Katherinebut then she's marriagebeen doing the job for more than thirty years. In fact 20 years Rachel and four children later, Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they've become chasmsneeded. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297870440</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jennifer Johnston1398515388|title=A Sixpenny SongThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=34.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Annie's father is dead. She's not particularly upset as First of all, it's a decade or so since they've had any contact. Dada (he preferred to be called 'Father') had wanted her to go into was the family businessearthquake, to make money. She'd wanted to go to Trinity College deep in Dublin to read English Literaturethe ocean floor, but instead she'd packed a suitcase which created the tsunami and left for Londonthis, where she still is - working in a bookshopturn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. Her mother died when she The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was young widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - Dada had sent six months after the child off to boarding school and did his best to ensure that her mother's name was never referred to again tsunami - and it Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't too long before he remarried. His death brought Annie back to Ireland and she found a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that the money had been left to wife number two (as he was confident that she would know how call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to look after it) but open his car door and Tamon the house now belonged to Anniedog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472209222</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alex Kovacs0989715337|title=The Currency of PaperPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Maximilian Sacheverell Hollingsworth was - as the name might suggest - of aristocratic birth, but ''Some frogs had broken off all contact with his family and in consequence found himself labouring for forty hours a week in a printing works in Dagenham. He came upon gotten into the idea of planning out his entire life and this he did in the course of a single afternoon whilst enjoying a little illicit sick leave in a pub in Bloomsbury. He would first become a counterfeiter - on a massive scale - and then a sculptor, filmmaker, collector of artefacts, sound artist and mystic. Circumstances would also turn him into a recluse, except on certain well-ordered occasions, most of which would occur - somewhat to his initial surprise - later in his life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1564788571</amazonuk>}}''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Ice-Cold HeavenDaisy Hildyard|authortitle=Mirko BonneEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=They say that if you fall off a horse you should get back on one right away, but even so… I donThe summary of this book doesn'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 come close to a further voyage having been wrecked and stranded off the coast of South America for well over a week. But Merce here does – he wants to follow his best friend on to a ship called ''The Endurance'' and head explaining what is done with Shackleton to the Antarctic. But Merce is only seventeen, and is rejected – causing him to stow away onto one of the world's worst ever journeyspremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715645846</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Sally Oliver |title=The Year Weight of Miracle 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 Griefvolume. 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=Leonid BorodinNatalia Garcia Freire|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=From 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 perhaps using the expression in a space of 25 years, our narrator looks back on what happened when he was 12 years oldway I'm not familiar with. Twenty five years that had I have to elapse, because that was confess my ignorance of the promise that he madeSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. He is now happy From the little I have read (in translation, happy I don't read Spanish) there does seem to have kept be a tendency towards the secret as he promised Sarma he would, and happier that he can now tell fantastical – 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 Baikalmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0704373246</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Rabbit Back Literature SocietyJennifer Saint|authortitle=Pasi Ilmari JaaskelainenElektra|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ella Milana is a language and literature supply teacher currently teaching 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in her hometown the heavily male dominated world of Rabbit Back and dealing with challenging revelations in her lifeAncient Greece. Ella is unexpectedly invited to join the hugely successful and influential Rabbit Back Literature SocietyCassandra, Clytemnestra, a group of nine authors who were hand selected and mentored from childhood by Finland’s greatest author (Laura White) to become literary icons Elektra are all bit players in their own right. There weere always intended to be ten members the story of the society but Laura White has not selected a new member for decades and Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the appointment of Ella is a massive literary event. The ceremony in honour of Ella’s new membership to silent women have the incredibly elite society is unfortunately overshadowed by Laura White’s disappearance at most compelling stories and the ceremony itselfmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908968982</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Angela Young8409290103|title=Speaking of LoveIf Only|author=Matthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=For some people it's impossible to tell another person that they love them and both are damaged. Iris could not tell her daughterTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, VivieMr Patrick, to ensure that she loved her and Matthew, Vivie's childhood friend, neighbour and would-be lover could not tell her how he felt. For all three the result was years of separation with Vivie feeling that she was fundamentally unloveable young man got on board the boat and the whole situation thereafter Patrick was further complicated by Iris's mental disintegration and her treatment removing most of her memories of Vivie's childhoodto send him a monthly allowance. If that sounds depressing Patrick sent the money regularly and soula correspondence -destroying then I am doing ''Speaking of Lovesorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn' an injustice because t care for his son, itwas that he didn's also a story of trust, reconciliation and learning t care to speak about your feelings.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00G4401G4</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Call of the Undertow|author=Linda Cracknell|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 one of them. You read all of the time. Over breakfast, have him in the bath, waiting for trains, on trains, between trains. You make this country where he might be a cup of tea in order danger to have an excuse to sit-his wife and-read for half an hourother children. But The alcohol problem was obvious even so, most of your reading is done in stolen moments – often in moments when a nagging voice from before Patrick managed to get the gremlin-centre of your brain is reminding you that you ''should'' be doing something elseyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908754303</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Crow BlueAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|authortitle=Adriana LisboaRed is My Heart
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Having lost her mother at the age of thirteen, Evangelina embarks on a quest to not only find her biological father, but to delve into the past [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and discover things about her mother she never knewread in my house. Set predominantly in North America and BrazilAnd so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this novel explores Vanja's journeysone was, both physical and emotionalis, as well as her relationships with key charactersblack and white and red. Yes, in particularhe has an artistic collaborator on this piece, that of her Motherand I think it's ex husband, Fernando. Uprooting herself when barely a teenager, Vanja leaves her home country of Brazil possible to live with Fernando in Colorado, say not one page lacks the only connection she has at her disposal to enable her to trace her roots and biological family. Narrated beautifully in the first person, the reader is propelled into the thoughts and feelings influence of the young but courageous, determined and, at times, very wise, adolescent girlsome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408838303</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B098FFFBH9|title=Close Your EyesSnowcub|author=Ewan MorrisonGraham Fulbright|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=1981: Emma remembers driving through a blizzard. That Fourteen-year-old Rachel is, her mother was driving, school's animal rights project leader and she was just and her friend are producing a childcompetition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. She remembers gets a great deal of support from her mother singing. Throughout everythingfamily: father Pip Harrison, what she remembersa lecturer at Imperial College, what everyone remembersLondon, is how mother Kate and her mother sangtwin, Nick. ActuallyKate runs the family business, she remembers lots of other things about her mother. Snippets mostly. Then she remembers losing her… being dropped a toy shop called Cornucopia in London at her Dad'sPutney, who didnwhich is where we't really seem like the dad she remembered… then ll meet Rachel''the Social'' taking her aways main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099565757</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview|title=The CommitmentsFrontpage|author=Roddy DoyleYancey Williams|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summarytitle=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 glockenspiel, Outspan on his brother's acoustic guitar, [and] Derek on nothing', as he can't afford a bass. They already feel directionless. They don't mind Depeche Mode, but Derek and Outspan draw the line at The Human League, which is one Crosshairs of Ray'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>}} {{newreview|title=The Madonna on the Moon|author=Rolf BauerdickDevil|rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Things are certainly strange in the small rural town of Baia Luna; all the stereotypes one would suspect in a newlyAward-Communist mountain village are turned winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on their head. People vocally feel free in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to dismiss the Soviet changes and technologyhis daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, but secretly at the dead from Eddie's point of night enter the fields to try and hear the sounds view - in room 315 of Sputnik blipping its orbit overhead. Gypsy men willingly get baptised into the ways and religions Garden of their ''gajo'' neighbours. The most forceful character is Eden nursing home, with only a teenager called Fritztrusty nursing aide, best friend of narrator PavelJenkins, and son for palatable company. Nothing is going to an ethnic German photographer. Part keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of Fritz's power seems to rest on him knowing a lot more than others about the village schoolteacher – enoughwriting though, perhapsso here, for her to disappear overnight?his readers, are his wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848875045</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Aimee Bender0008421714|title=The Color MasterMrs March|author=Virginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The eleven-year-old boy, his father, grandfather and Tom, a family friend, were on their annual hunting trip to problem began just after the familypublication of George March's 640-acre ranch in northern Californiamost successful novel to date. Strictly Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the boy wasn't old enough last page) seemed to hunt but family lore said that this time he would either be allowed to kill his first buckreading it or had already done so. On Every day Mrs March went to the way local patisserie to their camp they spotted a poacher and buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the boybread, 's father set up his rifle and loaded it - hoping that shooting 'but isn't this the bolt would tell the poacher that first time he'd been spotted. s based a character on you?'' The boy - we never know his name - was allowed to look through the rifle siteShe mentioned that Johanna, but he pulled the triggerprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''. Nothing Perhaps this would ever be not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the same again. For any whore of themNantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434021989</amazonuk>''
}}