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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Something Like HappyMatthew Tree|authortitle=John BurnsideWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Chitralekha Guraamaa is preparing for her 84th birthday celebrations - her Chaurasi - Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and her grandchildren (or rather grandadults as they are now) arrive from around the world. They went away in search chronic underachiever whose dreams of a better life but better comes being exceptional at a cost. Baghwati married beneath her caste, Manasa is resentful any of an apparently helpless disabled father-in-law his artistic passions all failed miserably and Agastaya hides a man-sized secretwho had endless crises of self confidence. All have one thing in common: the dread of facing their manipulativeSo Tim applied himself to his studies, powerful grandmother cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and their inability to get on with each otherset himself high but achievable ambitions. Worlds may collide but let the festivities commence!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780872984</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreview|title=The Collected Works of A J Fikry|author=Gabrielle Zevin|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=A J Fikry is not having a good time. He's lost his wife to a car crash, and he's not making that much money. The book store he runs, stuck out on a limb on a quiet island community, is too remote to turn a profit year-round, and he has just dismissed the latest publisher's rep to turn up at his door, partly because her previous counterpart, an inconsequential part of A J's life when all is said and done, had died and he didn't know about it. But his bad time is about to get a lot worse, as the one thing he owns worth the most – a rare book, more valuable than his house, his business, anything – is about to vanish. Which bizarrely will cause several major changes to his one-person household…Frontpage|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408704617</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewB0C47LV1PC|title=The Last Boat HomeFragility|author=Dea BrovigMosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Then: On the farm above Can you make a remote Norwegian hamlet''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, in 1976, schoolgirl Else is waiting for her mother to return through the wind and question should you make it? Or is the snow. She question if you did, would it land? The catch is also clutching at that the kitchen table as the contractions worsenanswer for both could well be.... no.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Beggar and the HareMosby Woods|authortitle=Tuomas KyroA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Our hero, Vatanescu, is a fish out of water. HeThe West isn's a father without his family, a man without a home, a possibility without a chancet the dominant force it once was. He's being transported across Europe by a criminal people-smuggler, who Nobody in the West is also packing Vatanescu's sister off quite sure how to the cosmetic surgeon then the prostitute trade. Our hero mend this or even if mending it is destined to sit in discomfort, sleet and in hateful gazes of others as a beggar on the streets best course of Helsinkiaction. But at the same time impossibilities Governments are amassing – one of which splits Vatanescu from his minder/mentorflailing. A war here, and leaves him on the run with a fistful of useless currencypush for climate action there. A further impossibility gifts him a friendlyfeeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, warm companion – there was a rabbit being chased by local youths jumps into man with precognition. Imagine the sanctuary of his arms, and becomes strategic advantage in this asset; a welcome source man who can tell you what will happen given any set of focuscircumstances. From then on many more jumps will That man would be made from one impossibility to anothervaluable, as right? Perhaps the life of most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this illegal immigrant begins ability. What would governments do to resonate across his adopted homeland…get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780721641</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0571379559|title=The Blazing WorldHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Siri HustvedtFiona Williams|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='All intellectual and artistic endeavours…fare better in 'The House of Broken Bricks'' is the mind story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the crowd when house on the crowd knows that somewhere behind riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the great work or the great spoof it can locate a cock passage of time, storms and a pair of ballsfloods.' Thus we are introduced Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the unforgettable Harriet Burden – largerdelivery rounds -thanand to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys -lifeSonny and Max, six-foot-tall amazon artist – and to some of the novelrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's essential elements: musing on what makes intellectual products successful in a postmodern marketplace, feminist resentment of the overvaluing of male achievementJamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an unapologetic, playful boldness assumption when Max is out with languagehis mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444779648</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=All That is Solid Melts into AirKay Chronister|authortitle=Darragh McKeonDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Moscow, 1986With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, and a ninepost-year old piano prodigy apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is trapped in a subway station by bulliesrobotic takeover, who carefully break one a world devoid of his little fingers. Rehearsal cancelledwater or a nuclear holocaust, the boy finds his favourite aunt, who takes him this genre is a way for humans to treatment only to discover her excathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-husband apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the doctor involvedfears that exist for humanity today. Many miles away It is a slightly older young man is off on his first hunting trip with the men of the village, only shocking novel that still manages to find diseased cows, and the grouse they seek sickly and weirdly uncoordinated. What has affected them, and will of course affect all the characters in the book, is the nuclear disaster in the plant at Chernobylhope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670922706</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|titleisbn=The Black Snow1803363002|author=Paul LynchEric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=3.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Barnabas Kane returned Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to his birthplace in Ireland with his family with the goal of setting up his own farm reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and raising his son in process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a better setting than New York. With his farm of home invader, a decent size and monster or a good herd of cattle all seems well with Kane until out ploughing one day he ghost, it usually something tangible and his farm hand Matthew Peoples spot smoke in , by the sky from end of the direction of his byrestory, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The fire marks Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the start horrors of a sometimes bleak downward spiral illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and Kane is forced are harder to rely on the kindness of his neighbours who still see him as an outsiderdefeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782062041</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Truman CapoteMadelaine Lucas|title=Breakfast at Tiffany's Thirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Holly Golightly. Who doesn't know her? Whether in the pages of ''Breakfast at Tiffany's'', the short novel by Truman Capote or capture on film by Audrey HepburnLove, sheI's an American icon. A young country girl becomes a New York socialited read, trading on amusement value was supposed to make be a life paid light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for by rich men who are titillated by her outrageous opinions and anecdotes. We gravity''want'' to know her. And the narrator ''wants'' to know her as much, if not more, than we do. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00HX9UTSE</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|titleauthor=The People in the PhotoJennifer Saint|authortitle=Helene GesternAtalanta|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Hélène Hivert works at the Museum of the History ''I was as worthy as any one of the Postcardthem. It is a job she lovesI would get on board that ship, as she finds delving into other people's lives 'most exciting'I vowed. LuckilyI would take my place, she is 'regularly sent collections to catalogue', and each time not just in the 'moment name of discovery' gives her a thrillthe goddess. It may be 'addictive', but 'There is something very moving about was for the thought that just two or three sources can be enough to build a picture sake of an entire life'my name, too. But what happens when the sources are a bit too close to home, when Hélène must play Holmes among the artefacts of her own familyAtalanta's past, pondering 'the silence of surfaces'? Well, the professional detachment goes straight out the window, and what had been a genuine pleasure, tinged by wonder, now becomes an uncomfortable obsession.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908313544</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Romy AshAmanthi Harris|title=FlounderingBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Loretta collects Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her boys Jordy and Tom from school formative years. It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as if it's home. How she came to be at the most normal thing in the worldVilla, but how it's not; not for them anyway. Jordy became her home, and Tom the machinations that have been living with their grandparents after being abandoned by this woman who refuses to be called flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'Mum'for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. As they get further from their eastern Australian home it remains an adventure for Tom but Jordy Padma's more sullen. Once they arrive at their ultimate destination - present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a ramshackle caravan park - Tom begins to understand why but not before both lads realise film, that strand weaves its way through everything that their worries are just beginninghappens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1921922087</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Audrey Magee178563335X|title=The UndertakingSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Peter Faber has decided 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 part of pick the new Nazi initiativechildren up. He will marry Katharina SpinellHer husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a woman he sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't even meet till their honeymoonlet her see her grandson. In return heHolthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she'll receive honeymoon leave from s in awe of the Russian front while vicar, Gail, but then she will secure a widow's pension should anything happen to him, hopefully providing been doing the Reich with one or two job for more Aryan babies on the waythan thirty years. Peter may not be Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the sonbeach would do them some good -in-law Katharina's parents envisaged it was stormy but their disappointment is blunted by their luxurious lifestyle under the patronage of the sinister Dr Weinartit was probably what they needed. However, this is still wartime and Peter must eventually return to Russia and whatever fate awaits himAnd then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782391029</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Pamela Erens1398515388|title=The VirginsBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Set First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in 1979-80 the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in an elite boarding school on turn, caused the east coast of the USA ''nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The Virgins'' tells deaths were uncountable, and the story loss of two young peoplelivelihoods was widespread. The story is mainly narrated by Bruce Bennettfact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami -Jones who would have liked to have Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a close relationship with Aviva Rossner but her unlikely choice was Seung Jungconvenience store. TheyHe wasn're not shy about flaunting their relationship and itt a dog person but the convenience store owner's the talk of Auburn Academy, but whilst the watchers believe comment that the relationship is one of unalloyed passion, the truth is rather different he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the couple are set on a path to an inevitable tragedydog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848549873</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=CrumbsPapa on the Moon|author=Miha MazziniMarco North|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We are in a hell of man's own making – a town that is basically one huge foundry, whose men go from working there to a bar then to (someone's) bed in three eight hour shifts, or so it seemsSome frogs had gotten into the well. Egon isn't one of those men, or isn't any more, for he works at other things than the foundry – namely churning out trashy low ''Walter stood waist-brow fiction, and a lot of wheeling and a lot more dealing. He still keeps his shift deep in at the bar and in people's bedsfragrant water, thoughnaked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, all sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the while looking out for number one. He has several friendships on dogs leaned over the go, opening and several sexual partners barked down at the same time, yet drinks so much itstrange noise of the buckets as he filled them.'s hard to say he exactly cherishes himself above all – if anything he doesn't care How is that much about anyone. He certainly cares for something however – his beloved stash an opening? The style of this novel in the form of Cartier cologne interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, who has run outthe most wonderful turn of phrase, and starts as he'll as like as not do anything for more…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908754397</amazonuk>means to go on.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amy Grace LoydDaisy Hildyard|title=The Affairs of OthersEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Five years ago Celia Cassill's husband died leaving her the owner The summary of the Brooklyn apartment block in which she lives. Shethis book doesn's fastidious as t come close to whom she lets and explaining what is understandably hesitant when George (one of her longstanding tenants) wants to temporarily sub-let to a friend while he goes abroad. Celia eventually agrees and so in moves Hope, a lady who has just left her husband and for whom life is as complicated as she makes Celia'sdone with the premise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0297871188</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Donal RyanSally Oliver |title=The Thing About DecemberWeight 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 World Does Not Belong To Us|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Johnsey Cunliffe was always Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a nice boy, delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a little slow - the one that the other kids picked on and itdelight's much is perhaps using the same expression in adult lifea way I'm not familiar with. If you were I have to ask Johnsey he'd say that he was a gomconfess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. Even if you've never met From the word before you know what it means. It wasnlittle I have read (in translation, I don't too bad whilst Daddy was read Spanish) there - he was a man with does seem to be a certain presence and even when it was just Johnsey and his mother he had some support. But after her death Johnsey was dependant on small kindnesses from other people and at tendency towards the mercy of those for whom he was an easy target. His life might have continued in this rather unsatisfactory way for some time but for fantastical – the collision of two eventsmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781620091</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=James McBrideJennifer Saint|title=The Good Lord BirdElektra
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Mackenzie and Anikka Lachlan have all they could possibly want. They 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in Thirroulthe heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, a close New South Wales coastal communityClytemnestra, and Elektra are parents to a lovely little girl and now, all bit players in 1948, Mac has come through the war years unscathed due to his job at home on story of the railwaysTrojan War. However in a single moment all their luck changes and Anikka becomes a widow, another grieving shadow. Alongside her neighbours (a war poet who can't write now he's home Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories 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 livingextreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1743318014</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Amy Tan8409290103|title=The Joy Luck ClubIf Only|author=Matthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= The Joy Luck Club Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm 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 Jing Mei's mother's ideato send him a monthly allowance. After arriving in Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the US from China in 1949 she invited three other Chinese immigrant ladies two although we hear more about what Lowry has to joinsay than Patrick. The four would meet to play Mah Jong and feast on morsels It wasn't that none of them could really afford. Once played outLowry senior didn't care for his son, they shared stories of the land theyit was that he didn'd leftt care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and other children. The evenings evolve over time; alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the food becomes affordable, men join the discussions but the core remains the same. Four Chinese mothers living a new life while sharing moments enjoyed and regretted, discussing their children and parents and telling stories of wisdom, happiness and, sometimes, intense painyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B0031Y9DPU</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sam ByersAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=IdiopathyRed is My Heart|rating=43.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Katherine no longer seeks or expects to be happy. She's stuck in a place [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and a job she hates white and her relationship with Daniel broke up over a year agoread in my house. Since then she's had sexual encounters with a few men but her motivations And so was this one, although I could have been confusing spelled that more accurately – this one was, and disturbing - not least to Katherine. She has a vicious wit (actuallyis, calling it ''wit'' is perhaps stretching the point a little...) which repels the people she'd like to attract black and white and attracts the people she'd prefer to repelred. Daniel is with a new girlfriend (wellYes, there was a ''slight'' overlap) but hehas an artistic collaborator on this piece, and I think it's possible to say not certain that he loves Angelica. He's in a difficult situation: not telling her that he loves her becomes tantamount to telling her that he doesn't love her and as a result he has to tell her that he loves her just to keep on one page lacks the levelinfluence of some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007412088</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sathnam SangheraB098FFFBH9|title=Marriage MaterialSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=On the morning after his fatherFourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's funeral Arjan Banga was surprised animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to see his mother opening up highlight the way in which human beings exploit the family shopanimal world. She was in gets a great deal of support from her sixtiesfamily: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, recovering from cancer mother Kate and besidesher twin, Bains Stores wasn't exactly thrivingNick. You could even be forgiven for wondering if it was ''open'', with Kate runs the advert for a bar of chocolate discontinued in 1994 having pride of place in the window and 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 motherfamily business, leaving his job as a graphic designer and his girlfriend, Freya, toy shop called Cornucopia in limbo. They were supposed to be getting married in DecemberPutney, but that looked increasingly unlikelywhich is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434021903</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Kerrigan in CopenhagenYancey Williams|authortitle=Thomas E KennedyCrosshairs of the Devil|rating=24.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Terrence Einhorn Kerrigan Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is an Irish-Danish American living getting on in Copenhagen. He is 'a full-time writer years and, despite his strenuous objections and translator'thanks to his daughter, who 'thinks of finds himself as a failed poet, which is a less complicated concept than a failed human being'. His newest writing assignmentliving - or imprisoned, however, is to from Eddie'select a sampling s point of one hundred view - in room 315 of the best, the most historic, the most congenial Garden of Copenhagen's 1Eden nursing home,525 serving houses and write them up for one of with only a one-hundred-volume travel guide: ''The Great Bars of the Western World'''. Kerrigantrusty nursing aide, thoughJenkins, 'does not wish the book to be writtenfor palatable company. He wants only Nothing is going to research it. Forever' keep Eddie from his stock- and preferably in the company -trade of writing though, so here, for his green-eyed Associatereaders, Anneliseare his wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408841940</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lois Walden0008421714|title=AfterworldMrs March|author=Virginia Feito|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The Duvalier family owe their wealth problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to sugar cane although their gratitude is shown in varying degrees and various waysdate. From Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the patriarch William (who never recovered from being hit by a manhole coverlast page) through his wife and childrenseemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, down to TheodorePatricia asked, as she was wrapping the lad who gained comfort (and bread, ''but isn't this the first time he's based a certain amount of secrecy) from travel and character on to their black servant Rheta Byou?'' She mentioned that Johanna, each has the principal character had a life'her mannerisms''. Each also has Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - ''a story to tell andweak, plain, detestable, pathetic, whether alive or in Afterworldunloved, theyunloveable wretch.''re going to tell it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908129859</amazonuk>
}}