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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The One I WasMatthew Tree|authortitle=Eliza GrahamWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In 1939Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, before the outbreak a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of the Second World War, a boy arrived being exceptional at Harwich docks. He was a Kindertransport refugee fleeing the anti-Semitism in Nazi Germanyany of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. Benjamin Goldman would change his name So Tim applied himself to Benny Gault when his idea that the war wouldn't happen and he could go home to Germany came to nothingstudies, but in the meantime he was adopted by Lord and Lady Dorner. Six boys were to live at their country home - Fairfleet - cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and be educated by a private tutor. On the face of it Benny's luck could not have worked out better, set himself high but he was hiding a secretachievable ambitions. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910229016</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.
''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic}}{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Indecent ActsMosby Woods|authortitle=Nick BrooksA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet GraceThe West isn't the dominant force it once was. She's Nobody in her fortiesthe West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, living with a hit-and-miss family push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in a Glasgow council flatactual charge. Imagine then, and in the middle of there was a whole host of issuesman with precognition. She has issues about her parents, and their moving on or deathImagine the strategic advantage in this asset; she has issues about her sister who might or might not have had a much superior life pattern than Grace; she has issues about her children – Francis who has left Grace with her own daughter to spend time with drink or drugs instead, and son Vincent, man who can tell you what will like as not create an issue by joining the army and moving on himselfhappen given any set of circumstances. Grace also has issues with the fact that she is nearly as blind as a batThat man would be valuable, and can neither read nor write. She's started right? Perhaps the novel where she shouldn't be – at home most valuable asset in Glasgow, struggling, as she was due to fly to meet her sister at lasthistory. Imagine then, yet packed her glasses in the case that must be the other end, and completely missed her flightthis man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908754451</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0571379559|title=A Well-Tempered HeartThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Jan-Philipp SendkerFiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ten years ''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 instead, she lives in the house on from the previous episoderiverbank, Julia Winbuilt of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, successful corporate lawyer specialising in intellectual property rights is exhaustedit's stood the passage of time, unhappy storms and alonefloods. Somewhat distant in all senses of the wordHer husband, Richard, if not exactly estrangedstruggles to grow his vegetables, from her mother to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and brotherMax, she has recently left a relationship the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that should have worked but just didnthey't re related, much less twins and her only real connection there's an assumption when Max is out with her artist friend Amy Leehis mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184697285X</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|titleauthor=Something Like HappyKay Chronister|authortitle=John BurnsideDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesDystopian Fiction|summary=How do you pick With a name world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for a short story collection? It seems to me the ''..humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill.and other stories'' add-on Whether it is like picking a favourite childrobotic takeover, a promotion world devoid of one portion of the content above the rest. [[:Category:John Burnside|John Burnside]] has got water or a title story herenuclear holocaust, but such this genre is the mood of the book that he seems a way for humans to have nailed the matter, and picked the cathartically experience their most apposite nameexistential fears. ''Something Like HappyDesert Creatures'' could in by Kay Chronister is a way be new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the title fears that exist for practically every piece herehumanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099575590</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|titleisbn=Brief Loves That Live Forever1803363002|author=Andrei MakineEric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesHorror|summary=Our unnamed narrator Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is inspired used as a way to think back through his life on the girls reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and women he has been in love withprocess them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', partly because of whether that is a time spent with an associate – a time marked by home invader, a seemingly most unremarkable encounter with monster or a further woman – whom he deemed had never been loved. The associateghost, you seeit usually something tangible and, had spent half his adult life in Soviet camps for political instruction – our narrator himself was an orphan in by the end of the 1960sstory, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' Soviet Unionis not like that. This snappy volume takes us through episodes It is a collection of short stories more interested in several lives at different points during and since the second half horrors of communist rule – illness, grief and finally explains the import of humiliation. Horrors that unremarkable encounter…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780870493</amazonuk>linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Prajwal ParajulyMadelaine Lucas|title=Land Where I FleeThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Chitralekha Guraamaa is preparing for her 84th birthday celebrations - her Chaurasi - and her grandchildren (or rather grandadults as they are now) arrive from around the world. They went away in search of a better life but better comes at ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a cost. Baghwati married beneath her caste, Manasa is resentful of an apparently helpless disabled father-in-law light and Agastaya hides a man-sized secret. All have one thing in common: the dread of facing their manipulativeweightless feeling, powerful grandmother and their inability to get on with each other. Worlds may collide but let the festivities commence!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780872984</amazonuk>}}I had always longed for gravity''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Last Boat HomeMichael Grothaus|authortitle=Dea BrovigBeautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Then: On the farm above a remote Norwegian hamlet''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, in 1976, schoolgirl Else is waiting for her mother or we can take steps to return through the wind and the snow. She is also clutching at the kitchen table as the contractions worsenchange it.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Beggar and the HareJennifer Saint|authortitle=Tuomas KyroAtalanta|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Our hero, Vatanescu, is a fish out ''I was as worthy as any one of waterthem. He's a father without his familyI would get on board that ship, a man without a home, a possibility without a chanceI vowed. He's being transported across Europe by a criminal people-smugglerI would take my place, who is also packing Vatanescu's sister off to the cosmetic surgeon then the prostitute trade. Our hero is destined to sit not just in discomfort, sleet and in hateful gazes of others as a beggar on the streets name of Helsinki. But at the same time impossibilities are amassing – one of which splits Vatanescu from his minder/mentor, and leaves him on the run with a fistful of useless currencygoddess. A further impossibility gifts him a friendly, warm companion – a rabbit being chased by local youths jumps into It was for the sanctuary sake of his armsmy name, and becomes a welcome source of focustoo. From then on many more jumps will be made from one impossibility to another, as the life of this illegal immigrant begins to resonate across his adopted homeland…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780721641</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''
}}
{{newreview|title=All That is Solid Melts into AirFrontpage|author=Darragh McKeon|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Moscow, 1986, and a nine-year old piano prodigy is trapped in a subway station by bullies, who carefully break one of his little fingers. Rehearsal cancelled, the boy finds his favourite aunt, who takes him to treatment only to discover her ex-husband the doctor involved. Many miles away a slightly older young man is off on his first hunting trip with the men of the village, only 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 Chernobyl.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670922706</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewAmanthi Harris|title=The Black Snow|author=Paul LynchBeautiful Place|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Barnabas Kane Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to his birthplace in Ireland with his family with the goal Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of setting up his own farm and raising his son in her home country. This is a better setting than New Yorkplace she spent her formative years. With his farm of It is not a decent size and a good herd place she was born into, but the one she thinks of cattle all seems well with Kane until out ploughing one day he as home. How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and his farm hand Matthew Peoples spot smoke in the sky from machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the direction of his byre''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. The fire marks Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the start musical score of a sometimes bleak downward spiral and Kane is forced to rely on film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the kindness of his neighbours who still see him as an outsiderVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782062041</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Truman Capote178563335X|title=Breakfast at Tiffany's Sea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Holly Golightly. Who doesnWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she't know her? Whether s a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the pages of ''Breakfast at Tiffanychildren up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma'sdaughter-in-law won''t let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the short novel by Truman Capote or capture on film by Audrey HepburnNorfolk coast, she's an American icon. A young country girl becomes is a New York socialitelovely place, trading on amusement value but Rachel is struggling to make develop a life paid for by rich men who are titillated by her outrageous opinions real bond with the parish - and anecdotes. We she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she'want'' to know her. And s been doing the narrator ''wants'' to know her as much, if not job for more, than we thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would dothem some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00HX9UTSE</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Patrick Ness1398515388|title=The Crane WifeBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=''The Crane Wife'' ticks First of all my boxes. It's by Patrick Ness who is one of my favourite writers of Young Adult fiction. It has a basis , it was the earthquake, deep in myth the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and legend and still better this, in an ancient story new to meturn, caused the nuclear meltdown. It doesn't go on The result was complete and on utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and Ariston for half a billion pagesthe loss of livelihoods was widespread. Best The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of all, priorities but - six months after the author includes tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a shout-out for the brilliant Decemberists. I agree with Ness: this is dog outside a band you should look upconvenience store. A heavy reading schedule meant I didn He wasn't get to it last year when it was first published a dog person but now itthe convenience store owner's out comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in paperback and here I am. I wasn't disappointed. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857868748</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jill Dawson0989715337|title=The Tell-Tale HeartPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Being told that you have six months to live concentrates the mind most wonderfully: fifty is no age to die, even if you have lived life to the full. Patrick's heart was giving up on him and the Professor of American Studies, philanderer and heavy drinker was at the head of the list for a heart transplant. His other problems - entirely of his own making - faded into insignificance. Sixteen-year-old Drew Beamish died in a motorcycle accident in the village where he lived in rural Cambridgeshire and it will be his (still beating) heart which is transplanted into Patrick. The two, who 'Some frogs had never met, would be permanently joined.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444731068</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=The People in the Photo|author=Helene Gestern|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Hélène Hivert works at the Museum of the History of the Postcard. It is a job she loves, as she finds delving gotten into other people's lives 'most exciting'. Luckily, she is 'regularly sent collections to catalogue', and each time the 'moment of discovery' gives her a thrillwell. It may be 'addictive', but 'There is something very moving about the thought that just two or three sources can be enough to build a picture of an entire life'. But what happens when the sources are a bit too close to home, when Hélène must play Holmes among the artefacts of her own family'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=Eric LundgrenDaisy Hildyard|title=The FacadesEmergency|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Sven and Molly Norberg live in the American mid-western town The summary of Trude. At least Sven still does; Molly has gone missing. Night after night Sven leaves Kyle, his teenage son, home alone while he scours this book doesn't come close to explaining what is done with the streets, revisiting places that he and Molly wandered through together in order to find herpremise. Meanwhile Trude has problems of its own and the librarians are armed and ready!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715647679</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Romy AshSally Oliver |title=FlounderingThe 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 World Does Not Belong To Us
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Loretta collects her boys Jordy and Tom Early comments on this debut novel from school as if itEcuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 's a delight' is perhaps using the most normal thing expression in the world, but ita way I's m not; not for them anywayfamiliar with. Jordy and Tom I have been living with their grandparents after being abandoned by this woman who refuses to be called 'Mum'confess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. As they get further from their eastern Australian home it remains an adventure for Tom but JordyFrom the little I have read (in translation, I don's more sullen. Once they arrive at their ultimate destination - t read Spanish) there does seem to be a ramshackle caravan park - Tom begins to understand why but not before both lads realise that their worries are just beginningtendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1921922087</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Audrey MageeJennifer Saint|title=The UndertakingElektra|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Peter Faber has decided to become part 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the new Nazi initiativeheavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. He will marry Katharina SpinellCassandra, a woman he won't even meet till their honeymoon. In return he'll receive honeymoon leave from the Russian front while she will secure a widow's pension should anything happen to himClytemnestra, hopefully providing and Elektra are all bit players in the Reich with one or two more Aryan babies on story of the wayTrojan War. Peter may not be Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the son-in-law Katharina's parents envisaged but their disappointment is blunted by their luxurious lifestyle under silent women have the patronage of most compelling stories and the sinister Dr Weinart. However, this is still wartime and Peter must eventually return to Russia and whatever fate awaits himmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782391029</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Pamela Erens8409290103|title=The VirginsIf Only|author=Matthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Set in 1979Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-80 in an elite boarding school 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. Patrick sent the east coast money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the USA two although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn'The Virgins't care for his son, it was that he didn' tells the story of two young people. The story is mainly narrated by Bruce Bennett-Jones who would have liked t care to have him in this country where he might be a close relationship with Aviva Rossner but her unlikely choice was Seung Jungdanger to his wife and other children. They're not shy about flaunting their relationship and it's The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the talk of Auburn Academy, but whilst the watchers believe that the relationship is one of unalloyed passion, the truth is rather different and the couple are set young man on a path to an inevitable tragedyhis way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848549873</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=CrumbsAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|authortitle=Miha MazziniRed is My Heart
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=We are [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read 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 my house. And so it seems. Egon isn't was this one of those men, or isn't any although I could have spelled that moreaccurately – this one was, for he works at other things than the foundry – namely churning out trashy low-brow fictionand is, black and a lot of wheeling white and a lot more dealingred. He still keeps his shift in at the bar and in people's bedsYes, though, all the while looking out for number one. He he has several friendships an artistic collaborator on the gothis piece, and several sexual partners at the same time, yet drinks so much I think it's hard possible to say he exactly cherishes himself above all – if anything he doesn't care that much about anyonenot one page lacks the influence of some striking visual ideas. He certainly cares for something however – his beloved stash of Cartier cologne has run out, and he'll as like as not do anything for more…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908754397</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Amy Grace LoydB098FFFBH9|title=The Affairs of OthersSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Five years ago Celia CassillFourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's husband died leaving animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the owner of the Brooklyn apartment block way in which she liveshuman beings exploit the animal world. She's fastidious as to whom she lets and is understandably hesitant when George (one gets a great deal of support from her longstanding tenants) wants to temporarily sub-let to family: father Pip Harrison, a friend while he goes abroadlecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, Nick. Celia eventually agrees and so Kate runs the family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in moves HopePutney, a lady who has just left her husband and for whom life which is as complicated as she makes Celiawhere we'll meet Rachel'smain (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297871188</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Donal RyanYancey Williams|title=The Thing About DecemberCrosshairs of the Devil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Johnsey Cunliffe was always a nice boy, but a little slow Award- the one that the other kids picked winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on and it's much the same in adult life. If you were to ask Johnsey he'd say that he was a gom. Even if you've never met the word before you know what it means. It wasn't too bad whilst Daddy was there - he was a man with a certain presence years and even when it was just Johnsey , despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his mother he had some support. But after her death Johnsey was dependant on small kindnesses daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from other people and at the mercy Eddie's point of those for whom he was an easy target. His life might have continued view - in this rather unsatisfactory way for some time but for room 315 of the collision Garden of two events.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781620091</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=James McBride|title=The Good Lord Bird|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Henry 'The Onion' Shackleford lives as Henrietta (or just plain Onion) until he's 17 due to Eden nursing home, with only a misunderstanding that may prove too dangerous trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for him to correctpalatable company. The reason Nothing is that the person under this misapprehension is the fiercely wellgoing to keep Eddie from his stock-in-meaning slavery abolitionist (with the emphasis on the 'fiercely') John Brown. As Onion accompanies him on his quest to free every slave they encountertrade of writing though, he discovers that Brown's philanthropy only stretches so far. Meanwhile it's that time of the 19th century when a shadow spreads over Americahere, one that will cause a historic scar almost as great as that of slavery but Brown is oblivious to this. He doesn't; want to start a civil war, just an armed slave revolt.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1594486344</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ashley Hay|title=The Railwayman's Wife|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Mackenzie and Anikka Lachlan have all they could possibly want. They live in Thirroul, a close New South Wales coastal communityfor his readers, are parents to a lovely little girl and now, in 1948, Mac has come his wanderings 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 can't write now helife'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 livingwork.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1743318014</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Amy Tan0008421714|title=The Joy Luck ClubMrs March|author=Virginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= The Joy Luck Club was Jing Meiproblem began just after the publication of George March's mother's ideamost successful novel to date. After arriving in Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the US from China in 1949 she invited three other Chinese immigrant ladies last page) seemed to joineither be reading it or had already done so. The four would meet Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to play Mah Jong and feast buy olive bread but on morsels that none of them could really afford. Once played outparticular morning, Patricia asked, they shared stories of as she was wrapping the land theybread, ''d left. The evenings evolve over time; the food becomes affordable, men join the discussions but isn't this 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 pain.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B0031Y9DPU</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sam Byers|title=Idiopathy|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Katherine no longer seeks or expects to be happy. Shefirst time he's stuck in based a place and a job she hates and her relationship with Daniel broke up over a year ago. Since then shecharacter on you?''s had sexual encounters with a few men but her motivations have been confusing and disturbing - not least to Katherine. She has a vicious wit (actuallymentioned that Johanna, calling it the principal character had ''wither mannerisms'' . Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is perhaps stretching the point a little...) which repels the people shewhore of Nantes - 'd like to attract and attracts the people she'd prefer to repel. Daniel is with a new girlfriend (wellweak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, there was a ''slight'' overlap) but he's not certain that he loves Angelicaunloveable wretch. 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 the level.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007412088</amazonuk>
}}