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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Karin AltenbergMatthew Tree|title=Breaking LightWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Gabriel Askew retires Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to the village be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of Mortford, the place in which he grew up being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and from where childhood ghosts haunt him to this daywho had endless crises of self confidence. It’s a conscious decision: Gabe, ostracised as a child due So Tim applied himself to his hair lipstudies, returns to face these demons that have controlled cultivated his abilities rather than his life daydreams and forced him to do the unthinkable set himself high but now he wants peace… if it's not too lateachievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780877153</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B0C47LV1PC|title=Lost LuggageFragility|author=Jordi PuntiMosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There are lots of things Can you wonder when make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you grow up with just one parentcould, but whether is the question should you also have a bunch of half-siblings, all with make it? Or is the same name as question if youdid, all dotted around the continent, would it land? The catch is not normally high on that the listanswer for both could well be. Gabriel Delacruz has 4 boys by 4 different women in 4 parts of Europe. None of them know of the others’ existence but when Gabriel disappears, his incredulous life is uncovered and Christof, Christophe, Christopher and Cristofol meet.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780722133</amazonuk>}}. no.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Beautiful FoolsMosby Woods|authortitle=R Clifton SpargoA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Famous writersThe West isn' wives have had something t the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the 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, a literary revival push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in recent yearsactual charge. Paula McLain's ''The Paris Wife'' and Naomi Wood's ''Mrs Hemingway'' imagine the lives of the various Hemingway womenImagine then, while the vogue for flappers and [[The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald|The Great Gatsby]] has led to there was a spate of books about Zelda Fitzgeraldman with precognition. Fans of Imagine the Roaring Twenties have been spoiled for choice, strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what with [[Z: A Novel will happen given any set of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler]]circumstances. That man would be valuable, ''Call Me Zelda'' by Erika Robuckright? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, and ''Guests on Earth'' by Lee Smiththat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1468308807</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roopa Farooki0571379559|title=The Good ChildrenHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is never any end to Paristhe story of four people. The sentence pops up Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, hypnoticshe lives in the house on the riverbank, through most built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the bookpassage of time, storms and floods. At times ironic Her husband, thoughtful or questioningRichard, it is a quote from Hemingway’s novelstruggles to grow his vegetables, ''A Moveable Feast'', in which to complete the American author looked back at his days delivery rounds - and to bring in Parissufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, where he was ‘very poor and very happythe rainbow twins.’ The narrator of Sonny's colouring reflects his mother'Never Any End to Pariss Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they' tells us that when he lived in Parisre related, he was ‘very poor much less twins and very unhappythere's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.’|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846558042</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Frances and BernardKay Chronister|authortitle=Carlene BauerDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=There's something very special about With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an epistolary novelalmost masochistic thrill. The format might seem unnatural to readers in this day Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of abbreviated text messages and e-mailswater or a nuclear holocaust, but the conceit of this genre is a written exchange allows way for fully developed first-person voices and humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a confessional tone. Provided the author can bypass the subtle difficulties new work of plotpost-building, letters are also a handy indicator apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the passage of time, and ably convey period vocabularyfears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099578603</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Adrian HarveyEric LaRocca|title=Being SomeoneThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=The relationship between Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a mahout way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and his elephant process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is close: some have said that it's rather like a marriage. On the surface home invader, a monster or a ghost, it seems almost idyllic with an obvious affection between man usually something tangible and beast - "that their spirits were water , by the end of the same pool"story, but all beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not quite as it seemslike that. Iravatha was the magnificent elephant who, year It is a collection of short stories more interested in, year out, led the Maharajah's parade only this year there was a dreadful accident and Annayyahorrors of illness, his mahout, slipped beneath the elephant's foot - grief and was killedhumiliation. TheyHorrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''d been together for more than half a century and beautiful, intelligent Iravatha knew what this meant.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1909273090</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=TaraShea NesbitMadelaine Lucas|title=The Wives of Los AlamosThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=1943: In the US ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a group of menlight and weightless feeling, women and children are uprooted but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from their homes with hardly any notice and after being sworn to total secrecy. Their destination is a hastily knocked upretrospective view, unfinished small town in the New Mexico desert; a place where muddy water drips from young woman unravels the taps and their lives are turned upside down for nearly 3 yearsyear-long relationship that once defined her. This isn't mass abduction by Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a malevolent power but man twenty years her senior from its inception – the US government's plan summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end WWIIthe summer after. The men (and some of Set against the women) are scientists, the place is Los Alamos, the site backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the project that will result in Robert Oppenheimer stating 24-year-old narrator''Nows deepening relationship with her older lover, I am become Deathdepicting its all-consuming nature, the destroyer of worlds." His story has been well documented in the past; now the voices belong to the Los Alamos Wiveshow it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408845997</amazonuk>0861546490
}}
{{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=Ron ButlinJennifer Saint|title=Ghost MoonAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Maggie sits in an elderly persons' care home tgryig to exist through the ever tightening grip 'I was as worthy as any one of dementiathem. Her sonI would get on board that ship, Tom, visits trying to jog her memory but she doesn't even recognise himI vowed. To MaggieI would take my place, Tom is 'Michael' a not just in the name that means nothing to a son getting more desperate to break through to his mother once againof the goddess. However there It was once a Michael, in a life that bubbles with secrets that even Tom doesn't know; for once, long agothe sake of my name, Maggie was youngtoo.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773770</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=A Well-Tempered HeartAmanthi Harris|authortitle=Jan-Philipp SendkerBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ten years Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on from the previous episode, Julia Win, successful corporate lawyer specialising in intellectual property rights is exhausted, unhappy and alonesouthern coast of her home country. Somewhat distant in all senses of the word, if not exactly estranged, from her mother and brother, This is a place she has recently left a relationship that should have worked but just didn't and spent her only real connection is with her artist friend Amy Lee.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184697285X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Something Like Happy|author=John Burnside|rating=4formative years.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=How do you pick a name for a short story collection? It seems to me the ''...and other stories'' add-on is like picking not a favourite childplace she was born into, a promotion of but the one portion she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the content above the rest. [[:Category:John Burnside|John Burnside]] has got a title story hereVilla, how it became her home, but such is the mood of and the book machinations that he seems to have nailed flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the matter, and picked the most apposite name. ''Something Like Happyscore''for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma' could in s present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way be through everything that happens at the title for practically every piece hereVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099575590</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=Brief Loves That Live Forever178563335X|authortitle=Andrei Makine|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=Our unnamed narrator is inspired to think back through his life on the girls and women he has been in love with, partly because of a time spent with an associate – a time marked by a seemingly most unremarkable encounter with a further woman – whom he deemed had never been loved. The associate, you see, had spent half his adult life in Soviet camps for political instruction – our narrator himself was an orphan in the 1960s' Soviet Union. This snappy volume takes us through episodes in several lives at different points during and since the second half of communist rule – and finally explains the import of that unremarkable encounter…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780870493</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSea Defences|author=Prajwal Parajuly|title=Land Where I FleeHilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Chitralekha Guraamaa is preparing for her 84th birthday celebrations - her Chaurasi - When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and her grandchildren (or rather grandadults as wondering why they are now) arrive from around 're held when you need to pick the worldchildren up. They went away in search of a better life but better comes at Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a costsobbing parishioner. Baghwati married beneath her caste, Manasa is resentful of an apparently helpless disabled fatherThelma's daughter-in-law and Agastaya hides won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a manreal bond with the parish -sized secret. All have one thing and she's in common: awe of the dread of facing their manipulativevicar, Gail, powerful grandmother but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and their inability to get Christopher hoped that a walk on with each otherthe beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. Worlds may collide but let the festivities commence!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780872984</amazonuk>And then Hannah went missing.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Collected Works of A J FikryBoy and the Dog|author=Gabrielle ZevinSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=A J Fikry is not having a good timeFirst of all, 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. He's lost his wife to a car crashThe deaths were uncountable, and he's not making that much moneythe loss of livelihoods was widespread. The book store he runs, stuck out on fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a limb on dog outside a quiet island community, is too remote to turn convenience store. He wasn't a profit year-round, and he has just dismissed dog person but the latest publisherconvenience store owner's rep comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to turn up at open his car 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 Tamon the most – a rare book, more valuable than his house, his business, anything – is about to vanishdog jumped in. Which bizarrely will cause several major changes to his one-person household…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408704617</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=The Last Boat HomePapa on the Moon|author=Dea BrovigMarco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Then: On ''Some frogs had gotten into the farm above a remote Norwegian hamlet, in 1976, schoolgirl Else is waiting for her mother to return through the wind and the snow. She is also clutching at the kitchen table as the contractions worsenwell.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Beggar and the HareDaisy Hildyard|authortitle=Tuomas KyroEmergency|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Our hero, Vatanescu, is a fish out The summary of water. He's a father without his family, a man without a home, a possibility without a chance. He's being transported across Europe by a criminal people-smuggler, who is also packing Vatanescuthis book doesn's sister off t come close to the cosmetic surgeon then the prostitute trade. Our hero explaining what is destined to sit in discomfort, sleet and in hateful gazes of others as a beggar on the streets 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 done with a fistful of useless currency. A further impossibility gifts him a friendly, warm companion – a rabbit being chased by local youths jumps into the sanctuary of his arms, and becomes a welcome source of focuspremise. 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…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780721641</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Sally Oliver |title=The Blazing WorldWeight 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=Siri HustvedtNatalia Garcia Freire|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=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'All intellectual and artistic endeavours…fare better is perhaps using the expression in the mind of the crowd when the crowd knows that somewhere behind the great work or the great spoof it can locate a cock and a pair of ballsway I'm not familiar with.' Thus we are introduced I have to confess my ignorance of the unforgettable Harriet Burden – largerSpanish-than-lifelanguage literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. From the little I have read (in translation, six-foot-tall amazon artist – and I don't read Spanish) there does seem to some of be a tendency towards the novel's essential elements: musing on what makes intellectual products successful in a postmodern marketplace, feminist resentment of fantastical – the overvaluing of male achievement, and an unapologetic, playful boldness with languagemystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444779648</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Clever GirlJennifer Saint|authortitle=Tessa HadleyElektra
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Stella grows up with her single mother 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in Bristol the heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in the 1960s; her father left when she was a baby, but her mother has cultivated story of the convenient myth that he diedTrojan War. In the stand-alone first chapter, Stella recounts a disturbing incident of domestic violence Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that affected her Aunt Andy. Sordid snippets from often the ensuing court case stay with Stella over silent women have the years; 'Innocent-seeming fragments would get in past my defences…then stick to my imagination like tar.' Even so, most compelling stories and the novel that follows is about the way in which we engage with memory – facts that linger versus those we, deliberately or subconsciously, choose not to tellmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099570521</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=8409290103|title=All That is Solid Melts into AirIf Only|author=Darragh McKeonMatthew Tree|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Moscow, 1986, and a nineTwenty-one-year -old piano prodigy is trapped in a subway station Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by bullieshis father, who carefully break one of cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his little fingers. Rehearsal cancelledaccountant, the boy finds his favourite auntMr Patrick, who takes him to treatment only to discover her ex-husband ensure that the doctor involved. Many miles away a slightly older young man is off got on his first hunting trip with board the men of the village, only boat and thereafter Patrick was to find diseased cows, and the grouse they seek sickly and weirdly uncoordinatedsend him a monthly allowance. What has affected them, Patrick sent the money regularly and will a correspondence - of course affect all sorts - sprang up between the characters in the booktwo although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, is the nuclear disaster it was that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the plant at Chernobylyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670922706</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Black SnowAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|authortitle=Paul LynchRed is My Heart
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Barnabas Kane returned to his birthplace in Ireland with his family with the goal of setting up his own farm [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and raising his son read in a better setting than New Yorkmy house. With his farm of a decent size And so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, and is, black and a good herd of cattle all seems well with Kane until out ploughing one day he white and his farm hand Matthew Peoples spot smoke in the sky from the direction of his byrered. The fire marks the start of a sometimes bleak downward spiral Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and Kane is forced I think it's possible to rely on say not one page lacks the kindness influence of his neighbours who still see him as an outsidersome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782062041</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Truman CapoteB098FFFBH9|title=Breakfast at Tiffany's |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 Hepburn, she's an American icon. A young country girl becomes a New York socialite, trading on amusement value to make a life paid for by rich men who are titillated by her outrageous opinions and anecdotes. We ''want'' to know her. And the narrator ''wants'' to know her as much, if not more, than we do. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00HX9UTSE</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSnowcub|author=Patrick Ness|title=The Crane WifeGraham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The Crane Wife'' ticks all my boxes. ItFourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's by Patrick Ness who is one of my favourite writers of Young Adult fiction. It has a basis in myth animal rights project leader and legend she and still better her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the way in an ancient story new to mewhich human beings exploit the animal world. It doesn't go on and on and Ariston for half She gets a billion pages. Best great deal of allsupport from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, Nick. Kate runs the author includes family business, a shout-out for the brilliant Decemberists. I agree with Ness: this toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is a band you should look up. A heavy reading schedule meant I didnwhere we't get to it last year when it was first published but now itll meet Rachel's out in paperback and here I am. I wasn't disappointedmain (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857868748</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jill DawsonYancey Williams|title=The Tell-Tale HeartCrosshairs of the Devil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Being told that you have six months to live concentrates the mind most wonderfully: fifty Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is no age getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to diehis daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, even if you have lived life to the full. Patrickfrom Eddie's heart was giving up on him and point of view - in room 315 of the Professor Garden of American StudiesEden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, philanderer and heavy drinker was at the head of the list for a heart transplantpalatable company. His other problems - entirely of Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his own making stock- faded into insignificance. Sixteenin-year-old Drew Beamish died in a motorcycle accident in the village where he lived in rural Cambridgeshire and it will be trade of writing though, so here, for his (still beating) heart which is transplanted into Patrick. The tworeaders, who had never met, would be permanently joinedare his wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444731068</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0008421714|title=The People in the PhotoMrs March|author=Helene GesternVirginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Hélène Hivert works at The problem began just after the Museum publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the History of last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the Postcard. It is a job she loveslocal patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she finds delving into other peoplewas wrapping the bread, ''s lives but isn'most excitingt this the first time he'. Luckily, she is s based a character on you?'regularly sent collections to catalogue' She mentioned that Johanna, and each time the principal character had 'moment of discovery' gives her a thrill. It may be mannerisms'addictive'. Perhaps this would not have mattered, but 'There except for the fact that Johanna is something very moving about the thought that just two or three sources can be enough to build a picture whore of an entire lifeNantes - ''. But what happens when the sources are a bit too close to homeweak, when Hélène must play Holmes among the artefacts of her own family's pastplain, pondering 'the silence of surfaces'? Welldetestable, the professional detachment goes straight out the windowpathetic, and what had been a genuine pleasure, tinged by wonderunloved, now becomes an uncomfortable obsessionunloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908313544</amazonuk>''
}}