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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreview|title=JFrontpage|author=Howard JacobsonMatthew Tree|ratingtitle=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''J'' marks an unusual turn for Howard Jacobson. Though it seems at times like a skewed folk tale, it also bears the subtle signs of a future dystopia. It has some of Jacobson's trademark elements – odd names, humorous metaphors, and Semitic references – but felt to me like a strange departure after [[The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson|The Finkler Question]] and ''Zoo Time'We'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224102052</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Mitchell|title=The Bone Clocksll Never Know|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Holly Sykes is 15 Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and has found true love with an older man in chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his twenties - until she finds him in bed with her best mate. Upset artistic passions all failed miserably and disorientated, she runs away from homewho had endless crises of self confidence. This may enable her So Tim applied himself to escape from the unfaithful Vinny his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and her overbearing family set himself high but not the weirdness. She's not the only one though: Hugo the student, conman and lothario thought he was only doing someone a good turn when the weirdness started for him. There is a point to it though: eventually battle lines will be drawn and it's anyone's guess as to who will win, despite what the Anchorites may sayachievable ambitions. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340921609</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Karen Joy FowlerB0C47LV1PC|title=We Are All Completely Beside OurselvesFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=RosemaryCan you make a 's childhood 'Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is blighted by the disappearance of her sisterquestion should you make it? Or is the question if you did, Fernwould it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be. Rosemary went to stay with her grandparents and, on her return Fern was no longer there. Curiously enough, her mother and father don't speak of it. The knock on effect was the angry departure of Rosemary's older brother Lowell whom she also misses. As she grows to adulthood, Rosemary remembers trying to come to terms with this, the damage that being a daughter of a psychologist has wrought and the revealed secrets that will finally make sense of it allno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668966X</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alison MooreMosby Woods|title=He WantsA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Lewis Sullivan is close to retirement, but elderly beyond his years and widowed. EdieThe West isn's death seems to have had practical implications - he's not getting t the food he used to enjoy - but beyond that dominant force it's difficult to see quite what they had once was. Nobody in common other than the library. He used West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it and she worked there - but they didn't even enjoy is the same booksbest course of action. Lewis is an RE teacher at the same school where his fatherGovernments are flailing. A war here, Lawrence, used to teach - when they were both a push for climate action there at the same time it often confused the paperwork. Lewis A feeling that nobody is beginning to wonder if he chose the wrong careerin actual charge. Imagine then, if he lives in the wrong placethere was a man with precognition. He used to be able to see Imagine the house he grew up strategic advantage in from the bedroom window before it was demolished and replaced by this asset; a supermarket carparkman who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, but he's always dreamed of living by right? Perhaps the seamost valuable asset in history. His adult daughterImagine then, Ruth visits him every day and brings him soup. He doesn't want soupthat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907773819</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0571379559|title=The Narrow Road to the Deep NorthHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Richard FlanaganFiona Williams|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The Narrow Road to the Deep NorthHouse of Broken Bricks'' is the title story of both Flanaganfour people. Tess Hembry's Booker Prizeroots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds -longlisted sixth novel and a book by seventeenthto bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys -century Japanese poet BashoSonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Poetry irradiates this often bleak story of Australian POWs building the Burma Death Railway during the Second World War Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, presenting beauty much less twins and love as counterpoints to gory descriptions of suffering and inhumanitythere's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701189053</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bilal TanweerKay Chronister|title=The Scatter Here is Too GreatDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=When the bomb exploded at the Karachi railway station causing intended death and mayhemWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an aging reactionary poet, his middle-aged sonalmost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a childworld devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a writer and a woman who relates more way for humans to stories than reality, are in the midst of itcathartically experience their most existential fears. Each experiences the blast as differently as their experiences of life are from each other but each ''willDesert Creatures'' be affectedby Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224099116</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Emily MackieEric LaRocca|title=In Search of SolaceThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=3.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Jacob Little Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is many things used as a way to many people reflect our darkest emotions and how we as he goes through life, reinventing his personae humans react and nameprocess them. Who exactly is he? Perhaps heMost horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad's unsure but the thing he's certain of , whether that is his love for a young woman he lived with for 2 years. It took her leaving home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and , by the end of the next decade apart for him to realise he loves her but now he wants to make up for lost timestory, beatable. She said her name was Solace so now heEric LaRocca's (all together now) ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in search the horrors of Solaceillness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340992522</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Sixteenth of JuneMadelaine Lucas|authortitle=Maya LangThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=On June 16th''Love, 1904I'd read, James Joyce was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had his first date with his future wife, Nora Barnacle – an occasion he commemorated by choosing it as the one-day setting always longed for his ''magnum opus'', gravity''Ulysses''; main character Leopold Bloom gives his name to the annual Joyce celebration that takes place around the world on June 16th.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1476745749</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=FireflyMichael Grothaus|authortitle=Janette JenkinsBeautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I read ''Firefly'' wanting But fearing something and having it come to be charmedpass are two different things. Sat at home, wishing And I was in Jamaica'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, idly humming or we can take steps to change it.'Mad Dogs and Englishmen'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099575043</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Karin AltenbergJennifer Saint|title=Breaking LightAtalanta|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Gabriel Askew retires to the village ''I was as worthy as any one of Mortfordthem. I would get on board that ship, the I vowed. I would take my place , not just in which he grew up and from where childhood ghosts haunt him to this daythe name of the goddess. It’s a conscious decision: Gabe, ostracised as a child due to his hair lipIt was for the sake of my name, returns to face these demons that have controlled his life and forced him to do the unthinkable but now he wants peace… if it's not too late.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780877153</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Beautiful FoolsAmanthi Harris|authortitle=R Clifton SpargoBeautiful Place|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Famous writers' wives have had something Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a literary revival in recent place she spent her formative years. Paula McLain's ''The Paris Wife'' and Naomi Wood's ''Mrs Hemingway'' imagine It is not a place she was born into, but the lives one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the various Hemingway womenVilla, how it became her home, while the vogue for flappers and [[The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald|The Great Gatsby]] has led to a spate of books about Zelda Fitzgerald. Fans of the Roaring Twenties machinations that have been spoiled for choice, what with [[Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler]], flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''Call Me Zeldascore'' by Erika Robuck, for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma''Guests on Earth'' by Lee Smiths present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1468308807</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roopa Farooki178563335X|title=The Good ChildrenSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=The Saddeq family are an example of success for their friends When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and neighbours in Lahorewondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Mr Saddeq is a doctor with his own practiceHer husband, Christopher, sons Sully collects six-year-old Hannah and Jakie are studying medicine in the US and UK respectively and daughters Mae and Lana have made good marriage matchesher elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. However the four Thelma'goods daughter-in-law won' children would view their success differentlyt let her see her grandson. Each reacts differently Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the futures that their caring father parish - and calculating mother have mapped out for them and plough their own furrows as far as theyshe're permitted but s in awe of the gravitational pull of home remains a constant through their lives and alsovicar, to some extentGail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the generation that followsbeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755383427</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dinaw Mengestu 1398515388|title=All Our DaysThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Isaac is a refugee from Ethiopia who finds a home First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in Uganda. At the university he's taken under ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the wing of a political activist also called Isaacnuclear meltdown. The 1970s is a dangerous time to be in Uganda as their world is about to exploderesult was complete and utter devastation. Years later Isaac the Ethiopian finds himself in America The deaths were uncountable, and lives under the care loss of social worker Helenlivelihoods was widespread. Slowly they form a less than professional relationship and Helen realises The fact that what little she knows many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of him may not be priorities but - six months after the truthtsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. Gradually his past is revealed as He wasn't a dog person but the guilt convenience store owner's comment that he carries comes would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the surfacedog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444793772</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=Never Any End to ParisPapa on the Moon|author=Enrique Vila-MatasMarco North|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There is never any end to Paris. The sentence pops up, hypnotic, through most of the book. At times ironic, thoughtful or questioning, it is a quote from Hemingway’s novel, ''A Moveable Feast'', in which Some frogs had gotten into the American author looked back at his days in Paris, where he was ‘very poor and very happywell.’ The narrator of ''Never Any End to Paris'' tells us that when he lived in Paris, he was ‘very poor and very unhappy.’|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846558042</amazonuk>}}
''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he filled them.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Frances and BernardDaisy Hildyard|authortitle=Carlene BauerEmergency|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=ThereThe summary of this book doesn's something very special about an epistolary novel. The format might seem unnatural t come close to readers in this day of abbreviated text messages and e-mails, but the conceit of a written exchange allows for fully developed first-person voices and a confessional tone. Provided the author can bypass the subtle difficulties of plot-building, letters are also a handy indicator of explaining what is done with the passage of time, and ably convey period vocabularypremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099578603</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Adrian HarveySally Oliver |title=Being SomeoneThe 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=The relationship between Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a mahout and his elephant delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is close: some have said that itno understatement – but 'a delight's rather like is perhaps using the expression in a marriageway I'm not familiar with. On I have to confess my ignorance of the surface it seems almost idyllic with an obvious affection between man and beast Spanish- "that their spirits were water of the same pool", but all is not quite as it seemslanguage literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. Iravatha was From the magnificent elephant who, year little I have read (intranslation, year out, led the MaharajahI don's parade only this year t read Spanish) there was does seem to be a dreadful accident and Annayya, his mahout, slipped beneath tendency towards the fantastical – the elephant's foot - and was killed. They'd been together for more than half a century and beautiful, intelligent Iravatha knew what this meantmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1909273090</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=TaraShea NesbitJennifer Saint|title=The Wives of Los AlamosElektra|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=1943: In 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the US a group story of men, three women and children are uprooted from their homes with hardly any notice and after being sworn to total secrecy. Their destination is a hastily knocked up, unfinished small town who live in the New Mexico desert; a place where muddy water drips from the taps and their lives are turned upside down for nearly 3 yearsheavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. This isn't mass abduction by a malevolent power but the US government's plan to end WWII. The men (Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and some of the women) Elektra are scientists, all bit players in the place is Los Alamos, the site story of the project Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that will result in Robert Oppenheimer stating ''Now, I am become Death, often the destroyer of worlds." His story has been well documented in silent women have the past; now the voices belong to most compelling stories and the Los Alamos Wivesmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408845997</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=8409290103|title=OrfeoIf Only|author=Richard PowersMatthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='No Twenty-one thinks twice about the quiet, older bohemian in the American Craftsman at 806 South Linden…people take up all kinds of hobbies in retirement.' Seventy-year-old Peter Els is an outMalcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-of-work composer in Pennsylvania. He teaches music appreciation at a senior centrebroker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, but much of his spare time is devoted to chemistry experiments. As a college student he agonised over ensure that the choice between chemistry and music, in fact, and these days he wonders if he young man got it wrong. His avant-garde compositions, such as a three-hour opera based on medieval German history, were infrequent board the boat and never very well receivedthereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. Should he have gone into biochemistry after all? Thus, thanks to Patrick sent the money regularly and a few thousand dollars' worth correspondence - of semisorts -professional equipment purchased off sprang up between the Internettwo although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, Els is now engaged it was that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a new kind of composition – with bacterial DNA taking danger to his wife and other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the place of musical notesyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782391614</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ron ButlinAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Ghost MoonRed is My Heart|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Maggie sits [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in an elderly persons' care home tgryig to exist through the ever tightening grip of dementiamy house. Her sonAnd so was this one, Tom, visits trying to jog her memory but she doesn't even recognise him. To Maggie, Tom is 'Michael' a name although I could have spelled that means nothing to a son getting more desperate to break through to his mother once again. However there accurately – this one was once a Michael, in a life that bubbles with secrets that even Tom doesn't know; for onceand is, black and white and red. Yes, long agohe has an artistic collaborator on this piece, Maggie was youngand I think it's possible to say not one page lacks the influence of some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907773770</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B098FFFBH9|title=The One I WasSnowcub|author=Eliza GrahamFulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In 1939, before the outbreak of the Second World War, a boy arrived at Harwich docks. He was a Kindertransport refugee fleeing the antiFourteen-year-Semitism in Nazi Germany. Benjamin Goldman would change his name to Benny Gault when his idea that the war wouldnold Rachel is her school't happen s animal rights project leader and she and he could go home her friend are producing a competition entry to Germany came to nothing, but highlight the way in which human beings exploit the meantime he was adopted by Lord and Lady Dorneranimal world. Six boys were to live She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at their country home - Fairfleet - Imperial College, London, mother Kate and be educated by a private tutorher twin, Nick. On Kate runs the face of it Bennyfamily business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's luck could not have worked out better, but he was hiding a secretmain (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910229016</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Indecent ActsYancey Williams|authortitle=Nick BrooksCrosshairs of the Devil|rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet Grace. She's Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in her fortiesyears and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living with a hit-andor imprisoned, from Eddie's point of view -miss family in a Glasgow council flat, and in room 315 of the middle Garden of a whole host of issues. She has issues about her parentsEden nursing home, and their moving on or death; she has issues about her sister who might or might not have had with only 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 insteadtrusty nursing aide, and son VincentJenkins, who will like as not create an issue by joining the army and moving on himselffor palatable company. Grace also has issues with the fact that she Nothing is nearly as blind as a bat, and can neither read nor write. She's started the novel where she shouldn't be – at home going to keep Eddie from his stock-in Glasgow-trade of writing though, strugglingso here, as she was due to fly to meet her sister at lastfor his readers, yet packed her glasses in the case that must be the other end, and completely missed her flightare his wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908754451</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0008421714|title=A Well-Tempered HeartMrs March|author=Jan-Philipp SendkerVirginia Feito|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ten years The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on from the previous episode, Julia Win, successful corporate lawyer specialising in intellectual property rights is exhausted, unhappy and alonelast page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Somewhat distant in all senses of Every day Mrs March went to the wordlocal patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, if not exactly estrangedPatricia asked, from her mother and brotheras she was wrapping the bread, she has recently left ''but isn't this the first time he's based a relationship character on you?'' She mentioned that should have worked but just didnJohanna, the principal character had 't and her only real connection mannerisms''. Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is with her artist friend Amy Leethe whore of Nantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184697285X</amazonuk>''
}}