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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreview|title=AsunderFrontpage|author=Chloe AridjisMatthew Tree|ratingtitle=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Marie, the narrator of Chloe AridjisWe's second novel, ''Asunder'', is a guard at the National Gallery in London. It is a simple, subdued life she leads in this 'tiny kingdom', but it suits her: 'I had always sought quiet in the world and there were few movements quieter, I realised, than paint cracking over time.' Most would find her work tedious, but over her nine years at the museum she has adjusted to the routine; 'unlike some of the new guards, I do not suffer from boredom or listlessness.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099572753</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Neel Mukherjee|title=The Lives of Othersll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= '''SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014'''Many generations of the Ghosh family live together in a single house in 1960's Calcutta, albeit a very big single house. Life may be materially comfortable but not easy. Jealousy, in-fighting, the struggle to keep the family business going (and, for the younger family members, the struggle to lead the life they'd like) causes Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than the odd sleepless night. Son Supratik has succeeded in choosing a to be different path though. He's tired of the endless consumption and acquisition and leaves home to follow from his Marxist beliefsfather, exchanging family living for discomfort a drunk and danger.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186291</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Problems with People|author=David Guterson|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=''Problems with People'' is a meandering exploration chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of the relationships, big his artistic passions all failed miserably and small, that we form across a lifetimewho had endless crises of self confidence. Ranging from that of parent and child So Tim applied himself to that between landlord and tenanthis studies, Guterson’s observation of the complexities cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and nuances involved in how we navigate these personal links is extremely sharp and true to lifeset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408859963</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B0C47LV1PC|title=Clara's DaughterFragility|author=Meike ZiervogelMosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Can you make a ''Clara’s DaughterYo birthing person''joke? And if you could, in is the question should you make it? Or is the short space of 144 pagesquestion if you did, paints would it land? The catch is that the portrait of the relationships threatening to destroy a family unitanswer for both could well be.... The intensity is conveyed with sharp stabs from Ziervogel’s spare sentencesno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773797</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=WreakingMosby Woods|authortitle=James ScudamoreA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The West isn'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 derelict mental hospitalwar here, gloomy railway archesa push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the bleak countryside strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the English coast. It all comes at us most valuable asset in grey flasheshistory. If ''Wreaking'' was a filmImagine then, it that this man loses this ability. What would saturated with cool tones. It’s an easy novel governments do to visualise: Scudamore’s spare, elegant style creates an almost palpable atmosphere.get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009952385X</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0571379559|title=JThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Howard JacobsonFiona Williams|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''JThe House of Broken Bricks''is the story of four people. Tess Hembry' marks an unusual turn for Howard Jacobsons roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Though Insubstantial as it seems at times like a skewed folk talemight look, it also bears 's stood the subtle signs passage of a future dystopiatime, storms and floods. It has some of Jacobson's trademark elements – odd names Her husband, Richard, humorous metaphorsstruggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and Semitic references – but felt to me like a strange departure bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after [[The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson|The Finkler Question]] and his father. People don't believe that they'Zoo Timere related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224102052</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Karen Joy FowlerKay Chronister|title=We Are All Completely Beside OurselvesDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Rosemary's childhood With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is blighted by the disappearance a robotic takeover, a world devoid of her sisterwater or a nuclear holocaust, Fern. Rosemary went this genre is a way for humans to stay with her grandparents and, on her return Fern was no longer therecathartically experience their most existential fears. Curiously enough, her mother and father don't speak 'Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of it. The knock on effect was the angry departure post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many 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 fears that being exist for humanity today. It is a daughter of a psychologist has wrought and the revealed secrets shocking novel that will finally make sense of it allstill manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184668966X</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|titleisbn=The City Son1803363002|author=Samrat UpadhyayEric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=3.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Didi lives in Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a remote Nepali villageway to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Her husbandMost horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', always referred to by what whether that is presumably a title rather than home invader, a monster or a name ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''the MasterjiThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' teaches is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the cityhorrors of illness, grief and humiliation. He rarely comes home Horrors that linger and are harder to see his wife and sonsdefeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1616953810</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alison MooreMadelaine Lucas|title=He WantsThirst for Salt|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Lewis Sullivan is close to retirement, but elderly beyond his years and widowed. Edie's death seems to have had practical implications - he's not getting the food he used to enjoy - but beyond that itLove, I's difficult to see quite what they had in common other than the library. He used it and she worked there - but they didn't even enjoy the same books. Lewis is an RE teacher at the same school where his fatherd read, Lawrence, used to teach - when they were both there at the same time it often confused the paperwork. Lewis is beginning to wonder if he chose the wrong career, if he lives in the wrong place. He used was supposed to be able to see the house he grew up in from the bedroom window before it was demolished a light and replaced by a supermarket carparkweightless feeling, but heI had always longed for gravity''s always dreamed of living by the sea. His adult daughter, Ruth visits him every day and brings him soup.
}}
{{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.''
''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|isbn=191458564X}}{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Narrow Road to the Deep NorthJennifer Saint|authortitle=Richard FlanaganAtalanta|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The Narrow Road to the Deep North'' is the title I was as worthy as any one of both Flanagan's Booker Prize-longlisted sixth novel and a book by seventeenth-century Japanese poet Bashothem. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. Poetry irradiates this often bleak story I would take my place, not just in the name of Australian POWs building the Burma Death Railway during goddess. It was for the Second World Warsake of my name, presenting beauty and love as counterpoints to gory descriptions of suffering and inhumanitytoo.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701189053</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Emily MackieAmanthi Harris|title=In Search of SolaceBeautiful Place|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jacob Little is many things Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to many people as he goes through life, reinventing his personae and namethe Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. Who exactly This is he? a place she spent her formative years. Perhaps he's unsure It is not a place she was born into, but the thing he's certain one she thinks of is his love for a young woman he lived with for 2 yearsas home. It took How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her leaving home, and the next decade apart for him to realise he loves machinations that have flowed through her but now he wants to make up life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for lost timethis gentle and yet subtly violent novel. She said her name was Solace so now he Padma's (all together now) in search present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of Solacea film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340992522</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=The Sixteenth of JuneSea Defences|author=Maya LangHilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=On June 16thWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, 1904sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, James Joyce had his first date with his future wifeChristopher, Nora Barnacle – an occasion he commemorated by choosing it as the onecollects six-year-day setting for his old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won'magnum opus't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she''Ulysses''; main character Leopold Bloom gives his name to s been doing the annual Joyce celebration job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that takes place around a walk on the world on June 16thbeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1476745749</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=After BeforeThe Boy and the Dog|author=Jemma WayneSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Emily ''easier for English people to pronounce than Emilienne''First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, lives in a council tower blockturn, barely furnishedcaused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but still - for her six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a place of safety, dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a place of anonymity, which is dog person but the best way for her convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to exist. She cleans commercial premises open his car door and relishes Tamon the workdog jumped in. She makes her small earnings go as far as possible, shopping locally, living frugally.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1909878847</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=FireflyPapa on the Moon|author=Janette JenkinsMarco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I read ''Firefly'' wanting to be charmedSome frogs had gotten into the well. Sat at home, wishing I was in Jamaica, idly humming 'Mad Dogs and Englishmen'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099575043</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Lost LuggageDaisy Hildyard|authortitle=Jordi PuntiEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There are lots The summary of things you wonder when you grow up with just one parent, but whether you also have a bunch of half-siblings, all this book doesn't come close to explaining what is done with the same name as you, all dotted around the continent, is not normally high on the list. 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 meetpremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780722133</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Sally Oliver |title=Wild WoodThe 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=Jan Needle and Willie RushtonNatalia Garcia Freire|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Bank clerk Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 classic ''Wind in the Willows'', populated with lovable anthropomorphic charactersEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, started life as a bed time story for his son Alistairdelight. He fused these adventurous tales I will agree with later descriptive epistles for the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a holidaying Alistair to create a tale which was, as Grahame described delight' is perhaps using the expression in a letter way I'm not familiar with. I have to Teddy Roosevelt, ''an expression confess my ignorance of the very simplest joys of life as lived by the simplest beings''Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. Indeed the four iconic protagonists - From the outrageous, irrepressible toad, the loyal and humble mole, the brave and paternalistic badger and the resourceful and determined rat little I have a fond place read (in many childhood memories but are they as valiant as they translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem? What if they were suddenly recast as to be a tendency towards the villains of fantastical – the piece?mystical realism. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1899262210</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Beautiful FoolsJennifer Saint|authortitle=R Clifton SpargoElektra
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Famous writers' wives have had something of a literary revival in recent years. Paula McLainElektra's ''The Paris Wife'' and Naomi Wood's ''Mrs Hemingway'' imagine by Jennifer Saint tells the lives story of the various Hemingway three women, while who live in the vogue for flappers and [[The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald|The Great Gatsby]] has led to a spate heavily male dominated world of books about Zelda FitzgeraldAncient Greece. Fans of the Roaring Twenties have been spoiled for choiceCassandra, what with [[Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler]], ''Call Me Zelda'' by Erika Robuck, and ''Guests on Earth'' by Lee Smith.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1468308807</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Roopa Farooki|title=The Good Children|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=The Saddeq family are an example of success for their friends and neighbours in Lahore. Mr Saddeq is a doctor with his own practiceClytemnestra, sons Sully and Jakie Elektra are studying medicine all bit players in the US and UK respectively and daughters Mae and Lana have made good marriage matches. However story of the four 'good' children would view their success differentlyTrojan War. Each reacts differently to Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the futures that their caring father and calculating mother silent women have mapped out for them and plough their own furrows as far as they're permitted but the gravitational pull of home remains a constant through their lives most compelling stories and also, to some extent, for the generation that followsmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755383427</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dinaw Mengestu 8409290103|title=All Our DaysIf Only|author=Matthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Isaac is a refugee from Ethiopia who finds a home in Uganda. At 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 university he's taken under young man got on board the wing of boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a political activist also called Isaacmonthly allowance. The 1970s is Patrick sent the money regularly and a dangerous time to be in Uganda as their world is correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to explodesay than Patrick. Years later Isaac the Ethiopian finds himself in America and lives under the It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care of social worker Helen. Slowly they form a less than professional relationship and Helen realises for his son, it was that what little she knows of he didn't care to have him may not in this country where he might be the trutha danger to his wife and other children. Gradually his past is revealed as the guilt he carries comes The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the surfaceyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444793772</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Never Any End to ParisAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|authortitle=Enrique Vila-MatasRed is My Heart|rating=43.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=There is never any end to Paris[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in my house. The sentence pops upAnd so was this one, hypnoticalthough I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, through most of the bookand is, black and white and red. At times ironicYes, thoughtful or questioninghe has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and I think it is a quote from Hemingway’s novel, ''A Moveable Feast'', in which s possible to say not one page lacks the American author looked back at his days in Paris, where he was ‘very poor and very happy.’ The narrator influence of ''Never Any End to Paris'' tells us that when he lived in Paris, he was ‘very poor and very unhappysome striking visual ideas.’|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846558042</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Johanna LaneB098FFFBH9|title=Black LakeSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=JohnFourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's family have owned Dulagh (Black Lake), animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the big mansion way in which human beings exploit the Irish countryside, for generationsanimal world. Unfortunately now no longer able to afford its upkeepShe gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, JohnLondon, his wife Marianne and children mother Kate and Philipher twin, move into a cottage on the estate insteadNick. They still own Kate runs the house but itfamily business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll be run by the government with revenue from opening it to the public. At the time it seems the perfect solution, but the future has plans other than perfectionmeet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755396294</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Frances and BernardYancey Williams|authortitle=Carlene BauerCrosshairs of the Devil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=ThereAward-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's something very special about an epistolary novel. The format might seem unnatural to readers point of view - in this day room 315 of abbreviated text messages and e-mails, but the conceit Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a written exchange allows trusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for fully developed firstpalatable company. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in-person voices and a confessional tone. Provided the author can bypass the subtle difficulties trade of plot-buildingwriting though, so here, for his readers, letters are also a handy indicator of the passage of time, and ably convey period vocabularyhis wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099578603</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Adrian Harvey0008421714|title=Being SomeoneMrs March|author=Virginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The relationship between a mahout and his elephant is close: some have said that itproblem began just after the publication of George March's rather like a marriagemost successful novel to date. On Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the surface last page) seemed to either be reading it seems almost idyllic with an obvious affection between man and beast - "or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that their spirits were water of the same pool"particular morning, Patricia asked, but all is not quite as it seems. Iravatha she was wrapping the magnificent elephant whobread, year in, year out, led ''but isn't this the Maharajahfirst time he's parade only this year there was based a dreadful accident and Annayya, his mahout, slipped beneath the elephantcharacter on you?'s foot - and was killed. They'd been together for more than half a century and beautiful, intelligent Iravatha knew what this meant.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1909273090</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=TaraShea Nesbit|title=The Wives of Los Alamos|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=1943: In the US a group of men, 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 upShe mentioned that Johanna, unfinished small town in the New Mexico desert; a place where muddy water drips from the taps and their lives are turned upside down for nearly 3 years. This isnprincipal character had 'her mannerisms't mass abduction by a malevolent power but the US government's plan to end WWII. The men (and some of the women) are scientistsPerhaps this would not have mattered, except for the place fact that Johanna is Los Alamos, the site whore of the project that will result in Robert Oppenheimer stating Nantes - ''Nowa weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, I am become Deathunloved, the destroyer of worldsunloveable wretch." His story has been well documented in the past; now the voices belong to the Los Alamos Wives.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408845997</amazonuk>''
}}