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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove --> {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mary CostelloMatthew Tree|title=Academy StreetWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It is 1944. Tess Lohan's mother has just died at age 40Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of tuberculosis. Seven-year-old Tess is one of six children in a rural Irish family. They live being exceptional at Easterfield, a centuries-old manor house. A teacher later tells Tess the history of her home: built in 1678, it was a famine hospital in the 1840s; there are numerous corpses buried on the land. He hints there may be many ghosts on the property, but the only one that haunts Tess is her dead mother. 'Memories and traces any of her mother must linger his artistic passions all over the house – in rooms and halls failed miserably and landings. The dent who had endless crises of her feet on a rugself confidence. On a cupSo Tim applied himself to his studies, the mark of her handcultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782114181</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
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|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Can you make a ''Here are the Young MenYo birthing person'' surges forwardjoke? And if you could, oozing edginess, from is the very first sentence. Is that a bad thingquestion should you make it? Probably not. It just means that readers may at times slip out of Or is the storyquestion if you did, feel themselves taking a step back and admiring would it land? The catch is that the spare coolness of the novel before easing back into the narrativeanswer for both could well be.... no.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408863731</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Takashi HiraideMosby Woods|title=The Guest CatA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The Guest CatWest isn'' had me at t the coverdominant force it once was. The reflective green material makes the cat's eyes glow and glint eerily Nobody in the light. There West is something ethereal and otherworldly about quite sure how to mend this novella and or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is before I've even read in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a single wordman with precognition. This simple story about Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a Japanese couple and man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the cat most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that decides to adopt them has become an international best-seller and I was keen this man loses this ability. What would governments do to find out why.get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447279409</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Susan Hill0571379559|title=Black Sheep|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Mount of Zeal is a mining village, and no mistake. Three concentric semi-circular streets align across the side of a hill, like the rows of seats in an amphitheatre, with little thought at all allowed for the life above the crest of the hill, and a lot of effort and dreams focused on the coal mine at the village's core. The Howker family (and how evocative that name is, so akin to the noise of hawking coal dust from one's lungs), and Ted and Rose, the youngest of the clan, in particular, will face the destiny the environment they grow up in gives them – with only the merest glimmers of hope and the faintest of sparks to latch on to as regards a likeable future. But if that is a faint spark, then how safe is it so close to the tinderbox House of a coal mine?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009953956X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewBroken Bricks|author=Sue Peebles|title=Snake Road|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=No one listened when Peggy Kirkpatrick began talking about a baby called Eleanor - well, no one except her granddaughter Agatha. You see, Peggy is elderly and she has dementia. No one has heard of 'Eleanor'. Some days are better than others, but none are particularly good. Peggy's unpredictable and sometimes it is - quite literally - a fight to wash her and she'll either go outside in her nightdress or wear multiple skirts indoors. The burden is carried most of the time by her daughter, Mary, but it's Aggie who attends the dementia carers' group in her place and it was probably this that provoked her into listening more carefully to what her Gran was saying and trying to learn more about her history in the hope of keeping Peggy in the present.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099575841</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Favel Parrett|title=When the Night ComesFiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Little Isla has moved to Hobart, Tasmania from ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the Australian mainland with her mother and younger brotherstory of four people. Bo is a chef Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the Nella Danriverbank, a Danish ship supplying the Antarctic expeditionsbuilt of broken bricks. Their meeting is just one of lifeInsubstantial as it might look, it's little moments that carry a greater effect than anyone realises at stood the passage of time, whether for storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the better or delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the worstrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848548540</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=By Night The Mountain BurnsClaire North|authortitle=Juan Tomas Avila LaurelHouse of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Sometimes a novel will startle because it tackles a topic totally unknown to us or tells us of lives previously un-imagined. This is the case with By Night the Mountain Burns. However, what is most remarkable about Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel’s novel is how easy it is to slip into the story of a child growing up on an isolated island in Equatorial Guinea. We are not reading about mysterious 'others'. We’re reading about people like ourselves, who live in a different place which has its own constraints – namely poverty and isolation.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276401</amazonuk>}}What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Neel MukherjeeKay Chronister|title=The Lives of OthersDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary= '''SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014'''Many generations of the Ghosh family live together in With a single house in 1960's Calcuttaworld that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, albeit post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a very big single house. Life may be materially comfortable but not easy. Jealousyrobotic takeover, in-fighting, the struggle to keep the family business going (anda world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for the younger family members, the struggle humans to lead the life theycathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures''d like) causes more than by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the odd sleepless nightfears that exist for humanity today. Son Supratik has succeeded in choosing It is a different path though. He's tired of the endless consumption and acquisition and leaves home shocking novel that still manages to follow his Marxist beliefs, exchanging family living for discomfort and dangerfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701186291</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|titleisbn=Problems with People1803363002|author=David GutersonEric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesHorror|summary=Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Problems with PeopleBig Bad'' , whether that is a meandering exploration home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the relationships, big and smallstory, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that we form across . It is a lifetime. Ranging from that collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of parent illness, grief and child to humiliation. Horrors that between landlord linger and tenant, Guterson’s observation of the complexities and nuances involved in how we navigate these personal links is extremely sharp and true are harder to lifedefeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408859963</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Clara's DaughterMadelaine Lucas|authortitle=Meike ZiervogelThirst for Salt|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Clara’s DaughterLove, I'', in the short space of 144 pagesd read, paints the portrait of the relationships threatening was supposed to destroy be a family unit. The intensity is conveyed with sharp stabs from Ziervogel’s spare sentences.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773797</amazonuk>}}light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=WreakingMichael Grothaus|authortitle=James ScudamoreBeautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=A derelict mental hospital, gloomy railway arches, the bleak countryside of the English coast. It all comes at us in grey flashes. If ''Wreaking'' was a film, But fearing something and having it would saturated with cool tonescome to pass are two different things. It’s an easy novel And I'm willing to visualise: Scudamore’s sparebet most of what we fear will never happen, elegant style creates an almost palpable atmosphereor we can take steps to change it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009952385X</amazonuk>}}''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David MitchellJennifer Saint|title=The Bone ClocksAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Holly Sykes is 15 and has found true love with an older man in his twenties - until she finds him in bed with her best mate''I was as worthy as any one of them. Upset and disorientatedI would get on board that ship, she runs away from homeI vowed. This may enable her to escape from I would take my place, not just in the unfaithful Vinny and her overbearing family but not name of the weirdnessgoddess. She's not the only one though: Hugo It was for the studentsake of my name, conman and lothario thought he was only doing someone a good turn when the weirdness started for himtoo. There is a point to it though: eventually battle lines will be drawn and itAtalanta's anyone's guess as to who will win, despite what the Anchorites may say. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340921609</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alison MooreAmanthi Harris|title=He WantsBeautiful Place|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Lewis Sullivan is close to retirementPadma, a young Sri Lankan, but elderly beyond his years and widowed. Edie's death seems has returned to have had practical implications - he's not getting the food he used to enjoy - but beyond that it's difficult to see quite what they had in common other than Villa Hibiscus on the librarysouthern coast of her home country. He used it and This is a place she worked there - but they didn't even enjoy the same booksspent her formative years. Lewis It is an RE teacher at not a place she was born into, but the same school where his father, Lawrence, used one she thinks of as home. How she came to teach - when they were both there be at the same time Villa, how it often confused became her home, and the paperwork. Lewis is beginning to wonder if he chose machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the wrong career, if he lives in the wrong place''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. He used Padma's present fails to be able to see escape her past and much like the house he grew up in from the bedroom window before it was demolished and replaced by musical score of a supermarket carparkfilm, but he's always dreamed of living by that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the sea. His adult daughter, Ruth visits him every day and brings him soup. He doesn't want soupVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907773819</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=The Narrow Road to the Deep NorthSea Defences|author=Richard FlanaganHilary Taylor|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they'The Narrow Road re held when you need to pick the Deep Northchildren up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won' 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 title parish - and she's in awe of both Flanaganthe vicar, Gail, but then she's Booker Prize-longlisted sixth novel been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a book by seventeenthwalk on the beach would do them some good -century Japanese poet Bashoit was stormy but it was probably what they needed. Poetry irradiates this often bleak story of Australian POWs building the Burma Death Railway during the Second World War, presenting beauty and love as counterpoints to gory descriptions of suffering and inhumanity And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701189053</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Country of Ice Cream StarBoy and the Dog|author=Sandra NewmanSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary='My name be Ice Cream Fifteen Star and this be First of all, it was the tale of how I bring earthquake, deep in the cure to all ocean floor, which created the Nighted Statestsunami and this, save every poory childrenin turn, short for lifecaused the nuclear meltdown. Is how a city die for selfish love The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and rise the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from this same smallness. Be how their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the new America begin, in wars against all hope tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a country with no power in dog outside a world that hate its lifeconvenience store. So been He wasn't a dog person but the faith I sworn, convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and it ain't evils Tamon the dog jumped in no world nor cruelties in no red hell can change the vally heart of Ice Cream Star.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186429</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bilal Tanweer0989715337|title=The Scatter Here is Too GreatPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When ''Some frogs had gotten into the bomb exploded at well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the Karachi railway station causing intended death and mayhem, an aging reactionary poetfragrant water, naked except for his middle-aged sonbeaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, a child, a writer sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and a woman who relates more to stories than reality, are barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he filled them.'' How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the midst form of itinterconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a sixpence. Each experiences And author Marco North, who has the blast most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as differently as their experiences of life are from each other but each ''will'' be affectedhe means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224099116</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Emily MackieDaisy Hildyard|title=In Search of SolaceEmergency|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jacob Little is many things The summary of this book doesn't come close to many people as he goes through life, reinventing his personae and name. Who exactly explaining what is he? Perhaps he's unsure but the thing he's certain of is his love for a young woman he lived done with for 2 years. It took her leaving and the next decade apart for him to realise he loves her but now he wants to make up for lost time. She said her name was Solace so now he's (all together now) in search of Solacepremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340992522</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Sally Oliver |title=The Sixteenth Weight of JuneLoss |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=Maya LangNatalia Garcia Freire|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=On June 16thEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, 1904, James Joyce had his a delight. I will agree with the first date with his future wife, Nora Barnacle – an occasion he commemorated by choosing it as the one-day setting for his tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight'magnum opus'', ''Ulysses''; main character Leopold Bloom gives his name to is perhaps using the annual Joyce celebration that takes place around the world on June 16th.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1476745749</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=After Before|author=Jemma Wayne|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Emily ''easier for English people to pronounce than Emilienne'', lives expression in a council tower block, barely furnished, but still - for her - a place of safety, a place of anonymity, which is the best way for her to existI'm not familiar with. She cleans commercial premises and relishes I have to confess my ignorance of the workSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. She makes her small earnings go as far as possibleFrom the little I have read (in translation, shopping locally, living frugallyI don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1909878847</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=FireflyJennifer Saint|authortitle=Janette JenkinsElektra
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I read 'Elektra'Firefly'' wanting to be charmedby Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Sat at homeCassandra, wishing I was Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in Jamaica, idly humming 'Mad Dogs the story of the Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and Englishmen'the most extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099575043</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=8409290103|title=The Hundred-Year HouseIf Only|author=Rebecca MakkaiMatthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The first thing you'll notice about this novel is that, like a crazy houseTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, it's upsidecotton-down. That isbroker AO Lowry: it opens in 1999he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that near-contemporary storyline taking up about half the text; follows it with sections set in 1955 young man got on board the boat and 1929; thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. Patrick sent the money regularly and finishes with a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn'prologuet care for his son, it was that he didn' set t care to have him in 1900this country where he might be a danger to his wife and other children. The second thing alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to jump out is that this is a ghost story – or is it? The first line is both declaration and qualification: 'For a ghost story, get the tale of Violet Saville Devohr was vague and underwhelmingyoung man on his way.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434022977</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage|author=Antoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Red is My Heart|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in my house. And so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, and is, black and white and red. Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and I think it's possible to say not one page lacks the influence of some striking visual ideas.|isbn=1913547183}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Karin AltenbergB098FFFBH9|title=Breaking LightSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Gabriel Askew retires Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the village of Mortford, the place way in which he grew up and from where childhood ghosts haunt him to this dayhuman beings exploit the animal world. It’s She gets a conscious decisiongreat deal of support from her family: Gabefather Pip Harrison, ostracised as a child due to his hair liplecturer at Imperial College, London, returns to face these demons that have controlled his life mother Kate and forced him to do her twin, Nick. Kate runs the unthinkable but now he wants peace… if itfamily business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's not too latemain (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780877153</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Lost LuggageYancey Williams|authortitle=Jordi PuntiCrosshairs of the Devil|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There are lots of things you wonder when you grow up with just one parentAward-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, but whether you also have a bunch from Eddie's point of halfview -siblingsin room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, all with the same name as youonly a trusty nursing aide, all dotted around the continentJenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is not normally high on the list. Gabriel Delacruz has 4 boys by 4 different women going to keep Eddie from his stock-in 4 parts -trade of Europe. None of them know of the others’ existence but when Gabriel disappearswriting though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his incredulous life is uncovered and Christof, Christophe, Christopher and Cristofol meet's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780722133</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0008421714|title=Wild WoodMrs March|author=Jan Needle and Willie RushtonVirginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Bank clerk Kenneth Grahame’s 1908 classic The problem began just after the publication of George March''Wind in s most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the Willows''local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, populated with lovable anthropomorphic charactersPatricia asked, started life as a bed time story for his son Alistair. He fused these adventurous tales with later descriptive epistles for a holidaying Alistair to create a tale which she waswrapping the bread, as Grahame described in ''but isn't this the first time he's based a letter to Teddy Roosevelt, character on you?''an expression of She mentioned that Johanna, the very simplest joys of life as lived by the simplest beingsprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''. Indeed Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the four iconic protagonists fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - the outrageous''a weak, plain, detestable, irrepressible toadpathetic, the loyal and humble moleunloved, the brave and paternalistic badger and the resourceful and determined rat have a fond place in many childhood memories but are they as valiant as they seem? What if they were suddenly recast as the villains of the piece?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1899262210</amazonuk>unloveable wretch.''
}}