132,602
edits
Changes
From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to searchno edit summary
[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Edwidge DanticatMatthew Tree|title=Claire of the Sea LightWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Claire Limye Lamne (Claire Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of the Sea Light) is born in the fishing village his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of Ville Rose, Haiti as her mother diesself confidence. Her father NoziasSo Tim applied himself to his studies, a poor fisherman, spends cultivated his life trying to make a better life for abilities rather than his baby to such an extent that he eventually encourages a local fabric seller to take Claire. This happens on the night of Claire's 7th birthday; the night that little Claire goes missing before the fabric seller can take herdaydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782068511</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0C47LV1PC
|title=Fragility
|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mary CostelloMosby Woods|title=Academy StreetA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It is 1944. Tess LohanThe West isn's mother has just died at age 40, of tuberculosist the dominant force it once was. Seven-year-old Tess Nobody in the West is one quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of six children in a rural Irish familyaction. Governments are flailing. They live at EasterfieldA war here, a centuries-old manor housepush for climate action there. A teacher later tells Tess the history of her home: built feeling that nobody is in 1678actual charge. Imagine then, it there was a famine hospital man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in the 1840sthis asset; there are numerous corpses buried on the landa man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. He hints there may That man would be many ghosts on the propertyvaluable, but right? Perhaps the only one that haunts Tess is her dead mother. 'Memories and traces of her mother must linger all over the house – most valuable asset in rooms and halls and landingshistory. The dent of her feet on a rug. On a cupImagine then, the mark of her handthat this man loses this ability.'What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782114181</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Here The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the Young Menhouse on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it'' surges forwards stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, oozing edginessstruggles to grow his vegetables, from to complete the very first sentencedelivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. Is that a bad thing? Probably not They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. It just means People don't believe that readers may at times slip out of the storythey're related, feel themselves taking a step back much less twins and admiring the spare coolness of the novel before easing back into the narrativethere's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408863731</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Kay Chronister
|title= Desert Creatures
|rating= 4
|genre= Dystopian Fiction
|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by 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.
|isbn=1803364998
}}
{{frontpage
|isbn=1803363002
|author= Eric LaRocca
|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There
|rating= 5
|genre= Horror
|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 ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Madelaine Lucas
|title=Thirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
}}
{{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.''
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Jennifer Saint
|title=Atalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the name of the goddess. It was for the sake of my name, too. Atalanta''
Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Favel ParrettAmanthi Harris|title=When the Night ComesBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Little Isla Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has moved returned to Hobart, Tasmania from the Australian mainland with Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her mother and younger brotherhome country. Bo This is a chef on the Nella Dan, a Danish ship supplying the Antarctic expeditionsplace she spent her formative years. Their meeting It is just not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her lifeever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's little moments present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that carry a greater effect than anyone realises happens at the time, whether for the better or the worstVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848548540</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=By Night The Mountain BurnsSea Defences|author=Juan Tomas Avila LaurelHilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Sometimes When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a novel will startle because it tackles trainee vicar, sitting in on a topic totally unknown PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to us or tells us of lives previously unpick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-imaginedlaw won't let her see her grandson. This is the case with By Night Holthorpe, on the Mountain Burns. HoweverNorfolk coast, what is most remarkable about Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel’s novel is how easy it a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to slip into develop a real bond with the story parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a child growing up walk on an isolated island in Equatorial Guinea. We are not reading about mysterious 'others'the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. We’re reading about people like ourselves, who live in a different place which has its own constraints – namely poverty and isolation And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276401</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=Asunder1398515388|authortitle=Chloe Aridjis|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Marie, the narrator of Chloe Aridjis'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 The Boy 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>}} {{newreviewDog|author=Neel Mukherjee|title=The Lives of OthersSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary= '''SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014'''Many generations First of all, it was the Ghosh family live together earthquake, deep in a single house the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in 1960's Calcuttaturn, albeit a very big single housecaused the nuclear meltdown. Life may be materially comfortable but not easyThe result was complete and utter devastation. Jealousy, in-fightingThe deaths were uncountable, the struggle to keep the family business going (and, for the younger family members, loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the struggle to lead list of priorities but - six months after the life they'd like) causes more than the odd sleepless night. Son Supratik has succeeded in choosing tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a different path thoughconvenience store. Hewasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's tired of the endless consumption and acquisition and leaves home comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to follow open his Marxist beliefs, exchanging family living for discomfort car door and dangerTamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186291</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=Problems with People0989715337|author=David Guterson|rating=4.5|genretitle=Short Stories|summary=''Problems with People'' is a meandering exploration of Papa on the relationships, big and small, that we form across a lifetime. Ranging from that of parent and child to that between landlord and tenant, Guterson’s observation of the complexities and nuances involved in how we navigate these personal links is extremely sharp and true to life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408859963</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Clara's DaughterMoon|author=Meike ZiervogelMarco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Clara’s DaughterSome frogs had gotten into the well.'' '', Walter stood waist-deep in the short space fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of 144 pagestheir eggs wove around him, paints sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the portrait dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of the relationships threatening to destroy a family unitbuckets as he filled them. The intensity is conveyed with sharp stabs from Ziervogel’s spare sentences.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773797</amazonuk>}}''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=WreakingDaisy Hildyard|authortitle=James ScudamoreEmergency
|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, it would saturated with cool tones. It’s an easy novel to visualise: Scudamore’s spare, elegant style creates an almost palpable atmosphere.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009952385X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=J|author=Howard Jacobson|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|The 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 Jacobsonthis book doesn's trademark elements – odd names, humorous metaphors, and Semitic references – but felt t come close to me like a strange departure after [[The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson|The Finkler Question]] and ''Zoo Time''explaining what is done with the premise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224102052</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=David MitchellSally Oliver |title=The Bone ClocksWeight 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=Holly Sykes 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' is 15 and has found true love with an older man perhaps using the expression in his twenties - until she finds him in bed a way I'm not familiar with her best mate. Upset and disorientated, she runs away from home. This may enable her I have to escape from confess my ignorance of the unfaithful Vinny and her overbearing family but not the weirdnessSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. She's not From the only one though: Hugo the studentlittle I have read (in translation, conman and lothario thought he was only doing someone I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a good turn when tendency towards 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 fantastical – the Anchorites may saymystical realism. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340921609</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Karen Joy FowlerJennifer Saint|title=We Are All Completely Beside OurselvesElektra
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Rosemary's childhood is blighted Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the disappearance heavily male dominated world of her sister, FernAncient Greece. Rosemary went to stay with her grandparents andCassandra, on her return Fern was no longer there. Curiously enoughClytemnestra, her mother and father don't speak Elektra are all bit players in the story of itthe Trojan War. The knock on effect was Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often 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, silent women have the damage that being a daughter of a psychologist has wrought most compelling stories and the revealed secrets that will finally make sense of it allmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184668966X</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreview|title=The City Son|author=Samrat Upadhyay|rating=3.5Frontpage|genreisbn=Literary Fiction8409290103|summary=Didi lives in a remote Nepali village. Her husband, always referred to by what is presumably a title rather than a name ''the Masterji'' teaches in the city. He rarely comes home to see his wife and sons.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1616953810</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewIf Only|author=Alison Moore|title=He WantsMatthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Lewis Sullivan is close to retirementTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, but elderly beyond cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his years accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the young man got on board the boat and widowedthereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. Edie's death seems to have had practical implications Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - he's not getting sprang up between the food he used two although we hear more about what Lowry has to enjoy - but beyond that it's difficult to see quite what they had in common other say than the libraryPatrick. He used it and she worked there - but they It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't even enjoy the same books. Lewis is an RE teacher at the same school where care for his fatherson, Lawrence, used to teach - when they were both there at the same time it often confused the paperwork. Lewis is beginning was that he didn't care to wonder if have him in this country where he chose the wrong career, if he lives in the wrong place. He used to might be able a danger to see the house he grew up in from the bedroom window before it was demolished his wife and replaced by a supermarket carpark, but he's always dreamed of living by the seaother children. His adult daughter, Ruth visits him every day and brings him soup. He doesn't want soupThe alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the young man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773819</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Narrow Road to the Deep NorthAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|authortitle=Richard FlanaganRed is My Heart|rating=43.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''The Narrow Road to the Deep North'' [[: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 the title of both Flanagan's Booker Prize-longlisted sixth novel , black and white and a book by seventeenth-century Japanese poet Bashored. Poetry irradiates Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this often bleak story of Australian POWs building the Burma Death Railway during the Second World Warpiece, presenting beauty and love as counterpoints I think it's possible to gory descriptions say not one page lacks the influence of suffering and inhumanitysome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701189053</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B098FFFBH9|title=The Country of Ice Cream StarSnowcub|author=Sandra NewmanGraham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school'My name be Ice Cream Fifteen Star s animal rights project leader and this be she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the tale of how I bring way in which human beings exploit the cure to all the Nighted States, save every poory children, short for lifeanimal world. Is how She gets a city die for selfish love, and rise great deal of support from this same smallness. Be how the new America beginher family: father Pip Harrison, in wars against all hope - a country with no power in a world that hate its life. So been the faith I sworn, and it ain't evils in no world nor cruelties in no red hell can change the vally heart of Ice Cream Star.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186429</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Bilal Tanweer|title=The Scatter Here is Too Great|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=When the bomb exploded lecturer at the Karachi railway station causing intended death and mayhem, an aging reactionary poetImperial College, his middle-aged sonLondon, a child, a writer mother Kate and a woman who relates more to stories than realityher twin, are in the midst of itNick. Each experiences Kate runs the blast as differently as their experiences of life are from each other but each ''will'' be affected.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224099116</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Emily Mackie|title=In Search of Solace|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Jacob Little is many things to many people as he goes through lifefamily business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, reinventing his personae and name. Who exactly which is he? Perhaps he's unsure but the thing hewhere we's certain of is his love for a young woman he lived 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 hell meet Rachel's main (all together nowif unsuspected) in search source of Solaceinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340992522</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview|title=The Sixteenth of JuneFrontpage|author=Maya LangYancey Williams|ratingtitle=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=On June 16th, 1904, James Joyce had his first date with his future wife, Nora Barnacle – an occasion he commemorated by choosing it as the one-day setting for his ''magnum opus'', ''Ulysses''; main character Leopold Bloom gives his name to Crosshairs of the annual Joyce celebration that takes place around the world on June 16th.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1476745749</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=After Before|author=Jemma WayneDevil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Emily ''easier for English people Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to pronounce than Emilienne'his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's point of view - in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, lives in with only a council tower blocktrusty nursing aide, barely furnishedJenkins, but still for palatable company. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock- for her in- a place trade of safetywriting though, a place of anonymityso here, which is the best way for her to exist. She cleans commercial premises and relishes the his readers, are his wanderings through his life's work. She makes her small earnings go as far as possible, shopping locally, living frugally.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1909878847</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreview|title=Firefly|author=Janette Jenkins|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I read ''Firefly'' wanting to be charmed. Sat at home, wishing I was in Jamaica, idly humming 'Mad Dogs and Englishmen'.Frontpage|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099575043</amazonuk>}} {{newreview0008421714|title=The Hundred-Year HouseMrs March|author=Rebecca MakkaiVirginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The first thing youproblem began just after the publication of George March'll notice about this s most successful novel is 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 local patisserie to buy olive bread but on thatparticular morning, Patricia asked, like a crazy houseas she was wrapping the bread, it's upside-down. That is: it opens in 1999, that near-contemporary storyline taking up about half the text; follows it with sections set in 1955 and 1929; and finishes with a 'prologuebut isn' set in 1900. The second thing to jump out is that t this is the first time he's based a ghost story – or is itcharacter on you? The first line is both declaration and qualification: 'For a ghost story' She mentioned that Johanna, the tale of Violet Saville Devohr was vague and underwhelming.principal character had 'her mannerisms''|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434022977</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Karin Altenberg|title=Breaking Light|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Gabriel Askew retires to the village of Mortford, the place in which he grew up and from where childhood ghosts haunt him to this day. It’s a conscious decision: GabePerhaps this would not have mattered, ostracised as a child due to his hair lip, returns to face these demons except for the fact that have controlled his life and forced him to do Johanna is the unthinkable but now he wants peace… if itwhore of Nantes - ''s not too latea weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780877153</amazonuk>''
}}
