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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{Frontpage|author=Matthew Tree|title=We'll Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= 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 his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn= 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=Edith PearlmanMosby Woods|title=HoneydewA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=American short story writer [[:Category:Edith Pearlman|Edith Pearlman]] brings us 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 war here, a compilation of stories push for climate action there. A feeling that have only been seen separately nobody is in magazines over actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the yearsstrategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. This follows on from That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the huge success of ''Binocular Vision'' (most valuable asset in 2013)history. Imagine then, the short story collection that led this man loses this ability. What would governments do to Ms Pearlman being presented with the National Critics' Circle Award. get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444797018</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Schneider0571379559|title=Brother The House of SleepBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Brother The House of SleepBroken Bricks'' tells is the story of Elias Johannes Alderfour people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, a child born into a god forsaken village high but instead, she lives in the Austrian Vorarlberghouse on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. He came into Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the world as a silent childpassage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, while struggles to grow his mother was screaming vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the midwife wasnrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother't really paying attentions Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. It took a couple of loud intonations of the Te Deum from the neglectful nurse before he finally uttered a soundPeople 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>0715649205</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Edwidge DanticatKay Chronister|title=Claire of the Sea LightDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Claire Limye Lamne (Claire of the Sea Light) With a world that is born in the fishing village of Ville Rosebecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, Haiti as her mother diespost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Her father NoziasWhether it is a robotic takeover, a poor fishermanworld devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, spends his life trying to make this genre is a better life way for his baby humans to such an extent cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that he eventually encourages a local fabric seller to take Claire. This happens on the night aligns many of Claire's 7th birthday; the night fears that little Claire goes missing before the fabric seller can take herexist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782068511</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Rebecca LeeEric LaRocca|title=Bobcat and Other StoriesThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=3.5|genre=Short StoriesHorror|summary=The first story in 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 ''BobcatBig Bad'' , whether that is the title storya home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and this alone is worth , by the price end of admission. Plaster it with prizes, put it in anthologies; it deserves every accolade it can get. However, the last story echoes the first, and 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 five tales in between are strangely repetitivehorrors of illness, most with Midwestern North American narrators grief and 1980s university settingshumiliation. Moreover, all seven Horrors that linger and are in the first-person; I would have appreciated more variety of perspectiveharder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1922182311</amazonuk>
}}
{{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''
}}
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Here But fearing something and having it come to pass are the Young Men'two different things. And I' surges forward, oozing edginess, from the very first sentence. Is that a bad thing? Probably not. It just means that readers may at times slip out m willing to bet most of the storywhat we fear will never happen, feel themselves taking a step back and admiring the spare coolness of the novel before easing back into the narrativeor we can take steps to change it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408863731</amazonuk>}}''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Takashi HiraideJennifer Saint|title=The Guest CatAtalanta|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The Guest Cat'' had me at the coverI was as worthy as any one of them. The reflective green material makes the cat's eyes glow and glint eerily in the light. There is something ethereal and otherworldly about this novella and I would get on board that is before ship, I've even read a single wordvowed. This simple story about a Japanese couple and I would take my place, not just in the name of the cat that decides to adopt them has become an international best-seller and I goddess. It was keen to find out whyfor the sake of my name, too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447279409</amazonuk>}}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 un-imagined. This is pick the case with By Night the Mountain Burnschildren up. However Her husband, Christopher, what is most remarkable about Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel’s novel is how easy it is to slip into the story of collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a child growing up on an isolated island in Equatorial Guineasobbing parishioner. We are not reading about mysterious Thelma'otherss daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. We’re reading about people like ourselves Holthorpe, who live in on the Norfolk coast, is a different lovely place which has its own constraints – namely poverty and isolation.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276401</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Asunder|author=Chloe Aridjis|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Marie, the narrator of Chloe Aridjis's second novel, ''Asunder'', but Rachel is struggling to develop a guard at real bond with the National Gallery in London. It is a simple, subdued life parish - and she leads in this 'tiny kingdom', but it suits her: 'I had always sought quiet s in awe of the world and there were few movements quieter, I realisedvicar, than paint cracking over time.' Most would find her work tediousGail, but over her nine years at the museum then she has adjusted to 's been doing the routine; 'unlike some of job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the new guards, I beach would do not suffer from boredom or listlessnessthem some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099572753</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Neel Mukherjee1398515388|title=The Lives of OthersBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu 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
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=8409290103|title=The City SonIf Only|author=Samrat UpadhyayMatthew Tree|rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Didi lives in 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 young man got on board the boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a remote Nepali villagemonthly allowance. Her husband, always referred Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to by what is presumably a title rather say than a name Patrick. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn'the Masterjit care for his son, it was that he didn'' teaches t care to have him in the citythis country where he might be a danger to his wife and other children. He rarely comes home The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to see get the young man on his wife and sonsway.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1616953810</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alison MooreAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=He WantsRed is My Heart|rating=43.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Lewis Sullivan is close to retirement, but elderly beyond his years [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and widowedread in my house. Edie's death seems to And so was this one, although I could have had practical implications - he's not getting the food he used to enjoy - but beyond spelled that it's difficult to see quite what they had in common other than the library. He used it more accurately – this one was, and she worked there - but they didn't even enjoy the same books. Lewis is an RE teacher at the same school where his father, Lawrenceblack and white and red. Yes, 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 careerhas an artistic collaborator on this piece, if he lives in the wrong place. He used to be able to see the house he grew up in from the bedroom window before and I think it was demolished and replaced by a supermarket carpark, but he's always dreamed possible to say not one page lacks the influence of living by the sea. His adult daughter, Ruth visits him every day and brings him soup. He doesn't want soupsome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907773819</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B098FFFBH9|title=The Narrow Road to the Deep NorthSnowcub|author=Richard FlanaganGraham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school''The Narrow Road s animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the Deep North'' is way in which human beings exploit the title animal world. She gets a great deal of both Flanagan's Booker Prize-longlisted sixth novel support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and a book by seventeenth-century Japanese poet Bashoher twin, Nick. Poetry irradiates this often bleak story of Australian POWs building Kate runs the Burma Death Railway during the Second World Warfamily business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, presenting beauty and love as counterpoints to gory descriptions which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of suffering and inhumanityinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701189053</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Country of Ice Cream StarYancey Williams|authortitle=Sandra NewmanCrosshairs of the Devil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='My name be Ice Cream Fifteen Star Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and this be the tale of how I bring the cure to all the Nighted States, save every poory children, short for life. Is how a city die for selfish love, despite his strenuous objections and rise from this same smallness. Be how the new America beginthanks to his daughter, in wars against all hope finds himself living - a country with no power in a world that hate its life. So been the faith I swornor imprisoned, and it ainfrom Eddie't evils s point of view - in no world nor cruelties in no red hell can change room 315 of the vally heart Garden 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 at the Karachi railway station causing intended death and mayhem, an aging reactionary poet, his middle-aged sonEden nursing home, with only a childtrusty nursing aide, a writer and a woman who relates more to stories than realityJenkins, are in the midst of itfor palatable company. Each experiences 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 Nothing is many things going to many people as he goes through life, reinventing keep Eddie from his personae and name. Who exactly is he? Perhaps he's unsure but the thing he'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 he's (all together now) stock-in search -trade of Solace.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340992522</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=The Sixteenth of June|author=Maya Lang|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=On June 16thwriting though, 1904so here, James Joyce had for his first date with readers, are his future wife, Nora Barnacle – an occasion he commemorated by choosing it as the one-day setting for wanderings through his life''magnum opus'', ''Ulysses''; main character Leopold Bloom gives his name to the annual Joyce celebration that takes place around the world on June 16ths work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1476745749</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0008421714|title=After BeforeMrs March|author=Jemma WayneVirginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Emily The problem began just after the publication of George March''easier for English people 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 local patisserie to pronounce than Emilienne''buy olive bread but on that particular morning, lives in a council tower blockPatricia asked, barely furnishedas she was wrapping the bread, ''but still - for her - isn't this the first time he's based a place of safety, a place of anonymitycharacter on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, which is the best way for principal character had 'her to existmannerisms''. She cleans commercial premises and relishes Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the work. She makes her small earnings go as far as possiblewhore of Nantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, shopping locallyunloved, living frugallyunloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1909878847</amazonuk>''
}}