Open main menu

Changes

no edit summary
[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dorthe NorsMatthew Tree|title=Karate Chop, and Minna Needs Rehearsal SpaceWe'll Never Know|rating=34.5|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=The reviewer picks up the book.<br>The book is called ''Minna Needs Rehearsal Space''.<br>The book is entirely made out of one-sentence paragraphs.<br>The one-sentence paragraphs are very seldom poetic, but normally are grammatically correct sentences.<br>The one-sentence paragraphs on the whole have just one verbTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, unless regarding that from reported or unreported speech.<br>The book concerns a middle-aged musician drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and composer who does indeed need rehearsal spacehad endless crises of self confidence.<br>The book concerns a woman who suddenly gets more space So Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than she wants when her boyfriend leaves her.<br>The boyfriend's departure causes a lot of people crowding around Minna, which causes a problem.<br>The problem might be resolved by a trip away from her city flat.<br>The title of the book might be ironichis daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782271198</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chigozie ObiomaB0C47LV1PC|title=The FishermenFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=This book is essentially a cautionary family tale of four brothers and the way they react to a prophecy about them by the local madman. It is also, in a sense, a coming-of-age story where Ben, the young narrator, is plunged into premature adulthood under the most brutal of circumstances. And it is about brotherly love. None of these descriptions, however, convey the fact that this book is written by an exciting new voice in African literary fiction.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0957548850</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jennifer Clement
|title=Prayers for the Stolen
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ladydi Garcia Martínez lives in rural Chilpancingo, Mexico, with her mother, Rita, who works as Can you make a cleaning lady for a rich family. Like many of the men in their town who left to find work''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, Ladydi's father crossed is the river into America, where he question should you make it? Or is rumoured to have another family. As a resultthe question if you did, this would it land? The catch is very much a matriarchal community. Rita describes that the situation answer for Ladydiboth could well be.... no. 's teacher: 'You men donFragility't get it' is set as the city of Portland, yetOregon, do you? This is a land of women. Mexico belongs cautiously begins to women.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587599</amazonuk>emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David GrossmanMosby Woods|title=Falling Out of TimeA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Like The West isn't the central characters dominant force it once was. Nobody in ''Falling Out the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of Time''action. Governments are flailing. A war here, Israeli author David Grossman lost his sona push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a soldier named Uri, during man with precognition. Imagine the Middle East conflict. In strategic advantage in this multifaceted examination asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of bereavement, it seems that everyone has lost a childcircumstances. The genre-bending mixture of poetry, absurdist dialogueThat man would be valuable, and an inverted fairy tale reflects right? Perhaps the difficulty of ever capturing grief most valuable asset in languagehistory. Each story and each strategy is like a new way of approaching the unspeakableImagine then, that this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099583720</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Samantha Ellis0571379559|title=How To Be A Heroine: Or, what I've learned from reading too muchThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''How to be a HeroineThe House of Broken Bricks'' is a pleasant and addictive readthe story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Playwright Samantha Ellis looks back at her childhood Insubstantial as a voracious reader it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and remembers floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the characters that influenced herdelivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. These are as diverse as Sylvia PlathThey have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother'Little Womens Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they' re related, much less twins and Scheherazadethere's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099575566</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ian WalthewClaire North|title=The Complex Chemistry House of LossOdysseus
|rating=5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Deep in rural France James Kerr was admitted ''What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a psychiatric clinicfew months after where we left off. His mental problems were deep In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and intractablethen by divine intervention never returned home. Superficially he seemed never to have got over As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the sudden death throne of his mother the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and sister when he was a child and after their death his relationship with his father had deteriorated because his father refused physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to speak Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of their loss. There were additional factors too: Kerr had spent some time in Afghanistan in a secret capacityfragile peace. In fact much One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his life since he went to university had involved putting up a frontsister Elektra, but doing something else in the backgroundseeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00OLMHCW2</amazonuk>0356516075
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael ChristieKay Chronister|title=If I Fall, If I DieDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=It probably tells you With a lot about the atmosphere of this book world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for the whole time I was reading humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether itis a robotic takeover, I thought the title was ''If I Falla world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, I Die''this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. That missing second ''IfDesert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is probably at the crux a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the whole talefears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>043402306X</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Virginia BurgesEric LaRocca|title=The VirtuosoTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=3.5|genre=General FictionHorror|summary=The title character of 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 ''The VirtuosoBig Bad'' , whether that is Isabelle Bryanta home invader, a professional violinist who has earned monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the affectionate nickname end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''BeethovenThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There's Babe'is not like that. She was the youngest-ever winner It is a collection of short stories more interested in the BBC Young Musician horrors of the Year competition illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and gave her first solo performance, of Beethovenare harder to defeat than any 's violin concerto, at Royal Albert Hall. 'Her violin represented another limb to her, it was that precious. It felt so natural, like an extension of her body.Big Bad' It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the violin is Isabelle's life.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B00R07U0B0</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adam FouldsMadelaine Lucas|title=In The Wolf's MouthThirst for Salt|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In Sicily''Love, bandits steal the sheep of I'd read, was supposed to be a young shepherd. Distraughtlight and weightless feeling, he seeks out his local Mafioso but I had always longed for helpgravity'' Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Sixteen years Overlaid with laterwisdom, two men are traveling the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to Sicily its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24- oneyear-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, a young English officerdepicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and the other an American infantryman. They are all soon thrust into a war that is greater and more terrible than anything they could have dreamed, familial relationships and they all must find different ways to survive its terrorshow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009958686X</amazonuk>0861546490
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eliza RobertsonMichael Grothaus|title=WallflowersBeautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=Eliza Robertson won the Man Booker Scholarship ''But fearing something and Curtis Brown Prize while completing her MA in Creative Writing at the University having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of East Angliawhat we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it. ''Wallflowers ''Beautiful Shining People' is already a bestseller in Robertson's native Canadarevolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. There Of what is real and what is quite some variety across the seventeen stories. Broadly speaking, though, there are a few themes: moving on from loss, finding love in the midst of gentle madnessartificial, and interactions with whether the natural world, often on the edge development of Canada's British Columbia wildernesstechnology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408856794</amazonuk>191458564X
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Edith PearlmanJennifer Saint|title=HoneydewAtalanta|rating=4|genre=Short Stories|summary=American short story writer [[:Category:Edith Pearlman|Edith Pearlman]] brings us a compilation of stories that have only been seen separately in magazines over the years. This follows on from the huge success of ''Binocular Vision'' (in 2013), the short story collection that led to Ms Pearlman being presented with the National Critics' Circle Award. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444797018</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Robert Schneider|title=Brother of Sleep|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Brother 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 Sleepmy name, too. Atalanta'' tells  Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the story protective eye of Elias Johannes Alder, a child born the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a god forsaken village high in formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the Austrian Vorarlberg. He came into opportunity comes – to join the world as Argonauts, a silent childfierce band of warriors, while his mother was screaming and descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the midwife wasnchance to fight in Artemis't really paying attentionname and carve out her own legendary place in history. It took What follows is a couple whirlwind of loud intonations of the Te Deum from the neglectful nurse before he finally uttered a soundchallenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715649205</amazonuk>1472292154
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Edwidge DanticatAmanthi Harris|title=Claire of the Sea LightBeautiful Place|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Claire Limye Lamne (Claire Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of the Sea Light) her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born in into, but the fishing village one she thinks of Ville Rose, Haiti as her mother dieshome. Her father Nozias How she came to be at the Villa, a poor fishermanhow it became her home, spends his life trying to make a better and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for his baby to such an extent that he eventually encourages a local fabric seller to take Clairethis gentle and yet subtly violent novel. This happens on the night of Claire Padma's 7th birthday; present fails to escape her past and much like the night musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that little Claire goes missing before happens at the fabric seller can take herVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782068511</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rebecca Lee178563335X|title=Bobcat and Other Stories|rating=3.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=The first story in ''Bobcat'' is the title story, and this alone is worth the price 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 the five tales in between are strangely repetitive, most with Midwestern North American narrators and 1980s university settings. Moreover, all seven are in the first-person; I would have appreciated more variety of perspective.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1922182311</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewSea Defences|author=Mary Costello|title=Academy StreetHilary Taylor|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It is 1944. Tess Lohan's mother has just died at age 40, of tuberculosis. Seven-year-old Tess is one of six children in a rural Irish family. They live 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 of her mother must linger all over the house – in rooms and halls and landings. The dent of her feet on a rug. On a cup, the mark of her hand.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782114181</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Rob Doyle|title=Here Are the Young Men|rating=4
|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'Here are re held when you need to pick the Young Menchildren 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' surges forwardt let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, oozing edginesson the Norfolk coast, from the very first sentence. Is that is a bad thing? Probably not. It just means that readers may at times slip out of the storylovely place, feel themselves taking but Rachel is struggling to develop a step back real bond with the parish - and admiring she's in awe of the spare coolness of vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the novel before easing back into job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the narrativebeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408863731</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Robert Edric1398515388|title=Sanctuary|rating=3|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Everyone knows Charlotte, Emily The Boy and Anne. Not many know that this famous trio of literary sisters also had a brother, Patrick Branwell Brontë, born the year after Charlotte and a year before Emily. Like his sisters, he had literary ambitions: he wrote juvenile stories, poems and translations from the Greek; he also trained as a painter (you have most likely seen his famous painting of his sisters). Again like his sisters, however, he was destined to die young.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857522876</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewDog|author=Takashi Hiraide|title=The Guest Cat|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''The Guest Cat'' had me at the cover. The reflective green material makes the cat's eyes glow Seishu Hase and glint eerily in the light. There is something ethereal and otherworldly about this novella and that is before I've even read a single word. This simple story about a Japanese couple and the cat that decides to adopt them has become an international best-seller and I was keen to find out why.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447279409</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Susan Hill|title=Black SheepAlison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Mount First of Zeal is a mining villageall, and no mistake. Three concentric semi-circular streets align across it was the side of a hillearthquake, like deep in the rows of seats in an amphitheatreocean floor, with little thought at all allowed for which created the life above the crest of the hilltsunami and this, in turn, and a lot of effort and dreams focused on caused the coal mine at the village's corenuclear meltdown. The Howker family (result was complete and how evocative that name isutter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, so akin to and the noise loss of hawking coal dust livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from one's lungs), and Ted and Rose, their owners came far down the youngest list of priorities but - six months after 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 tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a likeable futureconvenience store. But if He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that is a faint spark, then how safe is it so close he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the tinderbox of a coal mine?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009953956X</amazonuk>dog jumped in.
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sue Peebles0989715337|title=Snake RoadPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=No one listened when Peggy Kirkpatrick began talking about a baby called Eleanor ''Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist- welldeep in the fragrant water, no one naked except her granddaughter Agathafor his beaten leather hat. You seeLong strands of their eggs wove around him, Peggy is elderly sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and she has dementiabarked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he filled them. No one has heard of 'Eleanor'. Some days are better than others, but none are particularly good. Peggy's unpredictable and sometimes it  How is - quite literally - a fight to wash her and she'll either go outside in her nightdress or wear multiple skirts indoors. that for an opening? The burden is carried most style of this novel in the time by her daughterform of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, Maryturning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, but it's Aggie who attends has the dementia carers' group in her place and it was probably this that provoked her into listening more carefully most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to what her Gran was saying and trying to learn more about her history in the hope of keeping Peggy in the presentgo on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099575841</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Favel ParrettDaisy Hildyard|title=When the Night ComesEmergency|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Little Isla has moved The summary of this book doesn't come close to Hobartexplaining what is done with the premise.|isbn=1913097811}}  {{Frontpage |author=Sally Oliver |title=The Weight of Loss |rating=4 |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, Tasmania she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the Australian mainland with bones of her mother spine which steadily increase in size and younger brothervolume. Bo is Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a chef on the Nella Danphysical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, a Danish ship supplying the Antarctic expeditionsan experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Their meeting Yet something strange is just one happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of lifea kind. As Marianne's little moments memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a terrible price: that carry a greater effect than anyone realises at the time, whether for the better or the worstof identity itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848548540</amazonuk>086154112X }}{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=By Night The Mountain BurnsNatalia Garcia Freire|authortitle=Juan Tomas Avila LaurelThis World Does Not Belong To Us
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Sometimes a Early comments on this debut novel will startle because it tackles from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a topic totally unknown to us or tells us of lives previously un-imagineddelight. This is the case I will agree with By Night the Mountain Burns. However, what first – tremendous is most remarkable about Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel’s novel no understatement – but 'a delight' is how easy it is to slip into perhaps using the story of expression in a child growing up on an isolated island in Equatorial Guineaway I'm not familiar with. We are not reading about mysterious 'others' I have to confess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. We’re reading about people like ourselves From the little I have read (in translation, who live in I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a different place which has its own constraints tendency towards the fantastical namely poverty and isolationthe mystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908276401</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=AsunderJennifer Saint|authortitle=Chloe AridjisElektra
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Marie, the narrator of Chloe Aridjis's second novel, ''Asunder'Elektra', is a guard at by Jennifer Saint tells the National Gallery story of three women who live in Londonthe heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. It is a simpleCassandra, subdued life she leads in this 'tiny kingdom'Clytemnestra, but it suits her: 'I had always sought quiet and Elektra are all bit players in the world and there were few movements quieter, I realised, than paint cracking over timestory of the Trojan War.' Most would find her work tedious, but over her nine years at Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the museum she has adjusted to silent women have the routine; 'unlike some of most compelling stories and the new guards, I do not suffer from boredom or listlessnessmost extreme furies.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099572753</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Neel Mukherjee8409290103|title=The Lives of OthersIf Only|author=Matthew Tree
|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 CalcuttaTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, albeit a very big single house. Life may be materially comfortable but not easy. Jealousycotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, in-fightingMr Patrick, to ensure that the young man got on board the struggle boat and thereafter Patrick was to keep send him a monthly allowance. Patrick sent the family business going (money regularly and, for a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the younger family members, the struggle two although we hear more about what Lowry has to lead the life they'd like) causes more say than the odd sleepless nightPatrick. Son Supratik has succeeded It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, it was that he didn't care to have him in choosing this country where he might be a different path thoughdanger to his wife and other children. He's tired of The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the endless consumption young man on his way.}}{{Frontpage|author=Antoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and acquisition 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 leaves home to follow his Marxist beliefsread 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, exchanging family living for discomfort and dangerI think it's possible to say not one page lacks the influence of some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701186291</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B098FFFBH9|title=Problems with PeopleSnowcub|author=David GutersonGraham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=''Problems with People'' is a meandering exploration of 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 Daughter
|author=Meike Ziervogel
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school''Clara’s Daughter'', s animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the short space animal world. She gets a great deal of 144 pagessupport from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, paints Nick. Kate runs the portrait of the relationships threatening to destroy family business, a family unit. The intensity toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is conveyed with sharp stabs from Ziervogel’s spare sentenceswhere we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773797</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ali SmithYancey Williams|title=How to be BothCrosshairs of the Devil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There's something which you need to know about this book: if you decide to read itAward-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, the book you read might not be the same as the one which I've read despite his strenuous objections and am about thanks to review. There arehis daughter, you seefinds himself living - or imprisoned, two stories from Eddie's point of view - in each copy and half the books published will have room 315 of the story Garden of Francescho Del Cossa who worked in and around Ferrara in the fifteenth centuryEden nursing home, followed by the story of George - really Georgia - with only a teenager who lives with her father and younger brother in twentieth century Cambridgetrusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. The other books will have the stories Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in reverse order. The stories are the same-trade of writing though, so here, but the experiences of the for his readers will be quite different, are his wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>024114521X</amazonuk>0986031658}}{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0008421714|title=WreakingMrs March|author=James ScudamoreVirginia Feito|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A derelict mental hospital, gloomy railway arches, The problem began just after the bleak countryside publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the English coastlast page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. It all comes at us in grey flashes. If Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, ''Wreakingbut isn't this the first time he' was s based a filmcharacter on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, it the principal character had 'her mannerisms''. Perhaps this would saturated with cool tones. It’s an easy novel to visualise: Scudamore’s sparenot have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, elegant style creates an almost palpable atmosphereunloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009952385X</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreview
|title=J
|author=Howard Jacobson
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''J'' marks an unusual turn for Howard Jacobson. Though it seems at times like a skewed folk tale, it also bears the subtle signs of a future dystopia. It has some of Jacobson's trademark elements – odd names, humorous metaphors, and Semitic references – but felt to me like a strange departure after [[The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson|The Finkler Question]] and ''Zoo Time''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224102052</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=David Mitchell
|title=The Bone Clocks
|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. Upset and disorientated, she runs away from home. This may enable her to escape from the unfaithful Vinny and her overbearing family but not the weirdness. She's not the only one though: Hugo the student, conman and lothario thought he was only doing someone a good turn when the weirdness started for him. There is a point to it though: eventually battle lines will be drawn and it's anyone's guess as to who will win, despite what the Anchorites may say.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340921609</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Karen Joy Fowler
|title=We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Rosemary's childhood is blighted by the disappearance of her sister, Fern. Rosemary went to stay with her grandparents and, on her return Fern was no longer there. Curiously enough, her mother and father don't speak of it. The knock on effect was the angry departure of Rosemary's older brother Lowell whom she also misses. As she grows to adulthood, Rosemary remembers trying to come to terms with this, the damage that being a daughter of a psychologist has wrought and the revealed secrets that will finally make sense of it all.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668966X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=The City Son
|author=Samrat Upadhyay
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alison Moore
|title=He Wants
|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 it'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 father, 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 to be able to see the house he grew up in from the bedroom window before it was demolished and replaced by a supermarket carpark, but he's always dreamed of living by the sea. His adult daughter, Ruth visits him every day and brings him soup.
He doesn't want soup.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773819</amazonuk>}}Move on to [[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]