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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Per Olov Enquist and Deborah Bragan-Turner (translator)Matthew Tree|title=The Parable BookWe'll Never Know|rating=34.5|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

|summary=ItCan you make a ''Yo birthing person's not only springtime when a man's fancies turn to thoughts of love – he can also do it in the autumn of his lifejoke? And if you could, as does is the man involved here. But being a well-known author, and being beholden to silence, can he really put his thoughts on paperquestion should you make it? It happened a long time ago, and he only met Or is the woman concerned a couple of timesquestion if you did, but with would it being such a powerful event and such a slightly unusual circumstance, what should he doland? It takes a notebook The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no. ''Fragility'' is set as the city of his father's love poems to his motherPortland, that he finds both incomplete and scorchedOregon, cautiously begins to give him emerge from the green light – restrictions imposed during the voice from the past that says to him, 'go for it'. And what we read here is a result.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857059912</amazonuk>covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Maggie O'FarrellMosby Woods|title=This Must Be the PlaceA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=Maggie OThe West isn'Farrell's globe-trotting seventh novel opens t the dominant force it once was. Nobody in 2010 with Daniel Sullivan, an American linguistics professorthe West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. He lives with his wife ClaudetteA war here, a French actress who retreated from the limelight, and their two children in a remote home push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in Donegalactual charge. It Imagine then, there was 10 years ago that he first came here and met Claudette by chance when her van had a flat tireman with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; he struck up a conversation with her son Ari and gave the boy tips for dealing with his stutterman who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. NowThat man would be valuable, preparing to fly back to Brooklyn for his father's ninetieth birthday party, he's caught short by a long-lost voice he hears on right? Perhaps the radiomost valuable asset in history. It belongs to Nicola JanksImagine then, a former lover he last saw 24 years ago; when he learns that she died soon after they were together, he determines this man loses this ability. What would governments do to figure out whether he played a role, even if he doesn't like what he finds.get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755358805</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joanne Harris0571379559|title=Different ClassThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|summary= St Oswald''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's Grammar School For Boys is roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in crisisthe house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. A murdered schoolboyInsubstantial as it might look, a procession it's stood the passage of new Head Masterstime, a(nother) new Head Masterstorms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, a Crisis Intervention Team to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and a potential merger with St Oswald's all female counterpartMax, Mulberry Housethe rainbow twins. Roy Straitley is not altogether dismayed at the prospect of delaying Sonny's colouring reflects his retirement; St Oswaldmother's has been Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his lifefather. People don't believe that they're related, man much less twins and boy and a crisis there's an assumption when Max is a crisis after all is said and done, isnout with his mother that she's his nanny.}}{{Frontpage|author=Claire North|title=House of Odysseus|rating=5|genre= Literary Fiction |summary= ''t itWhat could matter more than love? It's probably his duty ' The follow-up to stay and right the shipexcellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. So when In the latest 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 new Head Masters and his duo throne of crisis managers walk into the staff room, Straitley can't quite believe his old eyesWestern Isles. The new Head is an ex-pupil of St OswaldHaving survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's; a boy whoshores, in his time at Queen Penelope is on the esteemed old School caused such an uproarious scandal brink of a fragile peace. One that one shatters however with the return of the Masters ended up in prison! Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0385619235</amazonuk>0356516075

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Bill BeverlyKay Chronister|title= DodgersDesert 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

|genre= Literary FictionHorror|summary= Judging a book by its cover can misleadHorror taps into something primeval within us. It can especially mislead if you don't look closely at the cover is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and are just grabbed by the process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''feelBig 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 ''styleThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' of the design of the thingis not like that. Being misled It is not necessarily a bad thing. For reasons best left collection of short stories more interested in the depths horrors of my addled brainillness, the styling of Dodgers had me thinking grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any 'noir'. I was expecting late fifties, early sixties. If IBig Bad'd looked closer, I'd have seen that it is much more contemporary than that. Then again…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843448572</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alice AdamsMadelaine Lucas|title=Invincible SummerThirst for Salt|rating=3.5

|summary=As Alice Adams's debut novel opens in the summer of 1995, four university friends are lounging on Bristol's Brandon HillLove, drinking and contemplating what the future holds. ThereI's Eva Andrewsd read, raised in Sussex by was supposed to be a single father; siblings Sylvie light and Lucien Marchantweightless feeling, neglected by their alcoholic mother; and Benedict Waverleybut I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, a rich kid whose parents have young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a holiday home on Corfuman twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Eva has a crush Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on Lucien, while Benedict is besotted with Evaboth romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1509814701</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Birgul OguzMichael Grothaus|title= HahBeautiful Shining People|rating= 34

|summary= ''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I was interested 'm willing to receive this book for review as I knew it was written in a modern, interesting style, being effectively a collection bet most of short storieswhat we fear will never happen, but appearing more in a novel structure. I was, however, rather disappointed with the book. Whilst or we can take steps to change it does have some very fine examples of prose writing within the stories, I felt disconnected from the narrator, who is the daughter of a recently deceased man who was involved in a Turkish military coup in 1980. There is therefore a lot of examples of the narrator relating the conversations they had shared regarding ''revolution '', and the way this had affected the daughterBeautiful Shining People's upbringing and childhood. Another 'story' then delves into a seemingly disconnected wander through revolves around the town, whereby we see the narrator working at gutting fish, question of identity and talking about a man she finds repulsive, but who appears acceptance. Of what it means to be in love with herhuman. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>9462380740</amazonuk>191458564X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chuck PalahniukJennifer Saint|title=Make Something UpAtalanta

|genre=Short Stories Literary Fiction|summary=What are we to make ''I was as worthy as any one of that subtitle-seeming writing them. I would get on the front cover – ''stories you can't unread''? Does board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not apply to all good fiction? Clearly it is here due to just in the reputation name of the author, and goddess. It was for the baggage his sake of my name brings to the page, too. WeAtalanta''d expect  Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a dramatic approach from anything Palahniuk writesson, and an added frisson, an extra layer, from which we might be forced to shrink back. But a lot Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the contents don't quite go that far. Yes, things are dramatic, when society starts attaching defibrillators to itself, to create the perfect, simple, care- (''The Price is Right''-, goddess Athemis and Kardashian-) free happiness. A man buys fashioned into a horse formidable huntress, one who longs for his daughter adventure. When the opportunity comes – but boy is it the wrong horse to buy. A man falls in love – yes, sometimes join the plot summaries of these stories really are better off for being short (speaking of whichArgonauts, don't turn to the three-page entrant here as a taster, it'll put you off by dint fierce band of beingwarriors, almost uniquely here, a nothing story). A call centre worker can't convince people he's on descendent from the level and even in their country Gods themselves – until someone starts riffing back Atalanta seizes the chance to him. A housing estate report conveys bad regulation violations, but not as bad as the happenings at a fight in Artemis'Burning Man'-styled festival, name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a very clever couple whirlwind of tales. But many too are the instances where challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that extra step has been takenif she marries, it will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099587688</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Aliya WhiteleyAmanthi Harris|title= The Arrival of MissivesBeautiful Place|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=In Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the aftermath southern coast of the Great Warher home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, Shirley Fearn dreams of challenging but the conventions one she thinks of rural England, where life is as unchanging as the seasonshome. The scarred veteran Mr Tiller, left disfigured by an impossible accident on How she came to be at the battlefields of FranceVilla, brings with him a message: part prophecyhow it became her home, part warningand the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. As Shirley Padma's village prepares for present fails to escape her past and much like the annual May Day celebrations, where musical score of a new queen will be crowned and the future rebornfilm, she must choose between change and renewal – will that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the missives Mr Tiller brings prevent her mastering her identity?Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907389377</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= P K Lynch178563335X|title= ArmadillosSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Aggie is one of TexasWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they' downtroddenre held when you need to pick the children up. Dirt poor Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and abusedher 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 'sub' from lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a 'sub' family'' … ''Her father real bond with the parish - and brother enact that she'sub'-ness on hers in awe of the vicar, week inGail, week out.'but then she' ''She has only s been doing the vaguest notion job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that there is something wrong with a walk on the abuse she enduresbeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.''|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178507959X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tarjei Vesaas, Torbjorn Stoverud and Michael Barnes (translators)1398515388|title=The BirdsBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|summary=We're somewhere in rural ScandinaviaFirst of all, on it was the shores of a large lakeearthquake, but deep in a community relying on the farmland that is scattered ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in amongst turn, caused the woodsnuclear meltdown. Our chief concerns are brother The result was complete and sister – Mattis utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and Hegethe loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He, Mattis, is what the other villagers call wasn'simple' – sure, he knows a few things about life, and what makes t a clever dog person and what makes a well-turned phrase, and how to talk to girls and when to not stare at them, but the convenience store owner's comment that he is definitely not quite as the others would wish. Those others include his sister, who is seeing her life waste away in listening call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his chatter, knitting jumpers to make ends meet, car door and regretting in her own small way what has got her to middle-age in this situation. But from this galling introduction, you should take away the bigger picture – even if there is no way out, Tamon the life dog jumped in this countryside is brilliantly conveyed, full of sun as well as shade, of labour and of idleness, and wit and charm as much as hardship. I defy you to read this and think this corner of Scandinavia bleak.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0914671200</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nicola Barker0989715337|title=The Cauliflower®Papa on the Moon|author=Marco North

|summary=Meet ''Some frogs had gotten into the boywell. We never learn his name – '' ''Walter stood waist-deep in fact we learn very little in this bookthe fragrant water, such as where or when we arenaked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and why. What we do know is that barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he has left homefilled them. We get the feeling his father '' How is too handy with punishment, but that can't be the only reason for him first hiding out in an olive grove overnight, then fleeing across the plains surrounding his family's village. Especially as he's chosen one opening? The style of the most awkward, attritional times to cross said plains – the land is this novel in the middle form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a horrendous droughtsixpence. When he tries to steal his first provisions from an aged goatherdAnd author Marco North, howeverwho has the most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he finds some light and liquid, but is this substitute father figure ever going means to be enough to help the boy flee what he needs to?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009958218X</amazonuk>go on.

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philip DentDaisy Hildyard|title=Mutable Passions: Charlotte Bronte: A Disquieting Affair|rating=3|genre=Historical Fiction |summary=As the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë's birth approaches, it is a perfect time for reading about her. Philip Dent's second novel chooses a lesser known period of her life to dramatize. All her siblings are now dead; during a hard winter when she is unable to visit her best friend, Ellen Nussey, Charlotte spends her time finishing ''Villette'', her final novel. The family servant, Tabby, ribs Charlotte about her romantic prospects – including Patrick Brontë's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls. Charlotte responds with indignation: 'I could no more kiss the lips of a man with a beard as big as rooks' nests than I could yours, Tabby.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178589093X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Miroslav Penkov|title=Stork MountainEmergency

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=A young man, his grandfather and a stork with a broken wing are the ''company of rebels'' at the heart The summary of this lively tale set in Bulgariabook doesn's Strandja Mountains. The storks that return t come close to the mountains each spring are migrants, like so many of the people that have passed through the region over the centuries. The young narrator explaining what is also in transit, born in Bulgaria, but raised and educated in America. The story opens with his return to Bulgaria in search of his grandfather who has broken off contact done with his family in America. But the young man's motives are not as clear cut as first appearspremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473622182</amazonuk>1913097811}} {{newreviewFrontpage |author= Elisa AlbertSally Oliver |title= After BirthThe Weight of Loss |rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= This book Marianne is definitely not for anyone who has a rosy picture of new motherhoodgrieving. In fact, I would probably avoid it if you are contemplating giving birth in Traumatised after the near future. For any woman who has ever struggled through the first few months death of motherhoodher sister, howevershe awakes to find strange, or a partner thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of somebody who is going through it, it is an astounding her spine which steadily increase in size and revelatory readvolume. Never before have I read Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a more searingphysical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, honest an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and open discussion the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of the emotional upheaval a woman often goes through after giving birthkind.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009959014X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Ayelet Gundar-Goshen|title= Waking Lions|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= If the point of As Marianne''literature'' - as opposed s memories threaten to the less exalted though just-as-worthwhile forms overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of writing - is to force you to think about the real world, the political world, the painful life-as-we-know-it world, whilst catching you up in memory and pain—but only at a story about something terrible price: that never really happened, but, you know, might well have done so…and if you think that matters, then you must read this bookof identity itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782271562</amazonuk>086154112X }}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yan LiankeNatalia Garcia Freire|title=The Four BooksThis World Does Not Belong To Us

|summary=''The Four Books'' is a difficult, challenging Early comments on this debut novel and not for the feint heartedfrom Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, or for someone looking for a page-turnerdelight. It really challenges I will agree with the readerfirst – tremendous is no understatement – but 's perceptions and opens up a gateway to an era that delight' is difficult to imagine for anyone brought up perhaps using the expression in a western cultureway I'm not familiar with. Set in Maoist China it tells I have to confess my ignorance of the story of four protagonists and a memorable antagonistSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. The four, found guilty of anti-revolutionary crimes are undergoing re-education From the little I have read (in a work camp governed by the child. With an Orwellian feeltranslation, I don''The Four Books'' will come t read Spanish) there does seem to be regarded as an undoubted masterpiecea tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099569493</amazonuk>0861541901

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yann MartelJennifer Saint|title=The High Mountains of PortugalElektra

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Tomas is being thrust into the twentieth Century, and he doesn't like it. He has given himself Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the job story of seeking something out three women who live in the High Mountains heavily male dominated world of PortugalAncient Greece. Cassandra, based on an ancient religious diary he found working in an archiveClytemnestra, and to do so he needs Elektra are all bit players in the use story of his uncle's brand new car to get him there and back in timethe Trojan War. His jaw drops when he learns he will Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have to do the driving himself, for he cannot make head nor tail of what anything on the infernal machine does and why. It is of course a certain kind of progress, a looking forward, which has become quite anathema to him – for ever since he lost his beloved wife, beloved child most compelling stories and father, all in the space of a week, he has walked everywhere backwards – shielding himself from what really is ahead with a padded behind, and never letting sight of what he has lostmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782114696</amazonuk>1472273915

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Antonio Moresco and Richard Dixon (translator)8409290103|title=Distant LightIf Only|author=Matthew Tree

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Our unnamed narrator might as well be 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 only person aliveboat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. He knows he's not – he still goes down to Patrick sent the nearest inhabited village to buy things to eat money regularly and other necessities, and he sees planes spreading their contrails over a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the remote area he lives in – but he might as well betwo although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. A lot of It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his thoughts are about lifeson, however, for it was that he has little didn't care to do except notice the nature around have him, from the smell of lilies burgeoning with nobody else to see them in this deserted village, country where he might be a danger to the swallows darting across the ravines of the countrysidehis wife and other children. Life – and The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the nature of a light that he sees spring into activity every night at what he thought was a totally lifeless, empty forest area young man on land separated from his lookout post in his back garden by a deep, wooded gorge…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0914671421</amazonuk>way.

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tania JamesAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=The Tusk That Did the DamageRed is My Heart

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Tania James was a Fulbright Fellow [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in New Delhi in 2011–12my house. For And so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – thisone was, her second novel after ''Atlas of Unknowns'' (shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian literature) and the story collection ''Aerogrammes''is, black and white and red. Yes, she clearly draws he has an artistic collaborator on her personal knowledge of India in all its contradictionsthis piece, especially when and I think it comes 's possible to environmental policy. The novel alternates between three perspectives: a third-person account say not one page lacks the influence of an elephant named the Gravedigger and first-person narratives from a poacher and a documentary filmmakersome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784700584</amazonuk>1913547183

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Anakana SchofieldB098FFFBH9|title= Martin John|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I had heard much about this novel before I read it for review, by which I mean I had heard it was profane, strange and had a daring subject matter accompanied by elements of humour. I have to say that whilst I agree it is certainly profane and strange and incredibly innovative, I didn't find much humour in it at all.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276665</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewSnowcub|author=Jon Kalman Stefansson and Philip Roughton (translator)|title=The Heart of ManGraham Fulbright|rating=34.5

|summary=What could be better than an existentialist book from rural Iceland, full of gnomic comments about how close life Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and death her friend areproducing a competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, that has as its core a journey taken bylecturer at Imperial College, amongst othersLondon, a naïve mother Kate and hormonal teenaged lad and a full coffin? Why, I hear you cryher twin, a trilogy concerning the sameNick. Yes, it's Kate runs the obvious answerfamily business, really – why else would we come to this third parta toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where the survivors of the expedition rest up, note the women giving them help, and see how eminently close the circle of life is to the figure of a snake swallowing its tail through, among other things, dogs rutting in a church below the coffinwe'll meet Rachel's bier?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184866236X</amazonuk>main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Joanna WalshYancey Williams|title= Vertigo|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= The short stories in Joanna Walsh's collection have the overall effect of disparate streams of consciousness of a woman laying bear her very soul, whilst often going about seemingly mundane activities of the ordinary and every day. The narrative voice appeared to me to be the same woman speaking throughout, playing different roles, though I'm not sure this was meant to be the case. The style of the stories is that Crosshairs of short vignettes, mostly written in a modernist, stream of consciousness style. Sometimes, the prose appears almost poetic. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276800</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Kristopher Jansma|title=Why We Came to the CityDevil

|summary='We came Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to the city because we wished to live haphazardlyhis daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, to reach for only from Eddie's point of view - in room 315 of the least realistic Garden of our desiresEden nursing home, and to see if we could not learn what our failures had to teachwith only a trusty nursing aide, and notJenkins, when we came to live, discover that we had never diedfor palatable company. We wanted Nothing is going to dig deep and suck out all the marrow keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life, to be overworked and reduced to our last wit's work.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0525426604</amazonuk>0986031658}}{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ernst Haffner and Michael Hofmann (translator)0008421714|title=Blood BrothersMrs March|author=Virginia Feito|rating=4.5

|summary=ItThe problem began just after the publication of George March's Berlin, and the Nazis are on their way most successful novel to power, even if they will never cross these pages themselvesdate. The city – huge, glamorous, bustling, vicious in the way it can swallow people – is home to a countless hoard of teenagers, Everyone but Mrs March (we focus know her first name only on just a few, most of whom have been in some corrective institution the last page) seemed to either be reading it or other before nowhad already done so. They call themselves Every day Mrs March went to the Blood Brotherslocal patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, even if all they share is Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the most unglamorous drudgery of going from one doss-house to anotherbread, balancing the cost of a few cigarettes with that of a warm room for a few hours or some stale rolls to eat. But en route to them is another 'Borstal' escapee, Willi. Surely his fate is going to be nothing if not more of but isn't this the same?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099594048</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Sara Taylor|title=The Shore|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=The first story we hear from the Shore, time he's based a group of isolated islands off the coast of Virginia, is from Chloe, whocharacter on you?''s telling her sister about what she overheard in the store. She'd been there buying chicken necks so mentioned that they could go crabbing. Normally they used bacon rindsJohanna, but they'd already eaten those. Cabel Bloxom the principal character had been murdered and ''they done cut his thang clean offher mannerisms''. The girls are motherless and Chloe Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is fiercely protective the whore of her little sister Renee. SheNantes - 's the first of the strong women we'll encounter in these storiesa weak, plain, which interlink to give a greater picture.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009959188X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Adam Baron|title=Blackheath|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Househusband James is happy in Blackheath. He's started doing stand-up again so that he too has an achievement in his life to balance wife Alice's award winning poetry. Children Ida and Dominic are doing well so all is great. Elsewhere in the area Amelia is equally happy with her actor husband Richarddetestable, her own career and children Niamh and teenage Michael. Sometimes happiness isn't enough though andpathetic, as the worlds of the two families start to mingleunloved, things start changing for each of themunloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908434902</amazonuk>''