Difference between revisions of "Newest Literary Fiction Reviews"
| Line 3: | Line 3: | ||
==Literary fiction== | ==Literary fiction== | ||
__NOTOC__ | __NOTOC__ | ||
| + | {{newreview | ||
| + | |author=Matthew Hooton | ||
| + | |title=Deloume Road | ||
| + | |rating=4 | ||
| + | |genre=Literary Fiction | ||
| + | |summary=A tiny, rural community with a handful of characters is at the heart of this novel. And the thing that binds them all together is Deloume Road. Hooton gives over every chapter (and some are very short) to one of his characters - Irene, Andy, the butcher. Each is very different from the other. | ||
| + | |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224087657</amazonuk> | ||
| + | }} | ||
| + | |||
{{newreview | {{newreview | ||
|author=Trevor Byrne | |author=Trevor Byrne | ||
Revision as of 14:09, 21 April 2010
Literary fiction
Deloume Road by Matthew Hooton
A tiny, rural community with a handful of characters is at the heart of this novel. And the thing that binds them all together is Deloume Road. Hooton gives over every chapter (and some are very short) to one of his characters - Irene, Andy, the butcher. Each is very different from the other. Full review...
Ghosts and Lightning by Trevor Byrne
Denny comes home to Dublin from Wales after his mum dies suddenly, and hangs around drinking and taking drugs with his sister, her girlfriend and some of their mates, while he wonders what to do with himself. There are some practical matters to sort out too, such as the nasty older brother who owns their house and wants his siblings out. Full review...
The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore
Andrei is a perceptive and deeply conscientious doctor, a young rheumatologist and paediatrician working in a Leningrad hospital just after the terrible siege, during the last days of Stalin’s dictatorship. He is as quick to notice symptoms in his colleagues as in his young patients. When he is approached by Russov, a fellow physician, he registers his confrere’s pervading smell of fear. This is all part of the pathology of the times; life as it is lived under a tyrannical dictatorship. A dictatorship determined to pursue a purge – a vendetta directed against doctors, particularly Jewish doctors. The sweating Russov manages to inveigle Andrei Aleksayev into treating a very sick child, Gorya, the son of Volkhov, who is a tyrannical and high ranking secret police officer. Therapeutic failure, in all probability, could result in vengeance, arrest and devastating effects on Andrei’s loving wife Anna and her young adolescent brother, Kolya. Full review...
The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan
Choosing a child as the viewpoint character of a novel requires confidence and imagination. To succeed is to convince the reader of events at two levels – the child's world within the adult world surrounding her. The very best novels about childhood, like say Harper Lee's classic, 'To Kill a Mockingbird', also reflect a wider cultural truth. In 'The Earth Hums in B Flat', a claustrophobic Welsh village is both protection and straitjacket as the characters struggle to cope with their family secrets. If that sounds a bit tacky, fear not, because the viewpoint character, Gwenni, is all whippet and sharp corners. Full review...
The Einstein Girl by Philip Sington
The two central characters are (and we've come across it many times before) a psychiatrist (in this case Kirsch) and his patient (known as the Einstein Girl) and hence the novel's title. The case of this girl is intriguing, not least because both doctor and patient had accidentally met prior to her admission to hospital. Kirsch appears immediately smitten - which may be a problem. He's already spoken for. In a nutshell, the Einstein Girl has lost her memory. Kirsch finds more and more of his professional time given over to her recovery, back to mental well-being. It becomes a long and complicated journey, for both of them. Full review...
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
'The belly craves food, the tongue craves water, the heart craves love, and the mind craves stories.'
This is the book to satisfy that last craving. It is rich in stories from the graphic opening chapter to the poignant closing lines. Everyone has a tale to tell and even minor characters are fleshed out with histories that amuse, horrify or enthral. Their stories made me think about how sometimes what at the time seems to be an insignificant choice can define the course of a life. Here the characters’ choices unleash a cascade of consequences. Full review...
The Book of Human Skin by Michelle Lovric
Ye can't take the slither out ovva snake.
So says Gianni, valet in a wealthy eighteenth century Venetian household. The master, a merchant, divides his time between Italy and Peru, where he deals in silver. But the merchant isn't the serpent - his son Minguillo is. On the night an earthquake ripped through Peru and deposited fanatical nun Sor Loreta at the convent in Arequipa, Minguillo was born - a serpent in his family's midst. His own mother couldn't bear to nurse him and his father went into denial, making more and more frequent trips to a South American home free of sociopathic progeny. Full review...
The Forty Rules of Love by Elif Shafak
This is a sixth novel from best-selling Turkish author, Elif Shafak. Set in twelfth century Anatolia, two famous characters from Islamic history meet in a gorgeously real world. A delicate contemporary US love story is wrapped around the rich, meaty historical fiction. Don't be misled by the dodgy-sounding title! Full review...
36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction by Rebecca Goldstein
'Atheist with a Soul' Cass Seltzer has achieved sudden celebrity thanks to his new bestselling book. This has led to a job offer from Harvard, and he waits for his girlfriend to return, while thinking back on past experiences. Most of these experiences involved his old mentor Professor Klapper, an ex-lover, Roz Margolis, and a six year old genius mathematician Azarya. The characters frustrate and amuse in roughly equal measure, while the plot meanders towards a sort-of-conclusion as Cass debates the existence of God with Nobel laureate Felix Fidley. Full review...
A Gate At The Stairs by Lorrie Moore
Bass-playing, 20 year-old Tassie Keltjin is studying an eclectic range of subjects (Geology, British Literature, Sufism, Soundtracks to War Movies and Wine Tasting) in post 9/11 USA when she lands a job as a child minder for chef, Sarah Bink who is adopting an African-American baby. A Gate at the Stairs is at times a very funny and at others a sad reflection of growing up in modern America. Full review...
The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton
If you are the type of person who wants their novels to start at the beginning, build character and plot before coming to a satisfying 'they all lived happily ever after' ending, then avoid this book at all costs. You will hate it. But I cannot remember when I last enjoyed a first time novel as much as this one. It is ambitious, daring and complex, and yet it works beautifully. Full review...
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
Ten years ago, Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible revealed the grim politics in the Congo. The Lacuna has a similarly political theme, this time turning her focus on Mexico and the USA in the 1940s and 1950s. Full review...
Sum: Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman
For some reason I find myself unable to start this review. So I'll mention this book starts with the end, and see where we go from there. Of course, that's the key – this book does just that – starts with the end of our human life here on Earth (or wherever you happen to be reading this) and posits forty possibilities of what happens thereafter, in the hereafter. It's not so much 'Five People You Meet in Heaven' as 'Forty Heavens you Might Meet People In'. Full review...
This Is How by M J Hyland
Things weren't going too badly for Patrick Oxtoby. He's intelligent and did well at school. Then his Gran died. He started getting pains in his shoulder and things rapidly went downhill from there. He drops out of university to become a mechanic. By the time we meet him as a 23-year-old, he's become a loner who cannot communicate his feelings and who cannot seem to fit himself into society. Now his fiancee has left him (and you can see her point) and he finds himself in a seaside boarding house in an unnamed English town, hoping to start a new life. Then, one night he commits an act of violence (you can see it coming) and his life goes from bad to awful. Full review...
Sick Heart River by John Buchan
This was a surprise for me. It’s rare for a book to come to my attention from the reviewing gods that’s a rerelease of a 1930s novel, and one that surfaced a couple of years ago now. But when it strikes me as startlingly Conradian, updated for the times, and perfectly able to stand alongside one of literature’s greats, then it’s just a sign those reviewing gods are on the ball. Full review...
All That Follows by Jim Crace
Leonard Lessing is a sofa socialist. He avoids corporate brands both in food and in clothes. He abides by all the right-on boycotts. He signs petitions. He does free gigs at benefit concerts. He gives donations - you know the kind of thing. Once, eighteen long years ago in Texas in 2006, he came very close to some real direct action. But he bottled it. And now, the frozen-shouldered jazzman-on-sabbatical finds his less-than-glorious radical past catching up with him right there in his living room, on the TV. Maxie Lermon, he of Austin 2006 and no stranger to violent agitprop, is in the UK, just up the road from Leonard, and he's taken a family hostage as a protest against the upcoming Reconciliation Summit. Full review...
The Clay Dreaming by Ed Hillyer
Hillyer has taken several historical facts and seamlessly blended in a big dollop of fiction to create a complex and riveting story. The title is suitably enigmatic, as is King Cole (or Brippoki). He and his fellow cricketers (who also have been given rather unkind nicknames) have sailed from the bottom of the world, to the bustling metropolis of London. Talk about extremes. And although they have all been diligently 'schooled' in all things English, nevertheless, they are the talk of the town. The novel has barely started and already the mind boggles. Full review...
The Road to Wanting by Wendy Law-Yone
We first meet Na Ga in her hotel room in Wanting, on the Chinese side of the border with Na Ga's native Burma (or Myanmar for the more geographically pedantic, although Burma is used throughout this book). She is attempting to commit suicide, but is interrupted by news from the hotel receptionist who tells her that her guide across the border, Mr Jiang, has just committed suicide himself. You might by now have the impression that this is not a cheery kind of book, and you'd be right up to a point, although it's certainly not without its light touches. In fact it's often quite beautiful, which makes the exposure of the seedier side so much more shocking. Full review...
The Dead Republic by Roddy Doyle
Henry left in 1922, after the Irish Civil War. It is now 1951. After his long exile, nothing is as he expected. He revisits an old home to find no trace that a house ever stood there. The project that has brought him back is not as he expected. The Quiet Man will be a hugely successful film for John Ford, but the life portrayed in it is not Henry Smart's life, and the portrait of Irish politics and everyday life in the film is not one he recognises. In his late 40s, he feels he is an old man already, alone with his memories of the wife and family he lost. Full review...
If it is Your Life by James Kelman
If This Is Your Life is not so much a collection of short stories as a collection of pieces of creative writing. Kelman doesn't really do 'stories'. In nineteen pieces of writing of varying length from just a single page to more lengthy pieces, such as the story that gives its title to this collection, Kelman writes (mostly) about people on the edge of society. He addresses issues such as class, politics, gender, age and ill health. Full review...
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
I never really got on with maths at school. Or sport. So a book that seems to deal with both baseball and mathematics ought to fly to the bottom of my 'to read' pile. However, this slim little Japanese novel slipped into my hands and into my heart as soon as I saw it. The premise is very simple - a young housekeeper is assigned to a job working for an elderly, brain damaged professor of mathematics. He has only eighty minutes of short-term memory, so he doesn't remember her from one day to the next, but his memory pre-1975 remains intact and somehow he continues to function, living through his obsession with numbers. Each morning he greets her at the door asking for her birth date and her telephone number. He finds puzzles and equations in everything, including shoe sizes and baseball, and the housekeeper becomes fascinated as she and her son also begin to see the beauty and the poetry in numbers. Full review...
A Day and a Night and a Day by Glen Duncan
Augustus Rose was brought up in New York, but not in a des res, in an altogether grittier part of the city. ' ... his childhood in East Harlem, darkness framing the blistered stoop, the blinding asphalt, the smell of garbage cans and urine.' He's had an unfortunate start in life. Mother, white, father (unknown) black so that makes the young Augustus an in-between, a not-sure, a neither-one-colour-nor-the-other. Today, in the 21st century, no one would raise an eyebrow, bat an eyelid. But this novel is set in the 1960s where racial tensions abound. Yes, even in cosmopolitan cities such as New York. Full review...
The Tin-Kin by Eleanor Thom
Dawn is a single mother who has been avoiding a lot of things for a long time. When her aunt, who raised Dawn as a daughter, dies, Dawn finds the key to a cupboard which she was forbidden to look into as a child. Inside she finds clues to her family history, links to a Traveller Community, unearthing a journey that sees her finding her roots. We also witness her struggle to renew her complicated relationship with her family and her efforts to escape the ever-present memory of her abusive husband. Full review...
The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge by Patricia Duncker
It's rural France, and 2000 is barely begun, when hunters come across a spread of human corpses in the mountains. Several families, all in the same cult, seem to have killed themselves on their path to wherever. If so, this is a problem, for the last time it happened, in Switzerland a few years previous, nobody could work out why – and who was there to dispose of some of the evidence. This isn't a problem for the policeman involved, as he fell desperately in love with the investigative judge in collaborating on the initial case. Combining again, they see a link with everybody involved in both cases, a famous conductor /composer. Full review...
Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen: A Manifesto in 41 Tales by Marilyn Chin
Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen (oh, how I love that title!) will almost certainly not be to everyone's taste, but I confess that I loved its originality, boldness, sassy style and the humour of it. Full review...
The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano
The Solitude of Prime Numbers follows the lives of Alice and Mattia from childhood to middle age. Alice is a wilful anorexic, scarred by a childhood skiing accident and an overbearing father. Mattia is an reclusive self-harmer trying to live with the guilt of having been responsible for his disabled twin sister's death. Their paths cross at a school friend's party during a painful adolescence and their lives are destined to intertwine throughout the coming years, despite the chronic awkwardness of their courtship. Full review...
Dark Matter by Juli Zeh
Dark Matter is translated from German and nothing has been 'lost in translation' here. The lives of two very bright academics are interwoven throughout. Students Sebastian and Oskar are the very best of friends; it's almost as if they share the same heartbeat. However, as they grow into adulthood real life comes along and tends to get in the way. Sebastian settles for domestic bliss. Their friendship cools off, becomes a little tense and strained. Full review...
Isa and May by Margaret Forster
Isamay is a would-be academic and she's writing a thesis about grandmothers in history, inspired, one suspects, by her own grandmothers, Isa and May. Her efforts are constantly diverted by the present needs of her grandmothers and the secrets about their pasts which rise to the surface when she least expects them. There's another complication too. Isamay is in her thirties and has never wanted a child, but reconsiders, despite the fact that her partner, Ian, is adamant that he doesn't want children. The more Isamay delves, the more she realises that there are secrets in Ian's past too. Full review...
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Jackson, Mississippi: 1960. The talk at the bridge club and the tennis club is of what Jackie Kennedy is wearing. They're white women, of course and they're free to play because a coloured woman will be looking after the children, doing the shopping and cleaning the house. They're trusted to bring the children up, but they're not trusted to be honest about the silver. Aibileen is raising her seventeenth white child but something hardened in her heart when her son died whilst the white bosses looked the other way. They took his body to the coloureds' hospital and rolled it off the back of the truck and left. Full review...
The Concert Ticket by Olga Grushin
The Concert Ticket follows the lives of a family in Soviet Russia who have grown desperately distant from one another. Sergei, the father, is a frustrated musician who longs to play the pre-revolutionary masterpieces of composers like Igor Selinsky but is forced to play the kind of patriotic ditties he despises. His schoolteacher wife, Anna, longs for his love, but is never quite able to get his attention with her shy gestures. Their shiftless son, Alexander, has quietly given up going to school and spends his days hanging around the park, consorting with undesirables. Also living in their house is Anna's silent, elderly mother. Full review...
The Temple-Goers by Aatish Taseer
Aatish Taseer is probably best known for his journalism, publishing regularly in the Indian press, in Prospect, and perhaps most prolifically in Time magazine. He has won acclaim for his memoir: Stranger to History in which he, raised by his Indian Sikh mother, traces his absent Muslim father across the border in Pakistan – and also for his translations of the short stories of Saadat Hasan Manto. Full review...
The Spider Truces by Tom Connolly
The title of this debut novel by Tom Connolly is enigmatic, mysterious. It draws the reader in - just like a fly to a spider's web. And in fairness 'The Spider Truces' does exactly what it say on the tin as the main character, Ellis, is obsessed and terrified in equal measure, of spiders.
... and when you live in an old house, as the O'Rourke family does, there are plenty of spiders and other creepy crawlies about. Full review...
The Favorites by Mary Yukari Waters
This story is set in Kyoto, Japan, starting in June 1978. Fourteen year old Sarah Rexford and her Japanese mother, Yoko, have come back from the US to stay with family for a few weeks. Sarah was born and brought up in Japan but has lived in the US with her mother and white American father for five years. She is very conscious of the differences between life in Kyoto and in Fielder's Butte, California. Here in Kyoto, the women, including Sarah and her mum, go shopping every day for food, and the food is very different – in an opening scene, Sarah is trying to explain to her grandfather what she normally has for breakfast in the US, and becoming aware of the gulf between her life in Japan and in California. Full review...
Trespass by Rose Tremain
Set in the hills of Southern France, Trespass is a novel about sibling love and rivalry, disputed territory and ultimately revenge. In the French corner are Aramon Lunel, resident of the Mas Lunel, and his sister Audrun who lives in a cottage in the grounds. In the English corner are Victoria Verey, a garden designer, and her partner, an untalented watercolourist, Kitty. The catalyst that brings these together is the arrival in France of Anthony Verey, Victoria's sister whose exclusive antiques business in London is failing and who decides to follow his sister in finding a new life in France. Aramon is tempted to sell his family Mas by the lure of 'foreign' money even if that means that his sister's house has to be destroyed to secure the deal. Full review...
All That I Have by Castle Freeman
Castle Freeman may sound like two thirds of a firm of provincial solicitors but thankfully this Castle Freeman is a man very skilled in writing about the law rather than practicing it. In his latest novel Freeman tells an intriguing tale involving local Sheriff Lucian Wing and his practical yet low-key approach to maintaining order in rural Vermont. Not for Wing the gung ho approach to fighting crime. He doesn't wear a uniform, he drives a battered old car rather than the standard issue sheriff's wagon and his gun, so ubiquitous in US law enforcement, is safely tucked away in his bottom drawer. Everyone in the area knows the sheriff and by and large they respect him and his slightly unorthodox way of doing business. Full review...
