[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]
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{{newreview
|author=Suzanne Rindell
|summary=The story starts harshly, with a release from prison, a bail hostel, a refuge for people with mental health problems as a better-than-nothing-lied-to-be-obtained kind of a sanctuary and a slow easing back into society. If you can call a housing association flat, with a decorating voucher and no furniture, only occasional power and annoying neighbours ''society''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554739</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jennie Rooney
|title=Red Joan
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It is very obvious where Jennie Rooney has taken the idea for her novel ''Red Joan'' from. As she acknowledges fully, it has its origin in the 1999 story of Melita Norwood whose espionage for the Russians wasn't discovered until she was in her late 80s, but while Norwood was a dyed in the wool communist, Rooney offers a more complex back story to her character, Joan. The result is a very different type of spy novel than normal. Joan, a widowed grandmother, is going about her day to day life when MI5 come knocking on her door to ask about her past. The narrative switches between their questions to her and her recollections of her time at Cambridge in the late 1930s where communist feelings were, by some, given a more sympathetic ear. When Joan falls for Leo, the cousin of her Russian born friend Sonya, she gets dragged into a world that is dangerous and morally complex.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701187573</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jason Hinojosa
|title=The Conception of Zachary Muse
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Evangeline Muse gives birth to Zachary alone in her special lagoon… but that's starting at the end. In the beginning, Thomas Greene is a tutor and Will Archer a talented wood carver who both accept employment from Michael Muse. What they don't realise at that moment is, once they meet his beautiful daughter, Evangeline, nothing will ever be the same again for any of them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>9380905440</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Andrew Cowan
|title=Worthless Men
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you read a lot of fiction about World War One, it's tempting to imagine pre-war England as an idyl of peace and innocence. Andrew Cowan's ''Worthless Men'' depicts a much more gritty and earthy England. Set in 1916 in an industrial and market town, it weaves together several narratives that combine to depict a hard life even before the outbreak of war. In fact, its easier to imagine the lure of adventure that the war initially offered as a change from the harsh realities of life at home, although by the time Cowan's novel begins, the grim reality of what is involved has dampened much of this enthusiasm.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144475940X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Meike Ziervogel
|title=Magda
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet a woman who, despite praying to remain virginal, had seven children. Meet a woman whose mother thought her ''hoity-toity'', and spoilt, and who thought she should go to work in a factory at school age to know her place better. Meet a woman of whom her oldest daughter would write 'I don't care what Mother says. Mother isn't always right. No, she definitely isn't.' All three women are, of course, one and the same, and they're Magda Goebbels, the woman who epitomised more than anyone the Nazi wife.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773401</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Shani Boianjiu
|title=The People of Forever are not Afraid
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Yael, Lea and Avishag go through their final years at high school in a little Israeli town on the Lebanese border and then on to the inevitable: the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). Gender is immaterial, all Israeli citizens must serve at least two years and for these girls the moment arrives after graduation. Yael's posting seems futile as she guards a training base against marauding lads, sneaking across the border to pinch perfume from pockets rather than pose any real security threat. Lea's assignment on a border checkpoint searching the daily line of immigrant workers is riddled with routine. Avishag joins up with her own demons, her brother Dan having died after his national service. She knows how it happened but continues to struggle with why; something she must handle alone.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781090092</amazonuk>
}}