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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Stjernstrom and Rod Bradbury (translator)295967572X|title=The Best Book in the WorldPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Titus Jensen may not have written many great novels for Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a while (if ever) but train journey with his festival readings companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of others' works are renownedthis journey is, is uncertain. Why, his rendition of Django found the tickets ''The Diseases of on the Swedish Monarchs from Gustavas Vasa to Gustav Vfloor somewhere'' and has been compared favourably persuaded our narrator to his offerings from ''Handbook for Volvo 245''accompany him. However, one drunken night he and romantic poet Eddie X agree that their fame on Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the festival circuit would be insignificant by comparison if they could write past as the best book in pair travel to the world; a combination of all genres, appealing to all tastes station by coach and making all the best seller categoriestrain is a steam locomotive. They start work on it the next day but, rather than collaborate, each wants the lone glory. The race (or should that be battle?) to the publishing date is on!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843914808</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adriaan van DisMakenna Goodman|title=BetrayalHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Dutchman Mulder renews his acquaintance with his old friend Donald as he returns It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to South Africa-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a land he knew well in disgraced professor on the days brink of apartheidlosing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. Life may have moved on However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and apartheid ceased but some things have worsenedunnerving: Helen. Have Mulder The connection between Helen and Donald made any difference at all? the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As they recall their shadier youththe former owner of the countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, they have one more chance her past tied to struggle for someonehis potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form's freedom against all odds and a violent society'. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051849</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Olga Tokarczuk
|title=House of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?''
The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in that image is the house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Thea Lenarduzzi|title=Her Privates WeThe Tower|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= ''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, above all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. |isbn=1804271799}}{{Frontpage|author=Frederic ManningJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Vaim|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ernest Hemingway called Frederic Manning's 'All was strange'Her Privates We'' 'The finest and noblest book of men in war' he had ever read. But Hemingway wasn't a very trustworthy man, so we tend to defer judgement. He is, however, useful for contrast. Hemingway's tales of war (such as ''A Farewell to Arms'' and ''For Whom This haunting phrase encapsulates the Bell Tolls'') usually involve macho misfits and trite love stories, feats pervading sense of derring-do and filmic dialogue; all the things, otherworldliness which permeates this story set in factVaim, that have no place a fictional fishing village in Manning's First World War novel. Why is this? Well, by the time Hemingway started driving a Red Cross ambulance on the Italian front (1918), Manning's service was already over. Nevertheless, unlike the illustrious (Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and self-mythologising) HemingwayEline, Manning spent his war deep in the trenches two of the Somme, mixing it with the proletarian soldiery. As such, ''Her Privates We'' is a brutal novel concerning the 'subterranean, furtive, twilight life' of the average Tommy, a work of startling power, and one that completely eclipses the war novels of the romantic Hemingwayprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184668787X</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ruth OzekiClaire-Louise Bennett|title=A Tale for the Time BeingBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Ruth finds Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a 'Hello Kitty' bag washed up on the shore kiss, usually a symbol of Whaletownintimacy and closeness, the small Canadian island that she and her husband Oliver call homebecomes evidence of love lost. As Ruth opens it and begins reading When the diary safely protected insidenarrator cries out internally, she learns about Nao''come over here and kiss me, '' it is less an invitation than a teenager in Japandesperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. Through her writing Nao becomes real and the tales The imagined recipient of her varied lifethis plea is Xavier, struggles at school and fascinating relatives compels Ruth to search for herex-partner, or at least a ghost she conjures to discover test her fatedetachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857867970</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sebastian FaulksHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=A Possible LifeLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Geoffrey swaps a career as a public school master for an existence as an English officer behind German lines during WWIIFirst published in 1953 in French, an experience that will take a lifetime to expunge. Billy this novel is a child sent to timeless text which wrenches the workhouse to give his family a chance hearts of survivalits readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the page and positions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. Elena has to come to terms with an adopted brother, Jeanne Like the French nursemaid lives in the shadow of a one-off encounter and Jack? He bears the indelible heart print of a girl who travels with a guitar. Five lives, five stories, one humanher characters, emotional threadthey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099549220</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tash AwJonathan Buckley|title=Five Star BillionaireOne Boat
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=China ''One Boat'' is a booming economy for people in a position to take advantage; people like Gary deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the pop star who once won reader into a talent showcontemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Yinghui the lingerie magnate or her childhood friend and property developer Justin who feels Teresa. Set against the weight evocative backdrop of his family's expectations. Then there's Phoebea small coastal Greek town, moving to Shanghai from this work masterfully captures the country on a promise magic of its setting and a belief that its power to attract success one must act provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as if one already the reason she has visited itafter the death of both her parents. Life will bring them Prompted by her mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-aware, inviting the reader into each other's orbit her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a book that not only requires but it won't leave any inspires depth of them the same as when they startedthought, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007494157</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jhumpa LahiriEowyn Ivey|title=The LowlandBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=43.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Subhash and Udayan Mitra are brothers growing up in an India growing into its post-independence status. Subhash goes along with Udayan's ideas but it's Udayan whoBlack Woods Blue Sky''s tells the radicalstory of Birdie, fighting against the injustices young mother of an elitism that remains once toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the British have left IndiaAlaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Eventually they go their separate waysDescribed as a ''wild card'', one studying abroad she feels stuck in her day-to avoid conflict -day life, and yearns to cross the other becoming more deeply embroiledWolverine river and live on the North Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. Life can't When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man, who says he has a cabin over there, she feels called to go on like this forever - and bring Emaleen with her. Without realising it doesn't but the reverberations seem to, affecting generation after generation as Subhash realises that the search for peace isnthis calling will transform hers and Emaleen't always an external things lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408828111</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Colum McCannSally Rooney|title=TransAtlanticIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=In 1845 ex-slave, black American Frederick Douglass visits Ireland for Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a lecture tour about freedom grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and emancipation only to discover he's not preaching to so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the converted after all. In 1919 Alcock and Brown climb many relationships woven into a rickety aircraft this story, the central one for readers to fly unravel is the Atlantic fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and land Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in LimerickDublin. In 1994 Senator George Mitchell also travels to Ireland watched by a world thatFollowing their father's about to see passing after a miracle of negotiation. Meanwhile through it all Lily and her descendants are also therelong battle with cancer, not only watching history but living it on both sides of the Atlanticbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408829371</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The LuminariesFyodor Dostoyevsky|authortitle=Eleanor CattonWhite Nights
|rating=5
|genre=Literary FictionShort Stories|summary=Eleanor Catton's ''The Luminaries'' is set As always in Dostoyevsky, the New Zealand gold rush of the late 1860scharacter work is sublime. It's a story about greed, power, gold, dreams, opium, secrets, betrayal and identity, but most of all, it's One is never left wondering what a celebration of the art of story telling, both in terms of Catton's book and the stories her characters have to tell. It's the kind of book that character is perfect escapism thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and which wraps you up in its world. If you like big, chunky books that you can get lost in for hours, then this is one for youtemperaments with remarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847084311</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Four New Words for LoveJames Baldwin|authortitle=Michael CannonGiovanni's Room|rating=34.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Christopher meets Gina on Waterloo Bridge. He is newly widowed, she is newly homeless; he''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, an elderly LondonerAmerican man living in Paris, she's as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a young Glaswegiangay bar. It While David is engaged to Hella, who is a defining event travelling in both their livesSpain, but that only becomes clear in the future. Of pressing concern real tension in the present is novel arises not from his infidelity but from the rather rude policeman looking to move Gina ondeeper conflict within himself. The situation It is nearing crisis. Sensing her desperation, Christopher impulsively asks her to come home with him, a proposal she tentatively accepts. Yet it is this one benevolent act David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that gives birth to an odd and platonic friendship, a ultimately dooms his relationship based on silences and lacunas, and one which Michael Cannon's fourth novel, ''Four New Words for Love'', looks to delicately unravelwith Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908754249</amazonuk>0141186356
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eve HarrisAlba de Cespedes |title=The Marrying of Chani KaufmanForbidden Notebook|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=After waiting till all her elder sisters' weddings were done This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and dusted in true ultra-orthodox Jewish styletension from the moment our protagonist, it's now 19-year-old Chani's turn. She's only met BaruchValeria Cossati, purchases her fiancéforbidden notebook, four times and he hasn't even seen her elbows but learns about herself in the match is made most intimate and the day eventually arrivesrevealing ways. Baruch secretly studies forbidden gentile literature and Chani has an inquisitive streak often perceived as rebellious so God knows what the future holds. Perhaps they should take the Rabbi's marriage as an example? Or perhaps not…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908737433</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alison MacLeodOttessa Moshfegh|title=UnexplodedMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=53
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It's 1940 At best, this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and Britain lives in fear reveals the fragility of a Nazi invasion that could happen any day. In case the human relationships; at worst happens, Evelyn's husband Geoffrey has buried a little something for her and their young son Philip in it is the garden. He tells her the tin contains a bit of money cynical, predictable and his favourite photo slightly trite tale of theman unlikeable protagonist. As she digs it up from impulse rather than necessityThis unlikely heroine, a slim, she discovers that there's no photo but what there attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is instead makes Evelyn doubt that she knows the man she married. The events that follow make Evelyn realise that indeed she doesn't. Meanwhile disillusioned with the war continues and a German does invade their livesworld, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, her solution lies in the way that either of them could envisageher hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241142636</amazonuk>1784707422
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hannah KentMatthew Tree|title=Burial Rites|rating=4.5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=Fridrik, Agnes and Sigridur are accused of murdering two men one Icelandic night in 1829 before setting fire to their home. Now Agnes awaits execution, imprisoned in the farm of a lowly local family who, rumour has it, wouldnWe't be too great a loss if the prisoner becomes dangerous. Margrit Jonsdottir (the farmer's wife) doesn't feel threatened and sets the shocked, malnourished Agnes to work. Gradually Agnes reveals the events of that night to Margrit and Toti, a young priest. Her version seems to be a little different from what everyone else concluded, predictably… Or perhaps not so predictably.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447233166</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Harvest|author=Jim Cracell Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As harvest comes inTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a village finds itself under threat. Invaded by a series of unfamiliar visitors, it will find itself utterly transformed over a short but apocalyptic seven days. We watch through the eyes drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of Walter Thirsk as three vagabonds escaping the enclosure being exceptional at any of their fields are blamed for the trangressions of others, as the chartmaker Mr Quill enumerates the common land, his artistic passions all failed miserably and as Master Kent's benevolent rule is overtaken by a new owner, who comes with enforcers in the name had endless crises of ''profitself confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, progress cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and enterprise'' - or sheep farming as Walter quickly realisesset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330445669</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Meg WolitzerB0C47LV1PC|title=The InterestingsFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Back in 1974 six teenagers met at summer camp and did all those things which Can you get to do when your parents are not around to stop make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you. They smoked potcould, drank vodka and Tangs - and talked way into is the question should you make it? Or is the night about anything and everything. Plays were put onquestion if you did, animations were perfected, but most importantly friendships were made would it land? The catch is that would last the answer for years - for some it would both could well be a lifetime. Back in 1974, as Nixon left the White House under a particularly heavy cloud, ... no. ''Fragility'The Interestings', is set as one the city of their number called themPortland, knew that they could achieve anything they set their minds to. For three summers they returned Oregon, cautiously begins to Spirit-in-emerge from the-Woods and then they faced restrictions imposed during the real world.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701188278</amazonuk>covid pandemic
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Charlotte MendelsonMosby Woods|title=Almost EnglishA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In the late nineteen eighties sixteen year old Marina is a border at Combe school, destined - as she and all about her know - for Cambridge and The West isn't the medical profession. After her first term she's wonders if she's made a mistake as it's definitely not like dominant force it once was at Ealing Girls. There, a girl whose mother Nobody in the West is emotionally fragile doesn't stand out, even if the mother gets quite sure how to sleep on the sofa in her in-laws' flat because their son - her husband - upped and left her and their daughter. You would still fit in mend this or even if the family you're living with mending it is Hungarian and hasn't entirely left the ways best course of the old country behindaction. Governments are flailing. At Combe A war here, a push for climate action there's too much about Marina . A feeling that she could be mocked for - or could get her nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a cruel nicknameman with precognition. Marina simply doesn't fit Imagine the strategic advantage inthis asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, but right? Perhaps the family have sacrificed everything so most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that she can go therethis man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>144721997X</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0571379559|title=1Q84: The Complete TrilogyHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Haruki MurakamiFiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The ''1Q84The House of Broken Bricks'' trilogy is, without doubt, an impressive book. In many ways, the trilogy almost has to be read in this way as the three component books make little sense on their ownstory of four people. The first book Tess Hembry's roots are in the series in particular is almost completely baffling if taken in isolation. It doesJamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, though, demand a degree of dedicationbut instead, and if the prospect of a 1300 page novel in which not a huge amount happens she lives in terms of plot and in which there is a significant level of repetition leaves you cold, then this might not be the best entry point into house on the wonderful world riverbank, built of Haruki Murakamibroken bricks. As often with Murakami though Insubstantial as it might look, it's possible to read this book at a number stood the passage of levelstime, storms and floods. On Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the surface it's a love story set in a slightly fantastical setting with a little bit of crime thrown delivery rounds - and to bring insufficient money. At a deeper level They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, he explores the thin lines between imagination and reality, life and death and what you might call yin and yangrainbow twins. It Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's a novel where balance and vacuums play a big partJamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. It seems counter-intuitive to call a book of this magnitude People don'delicatet believe that they're related, but much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother thatshe's just how the story appearshis nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099578077</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexander MaksikKay Chronister|title=A Marker to Measure DriftDesert Creatures|rating=54|genre=CrimeDystopian Fiction|summary=Jacqueline roams the beaches of the Greek islands offering massages With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for money to ward off starvationhumanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. It helps but hunger Whether it is always with hera robotic takeover, lurking alongside the memory a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a former life in Liberia and the mindway for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures''s ear voice by Kay Chronister is a new work of her motherpost-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. Jacqueline It is at least alive and existing, but at what cost?a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848548052</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|titleisbn=Familiar1803363002|author=J Robert LennonEric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionHorror|summary=Is there Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a greater change in the life of a middle-aged woman than the death of her teenage son? Elisa might have thought not, having been forced way to bury fifteen year old Silas, reflect our darkest emotions and try and move on with her husband Derek how we as humans react and the year-older son, Samprocess them. But Most horror fiction feature a greater change occurs on the way back from her annual''Big Bad'', solo pilgrimage to his grave – something very weird happens to the universe. She pops from one car to anotherwhether that is a home invader, from under a cloudless sky to monster or a slightly greyer one – ghost, it usually something tangible and from her self as Elisa to a world where people call her Lisa, where she by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is plumper, in a different job, stiil married to Derek collection of short stories more interested in the same home – but still the mother horrors of two young men…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846689473</amazonuk>illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Madelaine Lucas
|title=Thirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Michael Grothaus
|title=Beautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The SonJennifer Saint|authortitle=Philipp MeyerAtalanta|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Philipp Meyer's second novel, ''The SonI was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship,'' is an epicI vowed. I would take my place, multi-generational saga of Texas life. Tracing the McCullough family from not just in the middle name of the nineteenth century to goddess. It was for the present day, Meyer joins those writing today's masterpieces sake of American 'dirty realism': Ron Rash, [[:Category:David Vann|David Vann]]my name, Richard Ford and especially Cormac McCarthytoo. Like McCarthy's ''Blood Meridian,'Atalanta' ''The Son'' is a gory Western that transcends a simplistic cowboys-versus-Indians dichotomy to draw broader conclusions about the universality of violence in a nihilistic world.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857209426</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Natasha SolomonsAmanthi Harris|title=The Gallery of Vanished HusbandsBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=On her thirtieth birthday Juliet Montague went out Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to buy a fridge for the princely sum Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of twenty-one guineasher home country. She'd saved hard for it - and This is a place she spent her parents had given her the final few pounds - but then Juliet did something impulsiveformative years. Instead of buying It is not a fridge place she was born into, but the one she commissioned a portrait thinks of herself and so began her involvement in the post-war art sceneas home. Juliet wasn't - by any stretch of How she came to be at the imagination - an artistVilla, but how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she had a startling ability to spot a first arrived there provide the ''goodscore'' picturefor this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. It was simply something which she ''knew' Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, much as she had known for certain that her husband had left for good on strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the day he didn't return home as expectedVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444736345</amazonuk>1784631930
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=IndiscretionSea Defences|author=Charles DubowHilary Taylor|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Charles DubowWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's debut novel promises a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to be pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a modern day Great Gatsbysobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. It too Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is set amongst the rich and famous outside New Yorka lovely place, it too but Rachel is narrated by struggling to develop a character seemingly on real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the outsidevicar, Gail, Maddybut then she's childhood friend Walterbeen doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007501307</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=Unfaithfully YoursThe Boy and the Dog|author=Nigel WilliamsSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When Nigel Williams first really burst on to the best-seller list, a couple First of decades agoall, it was with a book set in Wimbledon that really quite tickled a younger me – and my mother. But then he produced two more the earthquake, deep in the same seriesocean floor, which created the tsunami and we soon decided he was a bit of a one-trick ponythis, in turn, and could never be sure how much of caused the trilogy we'd read, or be too eager to read morenuclear meltdown. Flash forward, The result was complete and Williams has certainly branched out – his setting this time is Putneyutter devastation. Wimbledon Common is now Putney HeathThe deaths were uncountable, and so onthe loss of livelihoods was widespread. But here he provides an epistolatory novel – and if there's one kind of novel to make me prick up my ears it is one built The fact that many pets were separated from letters. It is their owners came far down the blatant twolist of priorities but -andsix months after the tsunami -fro timing of Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the narrative, convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the succinctness that characters are formed with, that strike me as obvious benefits of such a book – and Unfaithfully Yours has those and many moredog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472106741</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleisbn=Russian Stories0989715337|author=Francesc Seres|ratingtitle=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=This brilliant and varied collection of short stories is Papa on the product of a current academic interest in cross-cultural translation. Francisco Guillen Serés is a Catalan professor of Art History from Aragon. A Russophile, he has travelled widely to collect stories from those writing during the past hundred years of Russian history. These have been translated into Catalan and then into English. These unusual and delightful stories, some twenty one of them written by five writers read fluently and engagingly. They form an informative tapestry of Soviet and post-Soviet life, moving back in time with the older, earlier writers like Bergchenko, who died in the siege of Stalingrad, at the end. Ranging over mythic and symbolic tales to realistic portrayals of personal relationships; love trysts in St Petersburg, ferocious bears in the deep heart of the Taiga to the perils of becoming lost in continuous orbit in space. All aspects are impressively recounted.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>085705158X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=The ParrotsMoon|author=Filippo BolognaMarco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When confronted with ''Some frogs had gotten into the topic of parrots, most people would describe them as tamed tropical birds that are taught to repeat simple phrases, having no particular intelligence to engender an originality of their ownwell. Filippo Bologna has not in fact written a book about birds, but about writers '' ''Walter stood waist- deep in factthe fragrant water, three writersnaked except for his beaten leather hat. Just as the Neo-Pagans have a liking Long strands of the Triple Goddesses of The Maidentheir eggs wove around him, The Mother and The Crone, our three writers are similarly split into The Beginner, The Writer, and The Mastersticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. All three Two of these novelists are battling it out for The Prize, a prestigious award that would revitalise the career of The Master, legitimize dogs leaned over the efforts of The Beginner opening and assure The Writer a place in barked down at the annals strange noise of historythe buckets as he filled them. '' How is that for an opening? The setting style of Rome is utilised to provide both a stunning backdrop and one that is sympathetic to this novel in the mood form of our characters. The interconnected short stories of our three protagonists are interwoven in a delightfully clear fashion; Bologna's prose is delicate goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and descriptivemusing, but not at the sacrifice of pacingturning on a sixpence. The stage is set; And author Marco North, who has the characters have learned their lines. There is just one problem... out most wonderful turn of the three writersphrase, none of them deserves starts as he means to win The Prizego on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908968192</amazonuk>
}}
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