Changes

|author=Afonso Cruz and Rahul Bery (translator)Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Kokoschka's DollBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=24.5

|summary=Well, Everything in this looked very much like a book I could love from the get-go, which however sweet or seemingly innocent, is why I picked my review copy up steeped in anguish and flipped pages over several times before actually reading any of itdistortion. I found things to potentially delight me each time – Even a weird section in the middle on darker stock paperkiss, usually a chapter whose number was in symbol of intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. When the 20narrator cries out internally,000s''come over here and kiss me, letters used as narrative form, and so on'' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. It intrigued with the subterranean voice a man hears in wartorn Dresden that what little I knew The imagined recipient of it mentioned, too. But you've seen the star rating that comes with this reviewplea is Xavier, and can tell that if love was on these pagesher ex-partner, it was not actually caused by thema ghost she conjures to test her detachment. So what happened?|isbn=15294026971804271934

|isbnauthor=0571362672Helene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Snow|author=John BanvilleLili is Crying|rating=4.5|genre=Crime (Historical)Literary Fiction|summary=''WellFirst published in 1953 in French, at least you're this novel is a Wexford man.'' So said Colonel Osborne when he welcomed DI St John (pronounced 'Sinjun') Strafford to Ballyglass House timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just before Christmas 1957. Osborne was master of the Keelmore Hounds as Bessette wrenches words and had done something memorable with the Inniskilling Dragoons at Dunkirk. The niceties had to be established even when there was a Catholic priest dead sentences from their proper position on the library floor with some precious bits of his anatomy missing. Strafford was from Roslea at Bunclody page and thispositions them elsewhere, along with his good-but-shabby suitdisjointed, marked him out as of Osborne's class and obviously Protestanttruncated. The dead priest was Father Tom Lawless from Scallanstown, who - despite the different religions - was in Like the habit lives of spending time at Ballyglass House. His horse was stabled thereher characters, they are often left tragically incomplete.|isbn=1804271675

|author= Tahi SaihateJonathan Buckley|title= Astral Season, Beastly SeasonOne Boat|rating= 3.54|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= We long for ''One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our past even though it is narrator and protagonist, Teresa. Set against the evocative backdrop of a place small coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and its power to which we can never returnprovoke profound introspection. Tahi SaihateTeresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the death of both her parents. Prompted by her mourning, in her debut novel ''Astral Seasonnarrative voice is meditative and deeply self-aware, Beastly Season'' illustrates how these rose-tinted glasses often lieinviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. Her novel It is a meditation book that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and ironically relies on youth and how the things we do as a teenager can seem intensely important and often life-alteringanalepsis for its propulsion.|isbn= 19162771011804271764

|author=Laura Imai MessinaEowyn Ivey|title=The Phone Box at the End of the WorldBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5

|summary= In ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the northeast story of JapanBirdie, in Inwate Prefecture the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a man installed bar waitress, a telephone box in his gardensetting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Described as a ''Inside there is an old black, telephone, disconnected, that carries voices into the wind.wild card'' It is a real place, a necessary placeshe feels stuck in her day-to-day life, and I am pleased yearns to see cross the IMPORTANT NOTE that Wolverine river and live on the author attaches North Fork to fulfil her storydesires of a simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, that the place is not a tourist destinationstrange, it is taciturn and solitary man, who says he has a sacred placecabin over there, a place that must be left she feels called to those who really need go - and bring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|isbn=178658039X1472279042

|author=Amin MaaloufSally Rooney|title=The DisorientedIntermezzo

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary= Adam Sally Rooney has lived in Paris for years, speaks French more easily than his native Arabic. In fact he hasn't been back to his homeland for 25 years. An old friend studied the chessboard of life and is dying…or as Adam prefers to think something of him a former-friendgrandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, perhaps not as harsh as an ex-friendher characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, or maybethe central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. The falling out was Ivan, a long time agosocially awkward chess prodigy, and Adam's partner has no idea what it was aboutcontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, even so she urges him to go knowing that he'll regret not doing soa successful lawyer living in Dublin. Not knowing whether heFollowing their father's going because he needs or wants topassing after a long battle with cancer, or simply because he was asked, hethe brothers's on the next planealready strained relationship faces new trials. |isbn=B07ZQSK9CY0571365469

|author=Joanne M HarrisFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=A Pocketful of CrowsWhite Nights

|genre= Confident ReadersShort Stories|summary= I have As always been of in Dostoyevsky, the mind that once you're above picture-book level and before you get to graphic sex & violence, there character work is no difference between books for children and books for adultssublime. There are good books One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and poor onestemperaments with remarkable clarity. And Joanne Harris does not produce poor ones|isbn=0241619785}}{{Frontpage|author=James Baldwin|title=Giovanni's Room|rating=4. 5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=''A Pocketful of CrowsGiovanni's Room'' is clearly aimed at follows the younger readers narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as witness the use of he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the middle initial real tension in the author's name to differentiate novel arises not from her adult offers. Ignore that if you have loved anything his infidelity but from ''Chocolat'' onwards you will know that Harris is mistress of the modern fairy taledeeper conflict within himself. This is no different. It is an utter delightDavid's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|isbn=14732221840141186356

|author=Frederic Beigbeder and Frank Wynne (translator)Alba de Cespedes |title=A Life Without EndForbidden Notebook

|summary=I looked at This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the calendar the other weekmoment our protagonist, and disappointedly realised I have a birthday this year – I knowValeria Cossati, yet another one. It won't be one of the major numberspurchases her forbidden notebook, but and learns about herself in the time when I have the same number as Heinz varieties looms on the horizonmost intimate and revealing ways. And then a few |isbn=1782278222}}{{Frontpage|author=Ottessa Moshfegh|title=My Year of the big 0-numbers, Rest and if all goes wellRelaxation|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=At best, I'll be an OBE. (Which this novel is a scathing critique of course stands for Over Bloody Eighty.) Now if that's modern society and reveals the extent fragility of my mid-life crisishuman relationships; at worst, I guess I have to be happy. Our author here doesn't use that exact phraseit is the cynical, but he might be said to be living onepredictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. Determined to find out how to prolong life for as long as he wants – he would like to see 400 – he hops right into bed with the assistant to the first geneticist he interviewsThis unlikely heroine, and they end up with a childslim, which attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is at least a way of continuing disillusioned with the life of his genesworld, and a motive but resolves not to keep on goinglose sleep over it: in fact, her solution lies in her hibernation. But how can he get to not flick the 'final way out' switch, especially when foie gras tastes so nice?|isbn=16428606701784707422

|author= Maryse CondéMatthew Tree|title= The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and IvanaWe'll Never Know|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= We live in a post- world: post-colonialism, post-modernism, post truth. The list goes on. There are numerous works that utilise the prefix post- in their categorisation, but perhaps none Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more so than Maryse Condé. In her new novelto be different from his father, ''The Wondrous a drunk and Tragic Life chronic underachiever whose dreams of Ivan being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and Ivana'', Condé writes with fervour about the scars left by colonialism on the countries who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to which it latched itself. Ivan and Ivana are twins born in Guadeloupehis studies, a French overseas department. They grow up with intense cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and passionate feelings for each other. As they grow up and move overseas, the ravages of a post-colonial society drive them apart with tragic consequencesset himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn=1642860697B0CVFXPGP8

|authorisbn= Ukamaka OlisakweB0C47LV1PC|title= Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All RightFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating= 54|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= The new novel by Ukamaka Olisakwe is a look at the trauma and heartache of being Can you make a woman in 1980s Nigeria. The title is ''Ogadinma Or, Everything Will Be All RightYo birthing person''. Ogadinma joke? And if you could, is the eponymous heroine of question should you make it? Or is the story.. We are with her in every scene and question if you did, would it land? The catch is her narrative voice that leads the story, although Olisakwe writes in third personanswer for both could well be.... This provides a sense of detachment for the reader and highlights the isolation of Ogadinmano. She is exiled from her father ''Fragility''s home and sent to Lagos where she is married set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to an older man named Tobe. Their marriage descends into violence and indignities and Ogadinma must utilise her resourcefulness to escape.|isbn=1911648160emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic

|author=Elliot ReedMosby Woods|title=A Key to Treehouse LivingWhirly Man Loses His Turn

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=This The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the story best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a young boyman who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, William Tyceright? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, who that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?|isbn=B0C9SNG8R1}}{{Frontpage|isbn=0571379559|title=The House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''The House of Broken Bricks'' is being raised by his uncle after the death story of his mother and his fatherfour people. Tess Hembry's abandonmentroots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. HoweverInsubstantial as it might look, it isn't told in s stood the usual narrative waypassage of time, storms and floods. InsteadHer husband, the book is made up of glossary entriesRichard, written by Williamstruggles to grow his vegetables, as a way of describing certain events, situations to complete the delivery rounds - and emotionsto bring in sufficient money. It runs alphabeticallyThey have twin boys - Sonny and Max, starting with ABSENCE, then moving to ALPHABETICAL ORDERthe rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. As I began to read I did find myself thinking People don'what on earth?!t believe that they' but I soon grew used to the stylere related, much less twins and was instead caught up in Williamthere's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's storyhis nanny.|isbn=1911545418

|author= Karina Sainz Borgo and Elizabeth Bryer (translator)Claire North|title= It Would Be Night in CaracasHouse of Odysseus|rating= 45

|summary= ''It Would Be Night in CaracasWhat could matter more than love?'' illuminates  The follow-up to the everyday horrors of modern day Venezuelaexcellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. It begins with In the death palace of Adelaida Falcon's mother and chronicles Adelaida's coming Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to terms with rule without her new solitude in this world husband, who sailed to war at Troy and her attempts to escape itthen by divine intervention never returned home. Danger stalks As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the shadows Western Isles. Having survived – politically andphysical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, in Queen Penelope is on the brink of a society where fragile peace. One that shatters however with the establishment is crumblingreturn of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, who can you turn to? seeking refuge.|isbn=00629368670356516075}}

|isbnauthor=1471186393Kay Chronister|title=Photographer Desert 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 Lostfears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|isbn=1803364998}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Caroline ScottEric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Historical FictionHorror|summary=May 1921Horror taps into something primeval within us. Edie receives It is used as a photograph through the postway to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. There Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is no letter a home invader, a monster or note with a ghost, itusually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There '' is nothing written on the back of the photographnot like that. It is a picture collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of her husbandillness, Francisgrief and humiliation. Francis has been missing for four years. Technically, he has been "missing, believed killed" but Horrors that is not something that a young widow can believe. She hangs on the word linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad'missing', disbelieving the word killed.

|isbnauthor=1509896465Madelaine Lucas|title=The Nightjar|author=Deborah HewittThirst for Salt|rating=4.5|genre=FantasyLiterary Fiction|summary=''The NightjarLove, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity' is an unusual and exciting story. Alice Wyndham lives ' Told from a normal life in London until she finds retrospective view, a box on young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her doorstep one morning and . Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her life begins senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to unravel, fastits sorrowful end the summer after. From that very moment, Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her life is flooded with magicolder lover, lossdepicting its all-consuming nature, expectation how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and particularly, betrayal. As everything around how it altered her shifts, all that she knows, all that she thinks she knows, must changeirrevocably. Who can she trust? Who must she trust? Who will she trust? More importantly, can she even trust herself?|isbn=0861546490

|isbnauthor=0857058738Michael Grothaus|title=Equator|author=Antonin Varenne and Sam Taylor (translator)Beautiful Shining People|rating=3.54|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=It strikes me that nobody can speak well of the Wild West outside the walls of a theme park. Our agent to see how bad it was here is Pete Ferguson, who bristles at the indignity of the white man against Native 'Indian', who spends days being physically sick while indulging in a buffalo hunt, and who hates the way man – and woman, of course – can turn against fellow man at the bat of an eyelid. But this book is about so much more than the 1870s USA, fearing something and the attendant problems with gold rushes, pioneer spirits and racial genocidehaving it come to pass are two different things. He finds himself trying And I'm willing to find this book's version bet most of Utopiawhat we fear will never happen, namely the Equator, where everything is upside down, people walk on their heads with rocks in their pockets or we can take steps to keep them on change it.'' ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the ground question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to counter the anti-gravity, and where, who knows, things might actually be betterhuman. But that equator Of what is real and what is a long way away – artificial, and there's a whole adventure full whether the development of Mexico and Latin America between him and it… technology is exciting or frightening.|isbn=191458564X

|isbnauthor=1526614960Jennifer Saint|title=The Dutch House|author=Ann PatchettAtalanta

|summary=When we first meet Danny and his elder sister''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, Maeve ConroyI vowed. I would take my place, they're both living at The Dutch House with their parents and under not just in the gaze name of the portraits goddess. It was for the sake of the former owners whose oil paintings still hang on the wallsmy name, too. ItAtalanta''s  Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a strange family dynamic: Cyril Conroy son, Atalanta is distant raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the closest Danny seems opportunity comes – to come to him is when he goes out with him on join the Argonauts, a Saturday collecting rents fierce band of warriors, descendent from properties the family ownsGods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. Elna Conroy What follows is lovinga whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, but absent increasingly often until the point comes when the children are told Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will not be returning. In other circumstances, this might have affected Maeve and Danny deeply, but their primary relationship is with each other. It's a bond which only death will breakher undoing.|isbn=1472292154

|isbnauthor=0954899520Amanthi Harris|title=A Winter Book|author=Tove JanssonBeautiful Place

|summary=Tove Jansson's worldwide fame lasts Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the Moomin books, written in the 1940s and later becoming television characters southern coast of the simplicity, naivety and sheer 'goodness' that would later produce flowerpot men or teletubbies. Simple drawings, simple stories, simple goodnessher home country. What This is often forgotten outside of a place she spent her native Finland formative years. It is that not a place she was a serious writer…that born into, but the one she wrote for adults thinks of as well as children…and that home. How she had a feeling for came to be at the natural world Villa, how it became her home, and the simple machinations that have flowed through her life that not only informed those child-ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like trolls but went far beyond any fantasy the musical score of how a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the world might beVilla.|isbn=1784631930

|isbn=0954221710178563335X|title=The Summer BookSea Defences|author=Tove JanssonHilary Taylor

|summary=Tove JanssonWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's short novel about Summer is several worlds away from a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the Moomintrolls she is most famous for outside children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her native Scandinaviagrandson. Book yourself an afternoon this Summer Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, and take yourself and The Summer Book somewhere quietis a lovely place, preferably within sight but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and sound she's in awe of the seavicar, settle back Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and prepare to be transportedChristopher 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.

|isbn=17885423471398515388|title=Snowflake, AZThe Boy and the Dog|author=Marcus SedgwickSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=34.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the 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 wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.}} {{Frontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=Papa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=4

|summary=This is a deep, interesting read, unlike any book I've read in quite some time'Some frogs had gotten into the well. The novel's story follows a young man named Ash ' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the process fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of joining a community their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of sick people in the curiously named town dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of Snowflake, Arizonathe buckets as he filled them. These people are sick, but it's not a sickness you've heard  How is that for an opening? The style of. Instead, they're environmentally ill – affected by household chemicals and fabrics, pesticides, static electricity, and radiation – and their only ''cure'' is to stay this novel in the town away form of interconnected short stories goes from the real worldsuccinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a sixpence. Though it's about a real placeAnd author Marco North, who has the people in it are fictional. It really is a place apartmost wonderful turn of phrase, quite literally cut off from the outside world – people are even required starts as he means to decontaminate themselves thoroughly before becoming fully integratedgo on.

|isbnauthor=1784742716Daisy Hildyard|title=Train Man|author=Andrew MulliganEmergency|rating=2.54

|summary=I came to The summary of this book thinking I knew just doesn't come close to explaining what to expect, even though it is [[:Category:Andy Mulligan|the author's]] debut in the adult novel market (hence the more mature name – he used to be an Andy). I thought it simple to sum up, the tale of a middle-aged man who knows too much about train travel having his life turned around in done with the most pleasant waypremise. I hadn't opened it when I'd shelved it alongside [[:Category:Chris Cleave|Chris Cleave]], and [[:Category:David Nicholls|David Nicholls]]. I expected some whimsy, some warmth and some affirmative loveliness.isbn=1913097811}}

More fool me{{Frontpage |author=Sally Oliver |title=The Weight of Loss |rating=4 |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving.Traumatised after the death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself.|isbn= 086154112X }} {{Frontpage|author=Natalia Garcia Freire|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the expression in a way I'm not familiar with. I have to confess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. From the little I have read (in translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism. |isbn=0861541901

|isbnauthor=1784631647Jennifer Saint|title=A Perfect Explanation|author=Eleanor AnstrutherElektra|rating=54

|summary=Enid Campbell was a woman 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who, on live in the face heavily male dominated world of it, had everythingAncient Greece. Leading the life of an aristocrat – full of inherited wealth and splendourCassandra, glamourous locales and high expectations. Only Enid's life has been plagued by mental illness – undiagnosedClytemnestra, untreated and threatening both Enid and those close to her. After losing custody of her children, Enid sells her son to her sister for £500 – but is this an act of greed, or an act of desperation? Exploring Elektra are all bit players in the true story of her own grandmother, Eleanor Anstruther has found the perfect subject for an explosive, moving Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and beautifully well-written debutthe most extreme furies.|isbn=1472273915