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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Stephanie Danler295967572X|title= SweetbitterPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating= 45|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Twenty –two year old Tess Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a restless graduate from a broken family. With the intention of finally starting her life, she moves to New York City train journey with no real plan but a need to do somethinghis companion Django. She manages to get a job at one of the most exclusive restaurants in town as a back-waiter Where they're going and Tess is thrown into what the comforting commotion purpose of New York life. It's at her new job that she becomes fascinated by two people: Simonethis journey is, a know-it-all server and Jake, a handsome yet moody bartenderis uncertain. While Django found the restaurant becomes her home and her colleagues her new family, tickets ''Sweetbitteron the floor somewhere'' follows Tess through a year of her life and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as she grows the pair travel to the station by coach and learns about the complexities of human relationshipstrain is a steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780749155</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rodrigo Hasbun and Sophie Hughes (translator)Makenna Goodman|title=AffectionsHelen of Nowhere

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=If you thought your teenaged years were a struggle to work out It could be argued that the world, and yourself, consider that pervading theme of Heidi Ertl. Or either of her sisters – this book serves as is malaise - a sort of tribute hard-to these three real-place feeling that something in your life womenis not quite right. The protagonist, and a disgraced professor on the lives that came out brink of their very disjointed youthlosing both his career and his relationship, forced to be rarefied from the norm by their family uprootingembodies this feeling. Father Hans was one of Leni Riefenstahl's key cameramenHowever, and Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a Nazi military photographerforce which is seductive, before taking radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the whole family into post-war exile in Boliviaprotagonist is indirect yet intimate. Their mother would have followed him to As the ends former owner of the earth – as countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in part would their daughtershis life, the older two of which her past tied to his potential fresh start the book by joining him on an expedition to discover a lost Incan city. Heidi finds young, instant love on The realtor who shows the trek – but sees protagonist around the dark side of such emotionshouse shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, toobeyond form''. Older sister MonikaAlthough she lives in an assisted living facility now, who might well be manic depressive, finds something else, while the baby of the family stays at home with a maudlin mother. So much here could be Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the hook on which to hang a full novel, but if anything it's reader gets the reaction of them all to this unusual formative journey that inspires this booksense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782272135</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Sun-mi HwangOlga Tokarczuk|title= The Dog who Dared to DreamHouse of Day, House of Night|rating= 45|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=From ''What's the very beginning, Scraggly knows good of a world that keeps changing like that she is different to her brothers and sisters. Her siblings have short? How can one go on calmly living in it?'' The title of this spellbinding work, glossy coats''House of Day, but ScragglyHouse of Night''s blue/black fur is long, wild and untamed. She may be an outsidersomewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, but she still enjoys life with her family in Grandpa Screecher's sunny yardsubtle changes which govern our lives, even if it means putting up with like the evil cat next door. Scraggly dreams that things can stay this way forevershift from day to night, but fate has other plans. One tragic nighthowever quotidian, everything she loves is cruelly ripped away from hercausing chaos. As she struggles to rebuild a new life and family for herselfBut, she comes to understand the constant in that sadnessimage is the house, betrayal and loss are an inevitable part of lifestoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived. Can Scraggly ever learn to trust another human again?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0349142106</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Sarah PerryThea Lenarduzzi|title= The Essex SerpentTower|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I confess to a bias… when I came across a reference to Sarah Perry''How unctuous are the fats of another's latest life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel; I wanted to read it for two reasons only, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. She Just as T's story is being told, the story of a local writersecond protagonist is unveiled: Annie, and the book is set daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a place not too far awaytower, captures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, but that I have yet above all, an enticing story to explore and T. It is a story which fascinates me: the Blackwater estuary she consumes avariciously, both in Essex. That's a place of the kind of wide open skies quest for truth and knowledge, and mud creeks that you will find up much in service of the Norfolk and Suffolk coast as wellmyth, fable and a landscape type that probably only appeals to a certain type of personfantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178125544X</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Susan BealeJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=The Good GuyVaim

|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=September 1964: an Indian summer in suburban Massachusetts''All was strange''. Ted McDougall is a twenty-three-year-old Goodyear tyre salesman who lives with his wife Abigail and ten-month-old daughter Mindy in the up-and-coming Elm Grove community. Both Ted and Abigail feel unappreciated in their roles. Ted knows his This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in-laws wanted him to become a lawyer and join Abigail's father's firmVaim, but he's a good salesman fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and wishes they wouldn't look down on him for it. Meanwhile AbigailEline, an American history buff, can't master two of the domestic arts of cooking and cleaning, much as she tries, and longs to go back to schoolprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473630339</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Emma ClineClaire-Louise Bennett|title= The GirlsBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=California. Summer 1969Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Fourteen year old Evie Boyd is Even a thoughtful yet bored teenager from kiss, usually a broken home. The attention she craves is nowhere to be found in the form symbol of her neglectful, serial dating motherintimacy and closeness, or even in the friendship becomes evidence of her fickle best friend Connielove lost. Abandoned by those around herWhen the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me, Evie's path collides with Suzanne – ' it is less an invitation than a mysterious older girl who introduces Evie desperate attempt to a strange yet thrilling new life, offering her the intimate relationship confirm her life back home lacksemotional numbness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784740446</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Simon Van Booy|title= Father's Day|rating= 5|genre= General Fiction|summary=When devastating news shatters the life The imagined recipient of six year old Harveythis plea is Xavier, she finds herself in the care of a veteran social worker, Wanda, and alone in the world save for one relative she has never met - a disabled her ex-conpartner, haunted by a violent past he can't escape. Moving between past and present, Father's Day weaves together the story of Harvey's childhood on Long Island, and ghost she conjures to test her life as a young woman in Parisdetachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780749694</amazonuk>1804271934

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Thomas KeneallyHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Napoleon's Last IslandLili is Crying

|summary=It's not usual to open First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a review with timeless text which wrenches the history hearts of how the book came to be written but with ''Napoleon's Last Island'' the story sheds an intriguing light its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the plot. In 2012 author Thomas Keneally was given tickets to an exhibition of Napoleonic artefacts: uniforms, furniture, china, paintingspage and positions them elsewhere, military decorationsdisjointed, snuff boxes and memorabilia as well as Napoleon's death mask. He was intrigued as to how the exhibits and particularly the mask came to be in Australiatruncated. Some pieces in the exhibition had been bought in later but most came from the descendants of the Balcombe family, who came to Like the colony in the first half lives of the nineteenth centuryher characters, from St Helena via England. The result of Keneally's research into the story is ''Napoleon's Last Island''they are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473625335</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Natural Way of ThingsJonathan Buckley|authortitle=Charlotte WoodOne Boat|rating=54

|summary=Yolanda and Verla wake up disorientated. They realise they've been drugged. Yolanda thinks 'One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that perhaps they are in some kind defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of mental facility - She knew she was not mad, but all lunatics thought that. Verla just sits, still philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and frozenprotagonist, waitingTeresa. And soon enoughSet against the evocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, two men arrive to reveal their fate. Yolanda this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and Verla, along with eight other girls, have been brought its power to a remote farmhouse surrounded by an electrified fenceprovoke profound introspection. Their heads are shavedTeresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the death of both her parents. They are dressed in uncomfortablePrompted by her mourning, scratchyher narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-aware, Amish-style clothesinviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. They are tied together like It is a chain gang. And, like any chain gang, their days are marked with forced labour. Two men, one more cruel than the otherbook that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and a so-called nurse are their jailers, not their guardiansironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1760291870</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Emma GeenEowyn Ivey|title=The Many Selves of Katherine NorthBlack Woods Blue Sky

|genre=Science Literary Fiction|summary=As a Bristol-area 'phenomenaut'Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, nineteen-year-old Kit projects herself into the lab-grown bodies young mother of all sorts of creatures. She's recently spent toddler Emaleen, who longs for a lot of time life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a fox (appropriate given bar waitress, a setting which enables her nickname) bad habits and got particularly close with her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Described as a vixen named Tomoko. It's becoming much harder for 'wild card'', she feels stuck in her day-to-day life, and yearns to leave cross the animal world behind at Wolverine river and live on the end North Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man, who says he has a cabin over there, she feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with her . Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen'jumps's lives forever.|isbn=1472279042}} {{Frontpage|author=Sally Rooney|title=Intermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction |summary=Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Even after BuckleyHer dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her neuroengineercharacters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, signals her the central one for readers to 'Come home' unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and she resumes her original bodyPeter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, she has trouble giving up animal tendencies like territorialisma successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, toileting outdoors and raiding binsthe brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408858436</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sjon and Victoria Cribb (translator)Fyodor Dostoyevsky|title=Moonstone: The Boy Who Never WasWhite Nights

|summary=Sixteen-year-old Mani Stein - Moonstone in translation - existed on the fringes This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of society. He lived in Reykjavik suspense and in 1918 tension from the night sky (and the day for that matter) was lit by the eruptions of the Katla volcano. The Great War was raging, or possibly grinding onmoment our protagonist, but life in the capital carried on much as usual. There were shortagesValeria Cossati, such as coalpurchases her forbidden notebook, but there was the new fashion and it was for the movies that Mani lived, seeing every production he could, sometimes several times. He dreamed learns about herself in the films, changing them to suit his tastes, working his own life into the plots. But there was another reason why Mani was a misfit: Mani was gay most intimate and frequently made a living as a sex workerrevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473613132</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Conor O'CallaghanOttessa Moshfegh|title=My Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=At best, this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the fragility of human relationships; at worst, it is the cynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. This unlikely heroine, a slim, attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the world, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, her solution lies in her hibernation.|isbn=1784707422}}{{Frontpage|author=Matthew Tree|title=Nothing on EarthWe'll Never Know

|summary=On a sweltering night in what is a blisteringly hot summer a young girl hammers at a man's door and when let into the house tells him that her Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father has disappeared ''too''. Gradually her story emerges, of a home on one drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of those estates so common in Ireland after the collapse of the Celtic Tiger with only the occasional house occupied and others only part built. It could be being exceptional at any one of hundreds of Irish towns at that time his artistic passions all failed miserably and its main feature is the lack who had endless crises of hope that it will never be any betterself confidence. Our narrator tells her story, much, he saysSo Tim applied himself to his studies, as it was told to him cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and we hear of a life on the edge of poverty, with strange noises in the night, words written in the dust on the windows mirrored by those written in blue ink on her skinset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781620342</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Per Olov Enquist and Deborah Bragan-Turner (translator)B0C47LV1PC|title=The Parable BookFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=3.54

|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, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, a(nother) new Head Masterstruggles 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 out with his mother that she's his nanny.}}{{Frontpage|author=Claire North|title=House of Odysseus|rating=5|genre= Literary Fiction |summary= ''What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a crisis few months after all is said and donewhere we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, isn't it? It's probably his duty who sailed to stay war at Troy and right the shipthen by divine intervention never returned home. So when As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the latest throne of the new Head Masters Western Isles. Having survived – politically and his duo physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of crisis managers walk into a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the staff roomreturn of Orestes, Straitley can't quite believe King of Mycenae, and his old eyessister Elektra, seeking refuge. The new Head |isbn=0356516075}}{{Frontpage|author= Kay Chronister|title= Desert Creatures|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an ex-pupil almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of St Oswaldwater or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''s; Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a boy who, in his time at the esteemed old School caused such an uproarious scandal new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that one aligns many of the Masters ended up in prison! fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0385619235</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Bill BeverlyEric LaRocca|title= DodgersThe 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 – in fact we learn very little '' ''Walter stood waist-deep in this book, such as where or when we are, and why. What we do know is that he has left home. We get the feeling his father is too handy with punishmentfragrant water, but that can't be the only reason naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him first hiding out in an olive grove overnight, then fleeing across the plains surrounding his family's villagesticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Especially as he's chosen one Two of the most awkward, attritional times to cross said plains – dogs leaned over the land is in opening and barked down at the middle strange noise of a horrendous drought. When he tries to steal his first provisions from an aged goatherd, however, he finds some light and liquid, but is this substitute father figure ever going to be enough to help the boy flee what buckets as he needs to?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009958218X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Philip Dentfilled them.''|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 How is a perfect time that 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. an opening? 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 Mountain|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=A young man, his grandfather and a stork with a broken wing are the ''company of rebels'' at the heart style of this lively tale set novel in Bulgaria's Strandja Mountains. The storks that return to the mountains each spring are migrants, like so many form of the people that have passed through the region over the centuries. The young narrator is also in transit, born in Bulgaria, but raised interconnected short stories goes from succinct and educated in America. The story opens with his return laconic to Bulgaria in search of his grandfather who has broken off contact with his family in America. But the young man's motives are not as clear cut as first appearswistful and musing, turning on a sixpence.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473622182</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|And author= Elisa Albert|title= After Birth|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= This book is definitely not for anyone who has a rosy picture of new motherhood. In factMarco North, I would probably avoid it if you are contemplating giving birth in the near future. For any woman who has ever struggled through the first few months most wonderful turn of motherhoodphrase, however, or a partner of somebody who is going through it, it is an astounding and revelatory read. Never before have I read a more searing, honest and open discussion of the emotional upheaval a woman often goes through after giving birthstarts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009959014X</amazonuk>