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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Talulah Riley295967572X|title= Acts of LovePale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating= 4.5|genre= Women's Literary Fiction |summary= Bernadette St John presents herself as Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the very face purpose of contemporary feminine independence. She this journey is strong, career-driven, beautiful…and definitely holds the attention of the publicis uncertain. For Bernadette is Django found the tickets ''Man Whispereron the floor somewhere'', winning herself fame with her ability and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to coax secrets from the richest station by coach and most powerful men the train is a steam locomotive.}}{{Frontpage|author=Makenna Goodman|title=Helen of Nowhere|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It could be argued that the world, exposing them with controversial distaste pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in her articlesyour life is not quite right. Hidden behind such The protagonist, a conniving disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and judgemental personahis relationship, howeverembodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is a deep insecurityseductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and a desperate longing to be loved by the perfect manprotagonist is indirect yet intimate. She has already decided that As the newly engaged Tim Bazier is former owner of the only candidate for such countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a position volta in his life, her heart, and will stop at nothing past tied to win him back from his all-too-lovely fiancépotential fresh start. Yet what is perfect is a subject for discussionThe realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and charismatic entrepreneur Radley Blakedescribes her as ''s unwavering attention has also fallen upon the feisty journalist. It an entity that is a weaving tale of pure consciousness, beyond form''will-they-wont-they'' that Riley spins here. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, one that I found myself unable to put downHelen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473637902</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jesse BallOlga Tokarczuk|title=How to Set a Fire and WhyHouse of Day, House of Night|rating=45

|summary=Lucia Stanton is a sarcastic 14-year-old misfit who lives with her elderly Aunt Lucy in a garage they rent from an evil landlord at the bottom of his large garden. She never comes right out and explains why she''What's there, but if you read between the lines you work out good of a world that keeps changing like that her father is dead and her mother is ? How can one go on calmly living in a mental hospital – presumably for his murder. Aunt Lucy is dignified and principled – it?''Don The title of this spellbinding work, 't do things you aren't proud House of Day, House ofNight'' is her motto – even though they are undeniably poor: Lucia only has one set , somewhat reflects this notion of clothes and mostly shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives off of liquorice and Aunt Lucy's terrible homemade bread, 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.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1925355470</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jenn AshworthThea Lenarduzzi|title=FellThe Tower

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Now her parents have died''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, Annette returns to sell her old childhood home but therehow dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''s work to do on . In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the decrepit building first. As she wanders around and tries to make some order identity of T, the overgrown shambles, sheprotagonist of this tale. Just as T's watched by story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the ghost daughter of her mothera wealthy family in the 19th century, Netty; who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a spirit with regretstower, captures T's imagination. Netty reminisces about AnnetteAnnie's childhood and the turning point their lives reached when the mysterious healer Timothy Richardson came fate is, above all, an enticing story to stayT. It was is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a time that promised so much but one quest for which Netty now needs to make amendstruth and knowledge, and in service of myth, even if she is beyond the gravefable and fantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473630606</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue GeeJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=TrioVaim

|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=In the winter of 1936, Steven Coulter's wife, Margaret, dies of tuberculosis, leaving their Northumberland cottage cold and empty. His work as a history teacher at Kirkhoughton Boys' School isnAll was strange''t enough to distract him from his grief; he spends his long evenings writing letters to Margaret. Gradually, though, as spring arrives he starts to take an interest in other things. His colleague Frank Embleton invites him to a performance by . This haunting phrase encapsulates the Hepplewick Trio: Frank's sister Diana on cello; pianist Margot Heslop, whose mother died when she was young and who looks after her fatherpervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a coal mine manager, at Hepplewick Hall; fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and their friend George LiddellEline, two of the violinist and leader, who is a Royal College of Music graduateprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784630616</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Stephanie DanlerClaire-Louise Bennett|title= SweetbitterBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Twenty –two year old Tess Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is a restless graduate from a broken family. With the intention of finally starting her life, she moves to New York City with no real plan but a need to do something. She manages to get a job at one of the most exclusive restaurants steeped in town as a back-waiter anguish and Tess is thrown into the comforting commotion of New York lifedistortion. It's at her new job that she becomes fascinated by two people: SimoneEven a kiss, usually a know-it-all server symbol of intimacy and Jakecloseness, a handsome yet moody bartenderbecomes evidence of love lost. While When the restaurant becomes her home and her colleagues her new familynarrator cries out internally, ''Sweetbittercome over here and kiss me,'' follows Tess through it is less an invitation than a year desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, her life as ex-partner, a ghost she grows and learns about the complexities of human relationshipsconjures to test her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780749155</amazonuk>1804271934

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rodrigo Hasbun Helene Bessette and Sophie Hughes Kate Briggs (translator)|title=AffectionsLili is Crying

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=If you thought your teenaged years were First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a struggle to work out timeless text which wrenches the world, and yourself, consider that of Heidi Ertl. Or either hearts of her sisters – this book serves its readers just as a sort of tribute to these three real-life women, Bessette wrenches words and the lives that came out of sentences from their very disjointed youth, forced to be rarefied from proper position on the norm by their family uprooting. Father Hans was one of Leni Riefenstahl's key cameramen, page and a Nazi military photographerpositions them elsewhere, before taking the whole family into post-war exile in Bolivia. Their mother would have followed him to the ends of the earth – as in part would their daughtersdisjointed, the older two of which start the book by joining him on an expedition to discover a lost Incan citytruncated. Heidi finds young, instant love on Like the trek – but sees the dark side lives of such emotions, too. Older sister Monikaher characters, 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 the hook on which to hang a full novel, but if anything it's the reaction of them all to this unusual formative journey that inspires this bookthey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782272135</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Sun-mi HwangJonathan Buckley|title= The Dog who Dared to DreamOne Boat|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=From ''One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the very beginningreader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Scraggly knows that she is different to her brothers and sistersTeresa. Her siblings have shortSet against the evocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, glossy coats, but Scraggly's blue/black fur is long, wild this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and untamedits power to provoke profound introspection. She may be an outsider, but Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she still enjoys life with her family in Grandpa Screecher's sunny yard, even if has visited it means putting up with after the evil cat next doordeath of both her parents. Scraggly dreams that things can stay this way foreverPrompted by her mourning, but fate has other plans. One tragic nighther narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-aware, everything she loves is cruelly ripped away from inviting the reader into herlabyrinthine cogitations. As she struggles to rebuild It is a new life and family for herself, she comes to understand book that sadnessnot only requires but inspires depth of thought, betrayal since its narrative structure is fragmentary and loss are an inevitable part of lifeironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion. Can Scraggly ever learn to trust another human again?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0349142106</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Sarah PerryEowyn Ivey|title= The Essex SerpentBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating= 43.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I confess to ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bias… when I came across bar waitress, a reference to Sarah Perry's latest novel; I wanted to read it for two reasons onlysetting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Emaleen. She is Described as a local writer''wild card'', and the book is set she feels stuck in a place not too far awayher day-to-day life, but that I have yet and yearns to explore cross the Wolverine river and which fascinates me: live on the Blackwater estuary in EssexNorth Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. That's When she meets Arthur Nielson, a place of the kind of wide open skies strange, taciturn and mud creeks that you will find up much of the Norfolk solitary man, who says he has a cabin over there, she feels called to go - and Suffolk coast as wellbring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and a landscape type that probably only appeals to a certain type of personEmaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178125544X</amazonuk>1472279042

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Susan BealeSally Rooney|title=The Good GuyIntermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction |summary=September 1964: an Indian summer in suburban MassachusettsSally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Ted McDougall Her dialogue is a twenty-three-year-old Goodyear tyre salesman who lives with his wife Abigail gripping and ten-month-old daughter Mindy in so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the up-fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and-coming Elm Grove communityPeter Koubek. Both Ted and Abigail feel unappreciated in their roles. Ted knows Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his in-laws wanted him to become older brother Peter, a successful lawyer and join Abigail's living in Dublin. Following their father's firm, but he's passing after a good salesman and wishes they wouldn't look down on him for it. Meanwhile Abigaillong battle with cancer, an American history buff, canthe brothers't master the domestic arts of cooking and cleaning, much as she tries, and longs to go back to schoolalready strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473630339</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Emma ClineFyodor Dostoyevsky|title= The GirlsWhite Nights|rating= 45|genre= Literary FictionShort Stories|summary=California. Summer 1969. Fourteen year old Evie Boyd is a thoughtful yet bored teenager from a broken home. The attention she craves is nowhere to be found As always in the form of her neglectful, serial dating motherDostoyevsky, or even in the friendship of her fickle best friend Conniecharacter work is sublime. Abandoned by those around her, Evie's path collides with Suzanne – a mysterious older girl who introduces Evie to a strange yet thrilling new life, offering her the intimate relationship her life back home lacks.|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 of six year old Harvey, she finds herself in the care of a veteran social worker, Wanda, and alone in the world save for one relative she has One is never met - left wondering what a disabled ex-con, haunted by a violent past he can't escape. Moving between past character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and present, Father's Day weaves together the story of Harvey's childhood on Long Island, and her life as a young woman in Paristemperaments with remarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780749694</amazonuk>0241619785

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Thomas KeneallyJames Baldwin|title=NapoleonGiovanni's Last IslandRoom

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It's not usual to open a review with the history of how the book came to be written but with ''NapoleonGiovanni's Last IslandRoom'' follows the story sheds narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an intriguing light on the plotItalian bartender he meets in a gay bar. In 2012 author Thomas Keneally was given tickets While David is engaged to an exhibition of Napoleonic artefacts: uniformsHella, furniturewho is travelling in Spain, china, paintings, military decorations, 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 Australia. Some pieces real tension in the exhibition had been bought in later novel arises not from his infidelity but most came from the descendants of the Balcombe family, who came to the colony in the first half of the nineteenth century, from St Helena via Englanddeeper conflict within himself. The result of Keneally's research into the story It is ''NapoleonDavid's Last Island''crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473625335</amazonuk>0141186356

{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Natural Way of ThingsAlba de Cespedes |authortitle=Charlotte WoodForbidden Notebook|rating=54

|summary=Yolanda and Verla wake up disorientated. They realise they've been drugged. Yolanda thinks that perhaps they are in some kind This Italian work of mental facility - She knew she was not mad, but all lunatics thought that. Verla just sits, still and frozen, waiting. And soon enough, two men arrive to reveal their fate. Yolanda and Verla, along with eight other girls, have been brought to a remote farmhouse surrounded by feminist fiction holds an electrified fence. Their heads are shaved. They are dressed in uncomfortable, scratchy, Amish-style clothes. They are tied together like a chain gang. And, like any chain gang, their days are marked with forced labour. Two men, one more cruel than the other, and a so-called nurse are their jailers, not their guardians.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1760291870</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Emma Geen|title=The Many Selves air of Katherine North|rating=3.5|genre=Science Fiction|summary=As a Bristol-area 'phenomenaut', nineteen-year-old Kit projects herself into the lab-grown bodies of all sorts of creatures. She's recently spent a lot of time as a fox (appropriate given her nickname) suspense and got particularly close with a vixen named Tomoko. It's becoming much harder for her to leave tension from the animal world behind at the end of her 'jumps'. Even after Buckleymoment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, purchases her neuroengineerforbidden notebook, signals her to 'Come home' and she resumes her original body, she has trouble giving up animal tendencies like territorialism, toileting outdoors learns about herself in the most intimate and raiding binsrevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408858436</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sjon and Victoria Cribb (translator)Ottessa Moshfegh|title=Moonstone: The Boy Who Never WasMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=53

|summary=Sixteen-year-old Mani Stein - Moonstone in translation - existed on the fringes At best, this novel is a scathing critique of modern society. He lived in Reykjavik and in 1918 reveals the fragility of human relationships; at worst, it is the night sky (cynical, predictable and the day for that matter) was lit by the eruptions slightly trite tale of the Katla volcanoan unlikeable protagonist. The Great War was ragingThis unlikely heroine, or possibly grinding ona slim, but life attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the capital carried on much as usual. There were shortages, such as coalworld, but there was the new fashion and resolves not to lose sleep over it was for the movies that Mani lived: in fact, seeing every production he could, sometimes several times. He dreamed about 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 and frequently made a living as a sex workerher solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473613132</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Conor O'CallaghanMatthew 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, a(nother) new Head Masterstorms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles 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 a crisis after all is said and done, isnout with his mother that she's his nanny.}}{{Frontpage|author=Claire North|title=House of Odysseus|rating=5|genre= Literary Fiction |summary= ''t itWhat could matter more than love? It's probably his duty ' The follow-up to stay and right the shipexcellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. So when In the latest palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the new Head Masters and his duo throne of crisis managers walk into the staff room, Straitley can't quite believe his old eyesWestern Isles. The new Head is an ex-pupil of St OswaldHaving survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's; a boy whoshores, in his time at Queen Penelope is on the esteemed old School caused such an uproarious scandal brink of a fragile peace. One that one shatters however with the return of the Masters ended up in prison! Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0385619235</amazonuk>0356516075

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Bill BeverlyKay Chronister|title= DodgersDesert 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 fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|isbn=1803364998}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Eric LaRocca|title= The 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

|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Nicola Barker teasingly refers to herself as this book's 'collagistSome frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, piecing together diverse documents to create a picture naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of Sri Ramakrishna (1836–1886)their eggs wove around him, a largely illiterate guru who attracted followers to his intense worship sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of the goddess Kalibuckets as he filled them. His life story '' How is a sticky mass that for an opening? The style of contradictions:|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785150669</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Toni Morrison |title= God Help this novel in the Child|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=A truly complex form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and emotionally raw portrayal, that seeks laconic to cover issues of racewistful and musing, gender, and paedophiliaturning on a sixpence. A slim volumeAnd author Marco North, yeswho has the most wonderful turn of phrase, but one that is powerful in its punchstarts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555921</amazonuk>