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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Helen Dunmore295967572X|title=Birdcage WalkPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens

|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=Bristol 1792: Lizzie married well. John Diner Tredevant Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a property developer who has reached the zenith of train journey with his lifecompanion Django. Where they's work: building a terrace of prestigious houses overlooking re going and what the Avon Gorge. In a time purpose of turbulence as France reaches the dawn of revolutionthis journey is, Britain, including Diner, fears it may spreadis uncertain. This puts Lizzie in a difficult position since her mother Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and stephas persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either -father both believe but we are probably in propagating pamphlets and ideas of egalitarianism for and the past as the pair travel to all, including women. In other words, they think nothing of spreading ideas of the sort that fanned station by coach and the French flames. However, that's not Lizzie's only problem… there train is a darkness in her husband's past of which she's unawaresteam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091959403</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Emma HendersonMakenna Goodman|title= The Valentine HouseHelen of Nowhere|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= In June 1914, Sir Anthony Valentine, It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a keen mountaineer, arrives with his family hard-to spend the summer -place feeling that something in their chalet, high in the French Alpsyour life is not quite right. ThereThe protagonist, for a disgraced professor on the first time, fourteen-year-old foundling Mathilde starts work as one brink of the 'uglies' - village girls employed as servants losing both his career and pickedhis relationship, it embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is believedseductive, to ensure they don't catch Sir Anthony's roving eyeradical and unnerving: Helen. For Mathilde it The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the start former owner of the countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in his life-long entanglement with les anglais - strange, exciting people, far removed from her past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the hard grind of farming. Except she soon finds protagonist around the Valentines are less carefree than they appear, with a curiously absent daughter no one talks house shares stories about. It will be decades - disrupted by warHelen, accidents and a cruel betrayal - before Mathilde discovers the key to the mysterydescribes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. And Although she lives in 1976an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the year Sir Anthony's great-great grandson comes to visit, she must decide whether to use itsense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444704028</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hannah TintiOlga Tokarczuk|title=The Twelve Lives House of Samuel HawleyDay, House of Night|rating=45

|summary=When she turns twelve, Samuel Hawley teaches his daughter, Loo (short for Louise), how to use her grandfather''What's rifle. Shooting the good of a gun and hotwiring a car prove to be useful skills for world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'' The title of this daughter spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of a fugitive. Hawley is a lawless modern cowboy whoNight''s had many close shaves over his years on , somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the run for committing robberies and making dodgy deals. He and his young daughter form a cosy unit of their own; they live off of Chinese food and vending machine snacks in motel rooms and move on every six months or so to avoid small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the consequences of his criminal activities. But when they get shift from day to Olympusnight, Massachusettshowever quotidian, Hawley decides it's time to settle downcausing chaos. He buys a But, the constant in that image is the house by , stoic against the water – with cash – and becomes a clean-living fishermanancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1472234367</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Nicole Dennis-Benn Thea Lenarduzzi|title= Here Comes the Sun The Tower|rating= 45|genre= Literary Fiction |summary= You have to assume ''How unctuous are the team behind the cover sleeve for Nicole Dennis-Bennfats of another's debut life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel Here Come, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is being told, the Sun have story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a keen sense wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of ironytuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, above all, an enticing story to T. Either that or none It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of them read beyond the first pagemyth, fable and fantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178607124X</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Polly Clark|title= Larchfield|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction |summary=I It's early summer when a young poet, Dora Fielding, moves to Helensburgh on the west coast of Scotland and her hopes are first challenged. Newly married, pregnant, she's excited by the prospect of a life that combines family and creativity. She thinks she knows what being a person, a wife, a mother, means. She is soon shown that she is wrong. As the battle begins for her very sense of self, Dora comes to find the realities of small town life suffocating, and, eventually, terrifying; until she finds a way to escape reality altogether. Another poet, she discovers, lived in Helensburgh once. Wystan H. Auden, brilliant and awkward at 24, with his first book of poetry published, should be embarking on success and society in London. Instead, in 1930, fleeing a broken engagement, he takes a teaching post at Larchfield School for boys where he is mocked for his Englishness and suspected - rightly - of homosexuality. Yet in this repressed limbo Wystan will fall in love for the first time, even as he fights his deepest fears.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786481928</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Otto de Kat Jon Fosse and Laura Watkinson Damion Searls (translator)|title=The Longest NightVaim|rating=3.54

|summary=Emma has a philosophy – ''let the dead rest, and love the livingAll was strange''. The problem with that, as a 96-year-old, is that there are too few living left, and so while .. This haunting phrase encapsulates the love remains she will go through her memoriespervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, taking a woozy, diaphanous path through all the major events of her life. Starting fictional fishing village in wartime Berlin with one husband, who gets snatched from her at work, fleeing to another place to wait Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for peace, Jatgeir and wait for him in vainEline, moving to Holland and finding new love, and so on – this wispy journey will show all two of the impacts of war, from rationing right up to exile, death and survivalprotagonists caught in its melancholic current. The memories are coming strongly here and now, as Emma is waiting for at least one of her two sons to visit, and then she will die…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857056085</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Marisa SilverClaire-Louise Bennett|title= Little NothingBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction |summary=In an unnamed country at the beginning of the last century, a peasant couple longs for a child. In despair they turn to gypsy tonics and archaic prescriptions, and one cold wintery night, the couple's wish comes true. But the silence that follows the birth forewarns of darker days to come. Strangers look on askance and fall speechless in the child's presence, and villagers protectively hush their children as they pass on narrow market lanes. Pavla is no ordinary child, but then this is no ordinary tale.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786071274</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Jeroen Blokhuis and Asja Novak (translator)|title=The Yellow House|rating=3

|summary=If you were the needy kindEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, would you really join is steeped in the drumming-out of town of two people accused of murder purely because of their nationality? Would you get anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a feeling symbol of belonging just because you were there when someone carried a dead dog down off a mountain? The main character in this novel does. But he has something that will really get him notedintimacy and closeness, well-thought-becomes evidence of, includedlove lost. He has come to When the south of France to set up an artistsnarrator cries out internally, '' collective, where he can live come over here and work alongside his counterpartskiss me, who can inspire each other and best each other '' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to create wonderful artconfirm her emotional numbness. In fact a much-respected guest is on his way now, so surely he can find kinship? The guest's name imagined recipient of this plea isXavier, after allher ex-partner, Gauguina ghost she conjures to test her detachment. The main character is, of course, Vincent van Gogh…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907320563</amazonuk>1804271934

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer DownHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Our Magic HourLili is Crying

|summary=There had always been KatyFirst published in 1953 in French, Audrey this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and Adam. They've been friends since school sentences from their proper position on the page and nowpositions them elsewhere, along with Audrey's partner Nickdisjointed, they remain inseparable as young professionalstruncated. ThenLike the lives of her characters, one day, Katy kills herself. No warning, no reason just no Katy. The four they are suddenly three trying to make sense of a moment that leaves so many questions in a world that refuses to pause while they figure it outoften left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1925240835</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Ayobami AdebayoJonathan Buckley|title= Stay With MeOne Boat|rating= 54|genre= General Literary Fiction|summary= I have a ''thingOne Boat'' about blurbs which give away far too much 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 narrator and protagonist, Teresa. Set against the stories. Not evocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, this time. This time…''There are things even love can't do…if work masterfully captures the burden is too much magic of its setting and stays too long even love bends, cracks, comes close its power to breaking, and sometimes does breakprovoke profound introspection.'' ''But even when Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it's in a thousand pieces around your feetafter the death of both her parents. Prompted by her mourning, that doesn't mean it's no longer love…'' That her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-aware, inviting the most heart-breakingly beautiful truth I've read in a long time – and it sums up this storyreader into her labyrinthine cogitations. This It is a story about love book that not being enough…but still being love. I hope this becomes a classiconly requires but inspires depth of thought, not just in since its narrative structure is fragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its native Nigeria but around the worldpropulsion. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782119469</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Michael Farris SmithEowyn Ivey|title= Desperation RoadBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating= 3.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Maben is on ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the runAlaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Emaleen. For Described as a long while it's not clear whether 'wild card'', she's running from something or towards somethingfeels stuck in her day-to-day life, or simply back and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to where it all startedfulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. She's got her small daughter with herWhen she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and they've been walking for solitary man, who says he has a very long timecabin over there, she feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with her. It's hard on the child, but Without realising it's also clear that if it wasn't for the child Maben would stop running, this calling will transform hers and itEmaleen's clear that that would not be a good thinglives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1843449870</amazonuk>1472279042

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Samanta Schweblin and Megan McDowell (translator)Sally Rooney|title=Fever DreamIntermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Meet CarlaSally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. She's a glamorous older woman, with poise Her dialogue is gripping and beautyso brilliantly frustrating, and someone who still looks a treat in a golden bikinias her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. But insideAmong the many relationships woven into this story, she's different. The biggest issue she seems the central one for readers to bear relates to an event a few years ago, when her horse breeder husband had unravel is the drama of both a hired, valuable stallion, fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and their son, being poisonedPeter Koubek. Away from the right medical treatmentIvan, Carla took David to a woman who said the only hope was a 'migration' – basicallysocially awkward chess prodigy, to farm out part of David's spirit and swap it contrasts sharply with someone elsehis older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's, to dilute the toxin. This was passing after a successlong battle with cancer, as David seems to have survived, although Carla is sure it was the wrong decision – she now sees David as at least part monster. But another odd thing about this tale is that it isnbrothers't being narrated by Carla, but by her neighbour, another mother called Amanda, who is renting a holiday home nearbyalready strained relationship faces new trials. And the further odd thing is to whom she is narrating this story – it's to David…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786070901</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shanthi SekaranFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=Lucky BoyWhite Nights

|genre=Literary FictionShort Stories|summary=Solimar wants more from her life than her Mexican home can offer and now she's 18As always in Dostoyevsky, she can go find itthe character work is sublime. Her target One is to get to the USA, never left wondering what a target so blinding that she doesn't realise what reaching out for it will cost. Meanwhile Kavya character is living the American dream. She's rich in friendship, family, a loving husband thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and life prospects and yet Kavya has a baby-shaped hole in her worldtemperaments with remarkable clarity. The problem is that there's only one baby for both of them… Lucky boy!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0735212279</amazonuk>0241619785

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Rick BassJames Baldwin|title= For a Little WhileGiovanni's Room|rating= 4.5|genre= Short StoriesLiterary Fiction |summary=''For a Little WhileGiovanni's Room'' is follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a collection of twenty-five short stories from Rick Bassgay bar. As someone previously unacquainted with Bass' work this new collection was a wonderful introduction While David is engaged to his quirkyHella, unusual style which focuses on stripped backwho is travelling in Spain, simple fables featuring often mundane situations, mysterious characters and magical experiences. The characters the real tension in each tale are beautifully crafted and the stories are dreamy, loose narratives covering everything novel arises not from his infidelity but from love to death to choices made the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and chances takendenial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782273042</amazonuk>0141186356

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dorthe NorsAlba de Cespedes |title=Mirror, Shoulder, SignalForbidden Notebook|rating=3.54

|summary=Danish author Dorthe Nors has published four novels, a novella This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and a story collection. The tension from the moment our protagonist of her latest novel, forty-something Sonja, has a problem with balance – literally. Due to an inner ear conditionValeria Cossati, if she bends over she's crippled by dizziness. It's inconvenient given that Sonja is currently taking lessons at Folke Driving School. She's already doing poorly – purchases her angryforbidden notebook, sweary instructor Jytte doesn't trust her enough to change gears so does it all for her – and so can't have them finding out that she gets dizzy. Eventually Sonja switches so Folke himself is her instructor, but he's an odious lecher. She really can't winlearns about herself in the most intimate and revealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782273123</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Alice HoffmanOttessa Moshfegh|title= FaithfulMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating= 4.53|genre= General Literary Fiction |summary= Growing up on Long Island, Shelby Richmond is an ordinary girl until one night an extraordinary tragedy changes her fate. Her At best friend's future is destroyed in an accident, while Shelby walks away with the burden of guilt. What happens when a life is turned inside out? When love this novel is something so distant it may as well be a star in scathing critique of modern society and reveals the sky? Moving from a life in her parents basement to a life in New York Cityfragility of human relationships; at worst, Shelby remains damaged by it is the loss of her best friendcynical, stumbling through life blindly predictable and fighting desperately to become connected to anything at allslightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. ButThis unlikely heroine, as she grows, she discovers emotiona slim, survival attractive and happiness, bundled up newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with dogsthe world, foodbut resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, books and men she's probably best avoiding… Deep her solution lies in New York City she find a circle of lost and found souls, and the angel who's been watching over her since that fateful night all those years ago…hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1471157717</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)Matthew Tree|title=OctavioWe's Journey|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Meet Octavio. He's a large lunk, a gentle giant, living alone in a lowly Venezuelan town – a town which once, fleetingly, had fame, fashion and success through a minor miracle, but has none any longer. Octavio, it seems, has some unusual habits – here he is, marching off to the chemist's with a table across his back, for it was all the doctor had at the time to write a prescription on. Now we never learn exactly what the cause of the prescription was, but we soon find out what the cause of the table is – Octavio cannot read, and has learned nothing beyond cutting into his palm to allow the wound to let him escape the need to write. Until, that is, a woman seems to suggest a way for him to learn to read and write, and to love – but that experience also proves to Octavio that there is a whole host of other things he can put his mind to, both for good, and for bad…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910477311</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Tomoka Shibasaki and Polly Barton (translator)|title=Spring Gardenll Never Know

|genre=General Literary Fiction |summary=MurakamiTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and (long before the film) Endo's ''Silence''. That's my limit as regards contemporary Japanese writing. But now there's Tomoka Shibasaki, chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and her noted work ''Spring Garden''who had endless crises of self confidence. Which, make no mistake, is definitely Japanese. For instance, if I told you it starts with a man looking up So Tim applied himself to watch his female neighbour on her balconystudies, and concerns obsession, you could well think it was cultivated his abilities rather than his about her. But no – perhaps only in the west is the gaze so male. The obsession is very much hers here, daydreams and it – and the novel – concern a singular houseset himself high but achievable ambitions. And the very singular country it lives in, and the changes it is going through…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782272704</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Laura KayeB0C47LV1PC|title= English AnimalsFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating= 54|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= When Mirka gets Can you make a job in a country house in rural England''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, she has no idea of is the struggle she faces to question should you make sense of a very English coupleit? Or is the question if you did, and a way of life would it land? The catch is that is entirely alien to herthe answer for both could well be.... Richard and Sophie are chaotic, drunken, frequently outrageous but also warm, generous and kind to Mirka, despite their argumentative and turbulent marriageno. Mirka  ''Fragility'' is swiftly commandeered by Richard for his latest money-making enterpriseset as the city of Portland, taxidermyOregon, and soon surpasses him in skill. After a traumatic break two years ago with her family in Slovakia, Mirka finds cautiously begins to her surprise that she is happy at Fairmont Hall. But when she tells Sophie that she is gay, everything she values is put in danger and she must learn emerge from the restrictions imposed during the hard way what she really believes in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140870823X</amazonuk>covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Charles D BlanchardMosby Woods|title=Kingdom's EndA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=The rats made their massive colony inside West isn't the ruins dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of an abandoned motion picture palaceaction. Governments are flailing. A war here, where a push for thirty long dark years, an aged blind leader ruled over themclimate action there. A beloved figure held feeling that nobody is in high regardactual charge. Imagine then, he rules there was a man with patience, understanding, justice and loveprecognition. When Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a young upstart challenges all he has built, ruling with harsh punishments and rash decisionsman who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the rats must decide how best to protect their colony most valuable asset in order to preserve all that they have built togetherhistory. As the rats clash amongst themselvesImagine then, some fail to notice the ever growing threats and dangers that the outside world provides - who will come out on top in this very literal rat raceman loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>148344936X</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sebastian Barry0571379559|title=Days Without EndThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|summary=It''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the mid nineteenth century passage of time, storms and Thomas McNulty has left his home in Sligofloods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his family dead from faminevegetables, to make a new life complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in a new nationsufficient money. He teams up with prairie fairy - a dancer in drag They have twin boys - John Cole Sonny and together they sign up for Max, the US Armyrainbow twins. Their journey will take them through the American Indian wars Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and eventually 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 Civil Warexcellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. Along In the waypalace of Odysseus, the two soldiers form a lasting bond with a young Sioux girl called Winona and their travels take them from Missouri delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to Wyoming war at Troy and Tennesseethen by divine intervention never returned home. ItAs ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the story brink of perhaps a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the most violent birth return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{Frontpage|author= Kay Chronister|title= Desert Creatures|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a nation in history but world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether itis 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''s also by Kay Chronister is a conventionnew work of post-defying love storyapocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=1803364998}}{{frontpage|isbn=<amazonuk>0571277004</amazonuk>1803363002|author= Eric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big 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 ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rose TremainMadelaine Lucas|title=The Gustav SonataThirst for Salt

|summary=Gustav Perle grew up in a small town in neutral Switzerland: the horrors of the Second World War seemed distant''Love, but neutrality was maintained partly at the expense of those who would seek refuge in the country. GustavI's father died in mysterious circumstances and whilst Gustav adored his mother, Emilied read, she was cold and indifferent supposed to him. Until he met Anton Zwiebel he was be a lonely child with just one toylight and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a tin trainretrospective view, but he and Anton met at kindergarten where it fell to Gustav to look after a young woman unravels the nervous boyyear-long relationship that once defined her. Anton is Jewish and he's Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a talented pianist, but he lacks man twenty years her senior from its inception – the confidence summer after finishing university – to perform in publicits sorrowful end the summer after. Throughout much Set against the backdrop of his life he relies on Gustavan isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's supportdeepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, but fails to appreciate just how important, it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how necessary it is to his wellbeingaltered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784700207</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom TomaszewskiMichael Grothaus|title=The Eleventh LetterBeautiful Shining People|rating=34|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=At the end of the working day, Christopher is looking over the ghosts of his occupancy of some rooms on Harley Street, before moving up the road to different chambers, and pastures new. He's half impelled 'But fearing something and half reluctant having it come to revisit a pair of audio cassettes, on which pass are interviews by him and someone else of a woman called Louise, who was arrested in Italy in the 1980s for the double murder of two close friends, Kate and Johndifferent things. Hardly aware heAnd I's being snowed in by a London blizzard and the usual British response m willing to any bad weatherbet most of what we fear will never happen, he spontaneously provides shelter or we can take steps to a flame-haired beauty, Kay, who provokes him into playing the tapeschange it. It's an occurrence which changes him much more profoundly than he does others at ' ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the therapist's couchquestion of identity and acceptance. Indeed, the closer he gets Of what it means to Kaybe human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the closer he gets to the voice development of the victim from decades agotechnology is exciting or frightening. What on earth could be the connection?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>099357582X</amazonuk>191458564X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Steinunn Sigurdardottir and Philip Roughton (translator)Jennifer Saint|title=The Good LoverAtalanta|rating=2.5

|summary=Karl is a global example ''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the name of the Icelandic speciesgoddess. It was for the sake of my name, with more than one home abroad and an amanuensis-cum-assistant to do his scheduling and arrange housework while hetoo. Atalanta''s going here and there  Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a businessman. He has daughter rather than a string of lovers that has stretched into three figuresson, partly because with one exception three Atalanta is raised under the limit protective eye of liaisons he'll have with each. But he's also got the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a heart devoted to Unaformidable huntress, his teenaged love whom he adores, despite her splitting with him decades agoone who longs for adventure. On a whim he leaves a beach holiday When the opportunity comes – to go back to one of join the icy limbs Argonauts, a fierce band of Icelandwarriors, witnesses descendent from the changes wrought by fifteen years on her Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and then ends up staying the night with the woman next doorcarve out her own legendary place in history. This What follows is purely platonica whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, but what with his host knowing everything about the situationAtalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, an ever-present taxi driver, and an ex on the line in America, is there a way he can snatch his love from it will be her marriage and find happiness?undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>9462380139</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eric Beck RubinAmanthi Harris|title=School of VelocityBeautiful Place|rating=4.5

|summary=Jan's head Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is dropping him in ita place she spent her formative years. He's It is not a trained concert pianistplace she was born into, but is having difficulty performing, with a horrendous problem, in that he can hear any discordant music, or just in fact horrid noise, when in the wings waiting one she thinks of as home. How she came to perform, and never be at the score he is due to follow. The devil's tinnitusVilla, you might call how it. With another failure behind himbecame her home, but dignity somewhat intact, Jan decides he has to work back and the machinations that have flowed through his her life to tell us ever since she first arrived there provide the cause – ''score'' for this gentle and weyet subtly violent novel. Padma're likewise dropped into an extended flashback, s present fails to his formative years at art school, with escape her past and much like the musical score of a pretentious drama studentfilm, Dirk. The book is a fast-moving exploration of what Jan finds of note (pun intended) that strand weaves its way through his life, and all everything that might have caused his mental problemhappens at the Villa. But is cognisance of what might lie behind it going to help?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0993506275</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Gerard Reve178563335X|title=The Evenings: A Winter's TaleSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=3.5

|summary=When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they'The Evenings'' was voted re held when you need to pick the best Dutch novel of all time by the Society of Dutch Literaturechildren up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and its authorher elder brother, Gerard Reve (1923–2006)Jamie, was the first openly gay writer in the Netherlandswhilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. It Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a historic book for its native countrylovely place, but will it have Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the same impact parish - and she's in English translation? Contemporary Dutch novelist Herman Koch compares awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she''The Evenings'' to s been doing the works of Kerouac job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Salinger, and I can see how Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it could have achieved cult status for a certain generation, was stormy but plot-wise I found it more tedious than revelatorywas probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782271783</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Henrietta Rose-Innes1398515388|title= NinevehThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating= 4.5|genre= General Fiction|summary= Henritetta Rose-Inne's ''Nineveh'' instantly reassures you that you are First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the presence of a confident ocean floor, which created the tsunami and talented writer. The story of Katya Grubbsthis, a second generation pest exterminator who specialises in relocating turn, caused the bugs nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and rodents that ruin middle-class garden partiesutter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, Rose-Inne writes with and the enviable ability loss of describing both livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the intricacies list of Katyapriorities 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 job comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the feeling of it simultaneouslydog jumped in. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910709166</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sara Stridsberg and Deborah Bragan-Turner (translator)0989715337|title=The Gravity of LovePapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=4.5

|summary=Particularly literate cover… Setting of a real''Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-life mental hospital – deep in Sweden… Mature themes… Opening with an emotion- and closure-laden death… Yesthe fragrant water, this book has more than its share naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of things to put the potential reader off. Whichtheir eggs wove around him, in this instance, is quite a large shame indeedsticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857054767</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Carys Bray Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and others|title=How Much barked down at the strange noise of the Heart Can Hold: Seven Stories on Love|rating=3buckets as he filled them.5''|genre=Short Stories|summary=This Sceptre collection does not have as simple a remit as it might appear; these are no straightforward love stories. Instead, they each take one aspect How is that for an opening? The style of love – often one this novel in the form of the ancient Greek classifications – interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and provide musing, turning on a whole new way of thinking about itsixpence. After allAnd author Marco North, who has the heart holds a lot most wonderful turn of metaphorical weightphrase, starts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473649420</amazonuk>