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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christina Hesselholdt and Paul Russell Garrett (translator)295967572X|title=CompanionsPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=35

|summary=''Companions'' Our unnamed narrator is written as about to begin a series of monologues, where six middle-aged friends take it in turns to narrate scenes from their lives, charting train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the intimate details purpose of their holidaysthis journey is, dinner parties, families, marriages, affairs and work lives in a style that mixes honesty and openness with fantasy and evasionis uncertain. The charm of Django found the novel lies in tickets ''on the way the friendsfloor somewhere'' voices bicker with one another among the pages, as we discover that there are always several sides and has persuaded our narrator to the same storyaccompany him. We learn most about the characters Why not through what they say about themselves ? Not much else is clear either - but through what we are probably in the past as the others say about them. Along pair travel to the way, there is heartbreak station by coach and grief, but this the train is always offset by an abundance of humour and a writing style that never fails to be refreshingly light-heartedsteam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910695335</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Yaba BadoeMakenna Goodman|title= A Jigsaw Helen of Fire and StarsNowhere|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=Sante was It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a baby when she was washed ashore hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a sea-chest laden with treasure. It seems she is disgraced professor on the sole survivor of the tragic sinking brink of losing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a ship carrying migrants force which is seductive, radical and refugeesunnerving: Helen. Her peopleThe connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. Fourteen years on she's a member As the former owner of Mama Rosethe countryside house he's unique and dazzling circus. Butconsidering, from their watery graveHelen represents a volta in his life, the unquiet dead are calling Sante her past tied to avenge themhis potential fresh start. A bamboo fluteThe realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. A golden bangle. A ripening mango Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which must the reader gets the sense are not fall... if Sante is to tell their story and her ownaltogether innocuous. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786695480</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Martha Batalha and Eric M B Becker (translator)Olga Tokarczuk|title= The Invisible Life House of Day, House of Euridice GusmaoNight|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= On ''What's the surface, young housewife Euridice Gusmao has good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it all. A nice-enough?'' The title of this spellbinding work, parent-pleasing husband with a steady banking job''House of Day, two young children upon whom to dote, an immaculate home complete with maid. ThatHouse of Night's all anyone could ever want, isn't it? Not Euridice. She has an inexplicable ache inside her for something more, like many somewhat reflects this notion of us. Yet each of her pet projectsshifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from a desire day to publish a recipe book to starting a cottage sewing industry in her living roomnight, however quotidian, are met with scorn from her stern husband Antenorcausing chaos. He wants a wife who doesn't draw attention to herselfBut, whose only domains are her the constant in that image is the house and her family, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178607298X</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= David BergenThea Lenarduzzi|title= StrangerThe Tower|rating= 45|genre= Literary Fiction |summary=''StrangerHow unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream'' tells . In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the story identity of ÍsoT, a young Guatemalan woman, and her affair with an American doctor. When an accident forces him to return to the States, she is left pregnant and lonelyprotagonist of this tale. Her anguish becomes even more profound when her daughter Just as T's story is abductedbeing told, and taken to live with the doctor and his wife. What followed - tales story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the journey Íso embarked upon in the hope daughter of finding her baby - was an amazing story of the lengths a mother will go to wealthy family in order to save her child.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715652419</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Clar Ni Chonghaile|title= Rain Falls On Everyone|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= It's a cliché that the Irish have a picturesque turn 19th century, who died of phrase, but clichés only exist because they're true. Roddy Doyle put it differently tuberculosis after being locked in a recent interview with ''Writing'' magazinetower, when he said that ''With Irish, therecaptures T's another language bubbling under the English''imagination. However you express it, that art of expression is woven into every other line of ClárAnnie's prosefate is, above all, an enticing story to T. Pick It is a page at random and you'll find something like ''the sickness that had come to roost story which she consumes avariciously, both in her home like a cursed owl'' or ''like he was Godquest for truth and knowledge, Jesus and Justin Timberlake rolled into one'' or ''a low sobbingin service of myth, slow fable and inevitable as rain on a Sunday'': expressions that catch your smile unawares, or tear at your heart in their mundane sadness. Or sometimes bothfantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785079018</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hesene Mete Jon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Sinful WordsVaim

|summary=When we meet him, Behram is a student at the school of theology. He loves God with a passion and has a determination to live a life dedicated ''toAll was strange'' God and to live by His rules. He rents a property from Lulu Khan and his wife, Lady Geshtina and Khan invites Behram to his own home for a visit. It's a delightful place and . This haunting phrase encapsulates the wealth pervading sense of the couple is obvious as is their standing within the local community: Lady Geshtina's late father is buried otherworldliness which permeates this story set in what amounts to Vaim, a mausoleum, but it's fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not all this which enchants Behram. The couple have twin children feel more real for Jatgeir and Behram is takenEline, enthralled by two of the daughter, Naginaprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1524682527</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= JuanClaire-Tomas Avila LaurelLouise Bennett|title= The Gurugu PledgeBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Juan Tomas Avila LaurelEverything in this book, one of Equatorial Guinea's best-known dissident writershowever sweet or seemingly innocent, is an author who deserves to be read the world oversteeped in anguish and distortion. With The Gurugu PledgeEven a kiss, he's captured usually a an angry symbol of intimacy and incredibly urgent slice closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. When the migrant experience – narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me,'' it is less an invitation than a snapshot desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of the dangers faced by those crossing the African continent in search of the barbed wire fences at Melillathis plea is Xavier, her ex- the Spanish enclave on the North Eastern tip of Moroccopartner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908276940</amazonuk>1804271934

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Matthew SmithHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title= The WakingLili is Crying|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=Isabel SykesFirst published in 1953 in French, 23, recounts this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the recent attempt she made to come to terms with the loss hearts of her mother, the acclaimed but psychologically disturbed novelist Marianne Sykes. Marianne died in an unexplained house fire when Isabel was ten. Inspired by the appearance of Imogen Taylor, an enchanting young woman who wants to write a PhD its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on her mother's work, Isabel plunges into the depths of her past page and an intense new friendship. After discovering that Imogen is not who she seems to bepositions them elsewhere, disjointed, Isabel must face the darkest moments from her childhood in order to protect her family from more tragedytruncated. She receives unexpected help from beyond Like the grave: in the strange, glittering fragments lives of her mother's last, unfinished workcharacters, 'Midnightsong'they are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0995654158</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Ali SmithJonathan Buckley|title= AutumnOne Boat|rating= 54|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= The first part in Ali Smith's four part 'SeasonalOne Boat' series' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, Autumn is drawing the story reader into a contemplative realm of Daniel Gluck philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and Elisabeth Demandprotagonist, unexpected friends who used to be neighbours when Elisabeth was a little girlTeresa. In Set against the evocative backdrop of a series small coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the magic of memories its setting and dreamsits power to provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the death of both her parents. Prompted by her mourning, we discover their friendship from Daniel babysitting Elisabeth through to her visits with him now that he narrative voice is in a home meditative and drawing towards deeply self-aware, inviting the end of his extremely long and fascinating lifereader into her labyrinthine cogitations. Along the way, we get It is a wonderfully written insight into time, memoriesbook that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and the fleeting nature of life itselfironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241973317</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nicola Pugliese and Shaun Whiteside (translator)Eowyn Ivey|title=MalacquaBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5

|summary=We're in Naples'Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, in recent historywho longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and it's rainingher accidental neglect of Emaleen. It will in fact rain for four days solid – and seeing Described as ita ''wild card's October everyone's dressed for all seasons , she feels stuck in her day-to-day life, and expecting a bit of grey, but this is taking yearns to cross the proverbial. It's also making Wolverine river and live on the city rather dangerous – when people report North Fork to fulfil her desires of a huge sink-hole appearing in one street it's soon found that simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a pair of cars went into itstrange, taciturn and two people have diedsolitary man, who says he has a cabin over there, she feels called to go - and more passed on bring Emaleen with a whole building collapsingher. WhatWithout realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen's more, some strange noises are coming from an abandoned civic palacelives forever. Is the city being told something by these strange events, or can a journalist find a logic behind the circumstances?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1911508067</amazonuk>1472279042

{{newreview|author= Iosi Havilio|title= Petite Fleur|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Every now and then you read a book that leaves you thinking “well I have no idea what just happened but I know I enjoyed it”. This is how I felt after reading Petite Fleur, the fifth novel (perhaps 'long paragraph' would be more appropriate) from cult Argentinian writer Iosi Havilio.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1911508040</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tania HershmanSally Rooney|title=Some of Us Glow More Than OthersIntermezzo

|genre=Short Stories General Fiction |summary=I won't be alone in stating that reading short story collections can be slightly awkwardSally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Going through from A-ZHer dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, witnessing a bounty of ideas and as her characters in short order can be too muchnever quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, but do you have the right central one for readers to pick unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and choose according to what appealsPeter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, and what time you have to fill? The sequence has carefully been consideredcontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, surelya successful lawyer living in Dublin. Such would appear to be the case here. The last time I read one of this authorFollowing their father's collections, passing after a long battle with [[The White Road by Tania Hershman|The White Road]]cancer, the only real difficulty was holding back and rationing them, but here you not only get a whopping forty pieces of writing, they are also spread into sectionsbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910061484</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=James KelmanFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=That Was a Shiver, and Other StoriesWhite Nights|rating=3.5|genre=Short Stories |summary=This is the ninth book of short stories by this author, which means he's presented just as many collections of the short form as he has novels. You will find it hard to think of another author that has been so noted for longer works (what with [[How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman|How Late It Was, How Late]] winning the Booker) but who is so generous in presenting shorter pieces for the time-poor, or those like me who see the variety in a writer's short or less typical works to be the more interesting places to turn. Opening these pages, from the pen of such an esteemed pro, came with no small sense of anticipation.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786890909</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Kate Mildenhall|title= Skylarking|rating= 4|genre= General Fiction |summary= Kate and Harriet are best friends growing up together on an isolated Australian cape. As the daughters of the lighthouse keepers, the two girls share everything, until a fisherman, McPhail, arrives in their small community. When Kate witnesses the desire that flares between him and Harriet, she is torn by her feelings of envy and longing. An innocent moment in McPhail's hut then occurs that threatens to tear their peaceful community apart. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785079239</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Joanna Walsh|title=Worlds from the Word's End|rating=3.5

|summary=We here at The Bookbag liked this author's fairly recent collection of short storiesAs always in Dostoyevsky, [[Vertigo by Joanna Walsh|Vertigo]]the character work is sublime. I myself missed out, but that seemed to be vignettes from one One is never left wondering what a character's narration – here we get homosexual male narrators is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and a host more, as well as much less of the sadness prevalent before. Having had a brief encounter temperaments with this author courtesy of her entry into the [[Bookshelf (Object Lessons) by Lydia Pyne|Object Lessons]] series, I was intrigued by her name being stamped on a selection of shorts. Was it the ideal calling card? Let's face it, the very short story itself can be a postcard – let's say, from a specific hotel or two, as we see hereremarkable clarity. Perhaps I should have geared myself up, however, for such intricate writing on said postcards – and for the exotic locations from which they came…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1911508105</amazonuk>0241619785

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Raja Alem, Katharine Halls (translator) and Adam Talib (translator)James Baldwin|title= The DoveGiovanni's NecklaceRoom|rating= 34.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I always hated Lit-Crit at school''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, so it came as something as a surprise that I ended up reviewing bookshe navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, for fun. Now I understand. Finally, I see why literary critics get so up-an Italian bartender he meets in-arms about lowly book reviewers. There is a differencegay bar. This book explains it all. The author While David is ''the first woman engaged to win Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the International Prize for Arabic fiction'' for this book. The book also real tension in the LiBerator prize for ''novel arises not from his infidelity but from the best book translated into German'' in 2014deeper conflict within himself. I suspect itIt is David's not done yet. ''The Times'' tells us crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that it ''exemplifies everything that is currently shaking the foundations of Arab societyultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.'' I am sure that not only will more plaudits fall upon the author and the book, but also that it will become a classic, spoken of in the same breath as the international classics: Proust, Márquez, Joyce, Rushdie, Nabokov…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715651757</amazonuk>0141186356

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Daniel Kehlmann and Ross Benjamin (translator)Alba de Cespedes |title=You Should Have LeftForbidden Notebook|rating=4.5|genre=General Literary Fiction |summary=Our narrator is a screenwriter, tasked with coming up with a sequel to his hit movie ''Besties'' – a film which helped pay for a house, but which his actress wife keeps letting him know, isn't ''art''. To concentrate, the family – he, the wife, This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and their four year old daughter – have rented a large, modern house at tension from the end of a horrid, hairpin bend-filled roadmoment our protagonist, in a charming alpine landscape. But things aren't right. The couple are at loggerheads too muchValeria Cossati, things keep unsettling our narratorpurchases her forbidden notebook, and learns about herself in the sole shopkeeper for miles around is ready with the Hammer Horror styled warnings of strange eventsmost intimate and revealing ways. Quickly we see the book's title in all its galling clarity – but it isn't too late to get out… is it? And out of what, exactly?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786484048</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Tove JanssonOttessa Moshfegh|title= Letters From KlaraMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating= 53|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Famed in At best, this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the UK for her creation fragility of the Moomin familyhuman relationships; at worst, Jansson it is rather belatedly beginning to gather the richly deserved esteem for her adult writings. For that I offer my heart-felt thanks to publishers ''Sort of books'' cynical, predictable and Thomas Teal, who has been responsible for most slightly trite tale of the translationsan unlikeable protagonist. Receiving this oneThis unlikely heroine, a slim, two things strike: firstly I somehow seem to have missed one of attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the seriesworld, and secondly there'll come a time sooner rather than later when there'll be no more but resolves not to be had. The former will be rectifiedlose sleep over it: in fact, the latter is a sad thoughther solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908745614</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom Malmquist and Henning Koch (translator)Matthew Tree|title=In Every Moment We Are Still Alive'll Never Know

|summary=Tom Malmquist is a poet Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from Sweden. Originally published in Swedish in 2015his father, this is a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his first work artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of prose. While it's being marketed as a novel, it reads more like a stylized memoirself confidence. Similar So Tim applied himself to Karl Ove Knausgaard's books, it features the author as the central character and narratorhis studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and the story of grief it tells is a highly personal oneset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473640008</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Michel DeonB0C47LV1PC|title= Your Father's RoomFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I donCan you make a ''t feel altogether qualified to review Michel DéonYo birthing person's 2004 fictionalised memoir 'joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no. 'Your Father's RoomFragility'', translated here into English for is set as the first time. I hadn't heard city of Déon before receiving my copyPortland, let alone read any of his booksOregon, published over a 70 year period cautiously begins to much acclaim in his homeland. But it's part of emerge from the pleasure of book reviewing to read with no prior knowledge or prejudice, all restrictions imposed during the more so if you discover an absolute gem.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910477346</amazonuk>covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Naomi AldermanMosby Woods|title= The PowerA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating= 54|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=It started with The West isn't the girls and spread. From younger woman to older woman, dominant force it once was awoken and everything changed. Womankind now has Nobody in the power of electricity in their fingertips and, slowly at first, West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the balance best course of power in the world starts shiftingaction. Governments are flailing. We follow the stories of different peopleA war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in different walks of lifeactual charge. Imagine then, who see this from there was a man with precognition. Imagine the very beginning and hurtle towards 'the event'. One thing strategic advantage in this startling new development is certainasset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, patriarchal archetypes and chauvinist thinkers are right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in for the shock of their liveshistory. LiterallyImagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670919969</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anna Pitoniak0571379559|title=The FuturesHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=45

|summary=When we first meet Evan Peck''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, he has just started at Yale Collegebut instead, where he plays ice hockeyshe lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Like lots Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of the other playerstime, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, he is actually Canadianstruggles to grow his vegetables, from smallto complete the delivery rounds -town British Columbiaand to bring in sufficient money. One night They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after a party Evan meets Julia Edwards at their dorm and his father. People don't believe that they go out for pizza. She technically has a boyfriend from her Boston boarding school days're related, but they soon break up much less twins and before long Julia and Evan have become inseparable, as they will remain for the rest of their college yearsthere's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718184564</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Stephan CollishawClaire North|title= The Song House of the StorkOdysseus|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Stephan Collishaw has achieved ''What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a rare feat few months after where we left off. In the 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 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 brink of a novel set amidst fragile peace. One that shatters however with the horrors return of Nazi tyranny 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 world that does not shy away from human sufferingis becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, but does not drown in post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it eitheris 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. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785079190</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Sabrina MahfouzEric LaRocca|title= The Things Trees Grew Because I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women WriteBled There

|genre= AnthologiesHorror|summary= What does it mean Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to be British reflect our darkest emotions and Muslim? This how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a question these writers tackle with stunning clarity. Modern day British society has home invader, a varied sense of cultural heritage; it is monster or a society that is changing and moving forward as ghost, it adds more usually something tangible and more voices to , by the end of the populationstory, but beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is also one not like that has an undercurrent of anxiety and fear towards those that are minorities. So this It is a collection displays how all that fear is received; it comes of short stories more interested in the form horrors of stereotypical labels illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and racial prejudice, which are themes eloquently reproduced hereharder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0863561462</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= David SzalayMadelaine Lucas|title= All That Man IsThirst for Salt|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Two teenage boys on an Inter Rail trip around Europe find themselves staying with ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a frustrated housewife on the outskirts of Praguelight and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a driftless young Frenchman discovers sexual fulfilment on a package holiday in Cyprusretrospective view, a lovestruck Hungarian minder is embroiled in a prostitution racket at an upmarket London hotelyoung woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a Belgian academic is forced man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to confront his egotism when his partner becomes pregnant, a Danish tabloid journalist exposes a highits sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-ranking politicianold narrator's love affairdeepening relationship with her older lover, a property developer inspects a new project in the French alpsdepicting its all-consuming nature, a Scot living in Croatia fails in love how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and business, a Russian millionaire confronts divorce, an elderly English politician survives a road accident in Italyhow it altered her irrevocably. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099593696</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Elizabeth HayMichael Grothaus|title= His Whole LifeBeautiful Shining People|rating= 54

|summary= If you think that ''un-put-down-ableBut fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'' is the greatest accolade for a bookm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, think againor we can take steps to change it. ''Put-down-able '' can be stronger praise: Beautiful Shining People''His Whole Life'' is put-down-able. It encourages you to put it down, to wrap yourself in the slow-moving story, the exquisite writing, revolves around the subtleties question of the characters, identity and just walk around for a while with them slowly sinking in; acceptance. Of what it encourages you means to come back to it again be human. Of what is real and again; mostly it encourages you to put it downwhat is artificial, to read it slowly, because you don't want it to endand whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857055445</amazonuk>191458564X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Phillip LewisJennifer Saint|title= The BarrowfieldsAtalanta|rating= 45|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Just before Henry Aster's birth'I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, his fatherI vowed. I would take my place, a frustrated novelist and lawyer, reluctantly returns to not just in the name of the remote North Carolina mountains in which he goddess. It was improbably raised and installs his young family in a gothic mansion - nicknamed for the sake of my name, too. Atalanta'the vulture house' - worthy of his hero Edgar Allan Poe Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. There Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Henry grows up Atalanta is raised under the desk protective eye of this fierce the goddess Athemis and brilliant manfashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. But when a death in When the opportunity comes – to join the family tips his father toward Argonauts, a fearsome unravellingfierce band of warriors, what was once a young sondescendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis's reverence name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is poisoned, a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and Henry fleesthrough it, not to return until years later when he, tooAtalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, must go home againit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473636825</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Paula CocozzaAmanthi Harris|title= How to Be HumanBeautiful Place|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= When Mary arrives home from work one day Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to find a magnificent fox the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her lawn - his ears spiked in attention and every hair bristling with his power to surprise - it home country. This is only the beginninga place she spent her formative years. He brings gifts (at least It is not a place she was born into, Mary imagines they are gifts), and gradually makes himself at but the one she thinks of as home. And as he listens How she came to Marybe at the Villa, Mary listens back. She begins to hear herself for the first time in years. Her bullish ex-boyfriendhow it became her home, still lurking on and the fringes of machinations that have flowed through her life, would be appalled. So would ever since she first arrived there provide the neighbours with a new baby''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. They only Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like wildlife that fits with the decor. But inside Mary musical score of a wildness is growing film, that strand weaves its way through everything that will not be tamedhappens at the Villa. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786330334</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Helen Dunmore178563335X|title=Birdcage WalkSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor

|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=Bristol 1792: Lizzie married wellWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. John Diner Tredevant Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a property developer who has reached real bond with the zenith parish - and she's in awe of his lifethe vicar, Gail, but then she's work: building a terrace of prestigious houses overlooking been doing the Avon Gorgejob for more than thirty years. In Rachel and Christopher hoped that a time of turbulence as France reaches walk on the dawn of revolution, Britain, including Diner, fears beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it may spreadwas probably what they needed. This puts Lizzie in a difficult position since her mother And then Hannah went missing.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Boy and step-father both believe in propagating pamphlets the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and ideas Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=First of egalitarianism for all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and to allthis, in turn, including womencaused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. In other wordsThe deaths were uncountable, they think nothing and the loss of spreading ideas 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 sort that fanned the French flamestsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. However, thatHe wasn's not Lizziet a dog person but the convenience store owner's only problem… there is a darkness comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in her husband's past of which she's unaware.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091959403</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Emma Henderson0989715337|title= The Valentine HousePapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= In June 1914''Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, Sir Anthony Valentine, a keen mountaineernaked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, arrives sticky gray pearls with his family to spend tadpoles inside them. Two of the summer in their chalet, high in dogs leaned over the French Alps. There, for opening and barked down at the first time, fourteen-year-old foundling Mathilde starts work as one strange noise of the 'uglies' - village girls employed buckets as servants and picked, it is believed, to ensure they donhe filled them.'t catch Sir Anthony's roving eye. For Mathilde it  How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the start form of a life-long entanglement with les anglais - strange, exciting people, far removed interconnected short stories goes from the hard grind of farming. Except she soon finds the Valentines are less carefree than they appear, with a curiously absent daughter no one talks about. It will be decades - disrupted by warsuccinct and laconic to wistful and musing, accidents and turning on a cruel betrayal - before Mathilde discovers the key to the mysterysixpence. And in 1976author Marco North, who has the year Sir Anthony's great-great grandson comes to visitmost wonderful turn of phrase, she must decide whether starts as he means to use itgo on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444704028</amazonuk>