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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Laila Lalami 295967572X|title=Secret SonPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=3.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''Secret Sonon the floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the story of Youssef El-Mekki, past as the slum-dwelling teenage son of single mother Rachida. Youssef has always been told that his father is dead, so when he finds out his mother has lied pair travel to conceal the fact that he was born out of wedlock, he plunges headlong into an identity crisis. He tracks down his real father, a wealthy businessman called Nabil Amrani who is surprisingly enthusiastic about his illegitimate son's arrival. Nabil has recently fallen out with his daughter station by coach and he seizes this opportunity to mould Youssef into the obedient son he has always wantedtrain is a steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918296</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Aravind AdigaMakenna Goodman|title=The White TigerHelen of Nowhere

|summary=Balram Halwai, a Bangalore entrepreneur (It could be argued that the pervading theme of sorts) and a natural philosopher, hears that there this book is malaise - a planned visit from the Chinese leader hard-to India to learn the source of Indian entrepreneurial talent. Balram knows -place feeling that the story he will be told by the Indian leader will be a long way from the true story of modern Indian something in your lifeis not quite right. The protagonist, and so resolves, over the course of seven nights, to write to a disgraced professor on the Chinese premier with the story brink of losing both his life career and his own journey from a poor son of a rickshaw driver to the head of relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his own business.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843547228</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Matthew Condon|title=The Trout Opera|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Judges Carrington and Thorpe recline in leather armchairs on the verandah of Buckley's Crossing hotel and watch in silence as discomfort with a giant trout shuffles across the bridge.  The Judgesforce which is seductive, despite their initial prominence radical and convincing back-story giving them a valid reason for being in Buckley's Crossing, will not really concern us. They are there to represent a typeunnerving: a visitor to small town Australia, a fisherman from the city, a seeker after something in the Snowy that probably isn't fishHelen.  We shall, however, be concerned with the giant trout.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>038561506X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Clare Morrall|title=The Man Who Disappeared|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I was drawn to this book straight away. Firstly, connection between Helen and the jacket cover is lovely. The subliminal message protagonist is read me, please read meindirect yet intimate. We are introduced to As the Kendall family; mother, father and three children. All leading unremarkable, rather ordinary lives. The father, Felix, works hard to provide for his family. He loves them all dearly. They all love him back. It is a secure family unit. Until - completely out former owner of the blue - countryside house he simply disappears. His family is distraught and mystified. We all know that a person cannot simply disappear. But Felix Kendall has taken himself off the radar. Why?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340994274</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Christopher Isherwood|title=A Single Man|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=If you've ever wanted to know what goes on inside someone's mind you'll love this short novelconsidering, first published back Helen represents a volta in 1964. We join George Falconer just at the moment he awakes from sleep and witness his innermost thoughts as he goes about a typical day. It all sounds pretty dull and monotonous but what makes this exciting is that George isn't just any old professor living the American Dreamlife, oh no, he's so detached from the banal normality of the world that he's almost outside of her past tied to his own body at timespotential fresh start.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548828</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Angelica Garnett|title=The Unspoken Truth|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I would not normally start a review with realtor who shows the biography of protagonist around the authorhouse shares stories about Helen, but The Unspoken Truth is presented and describes her as autobiographical fiction by a child of the Bloomsbury Group – in fact the subtitle ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form'A Quartet of Bloomsbury Stories'. The blurb on the inside cover even identifies Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which character is based on the author in each of reader gets the four stories, just in case we sense are not surealtogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184353</amazonuk>1804272205

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amos OzOlga Tokarczuk|title=Rhyming Life and DeathHouse of Day, House of Night

|summary=Rhyming Love and Death is a kind ''What's the good of philosophical love letter to literature, or perhaps more so to fiction. It is a book about how to write, about the compulsion to write, and about the strange world that the writer of fiction must live keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099521024</amazonuk>}}it?''

{{newreview|author=Paul Murray|The title=Skippy Dies|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Life in Seabrook College is a mess. Some of the staff are young enough to remember their own school days therethis spellbinding work, but many are certainly too old for that. A lot ''House of the boys are victims Day, House of ragging and bullying for being too chunkyNight'', or too smart somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - but some are so chunky and smart there's a certain kudos the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to themnight, however quotidian, causing chaos. The female of But, the species constant in that image is a thing only spied from their own school next door, and only met by selling them ritalin as a weight-control pillthe house, or meeting them at stoic against the very rare combined school discoancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241141826</amazonuk>1804271918

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom WolfeThea Lenarduzzi|title=The Bonfire of the VanitiesTower

|summary=In his own mind, bond trader Sherman McCoy is a 'Master of the Universe'. He has a pleasant wife, a beautiful mistress, and a sweet six year old daughter. Henry Lamb is a black student from How unctuous are the projects. Under normal circumstances, itfats of another's clear that McCoylife, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream's world and Lamb's world would never overlap. But when McCoy and his mistress Maria Ruskin end up lost in the Bronx, and an accident leads to Lamb being hit by McCoy's Mercedes, a chain of events start which will lead to his downfall.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548798</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Kate Cole-Adams|title=Walking to In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the Moon|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=We meet identity of T, the main character Jessica, or Jess protagonist of this tale. Just as she T's story is usually calledbeing told, deep in an emotional black hole. She can see no light at the end story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the tunnel. And right from daughter of a wealthy family in the start19th century, right from page onewho died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, we have a sense of the beautiful and poetic language of Cole-Adamscaptures T's imagination. Annie'Time and I have a new arrangements fate is, above all, an enticing story to T. We leave each other alone.' And indeed time It is not important a story which she consumes avariciously, both in this novel. We have all the time a quest for truth and knowledge, and in the world would probably be the motto service of the medical staff - if they had onemyth, fable and fantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849161348</amazonuk>1804271799

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ru Freeman|title=A Disobedient Girl|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=''A Disobedient Girl'' follows two women struggling to retain control of their lives in the face of servitude. Latha is a servant girl to the affluent Vithanage family, whose daughter, Thara, is Latha's age. As children, the girls are the best of friends, but they are destined to be separated by class, which is made painfully obvious when boys come into the picture. Meanwhile, Biso serves a cruel Jon Fosse and drunken husband who beats her and terrorises her children, one of whom is another man's love child. Biso's husband murdered her lover in a hateful rage when he uncovered her affair and she realises that she must escape his house if she and her children are to live. Latha too seeks escape, but she finds it in the arms of Thara's boyfriend and this sets off a chain of events that will echo far into her future.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917958</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Simon RobsonDamion Searls (translator) |title=CatchVaim

|summary=Catharine's husband Tom is away on business in Birmingham, and so Catharine awakes alone for the first time in their little cottage at the end of their lane. They moved there a few months previously, and since then Catharine has spent her days quietly awaiting her husband's return from workAll was strange''. She is sure that she will figure out, some day, what her purpose in life is. She thought it might be to have a baby, but they have been trying for some time and it hasn't happened as yet. Meanwhile she waits, and thinks, and waits. In This haunting phrase encapsulates the lounge stands her pianopervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a stark reminder of the life she didn't manage to realise because although she studied music she found, quite quickly, that fictional fishing village in spite of being passionate she lacked any kind of talent Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for it whatsoever. So, on this day, alone at homeJatgeir and Eline, Catharine finds herself tormented by the piano's presence and over-thinking every second two of the day. She worries away at who she is, and what her life is, as her loneliness and the day itself unravel around herprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224090232</amazonuk>1804271829

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joe MenoClaire-Louise Bennett|title=The Great PerhapsBig Kiss, Bye-Bye

|summary=Jonathan Casper faints when he sees clouds. His wife Madeline worries about everythingEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, not least the way the pigeons that she is studying are murdering each othersteeped in anguish and distortion. Their seventeen year old daughter Amelia wants to overthrow the evil empire Even a kiss, usually a symbol of capitalism intimacy and is making her own bombcloseness, while fourteen year old Thisbe is looking for God and praying to himbecomes evidence of love lost. JonathanWhen the narrator cries out internally, 's father, seventy six year old Henry'come over here and kiss me, '' it is planning his disappearanceless an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. Jonathan and Madeline may be on the verge The imagined recipient of splitting upthis plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to the dismay of both daughterstest her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330512471</amazonuk>1804271934

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elizabeth KostovaHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=The Swan ThievesLili is Crying|rating=2|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=1999 – A renowned painter, Robert Oliver, goes mad, attacking a painting with a knife. He's arrested, and sent to a psychiatrist who is also an artist. The psychiatrist, Andrew Marlowe, can't get his patient to talk to him, but tries to investigate what drove him to this by talking to his wife and his girlfriend, and reading some letters Oliver seems obsessed with. 1879 – Beatrice de Clerval, aspiring artist, corresponds with her uncle-by-marriage Olivier Vignot, a more experienced painter. Their letters will be found by Robert Oliver, 120 years later, and will lead to his loss of sanity4.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847442404</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Atiq Rahimi|title=The Patience Stone|rating=5

|summary=Set First published in Afghanistan1953 in French, ''The Patience Stone'' this novel is a partly allegorical tale timeless text which wrenches the hearts of a Muslim wife tending to her comatose soldier husband who has been shot in its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the neckpage and positions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. As she cares for him, for Like the first time ever she is able to speak to him without fear lives of censorship and he becomes, for hercharacters, like the mythical Patience Stone to which you tell your troubles and when the stone finally bursts, you they are free from your torments. But also this might mean the Apocalypseoften left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184167</amazonuk>1804271675

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joyce Carol OatesJonathan Buckley|title=A Fair MaidenOne Boat|rating=4.5

|summary=I've recently read the terrific short story collection 'One Boat'The Female Of The Species'' also by Oates 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 evocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and couldn't wait its power to start provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the death of both her latest bookparents. I felt sure that I was in for a literary treat Prompted by her mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self- and I was. Firstlyaware, inviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a book itselfthat not only requires but inspires depth of thought, a hardback with a beautifully nostalgic cover since its narrative structure is a book lover's delightfragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847248586</amazonuk>1804271764

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Dai Sijie Eowyn Ivey|title=Once on a Moonless NightBlack Woods Blue Sky

|summary=A French female scholar''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, studying in Chinathe young mother of toddler Emaleen, finds herself caught up in who longs for a life beyond the search for Alaskan lodge where she works as a lostbar waitress, sacred text that was inscribed on an ancient scrolla setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Emaleen. The scroll was torn Described as a ''wild card'', she feels stuck in two her day-to-day life, and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by Emperor Puyi years agonature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and was lost. After falling in love with solitary man, who says he has a young grocer called Tumchooq the young woman becomes caught up in tales within talescabin over there, as she finds that Tumchooq's father found feels called to go - and translated half of the missing scroll and became obsessed bring Emaleen with finding the other halfher. Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and soon Tumchooq too becomes embroiled in the searchEmaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099521326</amazonuk>1472279042

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Thomas Trofimuk Sally Rooney|title=Waiting for ColumbusIntermezzo

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=I was hooked instantly by Sally Rooney has studied the title. Original, thought-provoking, quirky. The book revolves around chessboard of life and is something of a youngish man who has been admitted to an insane asylum (these two grandmaster at putting it into words alone make me want to shiver) in modern-day Spain. The staff have their work cut out. He doesn't remember his name or anything at all about his past. He's sporadically violent - Her dialogue is gripping and he says he is Christopher Columbus! As the Americans would so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say, go figureexactly what they feel. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330518844</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Su Tong|title=The Boat to Redemption|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ku Dongliang and his fatherAmong the many relationships woven into this story, Ku Wenxuan, are forced the central one for readers to live on a barge on unravel is the river following Ku Wenxuan's fall from gracefraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Originally believed to be the son of a revolutionary martyrIvan, it is eventually proved that Mr Ku was not so - as a resultsocially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his position older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in society takes a nose-diveDublin. Dongliang suffers as Following their father's passing after a result of thislong battle with cancer, finding it hard to make friends within the barge community and on shore. Then an orphaned girl moves onto the barges and finds a place in Dongliangbrothers's apparently cold heartalready strained relationship faces new trials. Will she be able to take him out of himself? Or will she, too, turn her back on him?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>038561344X</amazonuk>0571365469

 {{newreview|author=Iain Banks|title=The Steep Approach to Garbadale|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It took me a while to realise that Iain Banks is, most of all, a teller of tales - I would call him a story-teller had this term not became a compliment-cum-invective usually reserved for the Jeffrey Archers and Dan Browns of the modern publishing world. This ability to tell stories - not to plot as much as to weave a yarn - combines with a penchant for creating appealing contexts for Banks' narratives to unfold in (this gets magnificently realised in the world building of his [[:Category:Iain M Banks|Iain M. Banks]] alter-ego) and populating them with memorable, larger than life but usually short of caricature, characters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349119287</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mary McCarthy |title=The Group|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='Given the attention paid to relations between the sexes, it would be tempting to call The Group a forerunner of today's chick lit. It's not.' So writes Candace Bushnell, the writer behind the TV series Sex and the City, in the introduction to this new Virago Modern Classics edition of The Group by Mary McCarthy. First published in 1963, this novel is about the lives of a group of young women after leaving college in 1933, including careers, relationships, sex, babies, parents, and money. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844085937</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Janice GallowayFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=Collected StoriesWhite Nights

|summary=In this collection, stories are taken from two previous volumesAs always in Dostoyevsky, Blood and Where You Find It. The forty-two snap shots of life are mainly of women and young girls, struggling with emotions, sometimes realized and sometimes not. In all, there seems to be an underlying link of isolation and truth. The settings are varied, from a visit to the dentist to the place known as home, to a walk in the eveningcharacter work is sublime. We have One is never left wondering what a peek into the deepest darkest corners of everyday relationships, character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with lovers, partners and most of all ourselvesremarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099540398</amazonuk>0241619785

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Herta MullerJames Baldwin|title=The PassportGiovanni's Room|rating=34.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Meet Windisch. A miller ''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in a small villageParis, as he trudges through there, and through navigates his neighbourstorturous affair with Giovanni, and through his lifean Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, counting his days and hourswho is travelling in Spain, for reasons that are the real tension in the novel arises not initially clearfrom his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. But he does want something - he It is waiting for a passport so he can leave for other climes. The perks David's crippling shame and denial of his job are the bags of flour he leaves by the mayor's house sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with regularity, as an open bribe, but there might be a bigger sacrifice to have to makeGiovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1852421398</amazonuk>0141186356

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer JohnstonAlba de Cespedes |title=Truth or FictionForbidden Notebook

|summary=Caroline Wallace is not a happy woman. She has waited ten years for her lover to propose to This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the moment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, purchases herforbidden notebook, and now just as he finally does, she has to go to Dublin to interview faded literary star Desmond Fitzmaurice. Desmond promises his tale will be brimful of 'sex learns about herself in the most intimate and violence', but Caroline has no idea of the mystery that lies at the heart of his storyrevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755330544</amazonuk>1782278222

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julian BarnesOttessa Moshfegh|title=Staring at the SunMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=43

|summary=Jean's first Incident involved Uncle LeslieAt best, hyacinths this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and golf tees. It's perhaps best forgottenreveals the fragility of human relationships; at worst, but Jean doesn't forget. Uncle Leslie figures large in her life - mostly on it is the golf course - until the War comes cynical, predictable and he runs away to Americaslightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. He's replaced by Tommy ProsserThis unlikely heroine, a grounded pilot who once saw the sun rise twice in one day slim, attractive and excites as many questions newly orphaned girl in Jean as he ever answers. Tommy her twenties is replaced by Michaeldisillusioned with the world, a policemanbut resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, whom Jean eventually marries. He doesn't know why minks are excessively tenacious of life and he doesn't much care. But Jean does. She cares much less for the Dutch cap that Michael sent her off to obtain before the wedding and much less again for their rather disastrous adventures solution lies in the bedroomher hibernation. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099540096</amazonuk>1784707422

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Russell Celyn JonesMatthew Tree|title=The Ninth Wave (New Stories from the Mabinogion) We'll Never Know

|summary=Pwyll rules a medieval-style fiefdom in a post-climate change Wales. Life is Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different in many ways - there's from his father, a new-but-old social order built on feudalism drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and horsepower is the main means who had endless crises of transportself confidence. But in many ways it's much the same - people still fight one anotherSo Tim applied himself to his studies, towns still have sink estates, rich boys still have too much time on their hands cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and precious little meaning in their livesset himself high but achievable ambitions. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1854115146</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Owen SheersB0C47LV1PC|title=White Ravens (New Stories from the Mabinogion)Fragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=4.5

|summary=In the old taleCan you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, Branwen is the sister of Bendigeidfran - question should you make it? Or is the giant King of Britain. She marries question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the King of Ireland, who doesn't treat her answer for both could wellbe.... She manages to send Bendigeidfran a message via a tamed starling and war and killings ensueno.

In this new tale, a young girl has just walked away from her brothers who, in ''Fragility'' is set as the wake city of the devastating foot and mouth outbreakPortland, Oregon, are despoiling their heritage by rustling and illegally slaughtering sheep. She meets an old man who tells her a story involving cautiously begins to emerge from the superstitions about restrictions imposed during the ravens in the Tower of London, propaganda work during World War II, and an equally doomed love affair. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115030</amazonuk>covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shirley JacksonMosby Woods|title=We Have Always Lived In The CastleA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5

|summary=Mary Katherine Blackwood, also known as Merricat, is eighteen, and lives with her older sister Constance The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the family home where 'Blackwoods had always lived'. Merricat quickly draws West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the reader into her world by a series best course of matter of fact but bizarre statements – her likes include her sister and death cap mushroomsaction. Governments are flailing. A war here, and everyone else a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in her family is deadactual charge. The wealthy Blackwood family has always kept the house 'steady against the world'Imagine then, shutting out other people, and they live near there was a villageman with precognition. Merricat believes that 'The people Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the village have always hated us'most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, and tells us that she hates them toothis man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141191457</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Deborah Gregory0571379559|title=Dancing With The DeadHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=35

|summary=I wanted to read ''Dancing with The House of Broken Bricks'' is the Dead'story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, because I'm interested she lives in family history. The blurb the house on the back riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the book also mentioned Gill – our heroine passage of the piece – was moving from Bristol (my current home) to Lincolnshire (where I was born time, storms and brought up)floods. I felt with all these links Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the novel could not fail delivery rounds - and to interest me – but this was not bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the caserainbow twins. 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 there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529305</amazonuk>

The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a 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 fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elizabeth BainesKay Chronister|title=Too Many MagpiesDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Becoming a mother brings With a whole new world of fear into your life. Suddenly you see the danger in every situationthat is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, and fear and trepidation post-apocalyptic fiction can be become your constant companionsan almost masochistic thrill. In this novellaWhether it is a robotic takeover, we meet a young mother who world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is married to a logical scientist. They attempt way for humans to control cathartically experience their childrenmost existential fears. ''Desert Creatures''s futures on by Kay Chronister is a scientific basis, growing their own fruit and vegetables, giving their children nothing sugary, eating no eggs new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for a whole year until any adverse affects from them were disprovedhumanity today. But after meeting with an enigmatic stranger our young mother begins to struggle as he introduces ideas of freedom into her world. She begins an affair with him, begins to let things slip at home and with the children, yet finds she It is a shocking novel that still continuously haunted by the sense of an ever-present dangermanages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844717216</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Katherine MayEric LaRocca|title=Burning OutThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=45|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Violet has it all – Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a well-paid job, and a luxurious apartment all way to herself. Everything is catered for; her meals, her clothes, reflect our darkest emotions and her health are all how she would like we as humans react and process them to be. But the life she Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is leading is beginning to take its toll. On the verge of snappinga home invader, a drained monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and somewhat out-, by the end of-sorts Violetthe story, withdraws back to her home townbeatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There, she meets someone familiar, '' is not like that. It is a ghost reminding her collection of how she used to be ten years earlier – a young carefree girl, full short stories more interested in the horrors of life. Only this isn't a ghostillness, but a girl living the life Violet once lived – exactly the same. Haunted by the past Violet realizes history is repeating itself grief and is convinced events will happen againhumiliation. Events Horrors that will in turn haunt the girllinger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906727392</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tove JanssonMadelaine Lucas|title=The True DeceiverThirst for Salt

|summary=Most people of my age will have come across Jansson's work unwittingly'Love, via the televised renditions of the Moomin tales. The readers amongst us would then have been entranced I'd read, was supposed to be a few years ago to discover that at last Thomas Teal light and weightless feeling, but I had set about the translation into English, first of The Summer Book and then of a collection of short stories which were published as always longed for gravity'A Winter Book'. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954899571</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Daniel Kehlmann |title=Me and Kaminski|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=After reviewing several long booksTold from a retrospective view, it's been refreshing to read such a fluent yet pared down story as 'Kaminski and Me'young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. In it, Sebastian ZollnerOverlaid with later wisdom, the obnoxious main character, shoves himself forward in narrator relives the affair with a desperate attempt man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to research a best seller which will re-ignite his career as its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an art critic. Kaminski, isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the proposed subject24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, was a fashionable painter long agodepicting its all-consuming nature, but now, ancient how it changed her perspective on both romantic and chronically ill, has virtually slid into oblivion. So the second-rate writer is on a loser unless he can dig up some juicy details to hook the art world familial relationships and general publichow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847249892</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreview|author=Hilary Dixon|title=When Rooks Speak ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of Love|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Arthur Transcombe is a middle-aged, grey-haired, self-effacing poetidentity and acceptance. Unremarkable really - on the outsideOf what it means to be human. He has, howeverOf what is real and what is artificial, managed to achieve some success with his poems. (Being a guest speaker at and whether the Cheltenham Literary Festival development of technology is no mean feat)exciting or frightening. He is also a babe magnet!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904529429</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=David Malouf Jennifer Saint|title=RansomAtalanta

|summary=Taking his theme from a small part of Homer's Iliad, Malouf tells the story of the king of Troy, Priam's grief-stricken voyage into the Greek camp to ransom Troy's wealth for the body I was as worthy as any one of his fallen sonthem. I would get on board that ship, HectorI vowed. I would take my place, killed by the equally grief-stricken Achilles whose great friend Hector had killed not just in battle before Achilles took his cruel revenge. Malouf tells the story in sparse, yet lyrical and poetic fashion suggesting the personal stories behind name of the epic themes that Homer relatedgoddess. It is an exquisitely written piece managing to be both deeply moving as well as a great piece was for the sake of story tellingmy name, too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184159</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''

{{newreview|author=David Vann |title=Legend of a Suicide|rating=4Princess.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Some books defy categorisation and that's the case with ''Legend of a Suicide''Warrior. Is it Literary Fiction? Is it a series of short stories linked by a common theme, or a novella with supporting pieces? Is it fiction with a strong autobiographical thread running through it? The simple answer to all these questions is ''yes'' – for the book is all that and moreLover. It's also a compelling page-turner – I began reading at ten o'clock last night and finished it at three thirty this morning, resenting every moment away from the bookHero.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141043784</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Milan Kundera|title=The Book of Laughter and Forgetting|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It's with Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a somehow guilty feeling that I admit that I have never been particularly fond son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of Milan Kundera. He's certainly a very good writer the goddess Athemis and undoubtedly fashioned into a very intelligent man capable of interesting philosophical insightsformidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. All those qualities contributed When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a cult status accorded to Kunderafierce band of warriors, compounded by descendent from the frisson of political subversion Gods themselves – never Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a harmful thing for a writer from what used to whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be known as Eastern Europe (but which returned to its status as Middle (or Central) Europe with the fall of the Iron Curtain)her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>057117437X</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andrew Miller Amanthi Harris|title=One Morning Like A BirdBeautiful Place|rating=45

|summary=Tokyo in 1940 is Padma, a place that we British tend not young Sri Lankan, has returned to give a great deal of thought to. Japan entered the war, we say, with the attack Villa Hibiscus on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, completely forgetting that Japan, like most of the rest southern coast of the world, was already her home country. This is a country at warplace she spent her formative years. She had been fighting in China since 1937 and It is not a place she was making in-roads born into European colonial territory in , but the area one she thinks of as wellhome.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340825154</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sadie Jones |title=Small Wars|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Even though our world is ostensibly How she came to be at peacethe Villa, hundreds of localizedhow it became her home, unwinnable conflicts continue to grumble on. Mostly, we only hear and care about the ones involving machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''our boysscore', as if war was some giant game of football' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. But it isn Padma't, s present fails to escape her past and ''Small Wars'' reflects on much like the casualties musical score of war in a story set in Cyprus in the Two-Way Family Favourites era of the nineteen-fifties. It may turn out to be an important book as film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the public mood turns against the 'war on terror' in Afghanistan. It's certainly a prescient oneVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184558</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Evelyn Waugh178563335X|title=A Handful of DustSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor

|summary=A complex class society which evolved into When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a highly sophisticated culture is invariably trainee vicar, sitting in on a fertile ground for development of social satirePCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and British literature would have been hugely depleted if all novels that can be regarded as such were suddenly to disappearher elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Evelyn Waugh made Holthorpe, on the genre his ownNorfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she''A Handful s in awe of Dustthe vicar, Gail, but then she'' is s been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a sublime example of his mastery of walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but itwas probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141183969</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=William Trevor 1398515388|title=Love The Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and SummerAlison Watts (translator)

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=''Love First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and Summer'' is set this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the small town loss of Rathmoye in a rural Ireland 'some years after livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the middle list of priorities but - six months after the last centurytsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn'. The novel charts t a dog person but the doomed love affair between Ellie, a young farmerconvenience store owner's wife, comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Florian, the Irish-Italian son of two artists, but it as much about Tamon the place and time dog jumped in which it is set.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918245</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bryony Doran 0989715337|title=The China BirdPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North

|summary=Edward is a sad and solitary figure. Late middle-aged, twisted-spined and hump-backed, a loner who works in the archive basement of ''Some frogs had gotten into the library, lodges with Mrs Ingrams who makes his tea and ruins his laundry, and hoards letters from his mother.  Like many an unmarried man with an aging, widowed mother, Edward finds his relationship with her somewhat strained. Unlike many of those men, his relationship was always that waywell. ''

She is rude and demanding''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and he either doesn't have the strength or barked down at the inclination to force strange noise of the issue with her. Apart from an occasion half-hearted reprimand, buckets as he stands back, ignores, makes excusesfilled them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095556302X</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=Jude Morgan |title=How is that for an opening? The Taste style of Sorrow|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The children were born this novel in Thornton, a suburb the form of Bradford, interconnected short stories goes from succinct and compared with where they were laconic to go it was wistful and musing, turning on a soft livingsixpence. Howarth was high up on the Yorkshire MoorsAnd author Marco North, industrialised and with weather which chilled to who has the bone. The parsonage was four-square but draughty and not exactly welcoming. They, most wonderful turn of coursephrase, were the Brontë family. The father was the impoverished curate and his six children had somehow starts as he means to be cared for after his wife's death from cancergo on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755338898</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Agnes Owens |title=The Complete Novellas|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Who is Agnes Owens? A Scottish author who portrays working class life from the nineteen forties and fifties. Now an octogenarian, apparently Agnes Owens started writing at the age of 58. Here are five previously published stories collected into one new edition, a companion volume to her short stories, published in 2008. I don't think you'll be disappointed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971373</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=J M Coetzee|title=Summertime|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Summertime'' is the third of a series of fictionalised autobiographies by J M Coetzee, following Move on from ''Boyhood'' and ''Youth''. There, that sounds straightforward enough, doesn't it? Except, in this 'autobiography' (or 'autrebiography' as one critic described the earlier volumes) the subject is dead. So, clearly, this story isn't 'true'. But then, how true is an ordinary autobiography? And to what extent is it a function of the novel to use fiction to reveal truth? So many questions, and I haven't even begun.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846553180</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]