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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]{{adsense2}}__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ioanna Bourazopoulou and Yannis Panas (Translator)295967572X|title=What Lot's Wife Saw|rating=4|genre=Science Fiction|summary= It's been over 20 years since The Overflow came, flooding half of Europe. Around the same time Violet Salt, a new multi-functional mineral, appeared, its production now governed globally by the mysterious, all-powerful Consortium. Meanwhile back in Europe The Colony, a haven for those escaping floods and indeed justice, is ruled by Governor Bera and six officials, the 'Purple Stars'. All seems to be well in a despotic, lawless way until the six wake up to the realisation that the Governor has died mysteriously in the night. The Consortium needs answers so choose the greatest crossword compiler of the age, Phileas Book, to investigate, whether he wants to or not.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1845025474</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewPale Pieces|author=Gabriel Weston|title=Dirty WorkG M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=#There are two women in an operating theatre and when one starts bleeding heavily - fatally - the other freezes, unable, despite all her training and undoubted skills, Our unnamed narrator is about to do anything at allbegin a train journey with his companion Django. Whatever Where they're going and what the outcome it cannot pass unnoticedpurpose of this journey is, unreported and surgeon Nancy Mullion is called to appear before a tribunal appointed by uncertain. Django found the General Medical Council. Over a period of weeks shetickets ''s forced to confront on the effect of being a doctor who has killed as well as cured. Youfloor somewhere''re probably making assumptions now and nodding wiselyhas persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Don't Why not? Not much else is clear either - because you but we are almost certainly going probably in the past as the pair travel to be wrong. This will not be the story which you are expecting station by coach and it was certainly not the story which Nancy's hospital wanted to heartrain is a steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022409128X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rachel KushnerMakenna Goodman|title=The FlamethrowersHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Set mainly It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in New York's art district in the late 1970syour life is not quite right. The protagonist, Rachel Kushner's ''The Flamethrowers'' tells a disgraced professor on the story brink of losing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a young girlforce which is seductive, known only to radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the reader as Reno, after former owner of the city she comes from. Shecountryside house he's considering, Helen represents a girl who loves motorbikes and photographyvolta in his life, but struggles her past tied to find her place in the New York art scenehis potential fresh start. When she falls for The realtor who shows the estranged son, Sandro, of protagonist around the Italian motorbike manufacturer Valerohouse shares stories about Helen, himself and describes her as ''an artist entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives in New Yorkan assisted living facility now, Reno finds herself in situations she cannot controlHelen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846557917</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Olga Tokarczuk
|title=House of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?''
The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in that image is the house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Roland Watson-GrantThea Lenarduzzi|title=SketcherThe Tower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Nine-year-old Skid Beaumont lives with his three brothers, father Alrick and mother Valerie in the swamps beyond the New Orleans city limits. Life is hard and home is a rundown shack with no running water but they're only there temporarily; a 'temporarilyHow unctuous are the fats of another' that is rather long-term. Alrick moved them from s life, how dizzying their nice home sugars in New Orleans because the land was cheap and soon the city would build out to envelop them. Years later theyour bloodstream're still waiting for that to happen. Life isn’t exactly mundane though; there are rumours that when Skid's brother Frico draws left-handed, strange things seem to happen.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846882427</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philip SingtonJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=The Valley of UnknowingVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In the mid-to-late eighties the German Democratic Republic looked like enduring. Bolstered by a system of ''Mitarbeiter'All was strange' (''fellow workers'' is a much more amenable term than ''informers'') the Stasi kept their populace in check. Western media was easy to censor in those days. Border controls were brutal. People were shot on This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a regular basis trying to cross the no-man's-land into West Berlin fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and along Eline, two of the other inner German bordersprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099535823</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert WalserClaire-Louise Bennett|title=The Walk and other storiesBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The publication of Everything in this collection of around forty short stories affords the English speaking public book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a unique opportunity; that symbol of reading Walserintimacy and closeness, possibly the leading modernist writer becomes evidence of Swiss German in love lost. When the last century. He has received high praise in narrator cries out internally, 'A Place in the Country'come over here and kiss me, W G Sebald's recently published posthumous collection and he ' it is well-known as being less an invitation than a significant influence on Franz Kafka. His work here dates from 1907 desperate attempt to 1929 and along with his poetry won him recognition with Berlin's avant gardeconfirm her emotional numbness. He combines lyrical delicacy with detailed observation; reflective melancholy with criticism The imagined recipient of brash commercialism. The fine writing in this volume strives to achieve plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a hard won integrity together with an experimental capacity for reflection. It challenges the reader and provokes him ghost she conjures to new insightstest her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846689589</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joydeep Roy-BhattacharyaHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=The WatchLili is Crying|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Nizam pushes a barrow up to a fortified US army base First published in 1953 in Afghanistan. What French, this novel is she doing there? How will a timeless text which wrenches the soldiers react? What do they believe: hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their experienceproper position on the page and positions them elsewhere, their trainingdisjointed, their gut reaction or a young girl amputee in truncated. Like the middle lives of the desert who may be the last thing her characters, they ever see?are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099565773</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anthony CartwrightJonathan Buckley|title=How I Killed Margaret ThatcherOne Boat|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=What motivates someone to become ''One Boat'' is a killer? When deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader first meets Sean Bullinto a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, he is nine years oldTeresa. Set against the evocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, living a seemingly carefree this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and happy existence surrounded its 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 his family her mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and friends in a closedeeply self-knit community in Dudleyaware, West Midlandsinviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. He loves Star Wars and playing football with his school friends and adores his teenage uncle JohnnyIt is a book that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, who tells him stories since its narrative structure is fragmentary and creates the most wonderful pieces of artironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781251576</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jenni FaganEowyn Ivey|title=The PanopticonBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Imagine reading ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a book set in life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a Scottish children’s care home. It’s about bar waitress, a violent setting which enables her bad habits and a deeply disturbed fifteen year old drug addict who, when she was eleven, found her prostitute foster mother murdered in the bathtubaccidental neglect of Emaleen. That’s the set-up of Jenni Fagan’s Described as a ''The Panopticonwild card'', she feels stuck in her day-to-day life, and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and that’s what it’s about – but live on the funny thing is that whatever you’re picturing in your head right nowNorth Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and what I was imagining before I sat down solitary man, who says he has a cabin over there, she feels called to read go - and bring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, bears absolutely no resemblance to the book Fagan has actually writtenthis calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099558645</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jess RichardsSally Rooney|title=Cooking with BonesIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary= Sisters Amber and Maya run away from home, Sally Rooney has studied the city chessboard of Paradon, life and arrive in is something of a small villagegrandmaster at putting it into words. Finding an old cottageHer dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the girls settle in comfortablymany relationships woven into this story, hidden from the locals' sight while joining in with their customs as Amber backs honey cakes each night from the ingredients left daily outside central one for readers to unravel is the cottage fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and the instructions of the former occupant's cookery booksPeter Koubek. Now they've moved away from their old life Amber tries to encourage Maya to stand on her own two feet which isn't easy. For Maya is Ivan, a formwanderersocially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, engineered to reflect other's wants; a role successful lawyer living in which itDublin. Following their father's difficult to exist normallypassing after a long battle with cancer, let alone while trying to adjust to change… and, indeed, unexpected deaththe brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444738038</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kate AtkinsonFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=Life After LifeWhite Nights
|rating=5
|genre=Literary FictionShort Stories|summary=Spanning the period from just before World War One to the end of World War Two, Kate Atkinson's ''Life After Life'' tells the story of Ursula Todd. Or more accurately, it tells the potential stories of Ursula Todd. If you've seen the movie ''Sliding Doors'' then you will have some idea of the concept Atkinson explores; that of small changes As always in life leading to different outcomesDostoyevsky, many of which lead to tragic endings but strangely the book manages to be a celebration of the spirit of Ursula and character work is often quite upliftingsublime. It's One is never left wondering what a book that sounds like it character is going to be much more confusing than it is though thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and the result is a very special book indeed. It's that rare thing of a book that has a strong literary style but which is also very readabletemperaments with remarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0385618670</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Emily PerkinsJames Baldwin|title=The ForrestsGiovanni's Room|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= This is the chronicle of the Forrest family during the life of daughter Dorothy. They move ('they' being DorothyGiovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, father Frankan American man living in Paris, mother Lee and siblings Michaelas he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, Evelyn and little Ruthie) from New York an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to New Zealand at Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the age of seven years old. Frank hopes real tension in the migration will signal a change in novel arises not from his luck as well as a new life for his familyinfidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. HeIt is David's right in that changes follow but there are as many to shake their stability as to still it crippling shame and the past remains with each denial of them as well as the ''de'' ''facto'' adoptee Daniel. Indeed, Dorothy grows to realise his sexuality that the past is a garment that's worn in some form throughout an entire lifetimeultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>140883149X</amazonuk>0141186356
}}
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As Therese Anne Fowler points out in her acknowledgements, views on the relationship between F Scott Fitzgerald and his wife and muse, Zelda, tend to split into 'Team Scott' and 'Team Zelda'. The former believe that it was Zelda's instability and possessiveness that limited Scott's creative output while the latter argue that it was Scott's debauched behaviour that led to Zelda's mental problems. ''Z'' takes a more balanced view - the truth This Italian work of the matter is that they needed each other but were tragically, mutually destructive. Getting the fact-based feminist fiction tone right is always a challenge, holds an air of suspense and this is exacerbated when tension from the author gives a writer the narrative voicemoment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, and Zelda was a talented writer in purchases her own right as well as a dancerforbidden notebook, artist and general social phenomenon. However Fowler pulls it off with aplomb learns about herself in what is a sensitive the most intimate and engrossing story of Zelda - 'the First Flapper'revealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444761404</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sheila HetiOttessa Moshfegh|title=How Should A Person Be?My Year of Rest and Relaxation
|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Much has been made in the media about the similarity in approach At best, this novel is a scathing critique of Sheila Heti's fictionalised autobiographical ''How Should A Person Be?'' modern society and Lena Dunham's HBO television series ''Girls''. They certainly share a similarly bleak and introspective view reveals the fragility of lifehuman relationships; at worst, both are apparently based on it is the writer's own experiencecynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. This unlikely heroine, both have a somewhat knowingly shock factor particularly when it comes to sex and both leave me somewhat depressed slim, attractive and sad. And both have been critical successes newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the US. Indeed, ''How Should A Person Be?'' also features on the 2013 long list for the [[Women's Prize for Fiction 2013|Women's Prize for Fiction]]world, although it's but resolves not easy to assess where the fiction starts and the reality stops. In lose sleep over it: in fact, the conceit is also somewhat similar to the scripted reality shows that dominate certain television channels. The effect is something that is interesting as a concept and exercise but less than enjoyable to readher solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846557542</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Barbara KingsolverMatthew Tree|title=Flight BehaviourWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Set in rural TennesseeTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, Dellarobia Turnbow is a young mother, trapped in the result drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of a shotgun wedding in a largely loveless marriage on her husband's failing family farm dominated by the disapproval his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of her God-fearing mother in lawself confidence. She dreams of escape with equally unsuitable younger men until one day on her way So Tim applied himself to acting on this impulse for the first timehis studies, she encounters an act of nature that will change her life for good. Barbara Kingsolver perfectly captures in the opening paragraphs the sense of entrapment and dissatisfaction of Dellarobia cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and doesn't let up for a momentset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0571290779</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nikolai Leskov, Richard Pevear (translator) and Larissa Volokhonsky (translator)B0C47LV1PC|title=The Enchanted Wanderer and Other StoriesFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This is Can you make a collection of 17 Nikolai Leskov stories as mixed in subject matter as they are in length. From the very short ''Spirit of Madame de GenlisYo birthing person''joke? And if you could, warning of is the question should you make it? Or is the dire consequences of selecting literature for a mollycoddled princessquestion if you did, to would it land? The catch is that the novella-length answer for both could well be.... no. ''The Enchanted WandererFragility'' telling is set as the tale city of the apparently immortal monk who prayed for suicide victimsPortland, Oregon, Leskov (aided greatly by cautiously begins to emerge from the talented translators Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky) unlocks restrictions imposed during the mores, traditions, religion and superstitions of 19th century Russia for a modern readership.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099577356</amazonuk>covid pandemic
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Taiye SelasiMosby Woods|title=Ghana Must GoA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Kweku Sai, father, husband and doctor, awakes early one morning and wanders outside into his Ghanaian gardenThe West isn't the 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 action. Governments are flailing. As he gazes back at his houseA war here, he suffers a fatal heart attack andpush for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, during his last moments reflects on his life and there was a family fragmentedman with precognition. On hearing Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of his deathcircumstances. That man would be valuable, his children and first wife Folasade look back on what they were before and, thanks right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in part to Folasade's and Kweku's actionshistory. Imagine then, what they've becomethat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670919861</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michele Roberts0571379559|title=IgnoranceThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Michèle Roberts's 'The House of Broken Bricks'Ignorance'is the story of four people. Tess Hembry' is a beautifully writtens roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, lyrical story about life she lives in wartime Francethe house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Narrated mainly by two characters, Jeanne and Marie-Angèle Insubstantial as it might look, it jumps back and forward in 's stood the passage of time , storms and is an enthralling mixture of guiltfloods. Her husband, Richard, faithstruggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and survivalto bring in sufficient money. The two girls could not be more different. Marie They have twin boys -Angèle is Sonny and Max, the grocerrainbow twins. Sonny's daughter while Jeanne is the daughter of a Jewish colouring reflects his mother who washes clothes for a living's Jamaican heritage. The two girls together go to the village convent for their education but come from different ends of the social spectrumMax takes after his father. When the German occupation arrives, the two girls' experiences are very different but both are People don'ignorantt believe that they' of each others plight re related, much less twins and their judgements are repeatedly shown to be wide of the mark. In fact the book could just as well have been titled there'Judgements an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny. Just when you think you know one through the eyes of the other, you get the opposite view of things. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408831155</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a 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=Carrie TiffanyKay Chronister|title=Mateship with BirdsDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=In the early nineteen fifties With a lonelyworld that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, middlepost-aged farmer observed the birds on his land and recorded what he saw in the blank pages apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of his milk ledgerwater or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. His animals and ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the birds were his family and his land - difficult though it could be - fears that exist for humanity today. It is a part of himshocking novel that still manages to find hope.|isbn=1803364998}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Eric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. Whilst Harry watched It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and recordedprocess them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', his neighbourwhether that is a home invader, Bettya monster or a ghost, watched Harry it usually something tangible and recorded , by the childhood illnesses and accidents end of her two childrenthe story, beatable. By day she worked in a nursing home where she was a lunchtime Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'wife', sitting at is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the bedside of some horrors of the old men in her care. Her daughter, Hazelillness, kept a nature notebook which was completely factual grief and accepting of birth and death in a way humiliation. Horrors that can only be achieved by those who live with livestock - linger and deadstock - on a daily basisare harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447219864</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anouk MarkovitsMadelaine Lucas|title=I Am ForbiddenThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The date is 1939 and the place is what we know as Romania and Hungary. Young Zalman Stern is stopped by soldiers and for a moment he feels this is his last moment on Earth. Meanwhile''Love, not too far awayI'd read, one moment 5 year old Josef Lichtenstein is playing with his baby sister, the next his childhood is deleted by the same bigotry was supposed to be a light and blood that deletes her. One day their paths will meet. This is the story of Zalmanweightless feeling, Josef, their descendants; their struggles, their beliefs; the cost of escape and the cost of remaining.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099571943</amazonuk>}}but I had always longed for gravity''
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Michael Grothaus
|title=Beautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Maggie O'FarrellJennifer Saint|title=Instructions for a HeatwaveAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In London, in July 1976 it hadn't rained for months'I was as worthy as any one of them. Gardens - if you could call them I would get on board that any longer - were thick with aphids and what water there was, which was to be consumed or used for washingship, came from a standpipeI vowed. Robert Riordan told his wifeI would take my place, Gretta, that he was going round not just in the name of the corner to buy a newspapergoddess. This It was what he did every morningfor the sake of my name, but this time he didntoo. Atalanta''t come back Princess. The police weren't interested as the closer they looked the more it was obvious that there was an intention to disappearWarrior. Lover. Gretta turned to her three adult children for helpHero. But how much help would they - could they - be?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755358783</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andrea EamesAmanthi Harris|title=The White ShadowBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As Padma, a general principle I am young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a little tired place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of books as home. How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that start at have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the end''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. I want Padma's present fails to argue for escape her past and much like the musical score of a return to good old fashioned narrative where stories start film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the beginning, go on until the end, and then stopVilla. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099565420</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=I J Kay178563335X|title=Mountains of the MoonSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The story starts harshlyWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, with sitting in on a release from prisonPCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, a bail hostelChristopher, a refuge for people with mental health problems as a bettercollects six-thanyear-nothingold Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-liedin-to-be-obtained kind of a sanctuary and a slow easing back into societylaw won't let her see her grandson. If you can call Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a housing association flatlovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with a decorating voucher the parish - and no furnitureshe's in awe of the vicar, Gail, only occasional power but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and annoying neighbours ''society''Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554739</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jennie Rooney1398515388|title=Red JoanThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=It is very obvious where Jennie Rooney has taken First of all, it was the idea for her novel ''Red Joan'' from. As she acknowledges fullyearthquake, it has its origin deep in the 1999 story of Melita Norwood whose espionage for ocean floor, which created the Russians wasn't discovered until she was tsunami and this, in her late 80sturn, but while Norwood was a dyed in caused the wool communist, Rooney offers a more complex back story to her character, Joannuclear meltdown. The result is a very different type of spy novel than normalwas complete and utter devastation. Joan The deaths were uncountable, a widowed grandmother, is going about her day to day life when MI5 come knocking on her door to ask about her pastand the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The narrative switches between fact that many pets were separated from their questions to her and her recollections owners came far down the list of her time at Cambridge in priorities but - six months after the late 1930s where communist feelings were, by some, given tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a more sympathetic earconvenience store. When Joan falls for Leo, He wasn't a dog person but the cousin of her Russian born friend Sonya, she gets dragged into a world convenience store owner's comment that is dangerous he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and morally complexTamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701187573</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jason Hinojosa0989715337|title=The Conception of Zachary MusePapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Evangeline Muse gives birth to Zachary alone in her special lagoon… but that's starting at 'Some frogs had gotten into the endwell. In the beginning, Thomas Greene is a tutor and Will Archer a talented wood carver who both accept employment from Michael Muse. What they don't realise at that moment is, once they meet his beautiful daughter, Evangeline, nothing will ever be the same again for any of them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>9380905440</amazonuk>}}'
}}