Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chuck Palahniuk295967572X|title=Make Something UpPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens

|genre=Short Stories Literary Fiction|summary=What are we to make of that subtitle-seeming writing on the front cover – ''stories you can't unread''? Does that not apply to all good fiction? Clearly it Our unnamed narrator is here due about to the reputation of the author, and the baggage begin a train journey with his name brings to the pagecompanion Django. WeWhere they'd expect a dramatic approach from anything Palahniuk writes, re going and an added frissonwhat the purpose of this journey is, an extra layer, from which we might be forced to shrink backis uncertain. But a lot of Django found the contents dontickets 't quite go that far. Yes, things are dramatic, when society starts attaching defibrillators to itself, to create 'on the perfect, simple, care- (floor somewhere''The Price and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is Right''clear either -, and Kardashian-) free happiness. A man buys a horse for his daughter – but boy is it we are probably in the wrong horse to buy. A man falls in love – yes, sometimes past as the plot summaries of these stories really are better off for being short (speaking of which, don't turn pair travel to the three-page entrant here as a taster, it'll put you off station by dint of being, almost uniquely here, a nothing story). A call centre worker can't convince people he's on the level coach and even in their country – until someone starts riffing back to him. A housing estate report conveys bad regulation violations, but not as bad as the happenings at train is a 'Burning Man'-styled festival, in a very clever couple of tales. But many too are the instances where that extra step has been takensteam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587688</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Aliya WhiteleyMakenna Goodman|title= The Arrival Helen of MissivesNowhere|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=In It could be argued that the aftermath pervading theme of the Great War, Shirley Fearn dreams of challenging the conventions of rural England, where this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is as unchanging as the seasonsnot quite right. The scarred veteran Mr Tillerprotagonist, left disfigured by an impossible accident a disgraced professor on the battlefields brink of Francelosing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, brings Goodman counteracts his discomfort with him a messageforce which is seductive, radical and unnerving: part prophecy, part warningHelen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As Shirleythe former owner of the countryside house he's village prepares for considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the annual May Day celebrationsprotagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, where a new queen will be crowned and the future reborndescribes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she must choose between change and renewal – will lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the missives Mr Tiller brings prevent her mastering her identity?sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907389377</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= P K LynchOlga Tokarczuk|title= ArmadillosHouse of Day, House of Night|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Aggie is one of Texas' downtrodden. Dirt poor and abused. 'What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'sub' from a  The title of this spellbinding work, 'sub' familyHouse of Day, House of Night'' … ''Her father and brother enact that 'sub', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities -ness on herthe small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, week inhowever quotidian, week outcausing chaos.'' ''She has only But, the vaguest notion constant in that there image is something wrong with the abuse she endures.house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.''|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178507959X</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tarjei Vesaas, Torbjorn Stoverud and Michael Barnes (translators)Thea Lenarduzzi|title=The BirdsTower|rating=4.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=We're somewhere in rural Scandinavia, on 'How unctuous are the shores fats of a large lakeanother's life, but how dizzying their sugars in a community relying on the farmland that is scattered in amongst the woodsour bloodstream''. Our chief concerns are brother and sister – Mattis and Hege. He In this compelling novel, MattisThea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, is what the other villagers call protagonist of this tale. Just as T'simple' – sures story is being told, he knows the story of a few things about lifesecond protagonist is unveiled: Annie, and what makes the daughter of a clever person and what makes wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a well-turned phrasetower, and how to talk to girls and when to not stare at them, but he is definitely not quite as the others would wishcaptures T's imagination. Those others include his sister, who Annie's fate is seeing her life waste away in listening to his chatter, knitting jumpers to make ends meetabove all, and regretting in her own small way what has got her an enticing story to middle-age in this situationT. But from this galling introduction, you should take away the bigger picture – even if there It is no way outa story which she consumes avariciously, the life both in this countryside is brilliantly conveyed, full of sun as well as shadea quest for truth and knowledge, of labour and in service of idlenessmyth, fable and wit and charm as much as hardshipfantasy. I defy you to read this and think this corner of Scandinavia bleak.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0914671200</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nicola BarkerJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=The Cauliflower®Vaim

|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Nicola Barker teasingly refers to herself as this book's 'collagistAll was strange''... This haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, piecing together diverse documents to create a picture of Sri Ramakrishna (1836–1886)fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and Eline, a largely illiterate guru who attracted followers to his intense worship two of the goddess Kaliprotagonists caught in its melancholic current. His life story is a sticky mass of contradictions:|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785150669</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Toni Morrison Claire-Louise Bennett|title= God Help the ChildBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=A truly complex Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and emotionally raw portrayaldistortion. Even a kiss, that seeks to cover issues usually a symbol of raceintimacy and closeness, genderbecomes evidence of love lost. When the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and paedophiliakiss me,'' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. A slim volumeThe imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, yesher ex-partner, but one that is powerful in its puncha ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099555921</amazonuk>1804271934

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jesus Carrasco Helene Bessette and Margaret Jull Costa Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Out in the OpenLili is Crying|rating=34.5

|summary=Meet the boy. We never learn his name – First published in fact we learn very little 1953 in French, this book, such novel is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as where or when we are, Bessette wrenches words and why. What we do know is that he has left home. We get sentences from their proper position on the feeling his father is too handy with punishmentpage and positions them elsewhere, but that can't be the only reason for him first hiding out in an olive grove overnightdisjointed, then fleeing across truncated. Like the plains surrounding his family's village. Especially as he's chosen one lives of the most awkwardher characters, attritional times to cross said plains – the land is in the middle of a horrendous droughtthey are often left tragically incomplete. When he tries to steal his first provisions from an aged goatherd, however, he finds some light and liquid, but is this substitute father figure ever going to be enough to help the boy flee what he needs to?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009958218X</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philip DentJonathan Buckley|title=Mutable Passions: Charlotte Bronte: A Disquieting Affair|rating=3|genre=Historical Fiction |summary=As the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë's birth approaches, it is a perfect time for reading about her. Philip Dent's second novel chooses a lesser known period of her life to dramatize. All her siblings are now dead; during a hard winter when she is unable to visit her best friend, Ellen Nussey, Charlotte spends her time finishing ''Villette'', her final novel. The family servant, Tabby, ribs Charlotte about her romantic prospects – including Patrick Brontë's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls. Charlotte responds with indignation: 'I could no more kiss the lips of a man with a beard as big as rooks' nests than I could yours, Tabby.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178589093X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Miroslav Penkov|title=Stork MountainOne Boat

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=A young man, his grandfather and a stork with a broken wing are the ''company of rebelsOne Boat'' at is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the heart reader into a contemplative realm of this lively tale set in Bulgaria's Strandja Mountainsphilosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. The storks that return to Set against the mountains each spring are migrantsevocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, like so many this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and its power to provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the people that have passed through reason she has visited it after the region over death of both her parents. Prompted by her mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-aware, inviting the centuriesreader into her labyrinthine cogitations. The young narrator It is also in transita book that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, born in Bulgaria, but raised since its narrative structure is fragmentary and educated in America. The story opens with his return to Bulgaria in search of his grandfather who has broken off contact with his family in America. But the young man's motives are not as clear cut as first appearsironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473622182</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Elisa AlbertEowyn Ivey|title= After BirthBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating= 43.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= This book is definitely not ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for anyone who has a rosy picture life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of new motherhoodEmaleen. In factDescribed as a ''wild card'', I would probably avoid it if you are contemplating giving birth she feels stuck in her day-to-day life, and yearns to cross the near future. For any woman who has ever struggled through Wolverine river and live on the first few months North Fork to fulfil her desires of motherhooda simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, howevera strange, or taciturn and solitary man, who says he has a partner of somebody who is going through itcabin over there, it is an astounding she feels called to go - and revelatory readbring Emaleen with her. Never before have I read a more searingWithout realising it, honest this calling will transform hers and open discussion of the emotional upheaval a woman often goes through after giving birthEmaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009959014X</amazonuk>1472279042

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author= Ayelet Gundar-GoshenSally Rooney|title= Waking LionsIntermezzo|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary General Fiction|summary= If Sally Rooney has studied the point chessboard of ''literature'' - as opposed to the less exalted though just-as-worthwhile forms life and is something of writing - a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is to force you to think about gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the real worldmany relationships woven into this story, the political world, central one for readers to unravel is the painful life-as-we-know-it worldfraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, whilst catching you up in a story about something that never really happenedsocially awkward chess prodigy, butcontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, you knowa successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, might well have done so…and if you think that matters, then you must read this bookthe brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782271562</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yan LiankeFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=The Four BooksWhite Nights

|genre=Literary FictionShort Stories|summary=''The Four Books'' is a difficultAs always in Dostoyevsky, challenging novel and not for the feint hearted, or for someone looking for a page-turnercharacter work is sublime. It really challenges the reader's perceptions and opens up One is never left wondering what a gateway to an era that character is difficult to imagine for anyone brought up in a western culture. Set in Maoist China it tells the story of four protagonists thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and a memorable antagonist. The four, found guilty of anti-revolutionary crimes are undergoing re-education in a work camp governed by the child. With an Orwellian feel, ''The Four Books'' will come to be regarded as an undoubted masterpiecetemperaments with remarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099569493</amazonuk>0241619785

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yann MartelJames Baldwin|title=The High Mountains of Portugal|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=Tomas is being thrust into the twentieth Century, and he doesn't like it. He has given himself the job of seeking something out in the High Mountains of Portugal, based on an ancient religious diary he found working in an archive, and to do so he needs the use of his uncleGiovanni's brand new car to get him there and back in time. His jaw drops when he learns he will have to do the driving himself, for he cannot make head nor tail of what anything on the infernal machine does and why. It is of course a certain kind of progress, a looking forward, which has become quite anathema to him – for ever since he lost his beloved wife, beloved child and father, all in the space of a week, he has walked everywhere backwards – shielding himself from what really is ahead with a padded behind, and never letting sight of what he has lost.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782114696</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Antonio Moresco and Richard Dixon (translator)|title=Distant LightRoom

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Our unnamed narrator might as well be the only person alive. He knows he''Giovanni's not – he still goes down to Room'' follows the nearest inhabited village to buy things to eat and other necessitiesnarrator David, and he sees planes spreading their contrails over the remote area he lives an American man living in – but Paris, as he might as well be. A lot of navigates his thoughts are about lifetorturous affair with Giovanni, however, for an Italian bartender he has little meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to do except notice the nature around himHella, from the smell of lilies burgeoning with nobody else to see them who is travelling in this deserted villageSpain, to the swallows darting across real tension in the ravines of novel arises not from his infidelity but from the countrysidedeeper conflict within himself. Life – It is David's crippling shame and the nature denial of a light his sexuality that he sees spring into activity every night at what he thought was a totally lifeless, empty forest area on land separated from ultimately dooms his lookout post in his back garden by a deep, wooded gorge…relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0914671421</amazonuk>0141186356

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tania JamesAlba de Cespedes |title=The Tusk That Did the DamageForbidden Notebook|rating=3.54

|summary=Tania James was a Fulbright Fellow in New Delhi in 2011–12. For this, her second novel after ''Atlas This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of Unknowns'' (shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian literature) suspense and tension from the story collection ''Aerogrammes''moment our protagonist, she clearly draws on Valeria Cossati, purchases her personal knowledge of India forbidden notebook, and learns about herself in all its contradictions, especially when it comes to environmental policy. The novel alternates between three perspectives: a third-person account of an elephant named the Gravedigger and first-person narratives from a poacher most intimate and a documentary filmmakerrevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784700584</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Anakana SchofieldOttessa Moshfegh|title= Martin John|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I had heard much about this novel before I read it for review, by which I mean I had heard it was profane, strange and had a daring subject matter accompanied by elements My Year of humour. I have to say that whilst I agree it is certainly profane and strange and incredibly innovative, I didn't find much humour in it at all.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276665</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Jon Kalman Stefansson Rest and Philip Roughton (translator)|title=The Heart of ManRelaxation

|summary=What could be better than an existentialist book from rural IcelandAt best, full this novel is a scathing critique of gnomic comments about how close life and death are, that has as its core a journey taken by, amongst others, a naïve and hormonal teenaged lad modern society and a full coffin? Why, I hear you cry, a trilogy concerning reveals the same. Yesfragility of human relationships; at worst, it's is the obvious answercynical, really – why else would we come to this third part, where the survivors predictable and slightly trite tale of the expedition rest upan unlikeable protagonist. This unlikely heroine, note the women giving them helpa slim, attractive and see how eminently close the circle of life newly orphaned girl in her twenties is to disillusioned with the figure of a snake swallowing its tail throughworld, among other thingsbut resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, dogs rutting her solution lies in a church below the coffin's bier?her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184866236X</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Joanna WalshMatthew Tree|title= VertigoWe'll Never Know|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= The short stories in Joanna Walsh's collection have the overall effect of disparate streams of consciousness of a woman laying bear her very soul, whilst often going about seemingly mundane activities of the ordinary and every day. The narrative voice appeared to me Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be the same woman speaking throughout, playing different rolesfrom his father, though I'm not sure this was meant to be the case. The style a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of the stories is that being exceptional at any of short vignettes, mostly written in a modernist, stream his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of consciousness styleself confidence. SometimesSo Tim applied himself to his studies, the prose appears almost poeticcultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908276800</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kristopher JansmaB0C47LV1PC|title=Why We Came to the CityFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=4.5

|summary=Can you make a 'We came to 'Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the city because we wished to live haphazardly, to reach for only question should you make it? Or is the least realistic of our desires, and to see question if we could not learn what our failures had to teachyou did, and not, when we came to live, discover would it land? The catch is that we had never diedthe answer for both could well be... We wanted to dig deep and suck out all . no. ''Fragility'' is set as the marrow city of lifePortland, Oregon, cautiously begins to be overworked and reduced to our last wit.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0525426604</amazonuk>emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ernst Haffner and Michael Hofmann (translator)Mosby Woods|title=Blood BrothersA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=ItThe West isn's Berlin, and t the Nazis are on their way to power, even if they will never cross these pages themselvesdominant force it once was. The city – huge, glamorous, bustling, vicious Nobody in the way it can swallow people – West is home quite sure how to a countless hoard of teenagers, but we focus on just a few, most of whom have been in some corrective institution mend this or other before now. They call themselves the Blood Brothers, even if all they share mending it is the most unglamorous drudgery best course of going from one doss-house to anotheraction. Governments are flailing. A war here, balancing the cost of a few cigarettes with push for climate action there. A feeling that of nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a warm room for man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a few hours or some stale rolls to eatman who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. But en route to them is another 'Borstal' escapeeImagine then, Willithat this man loses this ability. Surely his fate is going What would governments do to be nothing if not more of the sameget it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099594048</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sara Taylor0571379559|title=The ShoreHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=''The first House of Broken Bricks'' is the story we hear from of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the Shoreriverbank, a group built of isolated islands off broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the coast passage of Virginiatime, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, is from Chloestruggles to grow his vegetables, who's telling her sister about what she overheard to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the storerainbow twins. SheSonny's colouring reflects his mother'd been there buying chicken necks so that they could go crabbings Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Normally People don't believe that they used bacon rinds're related, but theymuch less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she'd already eaten thoses his nanny. Cabel Bloxom had been murdered and }}{{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 ''they done cut his thang clean offIthaca''picks up a few months after where we left off. The girls are motherless In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and Chloe is fiercely protective then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of her little sister Reneethe Western Isles. SheHaving survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the first brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the strong women we'll encounter in these storiesreturn of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{Frontpage|author= Kay Chronister|title= Desert Creatures|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, which interlink this genre is a way for humans to give cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a greater picturenew 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>009959188X</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Adam BaronEric LaRocca|title=BlackheathThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionHorror|summary=Househusband James Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is happy in Blackheathused as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. HeMost horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad''s started doing stand-up again so , whether that he too has an achievement in his life to balance wife Aliceis a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's award winning poetry''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. Children Ida and Dominic are doing well so all It is great. Elsewhere a collection of short stories more interested in the area Amelia is equally happy with her actor husband Richardhorrors of illness, her own career grief and children Niamh and teenage Michaelhumiliation. Sometimes happiness isn't enough though Horrors that linger and, as the worlds of the two families start are harder to mingle, things start changing for each of themdefeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908434902</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julian BarnesMadelaine Lucas|title=The Noise of TimeThirst for Salt|rating=3.5

|summary=Julian Barnes's first novel since he won the Booker Prize for [[The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes]] is a fictionalised biography of Russian composer Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (1906–75). Knowing Barnes's penchant for stylistic experimentationLove, thoughI'd read, this was never going supposed to be a straightforwardlight and weightless feeling, chronological life storybut I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. InsteadOverlaid with later wisdom, as Barnes so often does, he sets up the narrator relives the affair with a tripartite structure, focussing on three moments in Shostakovichman twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's life when he has a reckoning deepening relationship with Power (always capitalised here)her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably. The |isbn=0861546490}}{{Frontpage|author= Michael Grothaus|title phrase helpfully spells out =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.'' ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the book question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is all about: 'Art real and what is the whisper of historyartificial, heard above and whether the noise development of timetechnology is exciting or frightening.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910702609</amazonuk>191458564X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Danielle McLaughlinJennifer Saint|title=Dinosaurs on Other PlanetsAtalanta|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories Literary Fiction|summary=Seeing ''I was as this book is clearly a talented author hitting the ground runningworthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I will dispense with any major preamblevowed. We start with a tale I would take my place, not just in the name of a daughter affected by the emotions of her parents as they separate – and goddess. It was for the influence sake of a certain school-teacher – from the mothermy name, too. Atalanta''s point of view Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. An ancient input shows how alien Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, and Atalanta is raised under the modern day domesticity how regular, protective eye of the isolation of goddess Athemis and fashioned into a woman can feelformidable huntress, as events are peppered by minor acts of destructionone who longs for adventure. But men can be alienated too When the opportunity comes – especially oneto join the Argonauts, a reluctant guest at a party for children hosted by someone he once had an affair with – he feels the new form fierce band of this influence in warriors, descendent from the light of another one he has had to try and abandon. 'All About Alice' Gods themselves – that's what Atalanta seizes the title character wants chance to say but has nobody to speak it to, but is it her – mid-40s fight in Artemis' name and single, living with carve out her father – that own legendary place in history. What follows is most removed from her dreams or her old friend a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and now child factorythrough it, Marian? And we complete a lap of the calendar with the wintry tale of a man unable to tell his work superiors of the problems he faces at home – a new homeAtalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, recently built like so many one sees while driving round Irelandit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473613701</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anne EnrightAmanthi Harris|title=The Green RoadBeautiful Place|rating=4.5

|summary=''The Green Road'' is Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the story southern coast of her home country. This is a familyplace she spent her formative years. If the author It is not a place she was anyone other than Anne Enright it would be stereotypically Irishborn into, with all but the appropriate characters in place: the boy who goes off one she thinks of as home. How she came to be a priestat the Villa, the daughter who likes the bottle far too muchhow it became her home, the son who does good works and the woman who stays back where machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she was born and marries a local man, the dead husband who was perhaps just a little bit beneath the wife who plays first arrived there provide the ''grande damescore''for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma' s present fails to escape her past and is perfect at being needy, whilst all much like the while maintaining that she needs nothing. But, musical score of coursea film, it ''is'' Anne Enrightthat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099539799</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kate Atkinson178563335X|title=A God in RuinsSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor

|summary=Teddy Todd never really expected to survive the war. As When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a bomber pilot it wasnPCC meeting and wondering why they't something which re held when you could rely on and he certainly knew need to pick the statisticschildren up. But Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year- against all the oddsold Hannah and her elder brother, he came through itJamie, albeit with some time spent as whilst Rachel holds a prisoner of warsobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. On balance he had Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a good warlovely place, but time will see him married Rachel is struggling to Nancy, father to Viola and grandfather to Sunny and Bertie develop a real bond with the parish - and left with she's in awe of the feeling that itvicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more difficult to have a good peace than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good war- it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552776645</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Chuck Palahniuk1398515388|title=Beautiful YouThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5

|summary=Meet Penny Harrigan. And let's hope your introduction to her is more gentle than that we have on First of all, it was the first page of this bookearthquake, where she is being raped deep in front of a full court housethe ocean floor, who – male to which created the bone – sit back tsunami and say nothingthis, in turn, if not whip out their camera phonecaused the nuclear meltdown. Once people take her out on a gurney The result was complete and recognise herutter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, we can start and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the beginning, where she is tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a lowly underling at dog outside a law firm, having failed too many exams to progress satisfactorilyconvenience store. The company is where the worldHe wasn's richest man is in legal negotiations having left t a dog person but the worldconvenience store owner's best and most beautiful actress, and lo and behold comment that he just happens would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to pick Penny to replace her with, even if she doesn't think of herself as open his car door and Tamon the most beautiful girl arounddog jumped in. But what exactly is it she is wanted for, and can her apolitical style of feminism and aspirations be met?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009958767X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Helle Helle and Martin Aitken (translator)0989715337|title=This Should be Written in Papa on the Present TenseMoon|author=Marco North|rating=54

|summary= This is the first novel of Helle Helle's, an award winning Danish author, to be translated 'Some frogs had gotten into Englishthe well. It is easy to see from this novel why she is gaining accolades '' ''Walter stood waist-deep in her Danish homelandthe fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. The rhythmicLong strands of their eggs wove around him, natural flow sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the narrative is mesmerising dogs leaned over the opening and appears to lull you through barked down at the strange noise of the bookbuckets as he filled them. It has some lovely, spare sentences of description: ''There were run-down cottages with open doors and news on the radio. Gulls flocked around  How is that for an early harvester opening? The style of this novel in the late sun''. But mostlyform of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, it is written in turning on a modernistsixpence. And author Marco North, almost stream who has the most wonderful turn of consciousness stylephrase, which I found refreshingstarts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099587475</amazonuk>