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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Simon Van Booy295967572X|title= Father's DayPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating= 5|genre= General Literary Fiction|summary=When devastating news shatters Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the life purpose of six year old Harveythis journey is, she finds herself in is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the care of a veteran social worker, Wanda, floor somewhere'' and alone has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the world save for one relative she has never met - a disabled ex-con, haunted past as the pair travel to the station by a violent past he can't escape. Moving between past coach and present, Father's Day weaves together the story of Harvey's childhood on Long Island, and her life as train is a young woman in Parissteam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780749694</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Thomas KeneallyMakenna Goodman|title=Napoleon's Last IslandHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It's not usual to open a review with could be argued that the history pervading theme of how the this book came is malaise - a hard-to be written but with ''Napoleon's Last Island'' the story sheds an intriguing light -place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the plot. In 2012 author Thomas Keneally was given tickets to an exhibition brink of Napoleonic artefacts: uniformslosing both his career and his relationship, furnitureembodies this feeling. However, china, paintings, military decorationsGoodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, snuff boxes radical and memorabilia as well as Napoleon's death maskunnerving: Helen. He was intrigued as to how the exhibits The connection between Helen and particularly the mask came to be in Australiaprotagonist is indirect yet intimate. Some pieces in As the exhibition had been bought in later but most came from the descendants former owner of the Balcombe familycountryside house he's considering, who came to the colony Helen represents a volta in the first half of the nineteenth centuryhis life, from St Helena via Englandher past tied to his potential fresh start. The result of Keneally's research into realtor who shows the protagonist around the story is house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''Napoleon's Last Islandan entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473625335</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Natural Way of ThingsOlga Tokarczuk|authortitle=Charlotte WoodHouse of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Yolanda and Verla wake up disorientated. They realise they've been drugged. Yolanda thinks 'What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that perhaps they are ? How can one go on calmly living in some kind it?'' The title of mental facility - She knew she was not madthis spellbinding work, but all lunatics thought that. Verla just sits''House of Day, still and frozenHouse of Night'', waiting. And soon enoughsomewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, two men arrive to reveal their fate. Yolanda and Verlasubtle changes which govern our lives, along with eight other girls, have been brought like the shift from day to a remote farmhouse surrounded by an electrified fence. Their heads are shaved. They are dressed in uncomfortable, scratchy, Amish-style clothes. They are tied together like a chain gang. Andnight, like any chain ganghowever quotidian, their days are marked with forced labourcausing chaos. Two menBut, one more cruel than the otherconstant in that image is the house, and a so-called nurse are their jailers, not their guardiansstoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1760291870</amazonuk>1804271918
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Emma GeenThea Lenarduzzi|title=The Many Selves of Katherine NorthTower|rating=3.5|genre=Science Literary Fiction|summary=As a Bristol-area 'phenomenaut'How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, nineteen-year-old Kit projects herself into Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the lab-grown bodies identity of all sorts T, the protagonist of creaturesthis tale. SheJust as T's recently spent story is being told, the story of a lot second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of time as a fox (appropriate given her nickname) and got particularly close with wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a vixen named Tomokotower, captures T's imagination. ItAnnie's becoming much harder for her fate is, above all, an enticing story to leave the animal world behind at the end of her 'jumps'T. Even after BuckleyIt is a story which she consumes avariciously, her neuroengineerboth in a quest for truth and knowledge, signals her to 'Come home' and she resumes her original body, she has trouble giving up animal tendencies like territorialismin service of myth, toileting outdoors fable and raiding binsfantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408858436</amazonuk>1804271799
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sjon Jon Fosse and Victoria Cribb Damion Searls (translator)|title=Moonstone: The Boy Who Never WasVaim|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Sixteen-year-old Mani Stein - Moonstone in translation - existed on ''All was strange''... This haunting phrase encapsulates the fringes pervading sense of society. He lived otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Reykjavik and Vaim, a fictional fishing village in 1918 the night sky (Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and the day for that matter) was lit by the eruptions Eline, two of the Katla volcano. The Great War was raging, or possibly grinding on, but life protagonists caught in the capital carried on much as usual. There were shortages, such as coal, but there was the new fashion and it was for the movies that Mani lived, seeing every production he could, sometimes several times. He dreamed about the films, changing them to suit his tastes, working his own life into the plots. But there was another reason why Mani was a misfit: Mani was gay and frequently made a living as a sex workerits melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473613132</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Conor O'CallaghanClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Nothing on EarthBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=On a sweltering night Everything in what this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is a blisteringly hot summer a young girl hammers at a man's door steeped in anguish and when let into the house tells him that her father has disappeared ''too''distortion. Gradually her story emergesEven a kiss, of usually a home on one symbol of those estates so common in Ireland after the collapse intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of the Celtic Tiger with only the occasional house occupied and others only part builtlove lost. It could be any one of hundreds of Irish towns at that time and its main feature is When the lack of hope that it will never be any better. Our narrator tells her storycries out internally, much''come over here and kiss me, he says, as '' it was told is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to him and we hear confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of a life on the edge of povertythis plea is Xavier, with strange noises in the nighther ex-partner, words written in the dust on the windows mirrored by those written in blue ink on a ghost she conjures to test her skindetachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781620342</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Per Olov Enquist Helene Bessette and Deborah Bragan-Turner Kate Briggs (translator)|title=The Parable BookLili is Crying|rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It's not only springtime when First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a man's fancies turn to thoughts of love – he can also do it in timeless text which wrenches the autumn hearts of his life, its readers just as does Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the man involved here. But being a well-known author, page and being beholden to silencepositions them elsewhere, can he really put his thoughts on paper? It happened a long time agodisjointed, and he only met truncated. Like the woman concerned a couple lives of timesher characters, but with it being such a powerful event and such a slightly unusual circumstance, what should he do? It takes a notebook of his father's love poems to his mother, that he finds both they are often left tragically incomplete and scorched, to give him the green light – the voice from the past that says to him, 'go for it'. And what we read here is a result.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857059912</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Maggie O'FarrellJonathan Buckley|title=This Must Be the PlaceOne Boat
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Maggie O'Farrell's globe-trotting seventh novel opens in 2010 with Daniel Sullivan, an American linguistics professor. He lives with his wife Claudette, a French actress who retreated from the limelight, and their two children in a remote home in Donegal. It was 10 years ago that he first came here and met Claudette by chance when her van had a flat tire; he struck up a conversation with her son Ari and gave the boy tips for dealing with his stutter. Now, preparing to fly back to Brooklyn for his fatherOne Boat's ninetieth birthday party, he's caught short by a long-lost voice he hears on the radio. It belongs to Nicola Janks, is a former lover he last saw 24 years ago; when he learns deeply introspective novella that she died soon after they were togetherdefies traditional narrative structure, he determines to figure out whether he played drawing the reader into a rolecontemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, even if he doesn't like what he findsTeresa.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755358805</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Joanne Harris|title=Different Class|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= St Oswald's Grammar School For Boys is in crisis. A murdered schoolboy, a procession Set against the evocative backdrop of new Head Masters, a(nother) new Head Master, a Crisis Intervention Team and a potential merger with St Oswald's all female counterpartsmall coastal Greek town, Mulberry House. Roy Straitley is not altogether dismayed at this work masterfully captures the prospect magic of delaying his retirement; St Oswald's has been his life, man its setting and boy and a crisis is a crisis after all is said and done, isn't it? It's probably his duty its power to stay and right the shipprovoke profound introspection. So when Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the latest of reason she has visited it after the new Head Masters and his duo death of crisis managers walk into the staff roomboth her parents. Prompted by her mourning, Straitley can't quite believe his old eyes. The new Head her narrative voice is an exmeditative and deeply self-pupil of St Oswald's; a boy whoaware, in his time at inviting the esteemed old School caused such an uproarious scandal that one of the Masters ended up in prison! |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385619235</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Bill Beverly|title= Dodgers|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Judging a book by its cover can misleadreader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It can especially mislead if you don't look closely at the cover and are just grabbed by the ''feel'' or ''style'' of the design of the thing. Being misled is a book that not necessarily a bad thing. For reasons best left in the depths only requires but inspires depth of my addled brainthought, the styling of Dodgers had me thinking 'noir'. I was expecting late fifties, early sixties. If I'd looked closer, I'd have seen that it since its narrative structure is much more contemporary than thatfragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion. Then again…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1843448572</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alice AdamsEowyn Ivey|title=Invincible SummerBlack Woods Blue Sky
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As Alice Adams's debut novel opens in 'Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the summer young mother of 1995toddler Emaleen, four university friends are lounging on Bristol's Brandon Hillwho longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, drinking a setting which enables her bad habits and contemplating what the future holdsher accidental neglect of Emaleen. ThereDescribed as a ''wild card''s Eva Andrews, raised she feels stuck in Sussex 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 nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a single father; siblings Sylvie and Lucien Marchantstrange, neglected by their alcoholic mother; taciturn and Benedict Waverleysolitary man, a rich kid whose parents have a holiday home on Corfu. Eva who says he has a crush on Luciencabin over there, while Benedict is besotted she feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with Evaher. Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1509814701</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author= Birgul OguzSally Rooney|title= HahIntermezzo|rating= 34.5|genre= Literary General Fiction|summary= I was interested to receive this book for review as I knew it was written in a modern, interesting style, being effectively a collection Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of short stories, but appearing more in a novel structuregrandmaster at putting it into words. I wasHer dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, however, rather disappointed with the bookas her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Whilst it does have some very fine examples of prose writing within Among the storiesmany relationships woven into this story, I felt disconnected from the narrator, who central one for readers to unravel is the daughter of fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a recently deceased man who was involved in socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a Turkish military coup successful lawyer living in 1980Dublin. There is therefore a lot of examples of the narrator relating the conversations they had shared regarding ''revolution'', and the way this had affected the daughterFollowing their father's upbringing and childhood. Another 'story' then delves into passing after a seemingly disconnected wander through the townlong battle with cancer, whereby we see the narrator working at gutting fish, and talking about a man she finds repulsive, but who appears to be in love with herbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>9462380740</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chuck PalahniukFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=Make Something UpWhite Nights
|rating=5
|genre=Short Stories |summary=What are we to make of that subtitle-seeming writing on As always in Dostoyevsky, the front cover – character work is sublime. One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity.|isbn=0241619785}}{{Frontpage|author=James Baldwin|title=Giovanni's Room|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary='stories you can't unreadGiovanni's Room'? Does that not apply to all good fiction? Clearly it is here due to ' follows the reputation of the authornarrator David, an American man living in Paris, and the baggage as he navigates his name brings to the page. We'd expect a dramatic approach from anything Palahniuk writestorturous affair with Giovanni, and an added frisson, an extra layer, from which we might be forced to shrink back. But Italian bartender he meets in a lot of the contents don't quite go that fargay bar. Yes, things are dramatic, when society starts attaching defibrillators to itself, While David is engaged to create the perfectHella, simple, care- (''The Price who is Right''-travelling in Spain, and Kardashian-) free happiness. A man buys a horse for his daughter – but boy is it the wrong horse to buy. A man falls real tension in love – yes, sometimes the plot summaries of these stories really are better off for being short (speaking of which, don't turn to novel arises not from his infidelity but from the three-page entrant here as a taster, it'll put you off by dint of being, almost uniquely here, a nothing story)deeper conflict within himself. A call centre worker can't convince people heIt is David's on the level crippling shame 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 a 'Burning Man'-styled festival, in a very clever couple denial of tales. But many too are the instances where his sexuality that extra step has been takenultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099587688</amazonuk>0141186356
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Aliya WhiteleyAlba de Cespedes |title= The Arrival of MissivesForbidden Notebook|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=In the aftermath This Italian work of the Great War, Shirley Fearn dreams feminist fiction holds an air of challenging suspense and tension from the conventions of rural Englandmoment our protagonist, where life is as unchanging as the seasons. The scarred veteran Mr TillerValeria Cossati, left disfigured by an impossible accident on the battlefields of France, brings with him a message: part prophecypurchases her forbidden notebook, part warning. As Shirley's village prepares for the annual May Day celebrations, where a new queen will be crowned and learns about herself in the future reborn, she must choose between change most intimate and renewal – will the missives Mr Tiller brings prevent her mastering her identity?revealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907389377</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author= P K LynchOttessa Moshfegh|title= ArmadillosMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating= 4.53|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Aggie At best, this novel is one a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the fragility of Texas' downtrodden. Dirt poor human relationships; at worst, it is the cynical, predictable and abusedslightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. ''This unlikely heroine, a 'sub' from a 'sub' family'' … ''Her father slim, attractive and brother enact that 'sub'-ness on newly orphaned girl in hertwenties is disillusioned with the world, week but resolves not to lose sleep over it: infact, week out.'' ''She has only the vaguest notion that there is something wrong with the abuse she endures.her solution lies in her hibernation.''|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178507959X</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tarjei Vesaas, Torbjorn Stoverud and Michael Barnes (translators)Matthew Tree|title=The BirdsWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=We're somewhere in rural Scandinavia, on the shores of a large lake, but in a community relying on the farmland that is scattered in amongst the woods. Our chief concerns are brother and sister – Mattis and Hege. He, Mattis, is what the other villagers call 'simple' – sure, he knows a few things about life, and what makes a clever person and what makes a well-turned phrase, and how Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to talk to girls and when to not stare at them, but he is definitely not quite as the others would wish. Those others include be different from his sister, who is seeing her life waste away in listening to his chatter, knitting jumpers to make ends meetfather, a drunk and regretting in her own small way what has got her to middle-age in this situation. But from this galling introduction, you should take away the bigger picture – even if there is no way out, the life in this countryside is brilliantly conveyed, full chronic underachiever whose dreams of sun as well as shade, being exceptional at any of labour his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of idleness, and wit and charm as much as hardshipself confidence. I defy you So Tim applied himself to read this his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and think this corner of Scandinavia bleakset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0914671200</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nicola BarkerB0C47LV1PC|title=The Cauliflower®Fragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Nicola Barker teasingly refers to herself as this bookCan you make a ''s Yo birthing person'collagist'joke? And if you could, piecing together diverse documents to create a picture of Sri Ramakrishna (1836–1886)is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, a largely illiterate guru who attracted followers to his intense worship of would it land? The catch is that the goddess Kalianswer for both could well be.... His life story no. ''Fragility'' is a sticky mass set as the city of contradictions:|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785150669</amazonuk>Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Toni Morrison Mosby Woods|title= God Help the ChildA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=The 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. A truly complex and emotionally raw portrayalwar here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that seeks to cover issues nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of racecircumstances. That man would be valuable, gender, and paedophiliaright? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. A slim volume, yesImagine then, but one that is powerful in its punchthis man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099555921</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jesus Carrasco and Margaret Jull Costa (translator)0571379559|title=Out in the OpenThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=35
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the boystory of four people. We never learn his name – Tess Hembry's roots are in fact we learn very little Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in this bookthe house on the riverbank, such built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as where or when we areit might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and whyfloods. What we do know is that he has left home. We get the feeling Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his father is too handy with punishmentvegetables, but that can't be to complete the only reason for him first hiding out delivery rounds - and to bring in an olive grove overnightsufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, then fleeing across the plains surrounding rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his familymother's villageJamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Especially as hePeople don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's chosen one of the most awkward, attritional times to cross said plains – the land an assumption when Max is in the middle of a horrendous droughtout with his mother that she's his nanny. 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?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009958218X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philip DentClaire North|title=Mutable Passions: Charlotte Bronte: A Disquieting AffairHouse of Odysseus|rating=35|genre=Historical Literary 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 What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up 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 the excellent ''VilletteIthaca'', her final novelpicks up a few months after where we left off. The family servantIn the palace of Odysseus, Tabby, ribs Charlotte about with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her romantic prospects – including Patrick Brontë's curatehusband, Arthur Bell Nichollswho sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. Charlotte responds with indignation: 'I could no more kiss As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the lips throne of a man with a beard as big as rooks' nests than I could yours, Tabbythe Western Isles.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178589093X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Miroslav Penkov|title=Stork Mountain|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=A young man, his grandfather Having survived – politically and a stork with a broken wing are physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca''company of rebels'' at s shores, Queen Penelope is on the heart brink of this lively tale set in Bulgaria's Strandja Mountainsa fragile peace. The storks One that shatters however with the return to the mountains each spring are migrantsof Orestes, like so many King of the people that have passed through the region over the centuries. The young narrator is also in transitMycenae, born in Bulgaria, but raised 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 appearssister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473622182</amazonuk>0356516075
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Elisa AlbertKay Chronister|title= After BirthDesert Creatures
|rating= 4
|genre= Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary= This book With a world that is definitely not becoming increasingly inhospitable for anyone who has humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a rosy picture of new motherhood. In factrobotic takeover, I would probably avoid it if you are contemplating giving birth in the near future. For any woman who has ever struggled through the first few months a world devoid of motherhood, however, water or a partner of somebody who is going through itnuclear holocaust, it this genre is an astounding and revelatory reada way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. Never before have I read ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a more searing, honest and open discussion new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the emotional upheaval fears that exist for humanity today. It is a woman often goes through after giving birthshocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009959014X</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Ayelet Gundar-GoshenEric LaRocca|title= Waking LionsThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There
|rating= 5
|genre= Horror
|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Madelaine Lucas
|title=Thirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
 
Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man 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 deepening relationship with 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.
|isbn=0861546490
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Michael Grothaus
|title=Beautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= If the point ''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.'' ''literatureBeautiful Shining People'' - as opposed revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the less exalted though development of technology is exciting or frightening.|isbn=191458564X}}{{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Saint|title=Atalanta|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just-as-worthwhile forms in the name of the goddess. It was for the sake of writing - my name, too. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to force you to think about join the real worldArgonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the political world, Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the painful life-as-we-know-chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it world, whilst catching you up in a story about something Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that never really happened, but, you know, might well have done so…and if you think that mattersshe marries, then you must read this bookit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782271562</amazonuk>1472292154
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yan LiankeAmanthi Harris|title=The Four BooksBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The Four Books'' is Padma, a difficultyoung Sri Lankan, challenging novel and not for has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the feint hearted, or for someone looking for southern coast of her home country. This is a page-turnerplace she spent her formative years. It really challenges the reader's perceptions and opens up a gateway to an era that is difficult to imagine for anyone brought up in not a western culture. Set in Maoist China it tells place she was born into, but the story one she thinks of four protagonists and a memorable antagonistas home. The four How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, found guilty of anti-revolutionary crimes are undergoing re-education in a work camp governed by and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the child. With an Orwellian feel, ''The Four Booksscore'' will come for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to be regarded as an undoubted masterpieceescape her past and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099569493</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Yann Martel178563335X|title=The High Mountains of PortugalSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=45|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Tomas is being thrust into the twentieth CenturyWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and he doesnwondering why they't like itre held when you need to pick the children up. He has given himself the job of seeking something out in the High Mountains of PortugalHer husband, based on an ancient religious diary he found working in an archiveChristopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and to do so he needs the use of his uncleher elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's brand new car to get him there and back daughter-in time-law won't let her see her grandson. His jaw drops when he learns he will have to do the driving himselfHolthorpe, for he cannot make head nor tail of what anything on the infernal machine does and why. It Norfolk coast, is of course a certain kind of progresslovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a looking forward, which has become quite anathema to him – for ever since he lost his beloved wife, beloved child real bond with the parish - and father, all she's in awe of the space of a weekvicar, he has walked everywhere backwards – shielding himself from what really is ahead with a padded behindGail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and never letting sight of Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what he has lostthey needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782114696</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Boy and the Dog|author=Antonio Moresco Seishu Hase and Richard Dixon Alison Watts (translator)|title=Distant Light
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Our unnamed narrator might as well be First of all, it was the only person aliveearthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. He knows he's not – he still goes down to the nearest inhabited village to buy things to eat The result was complete and other necessitiesutter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and he sees planes spreading their contrails over the remote area he lives in – but he might as well beloss of livelihoods was widespread. A lot of his thoughts are about life, however, for he has little to do except notice the nature around him, The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the smell list of lilies burgeoning with nobody else to see them in this deserted village, to priorities but - six months after the swallows darting across the ravines of the countrysidetsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. Life – and He wasn't a dog person but the nature of a light convenience store owner's comment that he sees spring into activity every night at what he thought was a totally lifeless, empty forest area on land separated from would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his lookout post car door and Tamon the dog jumped in his back garden by a deep, wooded gorge…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0914671421</amazonuk>.
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tania James0989715337|title=The Tusk That Did Papa on the DamageMoon|author=Marco North|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Tania James was a Fulbright Fellow in New Delhi in 2011–12. For this, her second novel after ''Atlas of Unknowns'' (shortlisted for Some frogs had gotten into the DSC Prize for South Asian literature) and the story collection well.''Aerogrammes ''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, she clearly draws on her personal knowledge naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of India in all its contradictionstheir eggs wove around him, especially when it comes to environmental policysticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. The novel alternates between three perspectives: a third-person account Two of an elephant named the Gravedigger dogs leaned over the opening and first-person narratives from a poacher and a documentary filmmakerbarked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he filled them.''|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1784700584</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Anakana Schofield|title= Martin John|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I had heard much about How is that for an opening? The style of this novel before I read it for reviewin the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, by which I mean I had heard it was profaneturning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, strange and had a daring subject matter accompanied by elements who has the most wonderful turn of humour. I have phrase, starts as he means to say that whilst I agree it is certainly profane and strange and incredibly innovative, I didn't find much humour in it at allgo on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276665</amazonuk>
}}
 
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