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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__ {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Katherine MayJeremy Cooper|title=Burning OutDiscord|rating=43.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Violet has it all – Discord: a well-paid job, and a luxurious apartment all to herself. Everything is catered for; her meals, her clothes, and her health are all how she would like them to be. But the life she is leading is beginning to take its toll. On the verge of snapping, a drained and somewhat out-of-sorts Violet, withdraws back to her home town. There, she meets someone familiar, a ghost reminding her lack of how she used to be ten years earlier – a young carefree girlagreement or harmony (as between persons, full of life. Only this isn't a ghostthings, but a girl living the life Violet once lived – exactly the same. Haunted by the past Violet realizes history is repeating itself and is convinced events will happen again. Events that will in turn haunt the girl.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906727392</amazonuk>}}or ideas)
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Daniel Kehlmann Polly Barton|title=Me and KaminskiWhat Am I, A Deer?|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=After reviewing several long books, itPolly Barton's been refreshing to read such a fluent debut novel is an intellectually playful yet pared down story emotionally exposed work that uses translation as 'Kaminski both subject and Me'governing metaphor. In itThe narrator, Sebastian Zollnernewly relocated from London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the obnoxious main characterprocess of localisation, shoves himself forward in a desperate attempt rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to research a best seller which will re-ignite his career new audience. Barton treats this as an art critic. Kaminski, the proposed subject, was a fashionable painter long agoparadoxical act: arguably, but nowin striving for universality, ancient and chronically illlanguage is endlessly repackaged, has virtually slid into oblivionits originality at risk of disappearing altogether. So From this, the second-rate writer is on novel opens out into a loser unless he can dig up some juicy details wider, resonant question: to hook the art world and general public.what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, accepted, or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847249892</amazonuk>1804272175
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hilary DixonMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=When Rooks Speak of LoveThe Disappearing Act
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Arthur Transcombe Despite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is a middle-aged, grey-haired, self-effacing poetunmistakable. Unremarkable really - on A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the outsidetown of F for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. He hasDetoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, howeverher journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, managed M eventually offers to achieve some success with his poemsstep in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. (Being The train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and a guest speaker retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the Cheltenham Literary Festival is no mean feat)very heart of the novel form itself. He is also a babe magnet!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904529429</amazonuk>1804272329
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Malouf 295967572X|title=RansomPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Taking Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his theme from a small part companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of Homer's Iliadthis journey is, Malouf tells is uncertain. Django found the story of tickets ''on the king of Troy, Priamfloor somewhere''s griefand has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either -stricken voyage into but we are probably in the past as the Greek camp pair travel to ransom Troy's wealth for the body of his fallen son, Hector, killed station by the equally grief-stricken Achilles whose great friend Hector had killed in battle before Achilles took his cruel revenge. Malouf tells the story in sparse, yet lyrical coach and poetic fashion suggesting the personal stories behind the epic themes that Homer related. It train is an exquisitely written piece managing to be both deeply moving as well as a great piece of story tellingsteam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184159</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David Vann Makenna Goodman|title=Legend Helen of a SuicideNowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Some books defy categorisation and It could be argued that's the case with ''Legend pervading theme of this book is malaise - a Suicide''hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. Is it Literary Fiction? Is it The protagonist, a series disgraced professor on the brink of short stories linked by a common themelosing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, or a novella with supporting pieces? Is it fiction Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a strong autobiographical thread running through it? force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The simple answer to all these questions connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as 'yes'' – for the book an entity that is all that and more. Itpure consciousness, beyond form's also a compelling page-turner – I began reading at ten o'clock last night and finished it at three thirty this morning. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, resenting every moment away from Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the booksense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141043784</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Milan KunderaOlga Tokarczuk|title=The Book of Laughter and Forgetting|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It's with a somehow guilty feeling that I admit that I have never been particularly fond of Milan Kundera. He's certainly a very good writer and undoubtedly a very intelligent man capable House of interesting philosophical insights. All those qualities contributed to a cult status accorded to KunderaDay, compounded by the frisson of political subversion – never a harmful thing for a writer from what used to be known as Eastern Europe (but which returned to its status as Middle (or Central) Europe with the fall House of the Iron Curtain).|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057117437X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Andrew Miller |title=One Morning Like A BirdNight|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Tokyo in 1940 is ''What's the good of a place world that we British tend not to give a great deal of thought to. Japan entered the war, we say, with the attack keeps changing like that? How can one go on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, completely forgetting that Japan, like most of the rest of the world, was already a country at war. She had been fighting calmly living in China since 1937 and was making in-roads into European colonial territory in the area as well.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340825154</amazonuk>}}it?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Evelyn WaughThea Lenarduzzi|title=A Handful of DustThe Tower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A complex class society which evolved into a highly sophisticated culture is invariably a fertile ground for development of social satire, and British literature would have been hugely depleted if all novels that can be regarded as such were suddenly to disappear. Evelyn Waugh made the genre his own, and ''A Handful How unctuous are the fats of Dustanother's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream'' is a sublime example of his mastery of it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141183969</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bryony Doran Jon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=The China BirdVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Edward is a sad and solitary figure''All was strange''... Late middle-aged, twisted-spined and hump-backedThis haunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a loner who works fictional fishing village in the archive basement of the library, lodges with Mrs Ingrams who makes his tea Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and ruins his laundryEline, and hoards letters from his mother. Like many an unmarried man with an aging, widowed mother, Edward finds his relationship with her somewhat strained. Unlike many two of those men, his relationship was always that way. She is rude and demanding, and he either doesn't have the strength or the inclination to force the issue with her. Apart from an occasion half-hearted reprimand, he stands back, ignores, makes excusesprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>095556302X</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jude Morgan Claire-Louise Bennett|title=The Taste of SorrowBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The children were born Everything in Thorntonthis book, a suburb of Bradfordhowever sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and compared with where they were to go it was distortion. Even a soft living. Howarth was high up on the Yorkshire Moorskiss, industrialised usually a symbol of intimacy and with weather which chilled to the bone. The parsonage was four-square but draughty and not exactly welcoming. Theycloseness, becomes evidence of course, were the Brontë familylove lost. The father was When the impoverished curate narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and his six children had somehow kiss me,'' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to be cared for after his wife's death from cancerconfirm her emotional numbness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755338898</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Agnes Owens |title=The Complete Novellas|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Who imagined recipient of this plea is Agnes Owens? A Scottish author who portrays working class life from the nineteen forties and fifties. Now an octogenarianXavier, apparently Agnes Owens started writing at the age of 58. Here are five previously published stories collected into one new editionher ex-partner, a companion volume ghost she conjures to test her short stories, published in 2008. I don't think you'll be disappointeddetachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846971373</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=J M CoetzeeHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=SummertimeLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Summertime'' First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the third hearts of a series of fictionalised autobiographies by J M Coetzee, following its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on from ''Boyhood'' the page and ''Youth''. Therepositions them elsewhere, that sounds straightforward enoughdisjointed, doesn't it? Except, in this 'autobiography' (or 'autrebiography' as one critic described truncated. Like the earlier volumes) the subject is dead. So, clearly, this story isn't 'true'. But then, how true is an ordinary autobiography? And to what extent is it a function lives of the novel to use fiction to reveal truth? So many questionsher characters, and I haven't even begunthey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846553180</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=James LeverJonathan Buckley|title=Me CheetaOne Boat
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Straight out ''One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. Set against the golden age evocative backdrop of Hollywood comes a small coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the bitchiest, most revealing memoir from one magic of its stars. There are scores to be settled, stars to be insulted, secrets to be hinted at none too subtley, setting and lost opportunities its power to be longed forprovoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the death of both her parents. OhPrompted by her mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-aware, inviting the star telling all? Wellreader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a book that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for those of you who can't tell from the title (or even the picture on the front cover) it's Cheeta - chimpanzee star of the Tarzan filmsits propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007280165</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Erick Setiawan Eowyn Ivey|title=Of Bees and MistBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The first few chapters ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of this amazing workBirdie, had me scratching my headthe young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and pondering, her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Described as a ''wild card'what on earth is this about, and where is it going?' It struck me as simply bizarre. However, I was quickly reeled she feels stuck inher day-to-day life, and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the initially disparate cast North Fork to fulfil her desires of charactersa simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man, who seemed more like caricaturessays he has a cabin over there, soon had lives of their own she feels called to go - and fascinating ones at that!bring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755348532</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hilary MantelSally Rooney|title=Wolf Hall|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=A revisionist look at Henry VIII's minister, Thomas Cromwell. Rich, absorbing and intelligent, it's a beautiful, beautiful book. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007230184</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=A S Byatt|title=The Children's BookIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Antonia Byatt's Booker-nominated ''The Children's Book'' (her first novel for seven years) Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a staggering, complex grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and multi-layered bookso brilliantly frustrating, set between as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the last years of Victoria's reign and many relationships woven into this story, the end of central one for readers to unravel is the First World Warfraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Although this is undoubtedly an intelligent bookIvan, full of learning and ideasa socially awkward chess prodigy, ranging from classcontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, early feminism, Fabianism and anarchism, it is highly readable and accessiblea successful lawyer living in Dublin. The authorFollowing their father's stance is that this was passing after a unique time for children in the UKlong battle with cancer, freed from the brothers'be seen and not heard' of the early Victorian age, but before the 'treat them like adults' of the post war loss of innocence. It was a time when children, at least rich children, were allowed to be free and adult authors like JM Barrie wrote both about and for children and was also widely read by adultsalready strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701183896</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Colm Toibin Fyodor Dostoyevsky|title=BrooklynWhite Nights
|rating=5
|genre=Literary FictionShort Stories|summary=Colm Tóibín's quietly powerful new novel, Brooklyn, opens in the author's own home town of Enniscorthy, County Wexford As always in the 1950s. We are sitting with his conscientiously introverted heroine, Eilis LaceyDostoyevsky, as she watches through the upstairs living room window as her more glamorous older sister Rose walks briskly home from character workis sublime. Rose One is popular at the local golf club, with many male admirers. Meanwhile, Eilis' three brothers have all gone to England where there never left wondering what a character is work to be had. There are few opportunities in Enniscorthy, for employment thinking or anything else. Eilis is lucky to be offered a Sunday job in Miss Kelly's grocery shop, a shop Eilis' widowed mother will not enter. Later, Eilis will entertain her mother feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and sister temperaments with imitations of Miss Kelly's voice. Showing everything only through Eilis' eyes, Tóibín brilliantly evokes life in the claustrophobically tight-knit townremarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670918121</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shandi Mitchell James Baldwin|title=Under This Unbroken SkyGiovanni's Room|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=A photograph opens ''Giovanni's Room'' follows the story. A black and white picture of a familynarrator David, husbandan American man living in Paris, wife and their three childrenas he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, smiling for the cameraan Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. ThinWhile David is engaged to Hella, underfedwho is travelling in Spain, the real tension in their summer clothes despite the four inches of snow, they smile. Partly they smile because they do novel arises not know what is to come. A page and five years later we catch up with the Mykolayenkos. In the Spring of 1938 Ivan and from his cousin are catching mice in infidelity but from the barn and taking bets on which of the farm cats will pounce on the individually released rodents firstdeeper conflict within himself. The game is interrupted by a man with a loaded .22 rifle. It takes a while for it to sink in, that this is IvanDavid's father, Teodor, free after a prison sentence for stealing crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his own grainrelationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0297856588</amazonuk>0141186356
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Roddy DoyleAlba de Cespedes |title=Paddy Clarke Ha Ha HaForbidden Notebook|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I'm kind This Italian work of a reverse literary snobfeminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the moment our protagonist, in that I tend to avoid books that win awards. I've found that such books are often very well writtenValeria Cossati, but they're not always good reading. As shameful as it is to admitpurchases her forbidden notebook, I would much rather read for story as for fancy words. Clearly I'm not alone, as and learns about herself in 1993, the year Roddy Doyle's ''Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha'' won the Booker Prize, the bestseller lists contained [[:Category:John Grisham|John Grisham]], Sue Townsend most intimate and Jeffrey Archerrevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099535084</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sarah Waters Ottessa Moshfegh|title=The Little StrangerMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=53
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When was At best, this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the last time you couldn't put fragility of human relationships; at worst, it is the cynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. This unlikely heroine, a Booker nominated novel down? Sarah Watersslim, author of acclaimed novels ''Fingersmith'' attractive and ''The Night Watch'' has written a chilling psychological ghost story that kept me guessing until newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the very last pageworld, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, her solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844086011</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=James Kelman Matthew Tree|title=How Late It Was, How LateWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Sammy has just woken up outside in what looks likes Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a park after a heavy night drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of drinking. He can't remember much – how he got there, or why he is wearing some old trainers his artistic passions all failed miserably and not his new shoeswho had endless crises of self confidence. He doesn't know what's happened So Tim applied himself to his wallet or why people are staring at him. He does remember some things – one being a row of some sorts he'd had with Helenstudies, cultivated his girlfriend. Now he has been arrested, beaten up by the police, abilities rather than his daydreams and released back onto the street again. He needs to find a way to get home, the only problem is; he has just gone blindset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099546272</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Douglas CouplandB0C47LV1PC|title=Generation AFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I think with Douglas Coupland Can you either love him or hate him. So I suppose I should probably say straight off that hemake a 's one of my favourite writers. I've read all his fiction, and I just about peed my pants with excitement at getting to review this latest offering, Yo birthing person''Generation A''. Those in joke? And if you could, is the know will see that he question should you make it? Or is jumping off from his earlier novel, ''Generation X''the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that dealt with three disillusioned twenty-somethings who seem to have opted out of life, working 'Mcjobs' in the Californian desert and telling each other stories to pass the timeanswer for both could well be.... Here, with this new generation, there's storytelling again, this time amongst five characters, all from different places in the world, and different ages, who are brought together through one singular event in each of their lives - they are each stung by a beeno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434019836</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Emily Bronte Mosby Woods|title=Wuthering HeightsA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In 1801 Lockwood, one of our narrators, arrived at Wuthering Heights on The West isn't the Yorkshire moorsdominant force it once was. He was renting nearby Thrushcross Grange from the rude and surly Heathcliff, but when one of Heathcliff's dogs attacked him and Nobody in the weather turned against him he was forced West is quite sure how to stay overnight. In his room he found a diary written by a young girl by mend this or even if mending it is the name best course of Catherine Earnshawaction. Governments are flailing. A war here, who was close to Heathcliff as a child and it push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was this which caused Lockwood to have a terrifying dream in which Catherine's ghost fought to get into the room through the windowman with precognition. His screams of fear brought Heathcliff to Imagine the room and when Lockwood told him strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what he had seen Heathcliff asked him to leave will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the room and then sobbed as be begged Cathy to come most valuable asset inhistory. Lockwood persuades the housekeeper, Nelly Dean (our other narrator)Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to tell him the story behind what has happened.get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009953052X</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roberto Bolano 0571379559|title=AmuletThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The novel House of Broken Bricks'' is set in the late 1960s, a time story of political unrest and tension in Mexicofour people. The narrator and protagonist seek refuge when the army invades the university. Ensconced Tess Hembry's roots are in a fourth floor w.c.Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she commences to recollect her earlier life and experiences amongst lives in the house on the literati of Mexicoriverbank, and the world built of academiabroken bricks. She frequently refers to herself Insubstantial as it might look, it''s stood the mother passage of Mexican poetry''time, storms and this is indeed an aptfloods. Her husband, if somewhat generousRichard, descriptionstruggles to grow his vegetables, as she does emerge as a maternal figureto complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. She is an engaging character They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, tolerated, rather than liked by her acquaintancesthe rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and itthere's her very lack of sophistication which makes her such a real and believable narrator. Poetry an assumption when Max is her main love in life - out with his mother that she lives and breathes it, and all else fades into insignificance for her's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330511831</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=A S ByattKay Chronister|title=PossessionDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=A S Byatt won the Booker Prize With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for Possession in 1990 and 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, this new edition of the novel genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is part of a celebration new work of Booker winners produced by Vintage Books. Presumably in an attempt to make these literary prizepost-winners more accessible, Vintage has published apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the series in mass market formatfears that exist for humanity today. This edition of Possession It is therefore similar in size and appearance a shocking novel that still manages to an airport lounge blockbuster. More on that laterfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099535157</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Andrew J H Sharp Eric LaRocca|title=The Ghosts of EdenTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=1983: Michael Lacey, Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a consultant surgeon is flying into Uganda way to attend reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a medical conference. On the plane he struggles against his memories of ''Big Bad'', whether that is a child buried in Africahome invader, against his claustrophobiaa monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and against , by the unwelcome conversation end of his neighbouring passenger: the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a passenger apparently afflicted by a native cursecollection 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''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0955861330</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Iris MurdochMadelaine Lucas|title=The Sea, The SeaThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''What an egoist Love, I must seem in the preceding pages'' Charles Arrowby reflects towards the end of the book. An aging celebrityd read, he is certainly that – vainwas supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, self-regarding and obsessive. But he is one of the most engaging literary characters but I have ever come across, and this tale of his withdrawal to a remote coastal cottage is a tour de force.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099529793</amazonuk>}}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=Roma TearneJennifer Saint|title=Brixton BeachAtalanta|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When ''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 in the name of the goddess. It was for the terrorist bombs bring London to a standstill in July 2005sake of my name, a doctor heads out in frantic searchtoo. He canAtalanta't find her, and he knows she can't call him.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=James PalumboAmanthi Harris|title=TomasBeautiful Place|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Tomas Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has had enough returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, but the unthinking excess and greed one she thinks of modern societyas home. He despises How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the men declaring themselves film producers to impress women wheeling around their breasts on trolleys. So he kills them''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. The chief of police doesn Padma't pay s present fails to escape her past and much attention until he makes his favourite hotel disappearlike the musical score of a film, obviouslythat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0704371588</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Peter Ferry178563335X|title=None of This Ever Really HappenedSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Peter Ferry is driving home one evening When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when he sees a woman driving erraticallyyou need to pick the children up. He follows her cautiouslyHer husband, Christopher, captivated by her beauty collects six-year-old Hannah and concerned for her safetyelder brother, and then at Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a stop light is torn as to whether to get out and try to stop sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her driving any furthergrandson. Before he can do anythingHolthorpe, howeveron the Norfolk coast, her car has lurched forward and crashes into is a treelovely place, killing her. This but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the story that Peterparish - and she's in awe of the vicar, an English teacherGail, tells his pupilsbut then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Yet is it Rachel and Christopher hoped that a story, or did it really happen? Or did walk on the beach would do them some of good - it happen and some of was stormy but it he made up? was probably what they needed. And is the Peter Ferry of the story, a teacher and travel writer, the same as Peter Ferry, the author of the book who is also, funnily enough, a teacher and travel writer? |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099516489</amazonuk>then Hannah went missing.
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Aleksandar Hemon 1398515388|title=Love The Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and ObstaclesAlison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesGeneral Fiction|summary=We start with First of all, it was the young narrator away from homeearthquake, and deep in Africa, due to his diplomat father. He's left behind home, a potential girlfriendthe ocean floor, which created the tsunami and morethis, but finds company with an older, chancer character and his junkie girlfriend, and their pot, drinks and 70s rock. Closer to his roots, but still a young man abroadin turn, caused the second story sees him travelling across his homeland on an errand - to deliver payment for the biggest chest freezer his father could findnuclear meltdown. But poems, losing his virginity, keeping his money, The result was complete and various other fantasies might just put a cooler on that unusual task...|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330464434</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Anne Berry |title=The Hungry Ghosts|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''All children have nightmaresutter devastation. The fisherman's daughter I used to be deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was no exceptionwidespread.'' Lin Shui, The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the hungry ghost list of priorities but - six months after the title, knows what she is talking abouttsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. When she latches on to her He wasn'host' Alice Safford, the disturbed 12 year old daughter of an important government official in Hong Kong, she brings her nothing t a dog person but trouble. For poor Alice, Lin Shui is just the beginning, convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and she struggles through Tamon the tragedies of her life acquiring ghosts as she goes until she too wonders whether this life is worth livingdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007303408</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shahriar Mandanipour 0989715337|title=Censoring an Iranian Love StoryPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This is no ordinary love story. How could it be, with the protagonists Sara and Dara living in contemporary Iran where two unmarried, unrelated members of the opposite sex meeting one another without a chaperon is considered a deadly sin by society, the family and the law? Dara falls in love with Sara from afar, and conducts his initial courtship of her through books – he writes to her by placing dots under letters in The Blind Owl, a book he has overheard her requesting at the library. Such ingenuity continues when they actually meet and speak, a crime punishable by imprisonment by the patrols of the Campaign Against Social Corruption. So Dara takes the unusual step of suggesting the A & E Department of the hospital as their meeting place, somewhere no-one would question their conversation. This plan backfires, but that does not denigrate its cunning. That their story exists at all is a testament to ''Some frogs had gotten into the strength and endurance of love to overcome obstacles, and it is a charming and at times moving storywell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>140870160X</amazonuk>}}''
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