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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Herta MullerJeremy Cooper|title=The PassportDiscord|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet Windisch. A miller in Discord: a small villagelack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, he trudges through therethings, and through his neighboursor ideas) The principal example of discord within the novel, as with most instances of discord, and through his lifeis easily located. The two protagonists of the novel, counting his days Rebekah Rosen and hoursEvie Bennet, for reasons that are not initially clearas different as they come. But he does want something Rebekah is an uptight, traditional and no- he nonsense composer close to retirement, while Evie is waiting for a passport so he can leave for other climesforce of nature, bounding onto the musical scene as a precocious saxophonist, oozing with talent and charm. The perks of his job are the bags of flour he leaves by the mayortwo, predictably, don't always see eye to eye, their approaches different and Evie's house progressive views at odds with regularityRebekah's conservative leaning. However, as an open bribe, but there might be something connects them beyond just their musical project: a bigger sacrifice to have to makesort of fragile alliance formed within the clamour.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1852421398</amazonuk>1804272264
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer JohnstonPolly Barton|title=Truth or FictionWhat Am I, A Deer?
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Caroline Wallace Polly Barton's debut novel is not a happy womanan intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. She has waited ten years for her lover The narrator, newly relocated from London to propose to herBerlin, and now just as he finally doesworks translating video games into Japanese through the process of localisation, she has rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to go to Dublin to interview faded literary star Desmond Fitzmauricea new audience. Desmond promises his tale will be brimful of 'sex and violence'Barton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, but Caroline has no idea of the mystery that lies its originality at the heart risk of his storydisappearing altogether.From this, the novel opens out into a wider, resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, accepted, or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755330544</amazonuk>1804272175
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julian BarnesMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=Staring at the SunThe Disappearing Act
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jean's first Incident involved Uncle LeslieDespite her anonymisation of place names and people, hyacinths and golf tees. ItStepanova's perhaps best forgotten, but Jean doesn't forgetmessage in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. Uncle Leslie figures large in her life - mostly on A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the golf course - until the War comes and he runs away town of F for a literary festival she is to Americabe a guest speaker at. He's replaced Detoured by Tommy Prosser, a grounded pilot who once saw the sun rise twice in one day erratic train schedules and excites as many questions in Jean as he ever answers. Tommy is replaced nudged by Michaelforces beyond her control, her journey slowly bends toward a policemantraveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, whom Jean M eventually marriesoffers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. He doesn't know why minks are excessively tenacious The train functions as a motif of life transience and he doesn't much care. But Jean does. She cares much less for impermanence, while the circus embodies the Dutch cap reshaping of identity and a retreat into fantasy, an impulse that Michael sent her off to obtain before lies at the wedding and much less again for their rather disastrous adventures in very heart of the bedroomnovel form itself. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099540096</amazonuk>1804272329
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Russell Celyn Jones295967572X|title=The Ninth Wave (New Stories from the Mabinogion) Pale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Pwyll rules a medieval-style fiefdom in Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a post-climate change Walestrain journey with his companion Django. Life is different in many ways - thereWhere they's a new-but-old social order built on feudalism re going and horsepower is what the main means purpose of transportthis journey is, is uncertain. But in many ways itDjango found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere''s and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the same - people still fight one another, towns still have sink estates, rich boys still have too much time on their hands station by coach and precious little meaning in their livesthe train is a steam locomotive. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115146</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Owen SheersMakenna Goodman|title=White Ravens (New Stories from the Mabinogion)Helen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In It could be argued that the old tale, Branwen pervading theme of this book is the sister of Bendigeidfran malaise - a hard-to- the giant King of Britainplace feeling that something in your life is not quite right. She marries The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the King brink of Irelandlosing both his career and his relationship, who doesn't treat her wellembodies this feeling. She manages to send Bendigeidfran However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a message via a tamed starling force which is seductive, radical and war unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and killings ensuethe protagonist is indirect yet intimate. In this new taleAs the former owner of the countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a young girl has just walked away from volta in his life, her brothers past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who, in shows the wake of protagonist around the devastating foot house shares stories about Helen, and mouth outbreakdescribes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, are despoiling their heritage by rustling and illegally slaughtering sheepbeyond form''. She meets Although she lives in an old man who tells her a story involving assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the superstitions about reader gets the ravens in the Tower of London, propaganda work during World War II, and an equally doomed love affairsense are not altogether innocuous. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1854115030</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Olga Tokarczuk
|title=House of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Deborah GregoryThea Lenarduzzi|title=Dancing With The DeadTower|rating=35
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I wanted to read ''Dancing with How unctuous are the Dead'fats of another's life, because I'm interested how dizzying their sugars in family history. The blurb on the back of the book also mentioned Gill – our heroine of the piece – was moving from Bristol (my current home) to Lincolnshire (where I was born and brought up). I felt with all these links, the novel could not fail to interest me – but this was not the casebloodstream''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529305</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Katherine MayJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Burning OutVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Violet has it all – a well-paid job, and a luxurious apartment all to herself''All was strange''. 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 This haunting phrase encapsulates the verge pervading sense of snappingotherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a drained fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and somewhat out-of-sorts VioletEline, withdraws back to her home town. There, she meets someone familiar, a ghost reminding her of how she used to be ten years earlier – a young carefree girl, full two of life. Only this isn't a ghost, 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 protagonists caught in turn haunt the girlits melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906727392</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tove JanssonClaire-Louise Bennett|title=The True DeceiverBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Most people Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a symbol of my age will have come across Jansson's work unwittinglyintimacy and closeness, via the televised renditions becomes evidence of love lost. When the Moomin tales. The readers amongst us would then have been entranced narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me,'' it is less an invitation than a few years ago desperate attempt to discover that at last Thomas Teal had set about the translation into English, first of confirm her emotional numbness. The Summer Book and then imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a collection of short stories which were published as 'A Winter Book'ghost she conjures to test her detachment. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0954899571</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Daniel Kehlmann Helene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Me and KaminskiLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=After reviewing several long booksFirst published in 1953 in French, it's been refreshing to read such this novel is a fluent yet pared down story timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as 'Kaminski Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the page and Me'. In it, Sebastian Zollnerpositions them elsewhere, the obnoxious main characterdisjointed, shoves himself forward in a desperate attempt to research a best seller which will re-ignite his career as an art critictruncated. Kaminski, Like the proposed subject, was a fashionable painter long ago, but now, ancient and chronically illlives of her characters, has virtually slid into oblivion. So the second-rate writer is on a loser unless he can dig up some juicy details to hook the art world and general publicthey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847249892</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hilary DixonJonathan Buckley|title=When Rooks Speak of LoveOne Boat
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Arthur Transcombe ''One Boat'' is a middle-ageddeeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, grey-haireddrawing the reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, self-effacing poetTeresa. Unremarkable really - on Set against the evocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the outsidemagic of its setting and its power to provoke profound introspection. He Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she hasvisited it after the death of both her parents. Prompted by her mourning, howeverher narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-aware, managed to achieve some success with his poemsinviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. (Being It is a guest speaker at the Cheltenham Literary Festival book that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, since its narrative structure is no mean feat)fragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion. He is also a babe magnet!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904529429</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David Malouf Eowyn Ivey|title=RansomBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Taking his theme from a small part of Homer's Iliad, Malouf 'Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the king young mother of Troytoddler Emaleen, Priamwho longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Described as a ''wild card''s grief, she feels stuck in her day-to-stricken voyage into day life, and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the Greek camp North Fork to ransom Troy's wealth for the body fulfil her desires of his fallen sona simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man, Hectorwho says he has a cabin over there, killed by the equally griefshe feels called to go -stricken Achilles whose great friend Hector had killed in battle before Achilles took his cruel revengeand bring Emaleen with her. Malouf tells the story in sparseWithout realising it, yet lyrical this calling will transform hers and poetic fashion suggesting the personal stories behind the epic themes that Homer related. It is an exquisitely written piece managing to be both deeply moving as well as a great piece of story tellingEmaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184159</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David Vann Sally Rooney|title=Legend of a SuicideIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Some books defy categorisation Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and that's the case with ''Legend is something of a Suicide''grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Is it Literary Fiction? Is it a series of short stories linked by a common themeAmong the many relationships woven into this story, or a novella with supporting pieces? Is it fiction with a strong autobiographical thread running through it? The simple answer the central one for readers to all these questions unravel is ''yes'' – for the book is all that fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and morePeter Koubek. ItIvan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's also passing after a compelling page-turner – I began reading at ten olong battle with cancer, the brothers'clock last night and finished it at three thirty this morningalready strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469}}{{Frontpage|author=Fyodor Dostoyevsky|title=White Nights|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=As always in Dostoyevsky, resenting every moment away from the bookcharacter 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.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141043784</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Milan KunderaJames Baldwin|title=The Book of Laughter and ForgettingGiovanni's Room
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a somehow guilty feeling that I admit that I have never been particularly fond of Milan Kunderagay bar. He's certainly a very good writer and undoubtedly a very intelligent man capable of interesting philosophical insights. All those qualities contributed While David is engaged to a cult status accorded to KunderaHella, who is travelling in Spain, compounded by the frisson of political subversion – never a harmful thing for a writer real tension in the novel arises not from what used to be known as Eastern Europe (his infidelity but which returned to its status as Middle (or Central) Europe with from the fall deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of the Iron Curtain)his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>057117437X</amazonuk>0141186356
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andrew Miller Alba de Cespedes |title=One Morning Like A BirdForbidden Notebook
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Tokyo in 1940 is a place that we British tend not to give a great deal This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of thought to. Japan entered suspense and tension from the warmoment our protagonist, we sayValeria Cossati, with the attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, completely forgetting that Japan, like most of the rest of the worldpurchases her forbidden notebook, was already a country at war. She had been fighting in China since 1937 and was making in-roads into European colonial territory learns about herself in the area as wellmost intimate and revealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340825154</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sadie Jones Ottessa Moshfegh|title=Small Wars|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Even though our world is ostensibly at peace, hundreds of localized, unwinnable conflicts continue to grumble on. Mostly, we only hear and care about the ones involving 'our boys', as if war was some giant game My Year of football. But it isn't, Rest and ''Small Wars'' reflects on the casualties of war in a story set in Cyprus in the Two-Way Family Favourites era of the nineteen-fifties. It may turn out to be an important book as the public mood turns against the 'war on terror' in Afghanistan. It's certainly a prescient one.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184558</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Evelyn Waugh|title=A Handful of DustRelaxation|rating=53
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A complex class society which evolved into a highly sophisticated culture At best, this novel is invariably a fertile ground for development scathing critique of modern society and reveals the fragility of social satirehuman relationships; at worst, it is the cynical, predictable and British literature would have been hugely depleted if all novels that can be regarded as such were suddenly to disappearslightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. Evelyn Waugh made the genre his ownThis unlikely heroine, a slim, attractive and ''A Handful of Dust'' newly orphaned girl in her twenties is a sublime example of his mastery of disillusioned with the world, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, her solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141183969</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=William Trevor Matthew Tree|title=Love and SummerWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Love Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and Summer'' is set in the small town chronic underachiever whose dreams of Rathmoye in a rural Ireland 'some years after the middle being exceptional at any of the last century'. The novel charts the doomed love affair between Ellie, a young farmer's wife, his artistic passions all failed miserably and Florian, the Irish-Italian son who had endless crises of two artistsself confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, but it as much about the place cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and time in which it is sethimself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670918245</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bryony Doran B0C47LV1PC|title=The China BirdFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Edward is Can you make a sad and solitary figure. Late middle-aged''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, twisted-spined and hump-backed, a loner who works in is the archive basement of question should you make it? Or is the libraryquestion if you did, lodges with Mrs Ingrams who makes his tea and ruins his laundry, and hoards letters from his motherwould it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jude Morgan Mosby Woods|title=The Taste of SorrowA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The children were born West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in Thorntonthe West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a suburb of Bradfordpush for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, and compared with where they were to go it there was a soft livingman with precognition. Howarth was high up on Imagine the Yorkshire Moorsstrategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, industrialised and with weather which chilled to right? Perhaps the bone. The parsonage was four-square but draughty and not exactly welcomingmost valuable asset in history. They, of courseImagine then, were the Brontë familythat this man loses this ability. The father was the impoverished curate and his six children had somehow What would governments do to be cared for after his wife's death from cancer.get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755338898</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Agnes Owens 0571379559|title=The Complete NovellasHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Who ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is Agnes Owens? the story of four people. A Scottish author who portrays working class life from Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the nineteen forties and fiftiesriverbank, built of broken bricks. Now an octogenarianInsubstantial as it might look, apparently Agnes Owens started writing at it's stood the age passage of 58time, storms and floods. Here are five previously published stories collected into one new editionHer husband, Richard, a companion volume struggles to her short storiesgrow his vegetables, published to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in 2008sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. I Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't think youbelieve that they'll be disappointedre related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971373</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=J M CoetzeeKay Chronister|title=SummertimeDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=''Summertime'' With a world that is the third of a series of fictionalised autobiographies by J M Coetzeebecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, following on from ''Boyhood'' and ''Youth''post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. ThereWhether it is a robotic takeover, that sounds straightforward enough, doesn't it? Excepta world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, in this 'autobiography' (or 'autrebiography' as one critic described the earlier volumes) the subject genre is deada way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. So, clearly, this story isn't 'trueDesert Creatures''. But then, how true by Kay Chronister is an ordinary autobiography? And to what extent is it a function new 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 use fiction to reveal truth? So many questions, and I haven't even begunfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846553180</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=James LeverEric LaRocca|title=Me CheetaThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=45|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Straight out of the golden age of Hollywood comes the bitchiest, most revealing memoir from one of its starsHorror taps into something primeval within us. There are scores It is used as a way to be settledreflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', stars to be insultedwhether that is a home invader, secrets to be hinted at none too subtleya monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and lost opportunities to be longed for. Oh, and by the star telling all? Well, for those end of you who can't tell from the title (or even the picture on the front cover) itstory, beatable. Eric LaRocca's Cheeta - chimpanzee star ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the Tarzan filmshorrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007280165</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Erick Setiawan Madelaine Lucas|title=Of Bees and MistThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The first few chapters of this amazing work, had me scratching my head, and pondering, 'what on earth is this about'Love, and where is it going?I' It struck me as simply bizarre. Howeverd read, I was quickly reeled in, supposed to be a light and the initially disparate cast of charactersweightless feeling, who seemed more like caricatures, soon but I had lives of their own - and fascinating ones at that!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755348532</amazonuk>}}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=Colm Toibin Jennifer Saint|title=BrooklynAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Colm Tóibín's quietly powerful new novel, Brooklyn, opens in the author's own home town I was as worthy as any one of Enniscorthythem. I would get on board that ship, County Wexford in the 1950sI vowed. We are sitting with his conscientiously introverted heroineI would take my place, Eilis Lacey, as she watches through not just in the upstairs living room window as her more glamorous older sister Rose walks briskly home from work. Rose is popular at name of the local golf club, with many male admirers. Meanwhile, Eilis' three brothers have all gone to England where there is work to be hadgoddess. There are few opportunities in Enniscorthy, It was for employment or anything else. Eilis is lucky to be offered a Sunday job in Miss Kelly's grocery shopthe sake of my name, a shop Eilis' widowed mother will not entertoo. Later, Eilis will entertain her mother and sister with imitations of Miss KellyAtalanta's voice. Showing everything only through Eilis' eyes, Tóibín brilliantly evokes life in the claustrophobically tight-knit town.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918121</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Roddy DoyleAmanthi Harris|title=Paddy Clarke Ha Ha HaBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I'm kind of Padma, a reverse literary snobyoung Sri Lankan, in that I tend has returned to avoid books that win awardsthe Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. I've found that such books are often very well written, but they're not always good readingThis is a place she spent her formative years. As shameful as it It is to admitnot a place she was born into, I would much rather read for story but the one she thinks of as for fancy wordshome. Clearly I'm not alone How she came to be at the Villa, as in 1993how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the year Roddy Doyle's 'score'Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha'for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma' won s present fails to escape her past and much like the Booker Prizemusical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the bestseller lists contained [[:Category:John Grisham|John Grisham]], Sue Townsend and Jeffrey ArcherVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099535084</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sarah Waters 178563335X|title=The Little StrangerSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When was the last time you couldnwe first meet Rachel Bird she't put s a trainee vicar, sitting in on a Booker nominated novel down? PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Sarah WatersHer husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, author of acclaimed novels whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won'Fingersmitht let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she' s been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and ''The Night Watch'' has written Christopher hoped that a chilling psychological ghost story that kept me guessing until walk on the very last pagebeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844086011</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James Kelman 1398515388|title=How Late It Was, How LateThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Meet Andrew Whittaker. In some untold time First of recent American historyall, it was the earthquake, he is forced through a failed marriage deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and an artistic temperament at odds with so many other peoplethis, to let properties to tenants he does not likein turn, for $120 a monthcaused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The lodgers might not like deaths were uncountable, and the state loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the buildings list of priorities but - ceilings falling through and so on six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but thatthe convenience store owner's another matter. He comment that he would much prefer call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to be left alone in front of open his little Olivetti typewriter car door and create art. He runs a literary journal, of a kind, called "Soap", which no-one likes, no-one reads (and often, with dodgy, cheap printing, no-one could physically read it anyway), and which makes him poorer Tamon the dog jumped in time, money and spirit.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297856499</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Emily Bronte 0989715337|title=Wuthering Heights|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=In 1801 Lockwood, one of our narrators, arrived at Wuthering Heights Papa on the Yorkshire moors. He was renting nearby Thrushcross Grange from the rude and surly Heathcliff, but when one of Heathcliff's dogs attacked him and the weather turned against him he was forced to stay overnight. In his room he found a diary written by a young girl by the name of Catherine Earnshaw, who was close to Heathcliff as a child and it was this which caused Lockwood to have a terrifying dream in which Catherine's ghost fought to get into the room through the window. His screams of fear brought Heathcliff to the room and when Lockwood told him what he had seen Heathcliff asked him to leave the room and then sobbed as be begged Cathy to come in. Lockwood persuades the housekeeper, Nelly Dean (our other narrator), to tell him the story behind what has happened.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009953052X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Roberto Bolano |title=Amulet|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The novel is set in the late 1960s, a time of political unrest and tension in Mexico. The narrator and protagonist seek refuge when the army invades the university. Ensconced in a fourth floor w.c., she commences to recollect her earlier life and experiences amongst the literati of Mexico, and the world of academia. She frequently refers to herself as ''the mother of Mexican poetry'', and this is indeed an apt, if somewhat generous, description, as she does emerge as a maternal figure. She is an engaging character, tolerated, rather than liked by her acquaintances, and it's her very lack of sophistication which makes her such a real and believable narrator. Poetry is her main love in life - she lives and breathes it, and all else fades into insignificance for her.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330511831</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMoon|author=Jonathan Tulloch |title=A Winding RoadMarco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''A Winding Road'' is an unusual novel comprised of three separate (though structurally interspersed) narratives. The main one, which is set in the present and binds the other two together, follows the sordid escapades of one Piers Guest, art dealer, or, as he prefers, art advisor. Piers swans about London meeting clients, having affairs and generally doing just whatever he pleases with little thought for the consequences. The second narrative is (mostly) set in Nazi Germany and its main concern is a folklorist, Ernst Mann, and how he is viewed by his family after he joins Some frogs had gotten into the SS. His actions and motivations are questioned and obsessed aboutwell. The third narrative, set in Auvers-Sur-Oise in 1890, is a fictional account of the last days of Van Gogh's life, when he painted some of his most famous work. It features Dr. Gachet who famously treated the artist plus some of Dr. Gachet's other patients of Tulloch's own invention. Piers is alerted to the existence of a lost painting by Van Gogh which has been discovered in the archives of Ernst Mann.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224071149</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Colum McCann |title=Let The Great World Spin|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=This was one of those books where, after I closed it, I sat very quietly, just breathing out and breathing in, holding onto the last moments of a good story. Although it was a little slow to start, I found myself more and more caught up in the characters' lives, how they were all so cleverly interlinked, woven together. The core of the story takes place on the 7th of August, 1974, the day that Philippe Petit walked on a high wire between the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York, and we begin with his high wire walk. Petit is never directly named, and although there are flashes back to his training for the event, and his feelings and experience at the time, his is not the focus of the story, but merely the hook upon which all the other characters hang together.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0747597227</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=A S Byatt|title=Possession|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=A S Byatt won the Booker Prize for Possession in 1990 and this new edition of the novel is part of a celebration of Booker winners produced by Vintage Books. Presumably in an attempt to make these literary prize-winners more accessible, Vintage has published the series in mass market format. This edition of Possession is therefore similar in size and appearance to an airport lounge blockbuster. More on that later.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535157</amazonuk>}}
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