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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Su TongJeremy Cooper|title=The Boat to RedemptionDiscord|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ku Dongliang and his fatherDiscord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, Ku Wenxuanthings, are forced to live on a barge on or ideas) The principal example of discord within the river following Ku Wenxuan's fall from gracenovel, as with most instances of discord, is easily located. Originally believed to be The two protagonists of the son of a revolutionary martyrnovel, Rebekah Rosen and Evie Bennet, it are as different as they come. Rebekah is eventually proved that Mr Ku was not so an uptight, traditional and no- as nonsense composer close to retirement, while Evie is a resultforce of nature, his position in society takes a nose-dive. Dongliang suffers bounding onto the musical scene as a result of thisprecocious saxophonist, finding it hard to make friends within the barge community oozing with talent and on shorecharm. Then an orphaned girl moves onto the barges The two, predictably, don't always see eye to eye, their approaches different and finds a place in DongliangEvie's progressive views at odds with Rebekah's apparently cold heartconservative leaning. Will she be able to take him out However, something connects them beyond just their musical project: a sort of himself? Or will she, too, turn her back on him?fragile alliance formed within the clamour.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>038561344X</amazonuk>1804272264
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Iain BanksPolly Barton|title=The Steep Approach to GarbadaleWhat Am I, A Deer?
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It took me a while Polly Barton's debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, newly relocated from London to realise that Iain Banks isBerlin, most works translating video games into Japanese through the process of alllocalisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a teller of tales - I would call him a story-teller had new audience. Barton treats this term not became as a compliment-cum-invective usually reserved paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for the Jeffrey Archers and Dan Browns universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. From this, the modern publishing world. This ability to tell stories - not to plot as much as to weave novel opens out into a yarn - combines with a penchant for creating appealing contexts for Banks' narratives wider, resonant question: to unfold what extent do we translate ourselves in (this gets magnificently realised in the world building of his [[:Category:Iain M Banks|Iain M. Banks]] alter-ego) and populating them with memorableorder to be understood, larger than life but usually short of caricatureaccepted, characters.or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0349119287</amazonuk>1804272175
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mary McCarthy Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=The GroupDisappearing Act|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Despite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova'Given s message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the attention paid town of F for a literary festival she is to relations between the sexes, it would be tempting to call The Group a forerunner of today's chick litguest speaker at. It's notDetoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, her journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus.' So writes Candace Bushnell, the writer behind the TV Swept up in this series Sex and the Cityof events, M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the introduction to this new Virago Modern Classics edition show. The train functions as a motif of The Group by Mary McCarthy. First published in 1963transience and impermanence, this novel is about while the circus embodies the lives reshaping of identity and a group retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the very heart of young women after leaving college in 1933, including careers, relationships, sex, babies, parents, and moneythe novel form itself. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844085937</amazonuk>1804272329
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Janice Galloway295967572X|title=Collected StoriesPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet Windisch. A miller in Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a small village, he trudges through there, and through train journey with his neighbours, companion Django. Where they're going and through his lifewhat the purpose of this journey is, counting his days is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and hours, for reasons that are has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not initially ? Not much else is clear. But he does want something either - he is waiting for a passport so he can leave for other climes. The perks of his job but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the bags of flour he leaves station by coach and the mayor's house with regularity, as an open bribe, but there might be train is a bigger sacrifice to have to makesteam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1852421398</amazonuk>
}}
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Pwyll rules It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a medievalhard-style fiefdom to-place feeling that something in a post-climate change Walesyour life is not quite right. Life is different in many ways - there's The protagonist, a new-but-old social order built disgraced professor on feudalism the brink of losing both his career and horsepower his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the main means protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of transport. But in many ways itthe countryside house he's much considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the same - people still fight one anotherhouse shares stories about Helen, towns still have sink estatesand describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, rich boys still have too much time on their hands and precious little meaning beyond form''. Although she lives in their livesan assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1854115146</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Owen SheersOlga Tokarczuk|title=White Ravens (New Stories from the Mabinogion)House of Day, House of Night|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In the old tale, Branwen is ''What's the sister good of Bendigeidfran - the giant King of Britain. She marries the King of Ireland, who doesna world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?''t treat her well. She manages to send Bendigeidfran a message via a tamed starling and war and killings ensue.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shirley JacksonThea Lenarduzzi|title=We Have Always Lived In The CastleTower|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Mary Katherine Blackwood, also known as Merricat, is eighteen, and lives with her older sister Constance in the family home where 'Blackwoods had always lived'. Merricat quickly draws How unctuous are the reader into her world by a series fats of matter of fact but bizarre statements – her likes include her sister and death cap mushroomsanother's life, and everyone else how dizzying their sugars in her family is dead. The wealthy Blackwood family has always kept the house our bloodstream'steady against the world', shutting out other people, and they live near a village. Merricat believes that 'The people of the village have always hated us', and tells us that she hates them too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141191457</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elizabeth BainesJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Too Many MagpiesVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Becoming a mother brings a whole new world of fear into your life''All was strange''... Suddenly you see This haunting phrase encapsulates the danger pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in every situationVaim, and fear and trepidation can be become your constant companions. In this novella, we meet a young mother who is married to a logical scientist. They attempt to control their children's futures on a scientific basis, growing their own fruit fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and vegetables, giving their children nothing sugaryEline, eating no eggs for a whole year until any adverse affects from them were disproved. But after meeting with an enigmatic stranger our young mother begins to struggle as he introduces ideas two of freedom into her world. She begins an affair with him, begins to let things slip at home and with the children, yet finds she is still continuously haunted by the sense of an ever-present dangerprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844717216</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Katherine MayClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Burning OutBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Violet has it all – a well-paid jobEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a luxurious apartment all to herself. Everything is catered for; her mealskiss, her clothesusually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, and her health are all how she would like them to bebecomes evidence of love lost. But When the life she is leading is beginning to take its toll. On the verge of snappingnarrator cries out internally, a drained ''come over here and somewhat out-of-sorts Violetkiss me, withdraws back '' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her home townemotional numbness. ThereThe imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, she meets someone familiarher ex-partner, a ghost reminding her of how she used conjures to be ten years earlier – a young carefree girl, full 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 in turn haunt the girltest her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906727392</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tove Jansson|title=The True Deceiver|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Most people of my age will have come across Jansson's work unwittingly, via the televised renditions of the Moomin tales. The readers amongst us would then have been entranced a few years ago to discover that at last Thomas Teal had set about the translation into English, first of The Summer Book Helene Bessette and then of a collection of short stories which were published as 'A Winter Book'. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954899571</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Daniel Kehlmann 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... Like many an unmarried man with an aging, widowed mother, Edward finds his relationship with her somewhat strained. Unlike many of those men, his relationship was always that wayno.
}}
{{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=Literary General Fiction|summary=Sammy has just woken up outside First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in what looks likes a park after a heavy night of drinkingturn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. He can't remember much – how he got there The deaths were uncountable, or why he is wearing some old trainers and not his new shoesthe loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He doesnwasn't know whata dog person but the convenience store owner's happened comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open 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 Helen, his girlfriend. Now he has been arrested, beaten up by the police, car door and released back onto Tamon the street againdog jumped in. He needs to find a way to get home, the only problem is; he has just gone blind.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546272</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Douglas Coupland0989715337|title=Generation APapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I think with Douglas Coupland you either love him or hate him. So I suppose I should probably say straight off that he's one of my favourite writers'Some frogs had gotten into the well. I've read all his fiction, and I just about peed my pants with excitement at getting to review this latest offering, ''Generation A ''. Those Walter stood waist-deep in the know will see that he is jumping off from fragrant water, naked except for his earlier novelbeaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, ''Generation X'', that dealt sticky gray pearls with three disillusioned twenty-somethings who seem to have opted out tadpoles inside them. Two of life, working 'Mcjobs' in the Californian desert dogs leaned over the opening and telling each other stories to pass barked down at the strange noise of the timebuckets as he filled them. Here, with this new generation, there's storytelling again, ' How is that for an opening? The style of this time amongst five characters, all from different places novel in the worldform of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, and different agesturning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, who are brought together through one singular event in each has the most wonderful turn of their lives - they are each stung by a beephrase, starts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434019836</amazonuk>
}}
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