134,836
edits
Changes
no edit summary
[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joe MenoJeremy Cooper|title=The Great PerhapsDiscord|rating=43.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Jonathan Casper faints when he sees clouds. His wife Madeline worries about everything, not least the way the pigeons that she is studying are murdering each other. Their seventeen year old daughter Amelia wants to overthrow the evil empire of capitalism and is making her own bomb, while fourteen year old Thisbe is looking for God and praying to him. Jonathan's father, seventy six year old Henry, is planning his disappearance. Jonathan and Madeline may be on the verge of splitting up, to the dismay of both daughters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330512471</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Elizabeth Kostova|title=The Swan Thieves|rating=2
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=1999 – A renowned painter, Robert Oliver, goes mad, attacking a painting with a knife. He's arrested, and sent to Discord: a psychiatrist who is also an artist. The psychiatrist, Andrew Marlowe, can't get his patient to talk to himlack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, but tries to investigate what drove him to this by talking to his wife and his girlfriendthings, and reading some letters Oliver seems obsessed with.or ideas)
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Atiq RahimiPolly Barton|title=The Patience StoneWhat Am I, A Deer?|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Set in Afghanistan, 'Polly Barton's debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The Patience Stone'' is narrator, newly relocated from London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the process of localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a partly allegorical tale of new audience. Barton treats this as a Muslim wife tending to her comatose soldier husband who has been shot paradoxical act: arguably, in the neck. As she cares striving for himuniversality, for the first time ever she language is able to speak to him without fear endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of censorship and he becomesdisappearing altogether. From this, for herthe novel opens out into a wider, like the mythical Patience Stone resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to which you tell your troubles and when the stone finally burstsbe understood, accepted, you are free from your torments. But also this might mean the Apocalypse.or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184167</amazonuk>1804272175
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joyce Carol OatesMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=A Fair MaidenThe Disappearing Act|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=IDespite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova've recently read s message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the terrific short story collection ''The Female Of The Species'' also town of F for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. Detoured by Oates erratic train schedules and couldn't wait to start nudged by forces beyond her control, her latest bookjourney slowly bends toward a traveling circus. I felt sure that I was Swept up in this series of events, M eventually offers to step in for a literary treat - circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. The train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and I was. Firstlya retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the book very heart of the novel form itself, a hardback with a beautifully nostalgic cover is a book lover's delight.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847248586</amazonuk>1804272329
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dai Sijie 295967572X|title=Once on a Moonless NightPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A French female scholarOur unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of this journey is, studying in China, finds herself caught up in is uncertain. Django found the search for a lost, sacred text that was inscribed tickets ''on an ancient scroll. The scroll was torn in two by Emperor Puyi years ago, the floor somewhere'' and was losthas persuaded our narrator to accompany him. After falling Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in love with a young grocer called Tumchooq the young woman becomes caught up in tales within tales, past as she finds that Tumchooq's father found and translated half of the missing scroll and became obsessed with finding pair travel to the other half, station by coach and soon Tumchooq too becomes embroiled in the searchtrain is a steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099521326</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Thomas Trofimuk Makenna Goodman|title=Waiting for ColumbusHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I was hooked instantly by It could be argued that the titlepervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. OriginalThe protagonist, thought-provokinga disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and his relationship, quirkyembodies this feeling. The book revolves around However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a youngish man who has been admitted to an insane asylum (these two words alone make me want to shiver) in modern-day Spainforce which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The staff have their work cut outconnection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. He doesnAs the former owner of the countryside house he't remember s considering, Helen represents a volta in his name or anything at all about life, her past tied to his pastpotential fresh start. HeThe realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''s sporadically violent - and he says he an entity that is Christopher Columbus! As pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the Americans would say, go figuresense are not altogether innocuous. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330518844</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='Given 'What's the attention paid to relations between the sexes, good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it would be tempting to call The Group a forerunner of today?'s chick lit. It's not.'
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Janice GallowayThea Lenarduzzi|title=Collected StoriesThe Tower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet Windisch. A miller in a small village, he trudges through there, and through his neighbours, and through his life, counting his days and hours, for reasons that are not initially clear. But he does want something - he is waiting for a passport so he can leave for other climes. The perks of his job ''How unctuous are the bags fats of flour he leaves by the mayoranother's house with regularitylife, as an open bribe, but there might be a bigger sacrifice to have to makehow dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1852421398</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julian BarnesJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=Staring at the SunVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jean's first Incident involved Uncle Leslie, hyacinths and golf tees. It's perhaps best forgotten, but Jean doesnAll was strange't forget. Uncle Leslie figures large in her life - mostly on the golf course - until the War comes and he runs away to America. He's replaced by Tommy Prosser, a grounded pilot who once saw the sun rise twice in one day and excites as many questions in Jean as he ever answers. Tommy is replaced by Michael, a policeman, whom Jean eventually marries. He doesn't know why minks are excessively tenacious of life and he doesn't much care. But Jean does. She cares much less for This haunting phrase encapsulates the Dutch cap that Michael sent her off to obtain before the wedding and much less again for their rather disastrous adventures pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in the bedroom. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540096</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Russell Celyn Jones|title=The Ninth Wave (New Stories from the Mabinogion) |rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Pwyll rules Vaim, a medieval-style fiefdom fictional fishing village in a post-climate change Wales. Life is different in many ways - there's a new-but-old social order built on feudalism Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and horsepower is the main means Eline, two of transport. But in many ways it's much the same - people still fight one another, towns still have sink estates, rich boys still have too much time on their hands and precious little meaning protagonists caught in their livesits melancholic current. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1854115146</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Owen SheersClaire-Louise Bennett|title=White Ravens (New Stories from the Mabinogion)Big Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In the old taleEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, Branwen is the sister steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a symbol of Bendigeidfran - the giant King intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of Britainlove lost. She marries When the King of Irelandnarrator cries out internally, who doesn't treat her well. She manages to send Bendigeidfran a message via a tamed starling and war 'come over here and killings ensue. In this new talekiss me, '' it is less an invitation than a young girl has just walked away from desperate attempt to confirm her brothers who, in the wake emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of the devastating foot and mouth outbreakthis plea is Xavier, are despoiling their heritage by rustling and illegally slaughtering sheep. She meets an old man who tells her ex-partner, a story involving the superstitions about the ravens in the Tower of London, propaganda work during World War II, and an equally doomed love affairghost she conjures to test her detachment. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1854115030</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shirley JacksonHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=We Have Always Lived In The CastleLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Mary Katherine Blackwood, also known as MerricatFirst published in 1953 in French, this novel is eighteen, and lives with her older sister Constance in a timeless text which wrenches the family home where 'Blackwoods had always lived'. Merricat quickly draws the reader into her world by a series hearts of matter of fact but bizarre statements – her likes include her sister its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and death cap mushrooms, sentences from their proper position on the page and everyone else in her family is dead. The wealthy Blackwood family has always kept the house 'steady against the world'positions them elsewhere, shutting out other peopledisjointed, and they live near a villagetruncated. Merricat believes that 'The people Like the lives of the village have always hated us'her characters, and tells us that she hates them toothey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141191457</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Becoming ''One Boat'' is a mother brings deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a whole new world contemplative realm of fear into your life. Suddenly you see the danger in every situation, philosophical musings and fear fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and trepidation can be become your constant companions. In this novellaprotagonist, we meet a young mother who is married to a logical scientistTeresa. They attempt to control their children's futures on Set against the evocative backdrop of a scientific basissmall coastal Greek town, growing their own fruit this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and vegetables, giving their children nothing sugary, eating no eggs for a whole year until any adverse affects from them were disprovedits power to provoke profound introspection. But Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after meeting with an enigmatic stranger our young mother begins to struggle as he introduces ideas the death of freedom into both her worldparents. She begins an affair with himPrompted by her mourning, begins to let things slip at home her narrative voice is meditative and with deeply self-aware, inviting the childrenreader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a book that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, yet finds she since its narrative structure is still continuously haunted by the sense of an ever-present dangerfragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844717216</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Katherine MayEowyn Ivey|title=Burning OutBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=43.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Violet has it all – ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a well-paid jobbar waitress, and a luxurious apartment all to herself. Everything is catered for; setting which enables her meals, bad habits and her clothesaccidental neglect of Emaleen. Described as a ''wild card'', and she feels stuck in her health are all how she would like them day-to be. But the -day life she is leading is beginning , and yearns to take its toll. On cross the verge of snapping, a drained Wolverine river and somewhat out-of-sorts Violet, withdraws back live on the North Fork to fulfil her home towndesires of a simple life surrounded by nature. There, When she meets someone familiarArthur Nielson, a ghost reminding her of how she used to be ten years earlier – a young carefree girlstrange, taciturn and solitary man, full of life. Only this isn't who says he has a ghostcabin over there, but a girl living the life Violet once lived – exactly the same. Haunted by the past Violet realizes history is repeating itself she feels called to go - and is convinced events will happen againbring Emaleen with her. Events that Without realising it, this calling will in turn haunt the girltransform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906727392</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tove JanssonSally Rooney|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 and then of a collection of short stories which were published as 'A Winter Book'. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954899571</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Daniel Kehlmann |title=Me and KaminskiIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=After reviewing several long books, Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it's been refreshing to read such a fluent yet pared down story as 'Kaminski into words. Her dialogue is gripping and Me'. In itso brilliantly frustrating, Sebastian Zollner, the obnoxious main character, shoves himself forward in a desperate attempt to research a best seller which will re-ignite his career as an art criticher characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Kaminski, Among the proposed subjectmany relationships woven into this story, was a fashionable painter long ago, but now, ancient and chronically ill, has virtually slid into oblivion. So the second-rate writer central one for readers to unravel is on a loser unless he can dig up some juicy details to hook the art world fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and general publicPeter Koubek.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847249892</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Hilary Dixon|title=When Rooks Speak of Love|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Arthur Transcombe is Ivan, a middle-aged, grey-haired, self-effacing poet. Unremarkable really - on the outside. He has, howeversocially awkward chess prodigy, managed to achieve some success contrasts sharply with his poemsolder brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. (Being Following their father's passing after a guest speaker at long battle with cancer, the Cheltenham Literary Festival is no mean feat)brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials. He is also a babe magnet!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1904529429</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David Malouf Fyodor Dostoyevsky|title=RansomWhite Nights
|rating=5
|genre=Literary FictionShort Stories|summary=Taking his theme from a small part of Homer's Iliad, Malouf tells the story of the king of Troy, Priam's grief-stricken voyage into the Greek camp to ransom Troy's wealth for the body of his fallen son, Hector, killed by the equally grief-stricken Achilles whose great friend Hector had killed in battle before Achilles took his cruel revenge. Malouf tells the story As always in sparseDostoyevsky, yet lyrical and poetic fashion suggesting the personal stories behind the epic themes that Homer relatedcharacter work is sublime. It One is an exquisitely written piece managing to be both deeply moving as well as never left wondering what a great piece of story telling.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184159</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Vann |title=Legend of a Suicide|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Some books defy categorisation character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and that's the case temperaments with ''Legend of a Suicide''. Is it Literary Fiction? Is it a series of short stories linked by a common theme, or a novella with supporting pieces? Is it fiction with a strong autobiographical thread running through it? The simple answer to all these questions is ''yes'' – for the book is all that and more. It's also a compelling page-turner – I began reading at ten o'clock last night and finished it at three thirty this morning, resenting every moment away from the bookremarkable 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>
}}
Move on to [[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]