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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joe TreasureJeremy Cooper|title=BesottedDiscord|rating=43.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It is late August 1982, the day when O level results come out. Michael Cartwright already knows he has failed his exams and is dreading his parents finding out. He, his twin brother Kieran (who has done very well) and their younger sisters are on the family holiday, staying with their mother's parents in Kilross, County Cork. To escape boredom and his parents' anger, he wanders round the village, where he meets Fergal Noonan, training to be Discord: a priest, and lively Peggy O'Connor. He has his first kiss and a bit more with Peggy. The family soon goes home to Cheltenham, but their brief visit to Ireland will have far reaching significance.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330511726</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Laila Lalami |title=Secret Son|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=''Secret Son'' is the story lack of Youssef El-Mekkiagreement or harmony (as between persons, the slum-dwelling teenage son of single mother Rachida. Youssef has always been told that his father is deadthings, so when he finds out his mother has lied to conceal the fact that he was born out of wedlock, he plunges headlong into an identity crisis. He tracks down his real father, a wealthy businessman called Nabil Amrani who is surprisingly enthusiastic about his illegitimate son's arrival. Nabil has recently fallen out with his daughter and he seizes this opportunity to mould Youssef into the obedient son he has always wanted.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918296</amazonuk>}}or ideas)
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Matthew CondonPolly Barton|title=The Trout OperaWhat Am I, A Deer?
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Judges Carrington and Thorpe recline in leather armchairs on the verandah of BuckleyPolly Barton's Crossing hotel debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and watch in silence as a giant trout shuffles across the bridgegoverning metaphor. The Judgesnarrator, despite their initial prominence and convincing back-story giving them 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 new audience. Barton treats this as a valid reason paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for being in Buckley's Crossinguniversality, language is endlessly repackaged, will not really concern usits originality at risk of disappearing altogether. They are there to represent From this, the novel opens out into a typewider, resonant question: a visitor to small town Australia, a fisherman from the city, a seeker after something what extent do we translate ourselves in the Snowy that probably isn't fish. We shallorder to be understood, howeveraccepted, be concerned with the giant trout.or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>038561506X</amazonuk>1804272175
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Clare MorrallMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=The Man Who DisappearedDisappearing Act
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I was drawn to this book straight away. FirstlyDespite her anonymisation of place names and people, the jacket cover is lovely. The subliminal Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is read me, please read meunmistakable. We are introduced A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the Kendall family; mother, father town of F for a literary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and three children. All leading unremarkablenudged by forces beyond her control, rather ordinary livesher journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. The fatherSwept up in this series of events, Felix, works hard M eventually offers to provide step in for his familya circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. He loves them all dearly. They all love him back. It is The train functions as a secure family unit. Until - completely out motif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the blue - he simply disappears. His family is distraught reshaping of identity and mystified. We all know a retreat into fantasy, an impulse that a person cannot simply disappear. But Felix Kendall has taken himself off lies at the very heart of the radarnovel form itself. Why?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340994274</amazonuk>1804272329
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christopher Isherwood295967572X|title=A Single ManPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If youOur unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they've ever wanted to know re going and what goes on inside someone's mind you'll love the purpose of this short noveljourney is, first published back in 1964is uncertain. We join George Falconer just at Django found the tickets ''on the moment he awakes from sleep floor somewhere'' and witness his innermost thoughts as he goes about a typical dayhas persuaded our narrator to accompany him. It all sounds pretty dull and monotonous Why not? Not much else is clear either - but what makes this exciting is that George isn't just any old professor living we are probably in the past as the American Dream, oh no, he's so detached from pair travel to the banal normality of station by coach and the world that he's almost outside of his own body at timestrain is a steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548828</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Angelica GarnettMakenna Goodman|title=The Unspoken TruthHelen of Nowhere|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I would It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not normally start quite right. The protagonist, a review with disgraced professor on the biography brink of the authorlosing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, but radical and unnerving: Helen. The Unspoken Truth connection between Helen and the protagonist is presented as autobiographical fiction by a child indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the Bloomsbury Group – countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in fact his life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the subtitle protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form'A Quartet of Bloomsbury Stories'. The blurb on the inside cover even identifies Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which character is based on the author in each of reader gets the four stories, just in case we sense are not surealtogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184353</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amos OzOlga Tokarczuk|title=Rhyming Life and DeathHouse of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Rhyming Love and Death is a kind ''What's the good of philosophical love letter to literature, or perhaps more so to fiction. It is a book about how to write, about the compulsion to write, and about the strange world that the writer of fiction must live keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099521024</amazonuk>}}it?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom WolfeThea Lenarduzzi|title=The Bonfire of the VanitiesTower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In his own mind, bond trader Sherman McCoy is a 'Master of the Universe'. He has a pleasant wife, a beautiful mistress, and a sweet six year old daughter. Henry Lamb is a black student from How unctuous are the projects. Under normal circumstances, itfats of another's clear that McCoylife, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream's world and Lamb's world would never overlap. But when McCoy and his mistress Maria Ruskin end up lost in the Bronx, and an accident leads to Lamb being hit by McCoy's Mercedes, a chain of events start which will lead to his downfall.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548798</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Simon RobsonJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=CatchVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Catharine's husband Tom is away on business in Birmingham, and so Catharine awakes alone for the first time in their little cottage at the end of their lane. They moved there a few months previously, and since then Catharine has spent her days quietly awaiting her husband's return from workAll was strange''. She is sure that she will figure out, some day, what her purpose in life is. She thought it might be to have a baby, but they have been trying for some time and it hasn't happened as yet. Meanwhile she waits, and thinks, and waits. In This haunting phrase encapsulates the lounge stands her pianopervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a stark reminder of the life she didn't manage to realise because although she studied music she found, quite quickly, that fictional fishing village in spite of being passionate she lacked any kind of talent Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for it whatsoever. So, on this day, alone at homeJatgeir and Eline, Catharine finds herself tormented by the piano's presence and over-thinking every second two of the day. She worries away at who she is, and what her life is, as her loneliness and the day itself unravel around herprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224090232</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joe MenoClaire-Louise Bennett|title=The Great PerhapsBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jonathan Casper faints when he sees clouds. His wife Madeline worries about everythingEverything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, not least the way the pigeons that she is studying are murdering each othersteeped in anguish and distortion. Their seventeen year old daughter Amelia wants to overthrow the evil empire Even a kiss, usually a symbol of capitalism intimacy and is making her own bombcloseness, while fourteen year old Thisbe is looking for God and praying to himbecomes evidence of love lost. JonathanWhen the narrator cries out internally, 's father, seventy six year old Henry'come over here and kiss me, '' it is planning his disappearanceless an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. Jonathan and Madeline may be on the verge The imagined recipient of splitting upthis plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to the dismay of both daughterstest her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330512471</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elizabeth KostovaHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=The Swan ThievesLili is Crying|rating=24.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=1999 – A renowned painterFirst published in 1953 in French, Robert Oliver, goes mad, attacking this novel is a painting with a knife. He's arrested, timeless text which wrenches the hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the page and sent to a psychiatrist who is also an artist. The psychiatrist, Andrew Marlowe, can't get his patient to talk to himpositions them elsewhere, but tries to investigate what drove him to this by talking to his wife and his girlfrienddisjointed, and reading some letters Oliver seems obsessed withtruncated. 1879 – Beatrice de Clerval, aspiring artist, corresponds with Like the lives of her uncle-by-marriage Olivier Vignot, a more experienced painter. Their letters will be found by Robert Olivercharacters, 120 years later, and will lead to his loss of sanitythey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847442404</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Atiq RahimiJonathan Buckley|title=The Patience StoneOne Boat|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Set in Afghanistan, ''The Patience StoneOne Boat'' is a partly allegorical tale deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. Set against the evocative backdrop of a Muslim wife tending small coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and its power to her comatose soldier husband who provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has been shot in visited it after the neckdeath of both her parents. As she cares for himPrompted by her mourning, for the first time ever she her narrative voice is able to speak to him without fear of censorship meditative and he becomesdeeply self-aware, for inviting the reader into herlabyrinthine cogitations. It is a book that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, like the mythical Patience Stone to which you tell your troubles since its narrative structure is fragmentary and when the stone finally bursts, you are free from your torments. But also this might mean the Apocalypseironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184167</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A French female scholar''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, studying in Chinathe young mother of toddler Emaleen, finds herself caught up in who longs for a life beyond the search for Alaskan lodge where she works as a lost, sacred text that was inscribed on an ancient scroll. The scroll was torn in two by Emperor Puyi years agobar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and was losther accidental neglect of Emaleen. After falling in love with Described as a young grocer called Tumchooq the young woman becomes caught up in tales within tales''wild card'', as she finds that Tumchooq's father found and translated half of the missing scroll and became obsessed with finding the other half, and soon Tumchooq too becomes embroiled feels stuck in the search.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099521326</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Thomas Trofimuk |title=Waiting for Columbus|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I was hooked instantly by the title. Original, thoughther day-provoking, quirky. The book revolves around a youngish man who has been admitted to an insane asylum (these two words alone make me want to shiver) in modern-day Spain. The staff have their work cut out. He doesn't remember his name or anything at all about his past. He's sporadically violent - life, and he says he is Christopher Columbus! As yearns to cross the Americans would say, go figure. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330518844</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Su Tong|title=The Boat to Redemption|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ku Dongliang Wolverine river and his father, Ku Wenxuan, are forced to live on a barge on the river following Ku Wenxuan's fall from grace. Originally believed North Fork to be the son fulfil her desires of a revolutionary martyrsimple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, it is eventually proved that Mr Ku was not so - as a resultstrange, taciturn and solitary man, his position in society takes a nose-dive. Dongliang suffers as who says he has a result of thiscabin over there, finding it hard she feels called to make friends within the barge community go - and on shorebring Emaleen with her. Then an orphaned girl moves onto the barges Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and finds a place in DongliangEmaleen's apparently cold heartlives forever. Will she be able to take him out of himself? Or will she, too, turn her back on him?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>038561344X</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Iain BanksSally Rooney|title=The Steep Approach to Garbadale|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It took me a while to realise that Iain Banks is, most of all, a teller of tales - I would call him a story-teller had this term not became a compliment-cum-invective usually reserved for the Jeffrey Archers and Dan Browns of the modern publishing world. This ability to tell stories - not to plot as much as to weave a yarn - combines with a penchant for creating appealing contexts for Banks' narratives to unfold in (this gets magnificently realised in the world building of his [[:Category:Iain M Banks|Iain M. Banks]] alter-ego) and populating them with memorable, larger than life but usually short of caricature, characters.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349119287</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mary McCarthy |title=The GroupIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary='Given Sally Rooney has studied the attention paid to relations between the sexes, chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it would be tempting to call The Group a forerunner of today's chick litinto words. It's notHer dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel.' So writes Candace BushnellAmong the many relationships woven into this story, the writer behind central one for readers to unravel is the TV series Sex fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and the City, in the introduction to this new Virago Modern Classics edition of The Group by Mary McCarthyPeter Koubek. First published in 1963Ivan, this novel is about the lives of a group of young women after leaving college in 1933socially awkward chess prodigy, including careerscontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, relationshipsa successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, sex, babies, parents, and moneythe brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844085937</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Janice GallowayFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=Collected StoriesWhite Nights
|rating=5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=In this collection, stories are taken from two previous volumesAs always in Dostoyevsky, Blood and Where You Find It. The forty-two snap shots of life are mainly of women and young girls, struggling with emotions, sometimes realized and sometimes not. In all, there seems to be an underlying link of isolation and truth. The settings are varied, from a visit to the dentist to the place known as home, to a walk in the eveningcharacter work is sublime. We have One is never left wondering what a peek into the deepest darkest corners of everyday relationships, character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with lovers, partners and most of all ourselvesremarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099540398</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Herta MullerJames Baldwin|title=The PassportGiovanni's Room|rating=34.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Meet Windisch. A miller ''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in a small villageParis, as he trudges through there, and through navigates his neighbourstorturous affair with Giovanni, and through his lifean Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, counting his days and hourswho is travelling in Spain, for reasons that are the real tension in the novel arises not initially clearfrom his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. But he does want something - he It is waiting for a passport so he can leave for other climes. The perks David's crippling shame and denial of his job are the bags of flour he leaves by the mayor's house sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with regularity, as an open bribe, but there might be a bigger sacrifice to have to makeGiovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1852421398</amazonuk>0141186356
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer JohnstonAlba de Cespedes |title=Truth or FictionForbidden Notebook
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Caroline Wallace is not a happy woman. She has waited ten years for her lover to propose to This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the moment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, purchases herforbidden notebook, and now just as he finally does, she has to go to Dublin to interview faded literary star Desmond Fitzmaurice. Desmond promises his tale will be brimful of 'sex learns about herself in the most intimate and violence', but Caroline has no idea of the mystery that lies at the heart of his storyrevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755330544</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julian BarnesOttessa Moshfegh|title=Staring at the SunMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=43
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jean's first Incident involved Uncle LeslieAt best, hyacinths this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and golf tees. It's perhaps best forgottenreveals the fragility of human relationships; at worst, but Jean doesn't forget. Uncle Leslie figures large in her life - mostly on it is the golf course - until the War comes cynical, predictable and he runs away to Americaslightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. He's replaced by Tommy ProsserThis unlikely heroine, a grounded pilot who once saw the sun rise twice in one day slim, attractive and excites as many questions newly orphaned girl in Jean as he ever answers. Tommy her twenties is replaced by Michaeldisillusioned with the world, a policemanbut resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, 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 the Dutch cap that Michael sent her off to obtain before the wedding and much less again for their rather disastrous adventures solution lies in the bedroomher hibernation. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099540096</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Russell Celyn JonesMatthew Tree|title=The Ninth Wave (New Stories from the Mabinogion) We'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Pwyll rules a medieval-style fiefdom in a post-climate change Wales. Life is Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different in many ways - there's from his father, a new-but-old social order built on feudalism drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and horsepower is the main means who had endless crises of transportself confidence. But in many ways it's much the same - people still fight one anotherSo Tim applied himself to his studies, towns still have sink estates, rich boys still have too much time on their hands cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and precious little meaning in their livesset himself high but achievable ambitions. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1854115146</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Owen SheersB0C47LV1PC|title=White Ravens (New Stories from the Mabinogion)Fragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In the old taleCan you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, Branwen is the sister of Bendigeidfran - question should you make it? Or is the giant King of Britain. She marries question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the King of Ireland, who doesn't treat her answer for both could wellbe.... She manages to send Bendigeidfran a message via a tamed starling and war and killings ensueno.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shirley JacksonMosby Woods|title=We Have Always Lived In The CastleA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Mary Katherine Blackwood, also known as Merricat, is eighteen, and lives with her older sister Constance The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the family home where 'Blackwoods had always lived'. Merricat quickly draws West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the reader into her world by a series best course of matter of fact but bizarre statements – her likes include her sister and death cap mushroomsaction. Governments are flailing. A war here, and everyone else a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in her family is deadactual charge. The wealthy Blackwood family has always kept the house 'steady against the world'Imagine then, shutting out other people, and they live near there was a villageman with precognition. Merricat believes that 'The people Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the village have always hated us'most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, and tells us that she hates them toothis man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141191457</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Deborah Gregory0571379559|title=Dancing With The DeadHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=35
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I wanted to read ''Dancing with The House of Broken Bricks'' is the Dead'story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, because I'm interested she lives in family history. The blurb the house on the back riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the book also mentioned Gill – our heroine passage of the piece – was moving from Bristol (my current home) to Lincolnshire (where I was born time, storms and brought up)floods. I felt with all these links Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the novel could not fail delivery rounds - and to interest me – but this was not bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the caserainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529305</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=Elizabeth BainesKay Chronister|title=Too Many MagpiesDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Becoming a mother brings With a whole new world of fear into your life. Suddenly you see the danger in every situationthat is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, and fear and trepidation post-apocalyptic fiction can be become your constant companionsan almost masochistic thrill. In this novellaWhether it is a robotic takeover, we meet a young mother who world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is married to a logical scientist. They attempt way for humans to control cathartically experience their childrenmost existential fears. ''Desert Creatures''s futures on by Kay Chronister is a scientific basis, growing their own fruit and vegetables, giving their children nothing sugary, eating no eggs new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for a whole year until any adverse affects from them were disprovedhumanity today. But after meeting with an enigmatic stranger our young mother begins to struggle as he introduces ideas 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 It is a shocking novel that still continuously haunted by the sense of an ever-present dangermanages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844717216</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Katherine MayEric LaRocca|title=Burning OutThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=45|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Violet has it all – Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a well-paid job, and a luxurious apartment all way to herself. Everything is catered for; her meals, her clothes, reflect our darkest emotions and her health are all how she would like we as humans react and process them to be. But the life she Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is leading is beginning to take its toll. On the verge of snappinga home invader, a drained monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and somewhat out-, by the end of-sorts Violetthe story, withdraws back to her home townbeatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There, she meets someone familiar, '' is not like that. It is a ghost reminding her collection of how she used to be ten years earlier – a young carefree girl, full short stories more interested in the horrors of life. Only this isn't a ghostillness, but a girl living the life Violet once lived – exactly the same. Haunted by the past Violet realizes history is repeating itself grief and is convinced events will happen againhumiliation. Events Horrors that will in turn haunt the girllinger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906727392</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tove JanssonMadelaine Lucas|title=The True DeceiverThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Most people of my age will have come across Jansson's work unwittingly'Love, via the televised renditions of the Moomin tales. The readers amongst us would then have been entranced I'd read, was supposed to be a few years ago to discover that at last Thomas Teal light and weightless feeling, but I had set about the translation into English, first of The Summer Book and then of a collection of short stories which were published as always longed for gravity'A Winter Book'. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954899571</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{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=David Malouf Jennifer Saint|title=RansomAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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 I was as worthy as any one of his fallen sonthem. I would get on board that ship, HectorI vowed. I would take my place, killed by the equally grief-stricken Achilles whose great friend Hector had killed not just in battle before Achilles took his cruel revenge. Malouf tells the story in sparse, yet lyrical and poetic fashion suggesting the personal stories behind name of the epic themes that Homer relatedgoddess. It is an exquisitely written piece managing to be both deeply moving as well as a great piece was for the sake of story tellingmy name, too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184159</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andrew Miller Amanthi Harris|title=One Morning Like A BirdBeautiful Place|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Tokyo in 1940 is Padma, a place that we British tend not young Sri Lankan, has returned to give a great deal of thought to. Japan entered the war, we say, with the attack Villa Hibiscus on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, completely forgetting that Japan, like most of the rest southern coast of the world, was already her home country. This is a country at warplace she spent her formative years. She had been fighting in China since 1937 and It is not a place she was making in-roads born into European colonial territory in , but the area one she thinks of as wellhome.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340825154</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Sadie Jones |title=Small Wars|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Even though our world is ostensibly How she came to be at peacethe Villa, hundreds of localizedhow it became her home, unwinnable conflicts continue to grumble on. Mostly, we only hear and care about the ones involving machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''our boysscore', as if war was some giant game of football' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. But it isn Padma't, s present fails to escape her past and ''Small Wars'' reflects on much like the casualties musical score 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 film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the public mood turns against the 'war on terror' in Afghanistan. It's certainly a prescient oneVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184558</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Evelyn Waugh178563335X|title=A Handful of DustSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A complex class society which evolved into When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a highly sophisticated culture is invariably trainee vicar, sitting in on a fertile ground for development of social satirePCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and British literature would have been hugely depleted if all novels that can be regarded as such were suddenly to disappearher elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Evelyn Waugh made Holthorpe, on the genre his ownNorfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she''A Handful s in awe of Dustthe vicar, Gail, but then she'' is s been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a sublime example of his mastery of walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but itwas probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141183969</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=William Trevor 1398515388|title=Love The Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and SummerAlison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=''Love First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and Summer'' is set this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the small town loss of Rathmoye in a rural Ireland 'some years after livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the middle list of priorities but - six months after the last centurytsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn'. The novel charts t a dog person but the doomed love affair between Ellie, a young farmerconvenience store owner's wife, comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Florian, the Irish-Italian son of two artists, but it as much about Tamon the place and time dog jumped in which it is set.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918245</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bryony Doran 0989715337|title=The China BirdPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Edward is a sad and solitary figure. Late middle-aged, twisted-spined and hump-backed, a loner who works in the archive basement of ''Some frogs had gotten into the library, lodges with Mrs Ingrams who makes his tea and ruins his laundry, and hoards letters from his mother. Like many an unmarried man with an aging, widowed mother, Edward finds his relationship with her somewhat strained. Unlike many of those men, his relationship was always that waywell. ''
}}