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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ron ButlinJeremy Cooper|title=Ghost MoonDiscord|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Maggie sits in an elderly Discord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons' care home tgryig to exist through , things, or ideas) The principal example of discord within the ever tightening grip novel, as with most instances of dementiadiscord, is easily located. Her sonThe two protagonists of the novel, TomRebekah Rosen and Evie Bennet, are as different as they come. Rebekah is an uptight, visits trying traditional and no-nonsense composer close to jog her memory but she doesn't even recognise him. To Maggieretirement, Tom while Evie is 'Michael' a name that means nothing to force of nature, bounding onto the musical scene as a son getting more desperate to break through to his mother once againprecocious saxophonist, oozing with talent and charm. However there was once a MichaelThe two, predictably, in a life that bubbles with secrets that even Tom doesndon't know; for oncealways see eye to eye, long agotheir approaches different and Evie's progressive views at odds with Rebekah's conservative leaning. However, Maggie was youngsomething connects them beyond just their musical project: a sort of fragile alliance formed within the clamour.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907773770</amazonuk>1804272264
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The One I WasPolly Barton|authortitle=Eliza GrahamWhat Am I, A Deer?|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In 1939Polly Barton's debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, before newly relocated from London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the outbreak process of the Second World Warlocalisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a boy arrived at Harwich docksnew audience. He was Barton treats this as a Kindertransport refugee fleeing the anti-Semitism paradoxical act: arguably, in Nazi Germanystriving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. Benjamin Goldman would change his name to Benny Gault when his idea that From this, the war wouldn't happen and he could go home to Germany came novel opens out into a wider, resonant question: to nothing, but what extent do we translate ourselves in the meantime he was adopted by Lord and Lady Dorner. Six boys were order to live at their country home - Fairfleet - and be educated by a private tutor. On the face of it Benny's luck could not have worked out betterunderstood, accepted, but he was hiding a secret. or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910229016</amazonuk>1804272175
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Indecent ActsMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|authortitle=Nick BrooksThe Disappearing Act|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet Grace. She's in Despite her forties, living with a hit-anonymisation of place names and-miss family in a Glasgow council flatpeople, and Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the middle town of F for a whole host of issuesliterary festival she is to be a guest speaker at. She has issues about Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her parentscontrol, and their moving on or death; she has issues about her sister who might or might not have had journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, M eventually offers to step in for a much superior life pattern than Grace; she has issues about her children – Francis circus performer who has unexpectedly left Grace with her own daughter to spend time with drink or drugs instead, and son Vincent, who will like as not create an issue by joining the army and moving on himselfshow. Grace also has issues with the fact that she is nearly as blind The train functions as a batmotif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and can neither read nor write. She's started the novel where she shouldn't be – at home in Glasgowa retreat into fantasy, struggling, as she was due to fly to meet her sister an impulse that lies at last, yet packed her glasses in the case that must be very heart of the other end, and completely missed her flightnovel form itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908754451</amazonuk>1804272329
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=A Well-Tempered HeartPale Pieces|author=Jan-Philipp SendkerG M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ten years on from Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the previous episodepurpose of this journey is, Julia Win, successful corporate lawyer specialising in intellectual property rights is exhausted, unhappy and aloneuncertain. Somewhat distant in all senses of Django found the tickets ''on the word, if not exactly estranged, from her mother floor somewhere'' and brother, she has recently left a relationship that should have worked persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but just didn't we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and her only real connection the train is with her artist friend Amy Leea steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184697285X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Something Like HappyMakenna Goodman|authortitle=John BurnsideHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=How do you pick It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a name for a short story collection? It seems hard-to me the ''...and other stories'' add-on place feeling that something in your life is like picking a favourite childnot quite right. The protagonist, a promotion disgraced professor on the brink of one portion of the content above the restlosing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. [[:Category:John Burnside|John Burnside]] has got However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a title story hereforce which is seductive, but such radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the mood former owner of the book that countryside house he seems 's considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to have nailed his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the matterprotagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and picked the most apposite name. describes her as ''Something Like Happyan entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form'' could . Although she lives in a way be an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the title for practically every piece heresense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099575590</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Olga Tokarczuk
|title=House of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Prajwal ParajulyThea Lenarduzzi|title=Land Where I FleeThe Tower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Chitralekha Guraamaa is preparing for her 84th birthday celebrations - her Chaurasi - and her grandchildren (or rather grandadults as they ''How unctuous are now) arrive from around the world. They went away in search fats of a better another's life but better comes at a cost. Baghwati married beneath her caste, Manasa is resentful of an apparently helpless disabled father-how dizzying their sugars in-law and Agastaya hides a man-sized secretour bloodstream''. All have one thing in common: the dread of facing their manipulative, powerful grandmother and their inability to get on with each other. Worlds may collide but let the festivities commence!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780872984</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Last Boat HomeJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |authortitle=Dea BrovigVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Then: On the farm above a remote Norwegian hamlet, in 1976, schoolgirl Else is waiting for her mother to return through the wind and the snow''All was strange''. She is also clutching at the kitchen table as the contractions worsen. Now: fast forward to 2009. Else now lives in This haunting phrase encapsulates the town the hamlet has grown into, on the back pervading sense of oil money. Her daughter has a daughter of her ownotherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, but still spends many a night fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not coming home. ''She must have met someone'' the eleven-year-old granddaughter says matter-of-factly. Else has made a life feel more real for herself, running a spa, looking after her daughter Jatgeir and her granddaughter. A quiet lifeEline, but not such a bad onetwo of the protagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091954290</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Beggar and the HareClaire-Louise Bennett|authortitle=Tuomas KyroBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Our heroEverything in this book, Vatanescuhowever sweet or seemingly innocent, is a fish out of watersteeped in anguish and distortion. He's Even a father without his familykiss, usually a man without a homesymbol of intimacy and closeness, a possibility without a chancebecomes evidence of love lost. HeWhen the narrator cries out internally, ''s being transported across Europe by a criminal people-smugglercome over here and kiss me, who is also packing Vatanescu's sister off to the cosmetic surgeon then the prostitute trade. Our hero ' it is destined less an invitation than a desperate attempt to sit in discomfort, sleet and in hateful gazes of others as a beggar on the streets of Helsinkiconfirm her emotional numbness. But at the same time impossibilities are amassing – one The imagined recipient of which splits Vatanescu from his minder/mentorthis plea is Xavier, and leaves him on the run with a fistful of useless currency. A further impossibility gifts him a friendlyher ex-partner, warm companion – a rabbit being chased by local youths jumps into the sanctuary of his arms, and becomes a welcome source of focusghost she conjures to test her detachment. From then on many more jumps will be made from one impossibility to another, as the life of this illegal immigrant begins to resonate across his adopted homeland…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780721641</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Blazing WorldHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|authortitle=Siri HustvedtLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='All intellectual and artistic endeavours…fare better First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the mind hearts of its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the crowd when the crowd knows that somewhere behind the great work or the great spoof it can locate a cock page and a pair of balls.' Thus we are introduced to the unforgettable Harriet Burden – larger-than-lifepositions them elsewhere, six-foot-tall amazon artist – and to some of the novel's essential elements: musing on what makes intellectual products successful in a postmodern marketplacedisjointed, feminist resentment of truncated. Like the overvaluing lives of male achievementher characters, and an unapologetic, playful boldness with languagethey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444779648</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Clever GirlJonathan Buckley|authortitle=Tessa HadleyOne Boat
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Stella grows up with her single mother in Bristol in ''One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the 1960s; her father left when she was reader into a babycontemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, but her mother has cultivated the convenient myth that he diedTeresa. In Set against the stand-alone first chapterevocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, Stella recounts a disturbing incident this work masterfully captures the magic of domestic violence that affected her Aunt Andyits setting and its power to provoke profound introspection. Sordid snippets from Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the ensuing court case stay with Stella over reason she has visited it after the years; 'Innocentdeath of both her parents. Prompted by her mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-seeming fragments would get in past my defences…then stick to my imagination like tar.' Even soaware, inviting the novel that follows reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is about the way in which we engage with memory – facts a book that linger versus those wenot only requires but inspires depth of thought, deliberately or subconsciously, choose not to tellsince its narrative structure is fragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099570521</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=All That is Solid Melts into AirEowyn Ivey|authortitle=Darragh McKeonBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=43.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Moscow''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, 1986the young mother of toddler Emaleen, and who longs for a nine-year old piano prodigy is trapped in life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a subway station by bulliesbar waitress, who carefully break one a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of his little fingersEmaleen. Rehearsal cancelledDescribed as a ''wild card'', the boy finds his favourite auntshe feels stuck in her day-to-day life, who takes him and yearns to treatment only cross the Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to discover fulfil her ex-husband the doctor involveddesires of a simple life surrounded by nature. Many miles away When she meets Arthur Nielson, a slightly older young strange, taciturn and solitary man is off on his first hunting trip with the men of the village, only who says he has a cabin over there, she feels called to find diseased cows, go - and the grouse they seek sickly and weirdly uncoordinatedbring Emaleen with her. What has affected themWithout realising it, this calling will transform hers and will of course affect all the characters in the book, is the nuclear disaster in the plant at ChernobylEmaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670922706</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Black SnowSally Rooney|authortitle=Paul LynchIntermezzo|rating=34.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Barnabas Kane returned to his birthplace in Ireland with his family with Sally Rooney has studied the goal chessboard of setting up his own farm life and raising his son in is something of a better setting than New Yorkgrandmaster at putting it into words. With his farm of a decent size Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a good herd of cattle all seems well socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with Kane until out ploughing one day he and his farm hand Matthew Peoples spot smoke older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in the sky from the direction of his byreDublin. The fire marks the start of Following their father's passing after a sometimes bleak downward spiral and Kane is forced to rely on long battle with cancer, the kindness of his neighbours who still see him as an outsiderbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782062041</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Truman CapoteFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=Breakfast at Tiffany's White Nights
|rating=5
|genre=Literary FictionShort Stories|summary=Holly Golightly. Who doesn't know her? Whether As always in the pages of ''Breakfast at Tiffany's''Dostoyevsky, the short novel by Truman Capote or capture on film by Audrey Hepburn, she's an American iconcharacter work is sublime. A young country girl becomes One is never left wondering what a New York socialite, trading on amusement value to make a life paid for by rich men who are titillated by her outrageous opinions character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and anecdotes. We ''want'' to know her. And the narrator ''wants'' to know her as much, if not more, than we dotemperaments with remarkable clarity. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00HX9UTSE</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Patrick NessJames Baldwin|title=The Crane WifeGiovanni's Room
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''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 gay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.
|isbn=0141186356
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Alba de Cespedes
|title=Forbidden Notebook
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The Crane Wife'' ticks all my boxes. It's by Patrick Ness who is one This Italian work of my favourite writers feminist fiction holds an air of Young Adult fiction. It has a basis in myth suspense and legend tension from the moment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, purchases her forbidden notebook, and still better learns about herself in an ancient story new to me. It doesn't go on and on and Ariston for half a billion pages. Best of all, the author includes a shout-out for the brilliant Decemberists. I agree with Ness: this is a band you should look up. A heavy reading schedule meant I didn't get to it last year when it was first published but now it's out in paperback most intimate and here I am. I wasn't disappointedrevealing ways. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857868748</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jill DawsonOttessa Moshfegh|title=The Tell-Tale HeartMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=4.53
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Being told that you have six months to live concentrates the mind most wonderfully: fifty At best, this novel is no age to die, even if you have lived life to the full. Patrick's heart was giving up on him a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the Professor fragility of American Studieshuman relationships; at worst, philanderer it is the cynical, predictable and heavy drinker was at the head slightly trite tale of the list for a heart transplantan unlikeable protagonist. His other problems - entirely of his own making - faded into insignificance. Sixteen-year-old Drew Beamish died in This unlikely heroine, a motorcycle accident slim, attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the village where he lived world, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in rural Cambridgeshire and it will be his (still beating) heart which is transplanted into Patrick. The twofact, who had never met, would be permanently joinedher solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444731068</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The People in the PhotoMatthew Tree|authortitle=Helene GesternWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Hélène Hivert works at the Museum of the History of the Postcard. It is a job she loves, as she finds delving into other people's lives 'most exciting'. Luckily, she is 'regularly sent collections Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to catalogue'be different from his father, a drunk and each time the 'moment chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of discovery' gives her a thrill. It may be 'addictive', but 'There is something very moving about the thought that just two or three sources can be enough to build a picture his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of an entire life'self confidence. But what happens when the sources are a bit too close So Tim applied himself to home, when Hélène must play Holmes among the artefacts of her own family's past, pondering 'the silence of surfaces'? Well, the professional detachment goes straight out the windowhis studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and what had been a genuine pleasure, tinged by wonder, now becomes an uncomfortable obsessionset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908313544</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0C47LV1PC
|title=Fragility
|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.
}}
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Sven and Molly Norberg live The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the American mid-western town West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of Trudeaction. At least Sven still doesGovernments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; Molly has gone missinga man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. Night after night Sven leaves Kyle, his teenage sonThat man would be valuable, home alone while he scours right? Perhaps the streetsmost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, revisiting places that he and Molly wandered through together in order this man loses this ability. What would governments do to find her. Meanwhile Trude has problems of its own and the librarians are armed and ready!get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715647679</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Romy Ash0571379559|title=FlounderingThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Loretta collects her boys Jordy and Tom from school as if it''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the most normal thing in house on the worldriverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, but it's not; not for them anywaystood the passage of time, storms and floods. Jordy Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and Tom to bring in sufficient money. They have been living with their grandparents after being abandoned by this woman who refuses to be called twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny'Mums colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. As People don't believe that they get further from their eastern Australian home it remains 're related, much less twins and there's an adventure for Tom but Jordyassumption when Max is out with his mother that she's more sullen. Once they arrive at their ultimate destination - a ramshackle caravan park - Tom begins to understand why but not before both lads realise that their worries are just beginninghis nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1921922087</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=Audrey MageeKay Chronister|title= Desert Creatures|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a 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 find hope.|isbn=1803364998}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Eric LaRocca|title=The UndertakingTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.}}{{Frontpage|author=Madelaine Lucas|title=Thirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Peter Faber has decided ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to become part of the new Nazi initiative. He will marry Katharina Spinellbe a light and weightless feeling, a woman he wonbut I had always longed for gravity't even meet till their honeymoon. In return he'll receive honeymoon leave Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the Russian front while she will secure a widow's pension should anything happen to himyear-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, hopefully providing the Reich narrator relives the affair with one or two more Aryan babies on a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the waysummer after. Peter may not be Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the son24-inyear-law Katharinaold narrator's parents envisaged but their disappointment is blunted by their luxurious lifestyle under the patronage of the sinister Dr Weinart. Howeverdeepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, this is still wartime how it changed her perspective on both romantic and Peter must eventually return to Russia familial relationships and whatever fate awaits himhow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782391029</amazonuk>0861546490
}}
{{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.''
''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|isbn=191458564X}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Pamela ErensJennifer Saint|title=The VirginsAtalanta|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Set in 1979-80 in an elite boarding school on the east coast of the USA ''The Virgins'' tells the story I was as worthy as any one of two young peoplethem. The story is mainly narrated by Bruce Bennett-Jones who I would have liked to have a close relationship with Aviva Rossner but her unlikely choice was Seung Jungget on board that ship, I vowed. They're I would take my place, not shy about flaunting their relationship and it's just in the talk name of Auburn Academy, but whilst the watchers believe that goddess. It was for the relationship is one sake of unalloyed passionmy name, the truth is rather different and the couple are set on a path to an inevitable tragedytoo.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848549873</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Donal RyanAmanthi Harris|title=The Thing About DecemberBeautiful Place|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Johnsey Cunliffe was always Padma, a nice boyyoung Sri Lankan, but a little slow - has returned to the one that the other kids picked Villa Hibiscus on and it's much the same in adult lifesouthern coast of her home country. If you were to ask Johnsey he'd say that he was This is a gomplace she spent her formative years. Even if you've never met It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the word before you know what Villa, how it means. It wasnbecame her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score''t too bad whilst Daddy was there - he was a man with a certain presence and even when it was just Johnsey for this gentle and his mother he had some supportyet subtly violent novel. But after Padma's present fails to escape her death Johnsey was dependant on small kindnesses from other people past and at much like the mercy musical score of those for whom he was an easy target. His life might have continued in this rather unsatisfactory a film, that strand weaves its way for some time but for through everything that happens at the collision of two eventsVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781620091</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James McBride178563335X|title=The Good Lord Bird|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Henry 'The Onion' Shackleford lives as Henrietta (or just plain Onion) until he's 17 due to a misunderstanding that may prove too dangerous for him to correct. The reason is that the person under this misapprehension is the fiercely well-meaning slavery abolitionist (with the emphasis on the 'fiercely') John Brown. As Onion accompanies him on his quest to free every slave they encounter, he discovers that Brown's philanthropy only stretches so far. Meanwhile it's that time of the 19th century when a shadow spreads over America, one that will cause a historic scar almost as great as that of slavery but Brown is oblivious to this. He doesn't; want to start a civil war, just an armed slave revolt.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1594486344</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSea Defences|author=Ashley Hay|title=The Railwayman's WifeHilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Mackenzie When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and Anikka Lachlan have all wondering why they could possibly want're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. They live Thelma's daughter-in Thirroul-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a close New South Wales coastal communitylovely place, are parents but Rachel is struggling to develop a lovely little girl real bond with the parish - and nowshe's in awe of the vicar, in 1948Gail, Mac has come through but then she's been doing the war job for more than thirty years unscathed due to his job at home on the railways. However in a single moment all their luck changes Rachel and Anikka becomes Christopher hoped that a widow, another grieving shadowwalk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. Alongside her neighbours (a war poet who can't write now he's home and the local GP who experienced hell while not being able to bring anyone back from its grasp) Anikka must learn the most difficult lesson: how to go on livingAnd then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1743318014</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Amy Tan1398515388|title=The Joy Luck ClubBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary= The Joy Luck Club First of all, it was Jing Mei's mother's idea. After arriving the earthquake, deep in the US from China ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in 1949 she invited three other Chinese immigrant ladies to jointurn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The four would meet to play Mah Jong result was complete and feast on morsels that none of them could really affordutter devastation. Once played outThe deaths were uncountable, they shared stories and the loss of the land they'd leftlivelihoods was widespread. The evenings evolve over time; fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the food becomes affordable, men join the discussions list of priorities but - six months after the core remains the sametsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. Four Chinese mothers living He wasn't a new life while sharing moments enjoyed dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and regretted, discussing their children and parents and telling stories of wisdom, happiness and, sometimes, intense painTamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>B0031Y9DPU</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sam Byers0989715337|title=IdiopathyPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Katherine no longer seeks or expects to be happy. She's stuck in a place and a job she hates and her relationship with Daniel broke up over a year ago. Since then she's Some frogs had sexual encounters with a few men but her motivations have been confusing and disturbing - not least to Katherinegotten into the well. She has a vicious wit (actually, calling it ''wit '' is perhaps stretching Walter stood waist-deep in the point a littlefragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat.Long strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them..) which repels Two of the dogs leaned over the people she'd like to attract opening and attracts barked down at the people she'd prefer to repelstrange noise of the buckets as he filled them. Daniel is with a new girlfriend (well, there was a ''slight'' overlap) but he's not certain How is that he loves Angelica. He's for an opening? The style of this novel in a difficult situation: not telling her that he loves her becomes tantamount the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to telling her that he doesn't love her wistful and as musing, turning on a result he sixpence. And author Marco North, who has to tell her that the most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he loves her just means to keep go on the level.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007412088</amazonuk>
}}
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