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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Sarah PerryJeremy Cooper|title= The Essex SerpentDiscord|rating= 43.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I confess to Discord: a bias… when I came across a reference to Sarah Perry's latest lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, or ideas) The principal example of discord within the novel; I wanted to read it for , as with most instances of discord, is easily located. The two reasons onlyprotagonists of the novel, Rebekah Rosen and Evie Bennet, are as different as they come. She Rebekah is an uptight, traditional and no-nonsense composer close to retirement, while Evie is a local writerforce of nature, and bounding onto the book is set in musical scene as a place not too far awayprecocious saxophonist, but that I have yet oozing with talent and charm. The two, predictably, don't always see eye to explore eye, their approaches different and which fascinates me: the Blackwater estuary in Essex. ThatEvie's progressive views at odds with Rebekah's conservative leaning. However, something connects them beyond just their musical project: a place of the kind of wide open skies and mud creeks that you will find up much sort of fragile alliance formed within the Norfolk and Suffolk coast as well, and a landscape type that probably only appeals to a certain type of personclamour.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178125544X</amazonuk>1804272264

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Susan BealePolly Barton|title=The Good GuyWhat Am I, A Deer?

|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=September 1964: Polly Barton's debut novel is an Indian summer in suburban Massachusettsintellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. Ted McDougall is The 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 twenty-three-year-old Goodyear tyre salesman who lives with his wife Abigail and ten-month-old daughter Mindy in the up-and-coming Elm Grove communitynew audience. Both Ted and Abigail feel unappreciated in their roles. Ted knows his in-laws wanted him to become Barton treats this as a lawyer and join Abigail's father's firmparadoxical act: arguably, but he's a good salesman and wishes they wouldn't look down on him in striving for it. Meanwhile Abigailuniversality, an American history bufflanguage is endlessly repackaged, can't master the domestic arts its originality at risk of cooking and cleaningdisappearing altogether. From this, much as she triesthe novel opens out into a wider, and longs resonant question: to go back what extent do we translate ourselves in order to school.be understood, accepted, or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473630339</amazonuk>1804272175

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Emma ClineMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title= The GirlsDisappearing Act|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=CaliforniaDespite her anonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. Summer 1969. Fourteen year old Evie Boyd is a thoughtful yet bored teenager A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for a broken home. The attention literary festival she craves is nowhere to be found a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, her journey slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in the form this series of her neglectfulevents, serial dating mother, or even M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the friendship show. The train functions as a motif of her fickle best friend Connie. Abandoned by those around hertransience and impermanence, Evie's path collides with Suzanne – while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and a mysterious older girl who introduces Evie to a strange yet thrilling new liferetreat into fantasy, offering her an impulse that lies at the very heart of the intimate relationship her life back home lacksnovel form itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784740446</amazonuk>1804272329

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Simon Van Booy295967572X|title= Father's DayPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating= 5|genre= General Literary Fiction|summary=When devastating news shatters Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the life purpose of six year old Harveythis journey is, she finds herself in is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the care of a veteran social worker, Wanda, floor somewhere'' and alone has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the world save for one relative she has never met - a disabled ex-con, haunted past as the pair travel to the station by a violent past he can't escape. Moving between past coach and present, Father's Day weaves together the story of Harvey's childhood on Long Island, and her life as train is a young woman in Parissteam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780749694</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Thomas KeneallyMakenna Goodman|title=Napoleon's Last IslandHelen of Nowhere

|summary=It's not usual to open a review with could be argued that the history pervading theme of how the this book came is malaise - a hard-to be written but with ''Napoleon's Last Island'' the story sheds an intriguing light -place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the plot. In 2012 author Thomas Keneally was given tickets to an exhibition brink of Napoleonic artefacts: uniformslosing both his career and his relationship, furnitureembodies this feeling. However, china, paintings, military decorationsGoodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, snuff boxes radical and memorabilia as well as Napoleon's death maskunnerving: Helen. He was intrigued as to how the exhibits The connection between Helen and particularly the mask came to be in Australiaprotagonist is indirect yet intimate. Some pieces in As the exhibition had been bought in later but most came from the descendants former owner of the Balcombe familycountryside house he's considering, who came to the colony Helen represents a volta in the first half of the nineteenth centuryhis life, from St Helena via Englandher past tied to his potential fresh start. The result of Keneally's research into realtor who shows the protagonist around the story is house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''Napoleon's Last Islandan entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473625335</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Natural Way of ThingsOlga Tokarczuk|authortitle=Charlotte WoodHouse of Day, House of Night

|summary=Yolanda and Verla wake up disorientated. They realise they've been drugged. Yolanda thinks 'What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that perhaps they are ? How can one go on calmly living in some kind it?'' The title of mental facility - She knew she was not madthis spellbinding work, but all lunatics thought that. Verla just sits''House of Day, still and frozenHouse of Night'', waiting. And soon enoughsomewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, two men arrive to reveal their fate. Yolanda and Verlasubtle changes which govern our lives, along with eight other girls, have been brought like the shift from day to a remote farmhouse surrounded by an electrified fence. Their heads are shaved. They are dressed in uncomfortable, scratchy, Amish-style clothes. They are tied together like a chain gang. Andnight, like any chain ganghowever quotidian, their days are marked with forced labourcausing chaos. Two menBut, one more cruel than the otherconstant in that image is the house, and a so-called nurse are their jailers, not their guardiansstoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1760291870</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Emma GeenThea Lenarduzzi|title=The Many Selves of Katherine NorthTower|rating=3.5|genre=Science Literary Fiction|summary=As a Bristol-area 'phenomenaut'How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, nineteen-year-old Kit projects herself into Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the lab-grown bodies identity of all sorts T, the protagonist of creaturesthis tale. SheJust as T's recently spent story is being told, the story of a lot second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of time as a fox (appropriate given her nickname) and got particularly close with wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a vixen named Tomokotower, captures T's imagination. ItAnnie's becoming much harder for her fate is, above all, an enticing story to leave the animal world behind at the end of her 'jumps'T. Even after BuckleyIt is a story which she consumes avariciously, her neuroengineerboth in a quest for truth and knowledge, signals her to 'Come home' and she resumes her original body, she has trouble giving up animal tendencies like territorialismin service of myth, toileting outdoors fable and raiding binsfantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408858436</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sjon Jon Fosse and Victoria Cribb Damion Searls (translator)|title=Moonstone: The Boy Who Never WasVaim|rating=54

|summary=Sixteen-year-old Mani Stein - Moonstone in translation - existed on ''All was strange''... This haunting phrase encapsulates the fringes pervading sense of society. He lived otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Reykjavik and Vaim, a fictional fishing village in 1918 the night sky (Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and the day for that matter) was lit by the eruptions Eline, two of the Katla volcano. The Great War was raging, or possibly grinding on, but life protagonists caught in the capital carried on much as usual. There were shortages, such as coal, but there was the new fashion and it was for the movies that Mani lived, seeing every production he could, sometimes several times. He dreamed about the films, changing them to suit his tastes, working his own life into the plots. But there was another reason why Mani was a misfit: Mani was gay and frequently made a living as a sex workerits melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473613132</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Conor O'CallaghanClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Nothing on EarthBig Kiss, Bye-Bye

|summary=On a sweltering night Everything in what this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is a blisteringly hot summer a young girl hammers at a man's door steeped in anguish and when let into the house tells him that her father has disappeared ''too''distortion. Gradually her story emergesEven a kiss, of usually a home on one symbol of those estates so common in Ireland after the collapse intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of the Celtic Tiger with only the occasional house occupied and others only part builtlove lost. It could be any one of hundreds of Irish towns at that time and its main feature is When the lack of hope that it will never be any better. Our narrator tells her storycries out internally, much''come over here and kiss me, he says, as '' it was told is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to him and we hear confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of a life on the edge of povertythis plea is Xavier, with strange noises in the nighther ex-partner, words written in the dust on the windows mirrored by those written in blue ink on a ghost she conjures to test her skindetachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781620342</amazonuk>1804271934

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Per Olov Enquist Helene Bessette and Deborah Bragan-Turner Kate Briggs (translator)|title=The Parable BookLili is Crying|rating=34.5

|summary=It's not only springtime when First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a man's fancies turn to thoughts of love – he can also do it in timeless text which wrenches the autumn hearts of his life, its readers just as does Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the man involved here. But being a well-known author, page and being beholden to silencepositions them elsewhere, can he really put his thoughts on paper? It happened a long time agodisjointed, and he only met truncated. Like the woman concerned a couple lives of timesher characters, but with it being such a powerful event and such a slightly unusual circumstance, what should he do? It takes a notebook of his father's love poems to his mother, that he finds both they are often left tragically incomplete and scorched, to give him the green light – the voice from the past that says to him, 'go for it'. And what we read here is a result.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857059912</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Maggie O'FarrellJonathan Buckley|title=This Must Be the PlaceOne Boat

|summary=Maggie O'Farrell's globe-trotting seventh novel opens in 2010 with Daniel Sullivan, an American linguistics professor. He lives with his wife ClaudetteOne Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a French actress who retreated contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. Set against the limelightevocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the magic of its setting and their two children in a remote home in Donegalits power to provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the death of both her parents. It was 10 years ago that he first came here and met Claudette Prompted by chance when her van had a flat tire; he struck up a conversation with mourning, her son Ari narrative voice is meditative and gave the boy tips for dealing with his stutter. Now, preparing to fly back to Brooklyn for his father's ninetieth birthday partydeeply self-aware, he's caught short by a long-lost voice he hears on inviting the radioreader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It belongs to Nicola Janks, is a former lover he last saw 24 years ago; when he learns book that she died soon after they were togethernot only requires but inspires depth of thought, he determines to figure out whether he played a role, even if he doesn't like what he findssince its narrative structure is fragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755358805</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joanne HarrisEowyn Ivey|title=Different Class|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= St Oswald's Grammar School For Boys is in crisis. A murdered schoolboy, a procession of new Head Masters, a(nother) new Head Master, a Crisis Intervention Team and a potential merger with St Oswald's all female counterpart, Mulberry House. Roy Straitley is not altogether dismayed at the prospect of delaying his retirement; St Oswald's has been his life, man and boy and a crisis is a crisis after all is said and done, isn't it? It's probably his duty to stay and right the ship. So when the latest of the new Head Masters and his duo of crisis managers walk into the staff room, Straitley can't quite believe his old eyes. The new Head is an ex-pupil of St Oswald's; a boy who, in his time at the esteemed old School caused such an uproarious scandal that one of the Masters ended up in prison! |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0385619235</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Bill Beverly|title= Dodgers|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Judging a book by its cover can mislead. It can especially mislead if you don't look closely at the cover and are just grabbed by the ''feel'' or ''style'' of the design of the thing. Being misled is not necessarily a bad thing. For reasons best left in the depths of my addled brain, the styling of Dodgers had me thinking 'noir'. I was expecting late fifties, early sixties. If I'd looked closer, I'd have seen that it is much more contemporary than that. Then again…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843448572</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Alice Adams|title=Invincible SummerBlack Woods Blue Sky

|summary=As Alice Adams's debut novel opens in 'Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the summer young mother of 1995toddler Emaleen, four university friends are lounging on Bristol's Brandon Hillwho longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, drinking a setting which enables her bad habits and contemplating what the future holdsher accidental neglect of Emaleen. ThereDescribed as a ''wild card''s Eva Andrews, raised she feels stuck in Sussex her day-to-day life, and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a single father; siblings Sylvie and Lucien Marchantstrange, neglected by their alcoholic mother; taciturn and Benedict Waverleysolitary man, a rich kid whose parents have a holiday home on Corfu. Eva who says he has a crush on Luciencabin over there, while Benedict is besotted she feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with Evaher. Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1509814701</amazonuk>1472279042

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author= Birgul OguzSally Rooney|title= HahIntermezzo|rating= 34.5|genre= Literary General Fiction|summary= I was interested to receive this book for review as I knew it was written in a modern, interesting style, being effectively a collection Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of short stories, but appearing more in a novel structuregrandmaster at putting it into words. I wasHer dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, however, rather disappointed with the bookas her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Whilst it does have some very fine examples of prose writing within Among the storiesmany relationships woven into this story, I felt disconnected from the narrator, who central one for readers to unravel is the daughter of fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a recently deceased man who was involved in socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a Turkish military coup successful lawyer living in 1980Dublin. There is therefore a lot of examples of the narrator relating the conversations they had shared regarding ''revolution'', and the way this had affected the daughterFollowing their father's upbringing and childhood. Another 'story' then delves into passing after a seemingly disconnected wander through the townlong battle with cancer, whereby we see the narrator working at gutting fish, and talking about a man she finds repulsive, but who appears to be in love with herbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>9462380740</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chuck PalahniukFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=Make Something UpWhite Nights

|genre=Short Stories |summary=What are we to make of that subtitle-seeming writing on As always in Dostoyevsky, the front cover – ''stories you can't unread''? Does that not apply to all good fiction? Clearly it character work is here due to the reputation of the author, and the baggage his name brings to the page. We'd expect a dramatic approach from anything Palahniuk writes, and an added frisson, an extra layer, from which we might be forced to shrink back. But a lot of the contents don't quite go that farsublime. Yes, things are dramatic, when society starts attaching defibrillators to itself, to create the perfect, simple, care- (''The Price One is Right''-, and Kardashian-) free happiness. A man buys never left wondering what a horse for his daughter – but boy character is it the wrong horse to buy. A man falls in love – yes, sometimes the plot summaries of these stories really are better off for being short (speaking of which, don't turn to the three-page entrant here as a taster, it'll put you off by dint of being, almost uniquely here, a nothing story). A call centre worker can't convince people he's on the level thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and even in their country – until someone starts riffing back to him. A housing estate report conveys bad regulation violations, but not as bad as the happenings at a 'Burning Man'-styled festival, in a very clever couple of tales. But many too are the instances where that extra step has been takentemperaments with remarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099587688</amazonuk>0241619785

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Aliya WhiteleyJames Baldwin|title= The Arrival of MissivesGiovanni's Room|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=In the aftermath of ''Giovanni's Room'' follows the Great Warnarrator David, Shirley Fearn dreams of challenging the conventions of rural Englandan American man living in Paris, where life is as unchanging as the seasons. The scarred veteran Mr Tillerhe navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, left disfigured by an impossible accident on the battlefields of FranceItalian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, brings with him a message: part prophecywho is travelling in Spain, part warningthe real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. As ShirleyIt is David's village prepares for 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=This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the annual May Day celebrationsmoment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, purchases her forbidden notebook, where a new queen will be crowned and learns about herself in the future reborn, she must choose between change most intimate and renewal – will the missives Mr Tiller brings prevent her mastering her identity?revealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907389377</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= P K LynchOttessa Moshfegh|title= ArmadillosMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating= 4.53|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Aggie At best, this novel is one a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the fragility of Texas' downtrodden. Dirt poor human relationships; at worst, it is the cynical, predictable and abusedslightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. ''This unlikely heroine, a 'sub' from a 'sub' family'' … ''Her father slim, attractive and brother enact that 'sub'-ness on newly orphaned girl in hertwenties is disillusioned with the world, week but resolves not to lose sleep over it: infact, week out.'' ''She has only the vaguest notion that there is something wrong with the abuse she endures.her solution lies in her hibernation.''|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178507959X</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tarjei Vesaas, Torbjorn Stoverud and Michael Barnes (translators)Matthew Tree|title=The BirdsWe'll Never Know

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=We're somewhere in rural Scandinavia, on the shores of a large lake, but in a community relying on the farmland that is scattered in amongst the woods. Our chief concerns are brother and sister – Mattis and Hege. He, Mattis, is what the other villagers call 'simple' – sure, he knows a few things about life, and what makes a clever person and what makes a well-turned phrase, and how Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to talk to girls and when to not stare at them, but he is definitely not quite as the others would wish. Those others include be different from his sister, who is seeing her life waste away in listening to his chatter, knitting jumpers to make ends meetfather, a drunk and regretting in her own small way what has got her to middle-age in this situation. But from this galling introduction, you should take away the bigger picture – even if there is no way out, the life in this countryside is brilliantly conveyed, full chronic underachiever whose dreams of sun as well as shade, being exceptional at any of labour his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of idleness, and wit and charm as much as hardshipself confidence. I defy you So Tim applied himself to read this his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and think this corner of Scandinavia bleakset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0914671200</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nicola BarkerB0C47LV1PC|title=The Cauliflower®Fragility|author=Mosby Woods

|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Nicola Barker teasingly refers to herself as this bookCan you make a ''s Yo birthing person'collagist'joke? And if you could, piecing together diverse documents to create a picture of Sri Ramakrishna (1836–1886)is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, a largely illiterate guru who attracted followers to his intense worship of would it land? The catch is that the goddess Kalianswer for both could well be.... His life story no. ''Fragility'' is a sticky mass set as the city of contradictions:|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785150669</amazonuk>Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Toni Morrison Mosby Woods|title= God Help the ChildA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A truly complex and emotionally raw portrayalwar here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that seeks to cover issues nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of racecircumstances. That man would be valuable, gender, and paedophiliaright? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. A slim volume, yesImagine then, but one that is powerful in its punchthis man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099555921</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jesus Carrasco and Margaret Jull Costa (translator)0571379559|title=Out in the OpenThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=35

|summary=Meet ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the boystory of four people. We never learn his name – Tess Hembry's roots are in fact we learn very little Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in this bookthe house on the riverbank, such built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as where or when we areit might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and whyfloods. What we do know is that he has left home. We get the feeling Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his father is too handy with punishmentvegetables, but that can't be to complete the only reason for him first hiding out delivery rounds - and to bring in an olive grove overnightsufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, then fleeing across the plains surrounding rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his familymother's villageJamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Especially as hePeople don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's chosen one of the most awkward, attritional times to cross said plains – the land an assumption when Max is in the middle of a horrendous droughtout with his mother that she's his nanny. When he tries to steal his first provisions from an aged goatherd, however, he finds some light and liquid, but is this substitute father figure ever going to be enough to help the boy flee what he needs to?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009958218X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philip DentClaire North|title=Mutable Passions: Charlotte Bronte: A Disquieting AffairHouse of Odysseus|rating=35|genre=Historical Literary Fiction |summary=As the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë's birth approaches, it is a perfect time for reading about her. Philip Dent's second novel chooses a lesser known period of her life What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to dramatize. All her siblings are now dead; during a hard winter when she is unable to visit her best friend, Ellen Nussey, Charlotte spends her time finishing the excellent ''VilletteIthaca'', her final novelpicks up a few months after where we left off. The family servantIn the palace of Odysseus, Tabby, ribs Charlotte about with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her romantic prospects – including Patrick Brontë's curatehusband, Arthur Bell Nichollswho sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. Charlotte responds with indignation: 'I could no more kiss As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the lips throne of a man with a beard as big as rooks' nests than I could yours, Tabbythe Western Isles.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178589093X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Miroslav Penkov|title=Stork Mountain|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=A young man, his grandfather Having survived – politically and a stork with a broken wing are physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca''company of rebels'' at s shores, Queen Penelope is on the heart brink of this lively tale set in Bulgaria's Strandja Mountainsa fragile peace. The storks One that shatters however with the return to the mountains each spring are migrantsof Orestes, like so many King of the people that have passed through the region over the centuries. The young narrator is also in transitMycenae, born in Bulgaria, but raised and educated in America. The story opens with his return to Bulgaria in search of his grandfather who has broken off contact with his family in America. But the young man's motives are not as clear cut as first appearssister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473622182</amazonuk>0356516075

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Elisa AlbertKay Chronister|title= After BirthDesert Creatures

|genre= Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary= This book With a world that is definitely not becoming increasingly inhospitable for anyone who has humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a rosy picture of new motherhood. In factrobotic takeover, I would probably avoid it if you are contemplating giving birth in the near future. For any woman who has ever struggled through the first few months a world devoid of motherhood, however, water or a partner of somebody who is going through itnuclear holocaust, it this genre is an astounding and revelatory reada way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. Never before have I read ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a more searing, honest and open discussion new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the emotional upheaval fears that exist for humanity today. It is a woman often goes through after giving birthshocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009959014X</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Ayelet Gundar-GoshenEric LaRocca|title= Waking LionsThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There

|summary= If the point ''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.''literature '' - as opposed 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 less exalted though development of technology is exciting or frightening.|isbn=191458564X}}{{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Saint|title=Atalanta|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just-as-worthwhile forms in the name of the goddess. It was for the sake of writing - my name, too. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to force you to think about join the real worldArgonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the political worldchance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, the painful life-as-we-know-it worldwill be her undoing.|isbn=1472292154}}{{Frontpage|author=Amanthi Harris|title=Beautiful Place|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Padma, a young Sri Lankan, whilst catching you up in has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a story about something that never really happenedplace she was born into, butthe one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the Villa, you knowhow it became her home, might well and the machinations that have done so…and if you think flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that matters, then you must read this bookhappens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782271562</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Yan Lianke178563335X|title=The Four BooksSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor

|summary=When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they'The Four Booksre 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. Thelma's daughter-in-law won' t let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a difficultlovely place, challenging novel but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and not for she's in awe of the feint heartedvicar, Gail, or for someone looking but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a pagewalk on the beach would do them some good -turnerit was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing. It really challenges }}{{Frontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Boy and the reader's perceptions Dog|author=Seishu Hase and opens up a gateway to an era that is difficult to imagine for anyone brought up Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in a western culture. Set the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in Maoist China it tells turn, caused the story of four protagonists nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and a memorable antagonistutter devastation. The fourdeaths were uncountable, found guilty and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of antipriorities but -revolutionary crimes are undergoing resix months after the tsunami -education in Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a work camp governed by the childconvenience store. With an Orwellian feel, He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner'The Four Books'' will come s comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to be regarded as an undoubted masterpieceopen his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099569493</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Yann Martel0989715337|title=The High Mountains of PortugalPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Tomas is being thrust ''Some frogs had gotten into the twentieth Century, and he doesnwell.'' ''t like it. He has given himself the job of seeking something out Walter stood waist-deep in the High Mountains fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of Portugal, based on an ancient religious diary he found working in an archivetheir eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and to do so he needs barked down at the use strange noise of his uncle's brand new car to get him there and back in time. His jaw drops when he learns he will have to do the driving himself, for buckets as he cannot make head nor tail of what anything on the infernal machine does and whyfilled them. It '' How is that for an opening? The style of course a certain kind this novel in the form of progressinterconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a looking forwardsixpence. And author Marco North, which who has become quite anathema to him – for ever since he lost his beloved wife, beloved child and father, all in the space most wonderful turn of a weekphrase, starts as he has walked everywhere backwards – shielding himself from what really is ahead with a padded behind, and never letting sight of what he has lostmeans to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782114696</amazonuk>