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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Matthew SmithJeremy Cooper|title= The WakingDiscord|rating= 3.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=Isabel SykesDiscord: a lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, 23things, recounts or ideas) The principal example of discord within the recent attempt she made to novel, as with most instances of discord, is easily located. The two protagonists of the novel, Rebekah Rosen and Evie Bennet, are as different as they come . Rebekah is an uptight, traditional and no-nonsense composer close to terms retirement, while Evie is a force of nature, bounding onto the musical scene as a precocious saxophonist, oozing with the loss talent and charm. The two, predictably, don't always see eye to eye, their approaches different and Evie's progressive views at odds with Rebekah's conservative leaning. However, something connects them beyond just their musical project: a sort of her mother, fragile alliance formed within the acclaimed but psychologically disturbed novelist Marianne Sykesclamour. Marianne died in |isbn=1804272264}}{{Frontpage|author=Polly Barton|title=What Am I, A Deer?|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Polly Barton's debut novel is an unexplained house fire when Isabel was tenintellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. Inspired by The narrator, newly relocated from London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the appearance process of Imogen Taylorlocalisation, an enchanting young woman who wants rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to write a PhD on new audience. Barton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. From this, the novel opens out into a wider, resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, accepted, or loved?|isbn=1804272175}}{{Frontpage|author=Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=The Disappearing Act|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Despite her motheranonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short workof autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for a literary festival she is to be 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 this series of events, Isabel plunges into M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. The train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, while the circus embodies the depths reshaping of her past identity and a retreat into fantasy, an intense new friendshipimpulse that lies at the very heart of the novel form itself. After discovering that Imogen |isbn=1804272329}}{{Frontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=Pale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Our unnamed narrator is not who she seems about to bebegin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of this journey is, Isabel must face is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the darkest moments from her childhood floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in order the past as the pair travel to protect her family from more tragedythe station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.}}{{Frontpage|author=Makenna Goodman|title=Helen of Nowhere|rating=4. She receives unexpected help from beyond 5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It could be argued that the grave: pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the strangebrink of losing both his career and his relationship, glittering fragments embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of her motherthe countryside house he's lastconsidering, Helen represents a volta in his life, unfinished workher past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form'Midnightsong'. 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>0995654158</amazonuk>1804272205

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Ali SmithOlga Tokarczuk|title= AutumnHouse of Day, House of Night|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= The first part in Ali Smith''What's four part the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?'Seasonal' series The title of this spellbinding work, Autumn is the story ''House of Daniel Gluck and Elisabeth DemandDay, unexpected friends who used to be neighbours when Elisabeth was a little girl. In a series House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of memories and dreamsshifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, we discover their friendship like the shift from Daniel babysitting Elisabeth through day to her visits with him now night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in that he image is in a home and drawing towards the end of his extremely long and fascinating life. Along the way, we get a wonderfully written insight into time, memorieshouse, and stoic against the fleeting nature of life itselfancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241973317</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nicola Pugliese and Shaun Whiteside (translator)Thea Lenarduzzi|title=MalacquaThe Tower|rating=35

|summary=We're in Naples, in recent history, and it'How unctuous are the fats of another's raining. It will life, how dizzying their sugars in fact rain for four days solid – and seeing as itour bloodstream's October everyone's dressed for all seasons and expecting a bit . In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of greyT, but the protagonist of this is taking the proverbialtale. ItJust as T's also making story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the city rather dangerous – when people report daughter of a huge sink-hole appearing wealthy family in one street it's soon found that a pair of cars went into itthe 19th century, and two people have who diedof tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, and more passed on with a whole building collapsingcaptures T's imagination. WhatAnnie's morefate is, above all, some strange noises are coming from an abandoned civic palaceenticing story to T. Is the city being told something by these strange eventsIt is a story which she consumes avariciously, or can both in a journalist find a logic behind the circumstances?quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1911508067</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Iosi HavilioJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title= Petite FleurVaim|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Every now and then you read a book that leaves you thinking “well I have no idea what just happened but I know I enjoyed it”''All was strange''... This is how I felt after reading Petite Fleurhaunting phrase encapsulates the pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and Eline, two of the fifth novel (perhaps 'long paragraph' would be more appropriate) from cult Argentinian writer Iosi Havilioprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1911508040</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tania HershmanClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Some of Us Glow More Than OthersBig Kiss, Bye-Bye

|genre=Short Stories Literary Fiction|summary=I won't be alone Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in stating that reading short story collections can be slightly awkwardanguish and distortion. Going through from A-ZEven a kiss, witnessing usually a bounty symbol of ideas intimacy and characters in short order can be too muchcloseness, but do you have becomes evidence of love lost. When the right to pick and choose according to what appealsnarrator cries out internally, ''come over here and what time you have to fill? The sequence has carefully been consideredkiss me, surely. Such would appear '' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to be the case hereconfirm her emotional numbness. The last time I read one imagined recipient of this author's collectionsplea is Xavier, with [[The White Road by Tania Hershman|The White Road]]her ex-partner, the only real difficulty was holding back and rationing them, but here you not only get a whopping forty pieces of writing, they are also spread into sectionsghost she conjures to test her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910061484</amazonuk>1804271934

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=James KelmanHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=That Was a Shiver, and Other StoriesLili is Crying|rating=34.5|genre=Short Stories Literary Fiction|summary=This First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the ninth book hearts of short stories by this author, which means he's presented its readers just as many collections of Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the short form as he has novels. You will find it hard to think of another author that has been so noted for longer works (what with [[How Late It Waspage and positions them elsewhere, How Late by James Kelman|How Late It Was, How Late]] winning the Booker) but who is so generous in presenting shorter pieces for the time-poordisjointed, or those like me who see the variety in a writer's short or less typical works to be the more interesting places to turntruncated. Opening these pages, from Like the pen lives of such an esteemed proher characters, came with no small sense of anticipationthey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786890909</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Kate MildenhallJonathan Buckley|title= SkylarkingOne Boat|rating= 4|genre= General Literary Fiction |summary= Kate ''One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and Harriet are best friends growing up together on an isolated Australian capefragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. As Set against the daughters evocative backdrop of the lighthouse keepersa small coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the two girls share everything, until a fisherman, McPhail, arrives in their small communitymagic of its setting and its power to provoke profound introspection. When Kate witnesses Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the desire that flares between him and Harriet, reason she is torn has visited it after the death of both her parents. Prompted by her feelings of envy mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and longingdeeply self-aware, inviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. An innocent moment in McPhail's hut then occurs It is a book that threatens to tear their peaceful community apartnot only requires but inspires depth of thought, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785079239</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joanna WalshEowyn Ivey|title=Worlds from the Word's EndBlack Woods Blue Sky

|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=We here at The Bookbag liked this author's fairly recent collection 'Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of short storiesBirdie, [[Vertigo by Joanna Walsh|Vertigo]]. I myself missed outthe young mother of toddler Emaleen, but that seemed to be vignettes from one character's narration – here we get homosexual male narrators and who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a host morebar waitress, as well as much less a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of the sadness prevalent beforeEmaleen. Having had Described as a brief encounter with this author courtesy of ''wild card'', she feels stuck in her entry into day-to-day life, and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the [[Bookshelf (Object Lessons) by Lydia Pyne|Object Lessons]] series, I was intrigued by North Fork to fulfil her name being stamped on desires of a selection of shortssimple life surrounded by nature. Was it the ideal calling card? Let's face itWhen she meets Arthur Nielson, the very short story itself can be a postcard – let's saystrange, taciturn and solitary man, from who says he has a specific hotel or twocabin over there, as we see hereshe feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with her. Perhaps I should have geared myself upWithout realising it, however, for such intricate writing on said postcards – this calling will transform hers and for the exotic locations from which they came…Emaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1911508105</amazonuk>1472279042

{{newreview|author= Raja Alem, Katharine Halls (translator) and Adam Talib (translator)|title= The Dove's Necklace|rating= 3|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I always hated Lit-Crit at school, so it came as something as a surprise that I ended up reviewing books, for fun. Now I understand. Finally, I see why literary critics get so up-in-arms about lowly book reviewers. There is a difference. This book explains it all. The author is ''the first woman to win the International Prize for Arabic fiction'' for this book. The book also the LiBerator prize for ''the best book translated into German'' in 2014. I suspect it's not done yet. ''The Times'' tells us that it ''exemplifies everything that is currently shaking the foundations of Arab society.'' I am sure that not only will more plaudits fall upon the author and the book, but also that it will become a classic, spoken of in the same breath as the international classics: Proust, Márquez, Joyce, Rushdie, Nabokov…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715651757</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Daniel Kehlmann and Ross Benjamin (translator)Sally Rooney|title=You Should Have LeftIntermezzo

|summary=Our narrator Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a screenwritergrandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, tasked with coming up with a sequel to his hit movie ''Besties'' – a film which helped pay for a house, but which his actress wife keeps letting him know, isn't ''art''as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. To concentrateAmong the many relationships woven into this story, the family – he, central one for readers to unravel is the wife, fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and their four year old daughter – have rented a largePeter Koubek. Ivan, modern house at the end of a horridsocially awkward chess prodigy, hairpin bend-filled roadcontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in a charming alpine landscapeDublin. But things arenFollowing their father't right. The couple are at loggerheads too much, things keep unsettling our narrators passing after a long battle with cancer, and the sole shopkeeper for miles around is ready with the Hammer Horror styled warnings of strange eventsbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials. Quickly we see the book's title in all its galling clarity – but it isn't too late to get out… is it? And out of what, exactly?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786484048</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Tove JanssonFyodor Dostoyevsky|title= Letters From KlaraWhite Nights|rating= 5|genre= Literary FictionShort Stories|summary= Famed As always in Dostoyevsky, the UK for her creation of the Moomin family, Jansson character work is rather belatedly beginning to gather the richly deserved esteem for her adult writingssublime. For that I offer my heart-felt thanks to publishers ''Sort of books'' and Thomas Teal, who has been responsible for most of the translations. Receiving this one, two things strike: firstly I somehow seem to have missed one of the series, and secondly there'll come One is never left wondering what a time sooner rather than later when there'll be no more to be had. The former will be rectified, the latter character is a sad thoughtthinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908745614</amazonuk>0241619785

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom Malmquist and Henning Koch (translator)James Baldwin|title=In Every Moment We Are Still AliveGiovanni's Room

|summary=Tom Malmquist is a poet from Sweden. Originally published in Swedish in 2015, this is his first This Italian work of prose. While it's being marketed as a novelfeminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the moment our protagonist, it reads more like a stylized memoir. Similar to Karl Ove Knausgaard's booksValeria Cossati, it features the author as the central character and narratorpurchases her forbidden notebook, and learns about herself in the story of grief it tells is a highly personal onemost intimate and revealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473640008</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Michel DeonOttessa Moshfegh|title= Your Father's RoomMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating= 4.53|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I don't feel altogether qualified to review Michel Déon's 2004 fictionalised memoir ''Your Father's Room''At best, translated here into English for this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the first time. I hadn't heard fragility of Déon before receiving my copyhuman relationships; at worst, it is the cynical, let alone read any predictable and slightly trite tale of his booksan unlikeable protagonist. This unlikely heroine, published over a 70 year period to much acclaim slim, attractive and newly orphaned girl in his homeland. But it's part of her twenties is disillusioned with the pleasure of book reviewing world, but resolves not to read with no prior knowledge or prejudicelose sleep over it: in fact, all the more so if you discover an absolute gemher solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910477346</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Naomi AldermanMatthew Tree|title= The PowerWe'll Never Know|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=It started with the girls and spread. From younger woman Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to older womanbe different from his father, it was awoken a drunk and everything changed. Womankind now has the power chronic underachiever whose dreams of electricity in their fingertips and, slowly being exceptional at first, the balance any of power in the world starts shifting. We follow the stories his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of different people, in different walks of life, who see this from the very beginning and hurtle towards 'the event'self confidence. One thing in this startling new development is certainSo Tim applied himself to his studies, patriarchal archetypes cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and chauvinist thinkers are in for the shock of their lives. Literallyset himself high but achievable ambitions. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670919969</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anna PitoniakB0C47LV1PC|title=The FuturesFragility|author=Mosby Woods

|summary=When we first meet Evan PeckCan you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, he has just started at Yale College, where he plays ice hockey. Like lots of is the question should you make it? Or is the other playersquestion if you did, he would it land? The catch is actually Canadian, from small-town British Columbiathat the answer for both could well be.... One night after a party Evan meets Julia Edwards at their dorm and they go out for pizzano. She technically has a boyfriend from her Boston boarding school days ''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, but they soon break up and before long Julia and Evan have become inseparableOregon, as they will remain for cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the rest of their college years.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0718184564</amazonuk>covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Stephan CollishawMosby Woods|title= The Song of the StorkA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Stephan Collishaw has achieved 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 war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a rare feat – man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a novel man who can tell you what will happen given any set amidst the horrors of Nazi tyranny that does not shy away from human sufferingcircumstances. That man would be valuable, but does not drown right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it either. back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1785079190</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Sabrina Mahfouz0571379559|title= The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women WriteHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating= 5|genre= AnthologiesLiterary Fiction|summary= What does it mean to be British and Muslim? This ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is a question these writers tackle with stunning claritythe story of four people. Modern day British society has a varied sense Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of cultural heritage; broken bricks. Insubstantial as it is a society that is changing and moving forward as might look, it adds more 's stood the passage of time, storms and more voices floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the populationdelivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, but is also one the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that has they're related, much less twins and there's an undercurrent of anxiety and fear towards those assumption when Max is out with his mother that are minoritiesshe's his nanny. So this collection displays how all that fear is received; it comes in the form of stereotypical labels and racial prejudice, which are themes eloquently reproduced here.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0863561462</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= David SzalayClaire North|title= All That Man IsHouse of Odysseus|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Two teenage boys on an Inter Rail trip around Europe find themselves staying with ''What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a frustrated housewife on few months after where we left off. In the outskirts palace of PragueOdysseus, a driftless young Frenchman discovers sexual fulfilment on a package holiday in Cypruswith delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, a lovestruck Hungarian minder is embroiled in a prostitution racket who sailed to war at an upmarket London hotel, a Belgian academic is forced 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 confront his egotism when his partner becomes pregnant, a Danish tabloid journalist exposes a high-ranking politicianIthaca's love affairshores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a property developer inspects a new project in fragile peace. One that shatters however with the French alpsreturn of Orestes, King of Mycenae, a Scot living in Croatia fails in love and businesshis sister Elektra, a Russian millionaire confronts divorce, an elderly English politician survives a road accident in Italyseeking refuge. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099593696</amazonuk>0356516075

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Elizabeth HayKay Chronister|title= His Whole Life|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= If you think that ''un-put-down-able'' is the greatest accolade for a book, think again. ''Put-down-able'' can be stronger praise: ''His Whole Life'' is put-down-able. It encourages you to put it down, to wrap yourself in the slow-moving story, the exquisite writing, the subtleties of the characters, and just walk around for a while with them slowly sinking in; it encourages you to come back to it again and again; mostly it encourages you to put it down, to read it slowly, because you don't want it to end.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857055445</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Phillip Lewis|title= The BarrowfieldsDesert Creatures

|genre= Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary= Just before Henry Aster's birthWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, his fatherpost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a frustrated novelist and lawyerworld devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, reluctantly returns this genre is a way for humans to the remote North Carolina mountains in which he was improbably raised and installs his young family in a gothic mansion - nicknamed cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'the vulture house' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post- worthy apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of his hero Edgar Allan Poe. There, Henry grows up under the desk of this fierce and brilliant manfears that exist for humanity today. But when a death in the family tips his father toward It is a fearsome unravelling, what was once a young son's reverence is poisoned, and Henry flees, not shocking novel that still manages to return until years later when he, too, must go home againfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473636825</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Paula CocozzaEric LaRocca|title= How to Be HumanThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary FictionHorror|summary= When Mary arrives home from work one day Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to find reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a magnificent fox on her lawn - his ears spiked in attention and every hair bristling with his power to surprise - it ''Big Bad'', whether that is only the beginning. He brings gifts (at leasta home invader, Mary imagines they are gifts)a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and gradually makes himself at home. And as he listens to Mary, Mary listens back. She begins to hear herself for by the first time in years. Her bullish ex-boyfriend, still lurking on end of the fringes of her lifestory, would be appalledbeatable. So would the neighbours with a new baby. They only Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like wildlife that fits with . It is a collection of short stories more interested in the decorhorrors of illness, grief and humiliation. But inside Mary a wildness is growing Horrors that will not be tamedlinger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786330334</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Helen DunmoreMadelaine Lucas|title=Birdcage WalkThirst for Salt

|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=Bristol 1792: Lizzie married well. John Diner Tredevant is a property developer who has reached the zenith of his life's work: building a terrace of prestigious houses overlooking the Avon Gorge. In a time of turbulence as France reaches the dawn of revolution'Love, BritainI'd read, including Diner, fears it may spread. This puts Lizzie in was supposed to be a difficult position since her mother light and step-father both believe in propagating pamphlets and ideas of egalitarianism weightless feeling, but I had always longed for and to allgravity'' Told from a retrospective view, including womena young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. In other wordsOverlaid with later wisdom, they think nothing of spreading ideas of the sort that fanned narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the French flamessummer after. However, thatSet against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''s not LizzieThirst for Salt's only problem… there is a darkness in her husband's past of which shedetails the 24-year-old narrator's unawaredeepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091959403</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Emma HendersonMichael Grothaus|title= The Valentine HouseBeautiful Shining People|rating= 4

|summary= In June 1914, Sir Anthony Valentine, a keen mountaineer, arrives with his family to spend the summer in their chalet, high in the French Alps. There, for the first time, fourteen-year-old foundling Mathilde starts work as one of the 'uglies' - village girls employed as servants But fearing something and picked, having it is believedcome 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 ensure they donchange it.'t catch Sir Anthony's roving eye. For Mathilde it is  ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the start question of a life-long entanglement with les anglais - strange, exciting people, far removed from the hard grind of farmingidentity and acceptance. Except she soon finds the Valentines are less carefree than they appear, with a curiously absent daughter no one talks aboutOf what it means to be human. It will be decades - disrupted by warOf what is real and what is artificial, accidents and a cruel betrayal - before Mathilde discovers whether the key to the mystery. And in 1976, the year Sir Anthony's great-great grandson comes to visit, she must decide whether to use itdevelopment of technology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444704028</amazonuk>191458564X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hannah TintiJennifer Saint|title=The Twelve Lives of Samuel HawleyAtalanta|rating=45

|summary=When she turns twelve''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, Samuel Hawley teaches his daughterI vowed. I would take my place, Loo (short not just in the name of the goddess. It was for Louise)the sake of my name, how to use her grandfathertoo. Atalanta''s rifle Princess. Shooting Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a gun and hotwiring a car prove to be useful skills for this daughter of rather than a fugitive. Hawley son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a lawless modern cowboy formidable huntress, one who's had many close shaves over his years on the run longs for committing robberies and making dodgy dealsadventure. He and his young daughter form When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a cosy unit fierce band of their warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own; they live off legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of Chinese food challenges and vending machine snacks in motel rooms discovery and move on every six months or so to avoid the consequences of his criminal activities. But when they get to Olympusthrough it, MassachusettsAtalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, Hawley decides it's time to settle down. He buys a house by the water – with cash – and becomes a clean-living fishermanwill be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1472234367</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Nicole Dennis-Benn Amanthi Harris|title= Here Comes the Sun Beautiful Place|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction |summary= You have to assume the team behind the cover sleeve for Nicole Dennis-Benn's debut novel Here Come's the Sun have a keen sense of irony. Either that or none of them read beyond the first page.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178607124X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Polly Clark|title= Larchfield|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction |summary=I It's early summer when a young poet, Dora Fielding, moves to Helensburgh on the west coast of Scotland and her hopes are first challenged. Newly married, pregnant, she's excited by the prospect of a life that combines family and creativity. She thinks she knows what being a person, a wife, a mother, means. She is soon shown that she is wrong. As the battle begins for her very sense of self, Dora comes to find the realities of small town life suffocating, and, eventually, terrifying; until she finds a way to escape reality altogether. Another poet, she discovers, lived in Helensburgh once. Wystan H. Auden, brilliant and awkward at 24, with his first book of poetry published, should be embarking on success and society in London. Instead, in 1930, fleeing a broken engagement, he takes a teaching post at Larchfield School for boys where he is mocked for his Englishness and suspected - rightly - of homosexuality. Yet in this repressed limbo Wystan will fall in love for the first time, even as he fights his deepest fears.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786481928</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Otto de Kat and Laura Watkinson (translator)|title=The Longest Night|rating=3.5

|summary=Emma Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has a philosophy – ''let returned to the dead rest, and love Villa Hibiscus on the living''southern coast of her home country. The problem with that, as This is a 96-year-old, is that there are too few living left, and so while the love remains place she will go through spent her memories, taking formative years. It is not a woozyplace she was born into, diaphanous path through all but the major events one she thinks of her lifeas home. Starting in wartime Berlin with one husband How she came to be at the Villa, who gets snatched from how it became her at workhome, fleeing to another place to wait and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for peace, this gentle and wait for him in vain, moving yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to Holland and finding new love, escape her past and so on – this wispy journey will show all much like the impacts musical score of wara film, from rationing right up to exile, death and survivalthat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa. The memories are coming strongly here and now, as Emma is waiting for at least one of her two sons to visit, and then she will die…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857056085</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Marisa Silver178563335X|title= Little Nothing|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction |summary=In an unnamed country at the beginning of the last century, a peasant couple longs for a child. In despair they turn to gypsy tonics and archaic prescriptions, and one cold wintery night, the couple's wish comes true. But the silence that follows the birth forewarns of darker days to come. Strangers look on askance and fall speechless in the child's presence, and villagers protectively hush their children as they pass on narrow market lanes. Pavla is no ordinary child, but then this is no ordinary tale.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786071274</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewSea Defences|author=Jeroen Blokhuis and Asja Novak (translator)|title=The Yellow HouseHilary Taylor|rating=35

|summary=If you were the needy kindWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, would you really join sitting in the drumming-out of town of two people accused of murder purely because of their nationality? Would you get on a feeling of belonging just because PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you were there when someone carried a dead dog down off a mountain? The main character in this novel doesneed to pick the children up. But he has something that will really get him notedHer husband, Christopher, wellcollects six-thoughtyear-ofold Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, includedwhilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. He has come to Holthorpe, on the south of France to set up an artists' collectiveNorfolk coast, where he can live and work alongside his counterpartsis a lovely place, who can inspire each other and best each other but Rachel is struggling to create wonderful art. In fact develop a muchreal bond with the parish -respected guest is on his way now, so surely he can find kinship? The guestand she's name isin awe of the vicar, after allGail, Gauguinbut then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. The main character is, of course, Vincent van Gogh…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907320563</amazonuk>And then Hannah went missing.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jennifer Down1398515388|title=Our Magic HourThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|summary=There ''Some frogs had always been Katy, Audrey and Adamgotten into the well. They've been friends since school and now, along with Audrey's partner Nick ''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, they remain inseparable as young professionalsnaked except for his beaten leather hat. ThenLong strands of their eggs wove around him, one day, Katy kills herselfsticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. No warning, no reason just no KatyTwo of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he filled them. '' How is that for an opening? The four are suddenly three trying to make sense style of a moment that leaves so many questions this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a world that refuses sixpence. And author Marco North, who has the most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to pause while they figure it outgo on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1925240835</amazonuk>