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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=Over My Dead BodyPale Pieces|author=Hazel McHaffieG M Stevens|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.}}{{Frontpage|author=Makenna Goodman|title=Helen of Nowhere|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The mother It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a patient hard-to-place feeling that something in dire need your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a heartforce which is seductive, radical and a pair of lungs, ceases to pray for unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the survival former owner of her son for the following uncomfortable reason: countryside house he'Feels like you're asking for somebody else s considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to diehis potential fresh start.' Though merely an extra in The realtor who shows the protagonist around the main plot of McHaffiehouse shares stories about Helen, and describes her as 's ''Over My Dead Bodyan entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the situation of this mother quite successfully conveys just how complex reader gets the ethics of organ donation sense arenot altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0992623103</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?''
The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, House of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the shift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in that image is the house, stoic against the ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|isbn=1804271918}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Peter Stjernstrom and Rod Bradbury (translator)Thea Lenarduzzi|title=The Best Book in the WorldTower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Titus Jensen may not have written many great novels for a while (if ever) but his festival readings of others' works 'How unctuous are renowned. Why, his rendition the fats of another''The Diseases of the Swedish Monarchs from Gustavas Vasa to Gustav V'' has been compared favourably to his offerings from ''Handbook for Volvo 245''. Howevers life, one drunken night he and romantic poet Eddie X agree that how dizzying their fame on the festival circuit would be insignificant by comparison if they could write the best book sugars in the world; a combination of all genres, appealing to all tastes and making all the best seller categoriesour bloodstream''. They start work on it the next day but, rather than collaborate, each wants the lone glory. The race (or should that be battle?) to the publishing date is on!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843914808</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Adriaan van Dis|title=Betrayal|rating=4In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Dutchman Mulder renews his acquaintance with his old friend Donald Just as he returns to South AfricaT's story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a land he knew well wealthy family in the days 19th century, who died of apartheidtuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. Life may have moved on and apartheid ceased but some things have worsened. Have Mulder and Donald made any difference at Annie's fate is, above all? As they recall their shadier youth, they have one more chance an enticing story to struggle T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for someone's freedom against all odds truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and a violent societyfantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051849</amazonuk>1804271799
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Her Privates WeJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |authortitle=Frederic ManningVaim|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ernest Hemingway called Frederic Manning's 'All was strange'Her Privates We'' 'The finest and noblest book of men in war' he had ever read. But Hemingway wasn't a very trustworthy man, so we tend to defer judgement. He is, however, useful for contrast. Hemingway's tales of war (such as ''A Farewell to Arms'' and ''For Whom This haunting phrase encapsulates the Bell Tolls'') usually involve macho misfits and trite love stories, feats pervading sense of derring-do and filmic dialogue; all the things, otherworldliness which permeates this story set in factVaim, that have no place a fictional fishing village in Manning's First World War novel. Why is this? Well, by the time Hemingway started driving a Red Cross ambulance on the Italian front (1918), Manning's service was already over. Nevertheless, unlike the illustrious (Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and self-mythologising) HemingwayEline, Manning spent his war deep in the trenches two of the Somme, mixing it with the proletarian soldiery. As such, ''Her Privates We'' is a brutal novel concerning the 'subterranean, furtive, twilight life' of the average Tommy, a work of startling power, and one that completely eclipses the war novels of the romantic Hemingwayprotagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184668787X</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ruth OzekiClaire-Louise Bennett|title=A Tale for the Time BeingBig Kiss, Bye-Bye
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Ruth finds Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a 'Hello Kitty' bag washed up on the shore kiss, usually a symbol of Whaletownintimacy and closeness, the small Canadian island that she and her husband Oliver call homebecomes evidence of love lost. As Ruth opens it and begins reading When the diary safely protected insidenarrator cries out internally, she learns about Nao''come over here and kiss me, '' it is less an invitation than a teenager in Japandesperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. Through her writing Nao becomes real and the tales The imagined recipient of her varied lifethis plea is Xavier, struggles at school and fascinating relatives compels Ruth to search for herex-partner, or at least a ghost she conjures to discover test her fatedetachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857867970</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sebastian FaulksHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=A Possible LifeLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Geoffrey swaps a career as a public school master for an existence as an English officer behind German lines during WWIIFirst published in 1953 in French, an experience that will take a lifetime to expunge. Billy this novel is a child sent to timeless text which wrenches the workhouse to give his family a chance hearts of survivalits readers just as Bessette wrenches words and sentences from their proper position on the page and positions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. Elena has to come to terms with an adopted brother, Jeanne Like the French nursemaid lives in the shadow of a one-off encounter and Jack? He bears the indelible heart print of a girl who travels with a guitar. Five lives, five stories, one humanher characters, emotional threadthey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099549220</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tash AwJonathan Buckley|title=Five Star BillionaireOne Boat
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=China ''One Boat'' is a booming economy for people in a position to take advantage; people like Gary deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the pop star who once won reader into a talent showcontemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Yinghui the lingerie magnate or her childhood friend and property developer Justin who feels Teresa. Set against the weight evocative backdrop of his family's expectations. Then there's Phoebea small coastal Greek town, moving to Shanghai from this work masterfully captures the country on a promise magic of its setting and a belief that its power to attract success one must act provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as if one already the reason she has visited itafter the death of both her parents. Life will bring them Prompted by her mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-aware, inviting the reader into each other's orbit her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a book that not only requires but it won't leave any inspires depth of them the same as when they startedthought, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007494157</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jhumpa LahiriEowyn Ivey|title=The LowlandBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=43.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Subhash and Udayan Mitra are brothers growing up in an India growing into its post-independence status. Subhash goes along with Udayan's ideas but it's Udayan whoBlack Woods Blue Sky''s tells the radicalstory of Birdie, fighting against the injustices young mother of an elitism that remains once toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the British have left IndiaAlaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Eventually they go their separate waysDescribed as a ''wild card'', one studying abroad she feels stuck in her day-to avoid conflict -day life, and yearns to cross the other becoming more deeply embroiledWolverine river and live on the North Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. Life can't When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man, who says he has a cabin over there, she feels called to go on like this forever - and bring Emaleen with her. Without realising it doesn't but the reverberations seem to, affecting generation after generation as Subhash realises that the search for peace isnthis calling will transform hers and Emaleen't always an external things lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408828111</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Colum McCannSally Rooney|title=TransAtlanticIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Historical General Fiction|summary=In 1845 ex-slave, black American Frederick Douglass visits Ireland for Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a lecture tour about freedom grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and emancipation only to discover he's not preaching to so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the converted after all. In 1919 Alcock and Brown climb many relationships woven into a rickety aircraft this story, the central one for readers to fly unravel is the Atlantic fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and land Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in LimerickDublin. In 1994 Senator George Mitchell also travels to Ireland watched by a world thatFollowing their father's about to see passing after a miracle of negotiation. Meanwhile through it all Lily and her descendants are also therelong battle with cancer, not only watching history but living it on both sides of the Atlanticbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408829371</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The LuminariesFyodor Dostoyevsky|authortitle=Eleanor CattonWhite Nights
|rating=5
|genre=Literary FictionShort Stories|summary=Eleanor Catton's ''The Luminaries'' is set As always in Dostoyevsky, the New Zealand gold rush of the late 1860scharacter work is sublime. It's a story about greed, power, gold, dreams, opium, secrets, betrayal and identity, but most of all, it's One is never left wondering what a celebration of the art of story telling, both in terms of Catton's book and the stories her characters have to tell. It's the kind of book that character is perfect escapism thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and which wraps you up in its world. If you like big, chunky books that you can get lost in for hours, then this is one for youtemperaments with remarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847084311</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Four New Words for LoveJames Baldwin|authortitle=Michael CannonGiovanni's Room|rating=34.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Christopher meets Gina on Waterloo Bridge. He is newly widowed, she is newly homeless; he''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, an elderly LondonerAmerican man living in Paris, she's as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a young Glaswegiangay bar. It While David is engaged to Hella, who is a defining event travelling in both their livesSpain, but that only becomes clear in the future. Of pressing concern real tension in the present is novel arises not from his infidelity but from the rather rude policeman looking to move Gina ondeeper conflict within himself. The situation It is nearing crisis. Sensing her desperation, Christopher impulsively asks her to come home with him, a proposal she tentatively accepts. Yet it is this one benevolent act David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that gives birth to an odd and platonic friendship, a ultimately dooms his relationship based on silences and lacunas, and one which Michael Cannon's fourth novel, ''Four New Words for Love'', looks to delicately unravelwith Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908754249</amazonuk>0141186356
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eve HarrisAlba de Cespedes |title=The Marrying of Chani KaufmanForbidden Notebook|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=After waiting till all her elder sisters' weddings were done This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and dusted in true ultra-orthodox Jewish styletension from the moment our protagonist, it's now 19-year-old Chani's turn. She's only met BaruchValeria Cossati, purchases her fiancéforbidden notebook, four times and he hasn't even seen her elbows but learns about herself in the match is made most intimate and the day eventually arrivesrevealing ways. Baruch secretly studies forbidden gentile literature and Chani has an inquisitive streak often perceived as rebellious so God knows what the future holds. Perhaps they should take the Rabbi's marriage as an example? Or perhaps not…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908737433</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alison MacLeodOttessa Moshfegh|title=UnexplodedMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=53
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It's 1940 At best, this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and Britain lives in fear reveals the fragility of a Nazi invasion that could happen any day. In case the human relationships; at worst happens, Evelyn's husband Geoffrey has buried a little something for her and their young son Philip in it is the garden. He tells her the tin contains a bit of money cynical, predictable and his favourite photo slightly trite tale of theman unlikeable protagonist. As she digs it up from impulse rather than necessityThis unlikely heroine, a slim, she discovers that there's no photo but what there attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is instead makes Evelyn doubt that she knows the man she married. The events that follow make Evelyn realise that indeed she doesn't. Meanwhile disillusioned with the war continues and a German does invade their livesworld, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, her solution lies in the way that either of them could envisageher hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241142636</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Hannah KentMatthew Tree|title=Burial Rites|rating=4.5|genre=Crime (Historical)|summary=Fridrik, Agnes and Sigridur are accused of murdering two men one Icelandic night in 1829 before setting fire to their home. Now Agnes awaits execution, imprisoned in the farm of a lowly local family who, rumour has it, wouldnWe't be too great a loss if the prisoner becomes dangerous. Margrit Jonsdottir (the farmer's wife) doesn't feel threatened and sets the shocked, malnourished Agnes to work. Gradually Agnes reveals the events of that night to Margrit and Toti, a young priest. Her version seems to be a little different from what everyone else concluded, predictably… Or perhaps not so predictably.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447233166</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Harvest|author=Jim Cracell Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As harvest comes inTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a village finds itself under threat. Invaded by a series of unfamiliar visitors, it will find itself utterly transformed over a short but apocalyptic seven days. We watch through the eyes drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of Walter Thirsk as three vagabonds escaping the enclosure being exceptional at any of their fields are blamed for the trangressions of others, as the chartmaker Mr Quill enumerates the common land, his artistic passions all failed miserably and as Master Kent's benevolent rule is overtaken by a new owner, who comes with enforcers in the name had endless crises of ''profitself confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, progress cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and enterprise'' - or sheep farming as Walter quickly realisesset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330445669</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Meg WolitzerB0C47LV1PC|title=The InterestingsFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Back in 1974 six teenagers met at summer camp and did all those things which Can you get to do when your parents are not around to stop make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you. They smoked potcould, drank vodka and Tangs - and talked way into is the question should you make it? Or is the night about anything and everything. Plays were put onquestion if you did, animations were perfected, but most importantly friendships were made would it land? The catch is that would last the answer for years - for some it would both could well be a lifetime. Back in 1974, as Nixon left the White House under a particularly heavy cloud, ... no. ''Fragility'The Interestings', is set as one the city of their number called themPortland, knew that they could achieve anything they set their minds to. For three summers they returned Oregon, cautiously begins to Spirit-in-emerge from the-Woods and then they faced restrictions imposed during the real world.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701188278</amazonuk>covid pandemic
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Charlotte MendelsonMosby Woods|title=Almost EnglishA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In the late nineteen eighties sixteen year old Marina is a border at Combe school, destined - as she and all about her know - for Cambridge and The West isn't the medical profession. After her first term she's wonders if she's made a mistake as it's definitely not like dominant force it once was at Ealing Girls. There, a girl whose mother Nobody in the West is emotionally fragile doesn't stand out, even if the mother gets quite sure how to sleep on the sofa in her in-laws' flat because their son - her husband - upped and left her and their daughter. You would still fit in mend this or even if the family you're living with mending it is Hungarian and hasn't entirely left the ways best course of the old country behindaction. Governments are flailing. At Combe A war here, a push for climate action there's too much about Marina . A feeling that she could be mocked for - or could get her nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a cruel nicknameman with precognition. Marina simply doesn't fit Imagine the strategic advantage inthis asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, but right? Perhaps the family have sacrificed everything so most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that she can go therethis man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>144721997X</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0571379559|title=1Q84: The Complete TrilogyHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Haruki MurakamiFiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The ''1Q84The House of Broken Bricks'' trilogy is, without doubt, an impressive book. In many ways, the trilogy almost has to be read in this way as the three component books make little sense on their ownstory of four people. The first book Tess Hembry's roots are in the series in particular is almost completely baffling if taken in isolation. It doesJamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, though, demand a degree of dedicationbut instead, and if the prospect of a 1300 page novel in which not a huge amount happens she lives in terms of plot and in which there is a significant level of repetition leaves you cold, then this might not be the best entry point into house on the wonderful world riverbank, built of Haruki Murakamibroken bricks. As often with Murakami though Insubstantial as it might look, it's possible to read this book at a number stood the passage of levelstime, storms and floods. On Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the surface it's a love story set in a slightly fantastical setting with a little bit of crime thrown delivery rounds - and to bring insufficient money. At a deeper level They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, he explores the thin lines between imagination and reality, life and death and what you might call yin and yangrainbow twins. It Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's a novel where balance and vacuums play a big partJamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. It seems counter-intuitive to call a book of this magnitude People don'delicatet believe that they're related, but much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother thatshe's just how the story appearshis nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099578077</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
{{newreview|title=A Kind of Eden |author=Amanda Smyth|rating=4The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Martin Rawlinson has escaped from In the cold dreary English weather 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 exotic heat and exotic women throne of Trinidadthe Western Isles. He might have a wife Having survived – politically and a daughter back homephysical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, but home is a long way away and here Queen Penelope is on the young and beautiful Safiya. She's brink of a journalist and could easily have just dismissed him as some sad old white guy, but somehow she didn'tfragile peace. Somehow they talkedOne that shatters however with the return of Orestes, and walkedKing of Mycenae, and she showed him the real Trinidad and he fell in love with herhis sister Elektra, and with her homeseeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846688132</amazonuk>0356516075
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexander MaksikKay Chronister|title=A Marker to Measure DriftDesert Creatures|rating=54|genre=CrimeDystopian Fiction|summary=Jacqueline roams the beaches of the Greek islands offering massages With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for money to ward off starvationhumanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. It helps but hunger Whether it is always with hera robotic takeover, lurking alongside the memory a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a former life in Liberia and the mindway for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures''s ear voice by Kay Chronister is a new work of her motherpost-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. Jacqueline It is at least alive and existing, but at what cost?a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848548052</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
 {{newreviewfrontpage|titleisbn=Familiar1803363002|author=J Robert LennonEric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionHorror|summary=Is there Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a greater change in the life of a middle-aged woman than the death of her teenage son? Elisa might have thought not, having been forced way to bury fifteen year old Silas, reflect our darkest emotions and try and move on with her husband Derek how we as humans react and the year-older son, Samprocess them. But Most horror fiction feature a greater change occurs on the way back from her annual''Big Bad'', solo pilgrimage to his grave – something very weird happens to the universe. She pops from one car to anotherwhether that is a home invader, from under a cloudless sky to monster or a slightly greyer one – ghost, it usually something tangible and from her self as Elisa to a world where people call her Lisa, where she by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is plumper, in a different job, stiil married to Derek collection of short stories more interested in the same home – but still the mother horrors of two young men…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846689473</amazonuk>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= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
{{newreview|title=The Sorrow of Angels|author=Jon Kalman Stefansson|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Our decidedly unheroic main character has been at the café for three weeks nowTold from a retrospective view, so we are following on very closely from [[Heaven and Hell by Jon Kalman Stefansson|Heaven and Hell]]. After a young woman unravels the tragedy and soulyear-searching of long relationship that first bookonce defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, he seems settled in the ridiculous family that has formed around him there, finding employment, enjoying narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the literature, yet being very intrigued by summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the female bodysummer after. The man who is still young enough to be known only as Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt''details the boy24-year-old narrator'' might have latched s deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on to stability for once, both romantic and replaced the family familial relationships and best friend he had lost. But everything is restless in this environment, and once again he might just be tempted to go on a journey, with another male companion, despite the harshness of the surroundshow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051652</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.''
{{newreview|title=Heaven and Hell|author=Jon Kalman Stefansson|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Iceland, a hundred years ago. From a place that is ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the very definition question of rural and remote, a small fishing boat leaves for four hours' hard row to a profitable bank. It carries six men on the way out, identity and five on the way backacceptance. The deceased is the best friend – or perhaps only friend – of the main character, who is still young enough Of what it means to merely be known as ''boy''human. When he returns to port he enters an almost Camus-like semi-existence, wondering just how much life Of what is an answer, real and for whatis artificial, after and whether the tragedy he has witnesseddevelopment of technology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849164061</amazonuk>191458564X
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The SonJennifer Saint|authortitle=Philipp MeyerAtalanta|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Philipp Meyer's second novel, ''The SonI was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship,'' is an epicI vowed. I would take my place, multi-generational saga of Texas life. Tracing the McCullough family from not just in the middle name of the nineteenth century to goddess. It was for the present day, Meyer joins those writing today's masterpieces sake of American 'dirty realism': Ron Rash, [[:Category:David Vann|David Vann]]my name, Richard Ford and especially Cormac McCarthytoo. Like McCarthy's ''Blood Meridian,'Atalanta' ''The Son'' is a gory Western that transcends a simplistic cowboys-versus-Indians dichotomy to draw broader conclusions about the universality of violence in a nihilistic world.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857209426</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Donal Ryan|title=The Spinning Heart|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='My father still lives back the road past the weir in the cottage I was reared inPrincess. I go there every day to see is he dead and every day he lets me downWarrior. He hasn't yet missed a day of letting me downLover. Hero.'
This Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is how we meet Bobby - Bobby Mahon, as we'll learn - raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and he's brutally honest about his feelings for his fatherfashioned into a formidable huntress, one who has deliberately drunk away longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the farm he inherited from ''his'' father. But Frank Mahon isn't Bobby's onlyArgonauts, or even maina fierce band of warriors, problem. He's been earning big money as Pokey Burkedescendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis's foreman but the financial crash has hit name and Pokey has done a runnercarve out her own legendary place in history. An investment in What follows is a fake island off Dubai finished him whirlwind of challenges and now hediscovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis's disappeared. On the estate of forty houses he was buildingfatal warning: that if she marries, just two are occupied and the rutted roads are nothing more than a racetrack for the joyridersit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781620067</amazonuk>1472292154
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Natasha SolomonsAmanthi Harris|title=The Gallery of Vanished HusbandsBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=On her thirtieth birthday Juliet Montague went out Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to buy a fridge for the princely sum Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of twenty-one guineasher home country. She'd saved hard for it - and This is a place she spent her parents had given her the final few pounds - but then Juliet did something impulsiveformative years. Instead of buying It is not a fridge place she was born into, but the one she commissioned a portrait thinks of herself and so began her involvement in the post-war art sceneas home. Juliet wasn't - by any stretch of How she came to be at the imagination - an artistVilla, but how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she had a startling ability to spot a first arrived there provide the ''goodscore'' picturefor this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. It was simply something which she ''knew' Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, much as she had known for certain that her husband had left for good on strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the day he didn't return home as expectedVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444736345</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=IndiscretionSea Defences|author=Charles DubowHilary Taylor|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Charles DubowWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's debut novel promises a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to be pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a modern day Great Gatsbysobbing parishioner. It too Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is set amongst the rich and famous outside New Yorka lovely place, it too but Rachel is narrated by struggling to develop a character seemingly on real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the outsidevicar, Gail, Maddybut then she's childhood friend Walterbeen 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. And then Hannah went missing.}}{{Frontpage|isbn=1398515388|amazonuktitle=<amazonuk>0007501307</amazonuk>The Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=Unfaithfully YoursPapa on the Moon|author=Nigel WilliamsMarco North
|rating=4
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=When Nigel Williams first really burst on to ''Some frogs had gotten into the bestwell.'' ''Walter stood waist-seller listdeep in the fragrant water, a couple naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of decades agotheir eggs wove around him, it was sticky gray pearls with a book set in Wimbledon that really quite tickled a younger me – and my mothertadpoles inside them. But then he produced two more in Two of the dogs leaned over the same series, opening and we soon decided he was a bit of a one-trick pony, and could never be sure how much barked down at the strange noise of the trilogy webuckets as he filled them.'d read, or be too eager to read more. Flash forward, and Williams has certainly branched out – his setting this time ' How is Putney. Wimbledon Common is now Putney Heath, and so on. But here he provides that for an epistolatory opening? The style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and if there's one kind of novel laconic to make me prick up my ears it is one built from letterswistful and musing, turning on a sixpence. It is And author Marco North, who has the blatant two-and-fro timing most wonderful turn of the narrative, and the succinctness that characters are formed withphrase, that strike me starts as obvious benefits of such a book – and Unfaithfully Yours has those and many morehe means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472106741</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview|title=Russian Stories|author=Francesc Seres|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=This brilliant and varied collection of short stories is the product of a current academic interest in cross-cultural translation. Francisco Guillen Serés is a Catalan professor of Art History from Aragon. A Russophile, he has travelled widely Move on to collect stories from those writing during the past hundred years of Russian history. These have been translated into Catalan and then into English. These unusual and delightful stories, some twenty one of them written by five writers read fluently and engagingly. They form an informative tapestry of Soviet and post-Soviet life, moving back in time with the older, earlier writers like Bergchenko, who died in the siege of Stalingrad, at the end. Ranging over mythic and symbolic tales to realistic portrayals of personal relationships; love trysts in St Petersburg, ferocious bears in the deep heart of the Taiga to the perils of becoming lost in continuous orbit in space. All aspects are impressively recounted.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>085705158X</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]

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