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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=The CommitmentsPale Pieces|author=Roddy DoyleG M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It's the mid Our unnamed narrator is about to late 1980s, and Outspan, Derek and Ray have just formed begin a band. The trio is three days old, train journey with 'Ray on the Casio and his little sister's glockenspiel, Outspan on his brother's acoustic guitar, [and] Derek on nothing', as he can't afford a basscompanion Django. They already feel directionless. They donWhere they't mind Depeche Mode, but Derek re going and Outspan draw what the line at The Human Leaguepurpose of this journey is, which is one of Ray's favourite groupsuncertain. Such musical differences are already darkening Django found the bandtickets 's conception. There is also a problem with their name: And And And. Ray believes they should have an explanation mark after the second And, as it would 'look deadly on the postersfloor somewhere'. Outspan, however, thinks Ray's an idiot, and tells has persuaded our narrator to accompany him where . Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to stick his second exclamation mark. But Outspan has the station by coach and the train is a plan. They need to find Jimmy Rabbitte, for when it comes to music, Jimmy knowssteam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009958753X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Madonna on the MoonMakenna Goodman|authortitle=Rolf BauerdickHelen of Nowhere|rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Things are certainly strange in It could be argued that the small rural town pervading theme of Baia Luna; all the stereotypes one would suspect this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a newly-Communist mountain village are turned disgraced professor on their head. People vocally feel free to dismiss the Soviet changes brink of losing both his career and technologyhis relationship, but secretly at 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 dead former owner of night enter the fields countryside house he's considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to try and hear his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the sounds of Sputnik blipping its orbit overhead. Gypsy men willingly get baptised into protagonist around the ways house shares stories about Helen, and religions of their describes her as ''gajoan entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form'' neighbours. The most forceful character is a teenager called FritzAlthough she lives in an assisted living facility now, best friend of narrator Pavel, and son to an ethnic German photographerHelen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous. Part of Fritz's power seems to rest on him knowing a lot more than others about the village schoolteacher – enough, perhaps, for her to disappear overnight?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848875045</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Aimee BenderOlga Tokarczuk|title=The Color Master|rating=4.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=Another parade House of fascinatingDay, unusual personalities and oddevents from the author House of [[Willful Creatures by Aimee Bender|WillfulCreatures]]. This time out [[:Category:Aimee Bender|Aimee]]introduces us to people like Hans the fake Nazi, young William to whomall people look the same and Janet who decides to spice up herlove-life with detrimental results. Among other things we alsowitness a less-than-altruistic anti-war demonstration and an oddoccurrence in an orchard showing how odd an apple-only diet could makeus.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091953898</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Vann|title=Goat MountainNight|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The eleven-year-old boy, his father, grandfather and Tom, a family friend, were on their annual hunting trip to the family''What's 640-acre ranch in northern California. Strictly the boy wasn't old enough to hunt but family lore said that this time he would be allowed to kill his first buck. On the way to their camp they spotted good of a poacher and the boy's father set up his rifle and loaded it - hoping world that shooting the bolt would tell the poacher keeps changing like that he? How can one go on calmly living in it?''d been spotted. The boy - we never know his name - was allowed to look through the rifle site, but he pulled the trigger. Nothing would ever be the same again. For any of them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434021989</amazonuk>}}
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{{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>}}
}}
{{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
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{{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
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{{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
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{{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?''
The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Kay Chronister|title=A Kind Desert Creatures|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of Eden post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|isbn=1803364998}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Amanda SmythEric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=45|genre= Horror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.}}{{Frontpage|author=Madelaine Lucas|title=Thirst for Salt|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Martin Rawlinson has escaped from the cold dreary English weather ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to the exotic heat and exotic women of Trinidad. He might have be a wife light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a daughter back homeretrospective view, but home is a young woman unravels the year-long way away and here is relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the young and beautiful Safiyasummer after. SheSet against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town 's a journalist and could easily have just dismissed him as some sad 'Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old white guy, but somehow she didnnarrator't. Somehow they talkeds deepening relationship with her older lover, and walkeddepicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and she showed him the real Trinidad familial relationships and he fell in love with her, and with how it altered her homeirrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846688132</amazonuk>0861546490
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Michael Grothaus
|title=Beautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.''
''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|isbn=191458564X}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexander MaksikJennifer Saint|title=A Marker to Measure DriftAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=Jacqueline roams ''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 in the beaches name of the Greek islands offering massages for money to ward off starvationgoddess. It helps but hunger is always with her, lurking alongside was for the memory sake of a former life in Liberia and the mindmy name, too. Atalanta''s ear voice of her mother. Jacqueline is at least alive and existing, but at what cost?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848548052</amazonuk>}}Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Sorrow of AngelsAmanthi Harris|authortitle=Jon Kalman StefanssonBeautiful Place|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Our decidedly unheroic main character Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has been at returned to the café for three weeks now, so we are following Villa Hibiscus on very closely from [[Heaven and Hell by Jon Kalman Stefansson|Heaven and Hell]]the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. After It is not a place she was born into, but the tragedy and soul-searching one she thinks of that first bookas home. How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, he seems settled in and the ridiculous family machinations that has formed around him have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there, finding employment, enjoying provide the literature, yet being very intrigued by the female body. The man who is still young enough to be known only as ''the boyscore'' might have latched on to stability for once, this gentle and replaced the family and best friend he had lostyet subtly violent novel. But everything is restless in this environment, Padma's present fails to escape her past and once again he might just be tempted to go on much like the musical score of a journeyfilm, with another male companion, despite the harshness of that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the surroundsVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051652</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=Heaven and HellSea Defences|author=Jon Kalman StefanssonHilary Taylor|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=IcelandWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a hundred years agoPCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. From a place that is the very definition of rural Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and remoteher elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a small fishing boat leaves for four hourssobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won' hard row to a profitable bankt let her see her grandson. It carries six men Holthorpe, on the way outNorfolk coast, and five on the way back. The deceased is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the best friend – or perhaps only friend – parish - and she's in awe of the main charactervicar, Gail, who is still young enough to merely be known as ''boy'but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. When he returns to port he enters an almost Camus-like semiRachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good -existence, wondering just how much life is an answer, and for it was stormy but it was probably what, after the tragedy he has witnessedthey needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849164061</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The SonBoy and the Dog|author=Philipp MeyerSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Philipp Meyer's second novelFirst 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 Sondeaths were uncountable,'' is an epic, multi-generational saga and the loss of Texas lifelivelihoods was widespread. Tracing the McCullough family The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the middle list of priorities but - six months after the nineteenth century to tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the present day, Meyer joins those writing todayconvenience store owner's masterpieces of American 'dirty realism': Ron Rash, [[:Category:David Vann|David Vann]], Richard Ford and especially Cormac McCarthy. Like McCarthy's ''Blood Meridian,'' ''The Son'' is a gory Western comment that transcends a simplistic cowboys-versus-Indians dichotomy he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to draw broader conclusions about open his car door and Tamon the universality of violence dog jumped in a nihilistic world.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857209426</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Donal Ryan0989715337|title=The Spinning HeartPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='My father still lives back 'Some frogs had gotten into the road past the weir well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the cottage I was reared infragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. I go there every day to see is he dead Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and every day barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he lets me downfilled them. He hasn't yet missed a day of letting me down.'
}}
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