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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Call of the UndertowJeremy Cooper|authortitle=Linda CracknellDiscord|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you read Discord: a lot lack of booksagreement or harmony (as between persons, things, then or ideas) The principal example of discord within the fact novel, as with most instances of your life discord, is that you are always part-way through at least one of themeasily located. You read all The two protagonists of the time. Over breakfastnovel, in the bathRebekah Rosen and Evie Bennet, waiting for trains, on trains, between trainsare as different as they come. You make a cup of tea in order to have Rebekah is an excuse to sit-uptight, traditional andno-read for half an hour. But even sononsense composer close to retirement, most of your reading while Evie is done in stolen moments – often in moments when a nagging voice from force of nature, bounding onto the gremlin-centre of your brain is reminding you that you musical scene as a precocious saxophonist, oozing with talent and charm. The two, predictably, don't always see eye to eye, their approaches different and Evie'shoulds progressive views at odds with Rebekah'' be doing s conservative leaning. However, something elseconnects them beyond just their musical project: a sort of fragile alliance formed within the clamour.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908754303</amazonuk>1804272264
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Crow BluePolly Barton|authortitle=Adriana LisboaWhat Am I, A Deer?|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Having lost her mother at the age of thirteen, Evangelina embarks on a quest to not only find her biological father, but to delve into the past and discover things about her mother she never knew. Set predominantly in North America and Brazil, this novel explores VanjaPolly Barton's journeys, debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both physical subject and emotionalgoverning metaphor. The narrator, as well as her relationships with key charactersnewly relocated from London to Berlin, in particular, that works translating video games into Japanese through the process of her Mother's ex husbandlocalisation, Fernandorewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a new audience. Uprooting herself when barely Barton treats this as a teenagerparadoxical act: arguably, Vanja leaves her home country of Brazil to live with Fernando in Coloradostriving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, the only connection she has its originality at her disposal to enable her to trace her roots and biological familyrisk of disappearing altogether. Narrated beautifully in the first personFrom this, the reader is propelled novel opens out into the thoughts and feelings of the young but courageousa wider, determined andresonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, at timesaccepted, very wise, adolescent girl.or loved?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408838303</amazonuk>1804272175
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Close Your EyesMaria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|authortitle=Ewan MorrisonThe Disappearing Act|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=1981: Emma remembers driving through a blizzard. That is, Despite her mother was drivinganonymisation of place names and people, Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for a literary festival she was just is to be a childguest speaker at. She remembers Detoured by erratic train schedules and nudged by forces beyond her control, her mother singingjourney slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Throughout everythingSwept up in this series of events, what she remembers, what everyone remembers, is how her mother sangM eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has unexpectedly left the show. ActuallyThe train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, she remembers lots while the circus embodies the reshaping of other things about her mother. Snippets mostly. Then she remembers losing her… being dropped in London identity and a retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at her Dad's, who didn't really seem like the dad she remembered… then ''very heart of the Social'' taking her awaynovel form itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099565757</amazonuk>1804272329
}}
{{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>}}
}}
{{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=Short Stories
|summary=As always in Dostoyevsky, the character work is sublime. One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity.
|isbn=0241619785
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=James Baldwin
|title=Giovanni's Room
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.
|isbn=0141186356
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Alba de Cespedes
|title=Forbidden Notebook
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Eleanor Catton's ''The Luminaries'' is set in the New Zealand gold rush This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the late 1860s. It's a story about greedmoment our protagonist, powerValeria Cossati, gold, dreams, opium, secretspurchases her forbidden notebook, betrayal and identity, but most of all, it's a celebration of the art of story telling, both learns about herself in terms of Catton's book and the stories her characters have to tell. It's the kind of book that is perfect escapism most intimate 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 yourevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847084311</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Four New Words for LoveOttessa Moshfegh|authortitle=Michael CannonMy Year of Rest and Relaxation
|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Christopher meets Gina on Waterloo Bridge. He At best, this novel is newly widoweda scathing critique of modern society and reveals the fragility of human relationships; at worst, she it is newly homeless; he's the cynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of an elderly Londonerunlikeable protagonist. This unlikely heroine, she's a young Glaswegian. It slim, attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is a defining event in both their livesdisillusioned with the world, but that only becomes clear resolves not to lose sleep over it: in the future. Of pressing concern fact, her solution lies in the present is the rather rude policeman looking to move Gina onher hibernation. The situation is nearing crisis|isbn=1784707422}}{{Frontpage|author=Matthew Tree|title=We'll Never Know|rating=4. Sensing her desperation, Christopher impulsively asks her 5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to come home with himbe different from his father, a proposal she tentatively acceptsdrunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. Yet it is this one benevolent act that gives birth So Tim applied himself to an odd and platonic friendshiphis studies, a relationship based on silences cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and lacunas, and one which Michael Cannon's fourth novel, ''Four New Words for Love'', looks to delicately unravelset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908754249</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B0C47LV1PC
|title=Fragility
|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.
''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eve HarrisMosby Woods|title=The Marrying of Chani KaufmanA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=After waiting till all her elder sistersThe West isn' weddings were done and dusted t the dominant force it once was. Nobody in true ultra-orthodox Jewish style, the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it's now 19-year-old Chani's turnis the best course of action. Governments are flailing. She's only met BaruchA war here, her fiancéa push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, four times and he hasn't even seen her elbows but there was a man with precognition. Imagine the match is made and the day eventually arrives. Baruch secretly studies forbidden gentile literature and Chani has an inquisitive streak often perceived as rebellious so God knows strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what the future holdswill happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps they should take the Rabbi's marriage as an examplemost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back? Or perhaps not…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908737433</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alison MacLeod0571379559|title=UnexplodedThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's 1940 and Britain roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in fear the house on the riverbank, built of a Nazi invasion that could happen any daybroken bricks. In case the worst happensInsubstantial as it might look, Evelynit's stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband Geoffrey has buried a little something for her , Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and their young son Philip to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the gardenrainbow twins. He tells her the tin contains a bit of money and Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his favourite photo of themfather. As she digs it up from impulse rather than necessityPeople don't believe that they're related, she discovers that much less twins and there's no photo but what there an assumption when Max is instead makes Evelyn doubt out with his mother that she knows the man she married. The events that follow make Evelyn realise that indeed she doesn't. Meanwhile the war continues and a German does invade their lives, but not in the way that either of them could envisages his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241142636</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=Hannah KentKay Chronister|title=Burial RitesDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Crime (Historical)Dystopian Fiction|summary=FridrikWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, Agnes and Sigridur are accused post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of murdering two men one Icelandic night in 1829 before setting fire water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|isbn=1803364998}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Eric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home. Now Agnes awaits executioninvader, imprisoned in the farm of a lowly local family whomonster or a ghost, rumour has itusually something tangible and, wouldn't be too great a loss if by the end of the prisoner becomes dangerousstory, beatable. Margrit Jonsdottir (the farmerEric LaRocca's wife) doesn't feel threatened and sets 'The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the shockedhorrors of illness, malnourished Agnes to workgrief and humiliation. Gradually Agnes reveals the events of Horrors that night to Margrit linger and Toti, a young priest. Her version seems are harder to be a little different from what everyone else concluded, predictably… Or perhaps not so predictablydefeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447233166</amazonuk>
}}
{{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''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Meg WolitzerMichael Grothaus|title=The InterestingsBeautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Back in 1974 six teenagers met at summer camp ''But fearing something and did all those things which you get having it come to do when your parents pass are not around two different things. And I'm willing to stop you. They smoked potbet most of what we fear will never happen, drank vodka and Tangs - and talked way into the night about anything and everything. Plays were put on, animations were perfected, but most importantly friendships were made that would last for years - for some or we can take steps to change it would be a lifetime. Back in 1974, as Nixon left the White House under a particularly heavy cloud, 'The Interestings', as one of their number called them, knew that they could achieve anything they set their minds to. For three summers they returned to Spirit-in-the-Woods and then they faced the real world.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701188278</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=1Q84: The Complete TrilogyJennifer Saint|authortitle=Haruki MurakamiAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The ''1Q84'' trilogy is, without doubtI was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, an impressive bookI vowed. In many waysI would take my place, the trilogy almost has to be read not just in this way as the three component books make little sense on their own. The first book in name of the series in particular is almost completely baffling if taken in isolationgoddess. It doeswas for the sake of my name, though, demand too. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a degree of dedicationson, and if Atalanta is raised under the prospect protective eye of a 1300 page novel in which not a huge amount happens in terms of plot the goddess Athemis and in which there is fashioned into a significant level of repetition leaves you coldformidable huntress, then this might not be one who longs for adventure. When the best entry point into opportunity comes – to join the wonderful world of Haruki Murakami. As often with Murakami thoughArgonauts, it's possible to read this book at a number fierce band of levels. On warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the surface itchance to fight in Artemis's a love story set name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a slightly fantastical setting with a little bit whirlwind of crime thrown in. At a deeper level, he explores the thin lines between imagination challenges and discovery and realitythrough it, life and death and what you might call yin and yang. It's a novel where balance and vacuums play a big part. It seems counter-intuitive to call a book of this magnitude 'delicateAtalanta must remember Artemis'fatal warning: that if she marries, but that's just how the story appearsit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099578077</amazonuk>1472292154
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=A Kind of Eden Amanthi Harris|authortitle=Amanda SmythBeautiful Place|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Martin Rawlinson Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has escaped from returned to the cold dreary English weather to Villa Hibiscus on the exotic heat and exotic women southern coast of Trinidadher home country. He might have a wife and a daughter back home, but home This is a long way away and here place she spent her formative years. It is the young and beautiful Safiya. She's not a journalist and could easily have just dismissed him as some sad old white guyplace she was born into, but somehow the one she didn'tthinks of as home. Somehow they talked How she came to be at the Villa, and walkedhow it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she showed him first arrived there provide the real Trinidad ''score'' for this gentle and he fell in love with yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to escape herpast and much like the musical score of a film, and with her homethat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846688132</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alexander Maksik178563335X|title=A Marker to Measure DriftSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=Jacqueline roams When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the beaches of the Greek islands offering massages for money to ward off starvationchildren up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. It helps Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but hunger Rachel is always struggling to develop a real bond with her, lurking alongside the memory parish - and she's in awe of a former life in Liberia and the mindvicar, Gail, but then she's ear voice of her motherbeen doing the job for more than thirty years. Jacqueline is at least alive Rachel and existing, Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but at it was probably what cost?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848548052</amazonuk>they needed. And then Hannah went missing.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=FamiliarThe Boy and the Dog|author=J Robert LennonSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Is there a greater change First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the life of a middle-aged woman than ocean floor, which created the death of her teenage son? Elisa might have thought nottsunami and this, having been forced to bury fifteen year old Silasin turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and try and move on with her husband Derek and the year-older son, Samutter devastation. But a greater change occurs on the way back from her annualThe deaths were uncountable, solo pilgrimage to his grave – something very weird happens to and the universeloss of livelihoods was widespread. She pops The fact that many pets were separated from one car to another, from under their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a cloudless sky to dog outside a slightly greyer one – and from her self as Elisa to convenience store. He wasn't a world where people dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call her Lisa, where she is plumper, in a different job, stiil married Public Health prompted Kazumasa to Derek open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in the same home – but still the mother of two young men…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846689473</amazonuk>.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=The Sorrow of AngelsPapa on the Moon|author=Jon Kalman StefanssonMarco North|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Our decidedly unheroic main character has been at ''Some frogs had gotten into the café for three weeks now, so we are following on very closely from [[Heaven and Hell by Jon Kalman Stefansson|Heaven and Hell]]well. After the tragedy and soul'' ''Walter stood waist-searching of that first book, he seems settled deep in the ridiculous family that has formed fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him there, finding employment, enjoying sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the literature, yet being very intrigued by dogs leaned over the female body. The man who is still young enough to be known only as ''opening and barked down at the boy'' might have latched on to stability for once, and replaced strange noise of the family and best friend buckets as he had lostfilled them. But everything '' How is restless that for an opening? The style of this novel in this environment, the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and once again he might just be tempted laconic to go wistful and musing, turning on a journeysixpence. And author Marco North, with another male companion, despite who has the harshness most wonderful turn of the surroundsphrase, starts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051652</amazonuk>
}}
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