[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|title=The Ice-Cold Heaven|author=Mirko Bonne|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction|summaryisbn=They say that if you fall off a horse you should get back on one right away, but even so… I don't think many people who had only just left their first love – a shopgirl in their village – for their second – exploring the world on sailing cargo ships – would leap to a further voyage having been wrecked and stranded off the coast of South America for well over a week. But Merce here does – he wants to follow his best friend on to a ship called ''The Endurance'' and head with Shackleton to the Antarctic. But Merce is only seventeen, and is rejected – causing him to stow away onto one of the world's worst ever journeys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715645846</amazonuk>}} {{newreview295967572X|title=The Year of Miracle and GriefPale Pieces|author=Leonid BorodinG M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=From Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a space train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of 25 yearsthis journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator looks back on what happened when he was 12 years old. Twenty five years that had to elapse, because that was the promise that he madeaccompany him. He Why not? Not much else is now happy, happy to have kept clear either - but we are probably in the secret past as he promised Sarma he would, and happier that he can now tell the story: he can tell us of everything that happened in his childhood that year on pair travel to the shores of station by coach and the oldest lake in the world, Lake Baikaltrain is a steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0704373246</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview|title=The Rabbit Back Literature Society|author=Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ella Milana is a language and literature supply teacher currently teaching in her hometown of Rabbit Back and dealing with challenging revelations in her life. Ella is unexpectedly invited to join the hugely successful and influential Rabbit Back Literature Society, a group of nine authors who were hand selected and mentored from childhood by Finland’s greatest author (Laura White) to become literary icons in their own right. There weere always intended to be ten members of the society but Laura White has not selected a new member for decades and the appointment of Ella is a massive literary event. The ceremony in honour of Ella’s new membership to the incredibly elite society is unfortunately overshadowed by Laura White’s disappearance at the ceremony itself.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908968982</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Angela YoungMakenna Goodman|title=Speaking Helen of LoveNowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=For some people it's impossible It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to tell another person -place feeling that they love them something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and both are damagedhis relationship, embodies this feeling. Iris could not tell her daughterHowever, VivieGoodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is seductive, that she loved her radical and Matthew, Vivie's childhood friend, neighbour unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and would-be lover could not tell her how he feltthe protagonist is indirect yet intimate. For all three As the result was years former owner of separation with Vivie feeling that she was fundamentally unloveable and the whole situation was further complicated by Iriscountryside house he's mental disintegration and considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her treatment removing most of her memories of Vivie's childhoodpast tied to his potential fresh start. If that sounds depressing The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and soul-destroying then I am doing describes her as ''Speaking of Lovean entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form'' . Although she lives in an injustice because it's also a story of trustassisted living facility now, reconciliation and learning to speak about your feelingsHelen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00G4401G4</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Call of the UndertowOlga Tokarczuk|authortitle=Linda CracknellHouse of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you read a lot of books, then ''What's the fact good of your life is a world that keeps changing like that you are always part-way through at least ? How can one of them. You read all of the time. Over breakfast, in the bath, waiting for trains, go on trains, between trains. You make a cup of tea in order to have an excuse to sit-and-read for half an hour. But even so, most of your reading is done calmly living in stolen moments – often in moments when a nagging voice from the gremlin-centre of your brain is reminding you that you ''shouldit?'' be doing something else.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908754303</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|The title=Crow Blue|author=Adriana Lisboa|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Having lost her mother at the age of thirteenthis spellbinding work, Evangelina embarks on a quest to not only find her biological father''House of Day, but to delve into the past and discover things about her mother she never knew. Set predominantly in North America and BrazilHouse of Night'', somewhat reflects this novel explores Vanja's journeysnotion of shifting realities - the small, both physical and emotionalsubtle changes which govern our lives, as well as her relationships with key characters, in particularlike the shift from day to night, that of her Mother's ex husbandhowever quotidian, Fernandocausing chaos. Uprooting herself when barely a teenager, Vanja leaves her home country of Brazil to live with Fernando in ColoradoBut, the only connection she has at her disposal to enable her to trace her roots and biological family. Narrated beautifully constant in that image is the first personhouse, stoic against the reader ancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is propelled into the thoughts and feelings of the young but courageous, determined and, at times, very wise, adolescent girlperceived.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408838303</amazonuk>1804271918
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Close Your EyesThea Lenarduzzi|authortitle=Ewan MorrisonThe Tower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=1981: Emma remembers driving through a blizzard''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. That is In this compelling novel, her mother was drivingThea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, she was just a childthe protagonist of this tale. She remembers her mother singing. Throughout everythingJust as T's story is being told, what she remembersthe story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, what everyone remembersthe daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, is how her mother sang. Actually, she remembers lots who died of other things about her mother. Snippets mostly. Then she remembers losing her… tuberculosis after being dropped locked in London at her Dada tower, captures T'simagination. Annie's fate is, who didn't really seem like the dad above all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which she remembered… then ''the Social'' taking her awayconsumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099565757</amazonuk>1804271799
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The CommitmentsJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |authortitle=Roddy DoyleVaim|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It's the mid to late 1980s, and Outspan, Derek and Ray have just formed a band. The trio is three days old, with 'Ray on the Casio and his little sisterAll was strange's glockenspiel, Outspan on his brother's acoustic guitar, [and] Derek on nothing', as he can't afford a bass. They already feel directionless. They don't mind Depeche Mode, but Derek and Outspan draw . This haunting phrase encapsulates the line at The Human League, pervading sense of otherworldliness which is one of Ray's favourite groups. Such musical differences are already darkening the band'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 posters'. Outspanpermeates this story set in Vaim, however, thinks Ray's an idiot, and tells him where to stick his second exclamation mark. But Outspan has a plan. They need to find Jimmy Rabbitte, fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for when it comes to musicJatgeir and Eline, Jimmy knowstwo of the protagonists caught in its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009958753X</amazonuk>1804271829
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Madonna on the MoonClaire-Louise Bennett|authortitle=Rolf BauerdickBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Things are certainly strange Everything in the small rural town of Baia Luna; all the stereotypes one would suspect this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a newly-Communist mountain village are turned on their head. People vocally feel free to dismiss the Soviet changes and technologykiss, but secretly at the dead usually a symbol of night enter the fields to try intimacy and hear the sounds closeness, becomes evidence of Sputnik blipping its orbit overheadlove lost. Gypsy men willingly get baptised into When the ways and religions of their narrator cries out internally, ''gajocome over here and kiss me,'' neighbours. The most forceful character it is less an invitation than a teenager called Fritz, best friend of narrator Pavel, and son desperate attempt to an ethnic German photographerconfirm her emotional numbness. Part The imagined recipient of Fritz's power seems to rest on him knowing a lot more than others about the village schoolteacher – enoughthis plea is Xavier, perhapsher ex-partner, for a ghost she conjures to test her to disappear overnight?detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848875045</amazonuk>1804271934
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Aimee BenderHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=The Color MasterLili is Crying
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=Another parade First published in 1953 in French, this novel is a timeless text which wrenches the hearts of fascinating, unusual personalities its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and oddevents sentences from their proper position on the author of [[Willful Creatures by Aimee Bender|WillfulCreatures]]page and positions them elsewhere, disjointed, truncated. This time out [[:Category:Aimee Bender|Aimee]]introduces us to people like Hans Like the fake Nazilives of her characters, 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 makeusthey are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091953898</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David VannJonathan Buckley|title=Goat MountainOne Boat
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The eleven-year-old boy''One Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, his father, grandfather drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and Tomprotagonist, Teresa. Set against the evocative backdrop of a family friendsmall coastal Greek town, were on their annual hunting trip to this work masterfully captures the family'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 magic of its setting and its power to kill his first buckprovoke profound introspection. On Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the way to their camp they spotted a poacher and the boy's father set up his rifle and loaded reason she has visited it - hoping that shooting after the bolt would tell the poacher that he'd been spotteddeath of both her parents. The boy - we never know his name Prompted by her mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self- was allowed to look through the rifle siteaware, but he pulled inviting the triggerreader into her labyrinthine cogitations. Nothing would ever be the same again. For any It is a book that not only requires but inspires depth of themthought, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434021989</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Over My Dead BodyEowyn Ivey|authortitle=Hazel McHaffieBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=43.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The ''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a patient in dire need of life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a heartbar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and a pair her accidental neglect of lungs, ceases to pray for the survival of her son for the following uncomfortable reason: 'Feels like you're asking for somebody else to dieEmaleen.Described as a ' Though merely an extra in the main plot of McHaffie's ''Over My Dead Bodywild card'', she feels stuck in her day-to-day life, and yearns to cross the situation Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man, who says he has a cabin over there, she feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, this mother quite successfully conveys just how complex the ethics of organ donation arecalling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0992623103</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Peter Stjernstrom and Rod Bradbury (translator)Sally Rooney|title=The Best Book Intermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction |summary=Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the Worldbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469}}{{Frontpage|author=Fyodor Dostoyevsky|title=White Nights
|rating=5
|genre=Literary FictionShort Stories|summary=Titus Jensen may not have written many great novels for a while (if ever) but his festival readings of others' works are renowned. WhyAs always in Dostoyevsky, his rendition of ''The Diseases of the Swedish Monarchs from Gustavas Vasa to Gustav V'' has been compared favourably to his offerings from ''Handbook for Volvo 245''character work is sublime. However, one drunken night he and romantic poet Eddie X agree that One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their fame on the festival circuit would be insignificant by comparison if they could write the best book in the world; a combination of all genres, appealing to all tastes innermost dispositions and making all the best seller categoriestemperaments with remarkable clarity. 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!|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1843914808</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adriaan van DisJames Baldwin|title=BetrayalGiovanni'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= Dutchman Mulder renews his acquaintance with his old friend Donald as he returns to South AfricaThis Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the moment our protagonist, a land he knew well Valeria Cossati, purchases her forbidden notebook, and learns about herself in the days of apartheid. Life may have moved on and apartheid ceased but some things have worsened. Have Mulder and Donald made any difference at all? As they recall their shadier youth, they have one more chance to struggle for someone's freedom against all odds most intimate and a violent societyrevealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857051849</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Her Privates WeOttessa Moshfegh|authortitle=Frederic ManningMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=4.53
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ernest Hemingway called Frederic Manning's ''Her Privates We'' 'The finest and noblest book of men in war' he had ever read. But Hemingway wasn't a very trustworthy manAt best, so we tend to defer judgement. He this novel is, however, useful for contrast. Hemingway's tales a scathing critique of war (such as ''A Farewell to Arms'' modern society and ''For Whom reveals the Bell Tolls'') usually involve macho misfits and trite love stories, feats fragility of derring-do and filmic dialoguehuman relationships; all the thingsat worst, in fact, that have no place in Manning's First World War novel. Why it is this? Well, by the time Hemingway started driving a Red Cross ambulance on the Italian front (1918), Manning's service was already over. Neverthelesscynical, unlike the illustrious (predictable and self-mythologising) Hemingway, Manning spent his war deep in the trenches slightly trite tale of the Somme, mixing it with the proletarian soldieryan unlikeable protagonist. As suchThis unlikely heroine, ''Her Privates We'' is a brutal novel concerning the 'subterraneanslim, furtive, twilight life' of attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the average Tommyworld, a work of startling powerbut resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, and one that completely eclipses the war novels of the romantic Hemingwayher solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184668787X</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ruth OzekiMatthew Tree|title=A Tale for the Time BeingWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Ruth finds a 'Hello Kitty' bag washed up on the shore of Whaletown, the small Canadian island that she and her husband Oliver call home. As Ruth opens it and begins reading the diary safely protected inside, she learns about NaoTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a teenager in Japan. Through her writing Nao becomes real drunk and the tales chronic underachiever whose dreams of her varied life, struggles being exceptional at school any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and fascinating relatives compels Ruth who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to search for herhis studies, or at least to discover her fatecultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857867970</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.
{{newreview|author=Sebastian Faulks|title=A Possible Life|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Geoffrey swaps a career ''Fragility'' is set as a public school master for an existence as an English officer behind German lines during WWII, an experience that will take a lifetime to expunge. Billy is a child sent to the workhouse to give his family a chance city of survival. Elena has Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to come to terms with an adopted brother, Jeanne emerge from the French nursemaid lives in restrictions imposed during 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 human, emotional thread.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099549220</amazonuk>covid pandemic
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tash AwMosby Woods|title=Five Star BillionaireA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=China The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a booming economy push for people climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a position to take man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantagein this asset; people like Gary the pop star who once won a talent show, Yinghui the lingerie magnate or her childhood friend and property developer Justin man who feels the weight can tell you what will happen given any set of his family's expectationscircumstances. Then there's PhoebeThat man would be valuable, moving to Shanghai from right? Perhaps the country on a promise and a belief most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to attract success one must act as if one already has it. Life will bring them into each other's orbit but get it won't leave any of them the same as when they started.back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007494157</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jhumpa Lahiri0571379559|title=The LowlandHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Subhash and Udayan Mitra are brothers growing up in an India growing into its post-independence status''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Subhash goes along with UdayanTess Hembry's ideas roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's Udayan who's stood the radicalpassage of time, fighting against the injustices of an elitism that remains once the British have left Indiastorms and floods. Eventually they go their separate waysHer husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, one studying abroad to avoid conflict complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the other becoming more deeply embroiledrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Life canPeople don't go on like this forever believe that they're related, much less twins and it doesnthere't but the reverberations seem to, affecting generation after generation as Subhash realises s an assumption when Max is out with his mother that the search for peace isnshe't always an external things his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408828111</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=Colum McCannKay Chronister|title=TransAtlanticDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Dystopian Fiction|summary=In 1845 exWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-slaveapocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, black American Frederick Douglass visits Ireland this genre is a way for a lecture tour about freedom and emancipation only humans to discover hecathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures's not preaching ' 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 the converted after allfind hope. In 1919 Alcock and Brown climb |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 rickety aircraft way to fly the Atlantic reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and land in Limerickprocess them. In 1994 Senator George Mitchell also travels to Ireland watched by Most horror fiction feature a world ''Big Bad'', whether thatis a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's about to see ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a miracle collection of negotiationshort stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Meanwhile through it all Lily Horrors that linger and her descendants are also there, not only watching history but living it on both sides of the Atlanticharder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408829371</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The LuminariesMadelaine Lucas|authortitle=Eleanor CattonThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Eleanor Catton's 'Love, I'The Luminaries'' is set in the New Zealand gold rush of the late 1860s. It's d read, was supposed to be a story about greed, power, gold, dreams, opium, secrets, betrayal light and identityweightless feeling, but most of allI had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, it's a celebration of young woman unravels the art of story tellingyear-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, both in terms of Catton's book and the stories narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her characters have senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to tellits sorrowful end the summer after. ItSet against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's the kind of book that is perfect escapism and which wraps you up in deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its world. If you like bigall-consuming nature, chunky books that you can get lost in for hours, then this is one for youhow it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847084311</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|titleauthor=Four New Words for LoveJennifer Saint|authortitle=Michael CannonAtalanta|rating=35
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Christopher meets Gina ''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on Waterloo Bridgeboard that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the name of the goddess. He is newly widowedIt was for the sake of my name, she is newly homeless; hetoo. Atalanta's an elderly Londoner, she's Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for being born a young Glaswegian. It daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a defining event in both their livesformidable huntress, but that only becomes clear in one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the future. Of pressing concern in Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the present is Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the rather rude policeman looking chance to move Gina on. The situation is nearing crisis. Sensing fight in Artemis' name and carve out her desperation, Christopher impulsively asks her to come home with him, a proposal she tentatively acceptsown legendary place in history. Yet it What follows is this one benevolent act that gives birth to an odd and platonic friendship, a relationship based on silences whirlwind of challenges and lacunas, discovery and one which Michael Cannon's fourth novelthrough it, Atalanta must remember Artemis''Four New Words for Love''fatal warning: that if she marries, looks to delicately unravelit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908754249</amazonuk>1472292154
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eve Amanthi Harris|title=The Marrying of Chani KaufmanBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=After waiting till all Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her elder sisters' weddings were done and dusted in true ultra-orthodox Jewish stylehome country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, it's now 19-year-old Chani's turnbut the one she thinks of as home. She's only met Baruch How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her fiancéhome, four times and he hasn't even seen the machinations that have flowed through her elbows but life ever since she first arrived there provide the match is made ''score'' for this gentle and the day eventually arrivesyet subtly violent novel. Baruch secretly studies forbidden gentile literature Padma's present fails to escape her past and Chani has an inquisitive streak often perceived as rebellious so God knows what much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the future holdsVilla. Perhaps they should take the Rabbi's marriage as an example? Or perhaps not…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908737433</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alison MacLeod178563335X|title=UnexplodedSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=ItWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's 1940 and Britain lives a trainee vicar, sitting in fear of on a Nazi invasion that could happen any dayPCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. In case the worst happensHer husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, Evelynwhilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's husband Geoffrey has buried a little something for daughter-in-law won't let her see her and their young son Philip in the gardengrandson. He tells her Holthorpe, on the tin contains Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a bit of money real bond with the parish - and his favourite photo she's in awe of them. As she digs it up from impulse rather than necessitythe vicar, Gail, but then she discovers that there's no photo but what there is instead makes Evelyn doubt that she knows been doing the man she marriedjob for more than thirty years. The events Rachel and Christopher hoped that follow make Evelyn realise that indeed she doesn't. Meanwhile the war continues and a German does invade their lives, but not in walk on the way that either of beach would do them could envisagesome good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241142636</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hannah Kent1398515388|title=Burial RitesThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Crime (Historical)General Fiction|summary=FridrikFirst of all, it was the earthquake, Agnes and Sigridur are accused of murdering two men one Icelandic night deep in 1829 before setting fire to their home. Now Agnes awaits executionthe ocean floor, imprisoned in which created the farm of a lowly local family whotsunami and this, rumour has itin turn, wouldn't be too great a loss if caused the prisoner becomes dangerousnuclear meltdown. Margrit Jonsdottir (the farmer's wife) doesn't feel threatened The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and sets the shocked, malnourished Agnes to workloss of livelihoods was widespread. Gradually Agnes reveals The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the events list of that night to Margrit and Toti, priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a young priestconvenience store. Her version seems He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to be a little different from what everyone else concluded, predictably… Or perhaps not so predictablyopen his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447233166</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=HarvestPapa on the Moon|author=Jim CraceMarco North|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As harvest comes in, 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 of Walter Thirsk as three vagabonds escaping the enclosure of their fields are blamed for the trangressions of others, as the chartmaker Mr Quill enumerates the common land, and as Master Kent's benevolent rule is overtaken by a new owner, who comes with enforcers in 'Some frogs had gotten into the name of 'well.'profit, progress and enterprise'' - or sheep farming as Walter quickly realises.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330445669</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Meg Wolitzer|title=The Interestings|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Back ''Walter stood waist-deep in 1974 six teenagers met at summer camp and did all those things which you get to do when your parents are not around to stop you. They smoked pot, drank vodka and Tangs - and talked way into the night about anything and everything. Plays were put onfragrant water, animations were perfected, but most importantly friendships were made that would last for years - naked except for some it would be a lifetimehis beaten leather hat. Back in 1974, as Nixon left the White House under a particularly heavy cloud, 'The Interestings', as one Long strands of their number called eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them, knew that they could achieve anything they set their minds to. For three summers they returned to Spirit-in-Two of the dogs leaned over the-Woods opening and then they faced barked down at the strange noise of the real worldbuckets as he filled them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701188278</amazonuk>}}''
{{newreview|author=Charlotte Mendelson|title=Almost English|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=In How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the late nineteen eighties sixteen year old Marina is a border at Combe school, destined - as she form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and all about her know - for Cambridge laconic to wistful and the medical profession. After her first term she's wonders if she's made musing, turning on a mistake as it's definitely not like it was at Ealing Girlssixpence. There, a girl whose mother is emotionally fragile doesn't stand outAnd author Marco North, even if who has the mother gets 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 even if the family you're living with is Hungarian and hasn't entirely left the ways most wonderful turn of the old country behind. At Combe there's too much about Marina that she could be mocked for - or could get her a cruel nickname. Marina simply doesn't fit inphrase, but the family have sacrificed everything so that she can starts as he means to go thereon.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144721997X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview|title=1Q84: The Complete Trilogy|author=Haruki Murakami|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The ''1Q84'' 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 Move on their own. The first book in the series in particular is almost completely baffling if taken in isolation. It does, though, demand a degree of dedication, and if the prospect of a 1300 page novel in which not a huge amount happens 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 the wonderful world of Haruki Murakami. As often with Murakami though, it's possible to read this book at a number of levels. On the surface it's a love story set in a slightly fantastical setting with a little bit of crime thrown in. At a deeper level, he explores the thin lines between imagination and reality, 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 'delicate', but that's just how the story appears.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099578077</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]