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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!{{Frontpage|isbn=295967572X|title=Pale Pieces|author=G M Stevens|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the purpose of this journey is, is uncertain. Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either -- Remove -->but we are probably in the past as the pair travel to the station by coach and the train is a steam locomotive.}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael ChristieMakenna Goodman|title=If I Fall, If I DieHelen of Nowhere
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It probably tells you a lot about could be argued that the atmosphere pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that for something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the whole time I was reading itbrink of losing both his career and his relationship, I thought 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 title was former owner of the countryside house he''If I Falls considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, I Die''her past tied to his potential fresh start. That missing second The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''Ifan entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form'' is probably at . Although she lives in an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the crux of reader gets the whole talesense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>043402306X</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Olga Tokarczuk
|title=House of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one go on calmly living in it?''
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Thea Lenarduzzi
|title=The Tower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= ''How unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''.
In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the identity of T, the protagonist of this tale. Just as T's story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of tuberculosis after being locked in a tower, captures T's imagination. Annie's fate is, above all, an enticing story to T. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, both in a quest for truth and knowledge, and in service of myth, fable and fantasy. |isbn=1804271799}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adam FouldsJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=In The Wolf's MouthVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In Sicily, bandits steal ''All was strange''... This haunting phrase encapsulates the sheep pervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a young shepherdfictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and Eline, two of the protagonists caught in its melancholic current. Distraught|isbn=1804271829}}{{Frontpage|author=Claire-Louise Bennett|title=Big Kiss, he seeks out his local Mafioso for helpBye-Bye |rating=4. Sixteen years later5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Everything in this book, two men are traveling to Sicily - onehowever sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a young English officerkiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. When the other narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me,'' it is less an American infantrymaninvitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. They are all soon thrust into a war that The imagined recipient of this plea is greater and more terrible than anything they could have dreamedXavier, her ex-partner, and they all must find different ways a ghost she conjures to survive its terrorstest her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009958686X</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eliza RobertsonHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=WallflowersLili is Crying|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=Eliza Robertson won the Man Booker Scholarship and Curtis Brown Prize while completing her MA First published in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. ''Wallflowers'' is already a bestseller 1953 in Robertson's native Canada. There French, this novel is quite some variety across the seventeen stories. Broadly speaking, though, there are a few themes: moving on from loss, finding love in timeless text which wrenches the midst hearts of gentle madness, its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and interactions with sentences from their proper position on the natural worldpage and positions them elsewhere, often on disjointed, truncated. Like the edge lives of Canada's British Columbia wildernessher characters, they are often left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408856794</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Edith PearlmanJonathan Buckley|title=HoneydewOne Boat
|rating=4
|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=American short story writer [[:Category:Edith Pearlman|Edith Pearlman]] brings us ''One Boat'' is a compilation of stories deeply introspective novella that have only been seen separately in magazines over defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the yearsreader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. This follows on from Set against the huge success evocative backdrop of ''Binocular Vision'' (in 2013)a small coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the short story collection that led magic of its setting and its power to Ms Pearlman being presented with provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the death of both her parents. Prompted by her mourning, her narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-aware, inviting the National Critics' Circle Awardreader into her labyrinthine cogitations. It is a book that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, since its narrative structure is fragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444797018</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert SchneiderEowyn Ivey|title=Brother of SleepBlack Woods Blue Sky
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Brother of SleepBlack Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Elias Johannes AlderBirdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a child born into life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a god forsaken village high in the Austrian Vorarlbergbar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Emaleen. He came into the world Described as a silent child''wild card'', she feels stuck in her day-to-day life, while his mother was screaming and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the midwife wasn't really paying attentionNorth Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. It took When she meets Arthur Nielson, a couple of loud intonations of the Te Deum from the neglectful nurse before strange, taciturn and solitary man, who says he finally uttered has a soundcabin over there, she feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715649205</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Edwidge DanticatSally Rooney|title=Claire of the Sea LightIntermezzo
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Claire Limye Lamne (Claire Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of the Sea Light) life and is born in the fishing village something of Ville Rosea grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, Haiti as her mother diescharacters never quite say exactly what they feel. Her father NoziasAmong 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 poor fishermansocially awkward chess prodigy, spends contrasts sharply with his life trying to make older brother Peter, a better life for his baby to such an extent that he eventually encourages a local fabric seller to take Clairesuccessful lawyer living in Dublin. This happens on the night of ClaireFollowing their father's 7th birthday; passing after a long battle with cancer, the night that little Claire goes missing before the fabric seller can take herbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782068511</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rebecca LeeFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=Bobcat and Other StoriesWhite Nights|rating=3.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=The first story As always in ''Bobcat'' is Dostoyevsky, the title story, and this alone character work is worth the price of admissionsublime. Plaster it with prizes, put it in anthologies; it deserves every accolade it can get. However, the last story echoes the first, One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and the five tales in between are strangely repetitive, most temperaments with Midwestern North American narrators and 1980s university settings. Moreover, all seven are in the first-person; I would have appreciated more variety of perspectiveremarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1922182311</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mary CostelloJames Baldwin|title=Academy StreetGiovanni's Room
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It is 1944. Tess Lohan''Giovanni's mother has just died at age 40Room'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, of tuberculosis. Seven-year-old Tess is one of six children as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a rural Irish familygay bar. They live at EasterfieldWhile David is engaged to Hella, a centuries-old manor house. A teacher later tells Tess the history of her home: built who is travelling in 1678Spain, it was a famine hospital the real tension in the 1840s; there are numerous corpses buried on novel arises not from his infidelity but from the landdeeper conflict within himself. He hints there may be many ghosts on the property, but the only one that haunts Tess It is her dead mother. David'Memories s crippling shame and traces denial of her mother must linger all over the house – in rooms and halls and landings. The dent of her feet on a rughis sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni. On a cup, the mark of her hand.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782114181</amazonuk>0141186356
}}
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Here are This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the Young Men'' surges forwardmoment our protagonist, oozing edginessValeria Cossati, from the very first sentence. Is that a bad thing? Probably not. It just means that readers may at times slip out of the storypurchases her forbidden notebook, feel themselves taking a step back and admiring learns about herself in the spare coolness of the novel before easing back into the narrativemost intimate and revealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408863731</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert EdricOttessa Moshfegh|title=SanctuaryMy Year of Rest and Relaxation
|rating=3
|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=Everyone knows CharlotteAt best, Emily this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and Anne. Not many know that this famous trio reveals the fragility of literary sisters also had a brotherhuman relationships; at worst, Patrick Branwell Brontëit is the cynical, born the year after Charlotte predictable and a year before Emilyslightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. Like his sistersThis unlikely heroine, he had literary ambitions: he wrote juvenile storiesa slim, poems attractive and translations from newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the Greek; he also trained as a painter (you have most likely seen his famous painting of his sisters). Again like his sistersworld, howeverbut resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, he was destined to die youngher solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857522876</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Takashi HiraideMatthew Tree|title=The Guest CatWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The Guest Cat'' had me Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at the cover. The reflective green material makes the cat's eyes glow any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and glint eerily in the lightwho had endless crises of self confidence. There is something ethereal and otherworldly about this novella and that is before I've even read a single word. This simple story about a Japanese couple and the cat that decides So Tim applied himself to adopt them has become an international best-seller his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and I was keen to find out whyset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447279409</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.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue PeeblesMosby Woods|title=Snake RoadA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=No one listened when Peggy Kirkpatrick began talking about a baby called Eleanor - well, no one except her granddaughter AgathaThe West isn't the dominant force it once was. You see, Peggy Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is elderly and she has dementia. No one has heard the best course of 'Eleanor'action. Some days Governments are better than othersflailing. A war here, but none are particularly gooda push for climate action there. Peggy's unpredictable and sometimes it A feeling that nobody is - quite literally - a fight to wash her and she'll either go outside in her nightdress or wear multiple skirts indoorsactual charge. The burden is carried most of the time by her daughterImagine then, Mary, but it's Aggie who attends there was a man with precognition. Imagine the dementia carers' group strategic advantage in her place and it was probably this that provoked her into listening more carefully to asset; a man who can tell you what her Gran was saying and trying to learn more about her history in will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the hope of keeping Peggy most valuable asset in the presenthistory. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099575841</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Favel Parrett0571379559|title=When the Night ComesThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Little Isla has moved to Hobart, Tasmania from ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the Australian mainland with her mother and younger brotherstory of four people. Bo is a chef Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the Nella Danriverbank, a Danish ship supplying the Antarctic expeditionsbuilt of broken bricks. Their meeting is just one of lifeInsubstantial as it might look, it's little moments that carry a greater effect than anyone realises at stood the passage of time, whether for storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the better or delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the worstrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848548540</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=By Night The Mountain BurnsClaire North|authortitle=Juan Tomas Avila LaurelHouse of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Sometimes a novel will startle because it tackles a topic totally unknown to us or tells us of lives previously un-imagined. This is the case with By Night the Mountain Burns. However, what is most remarkable about Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel’s novel is how easy it is to slip into the story of a child growing up on an isolated island in Equatorial Guinea. We are not reading about mysterious 'others'. We’re reading about people like ourselves, who live in a different place which has its own constraints – namely poverty and isolation.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276401</amazonuk>}}What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Neel MukherjeeKay Chronister|title=The Lives of OthersDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary= '''SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014'''Many generations of the Ghosh family live together in With a single house in 1960's Calcuttaworld that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, albeit post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a very big single house. Life may be materially comfortable but not easy. Jealousyrobotic takeover, in-fighting, the struggle to keep the family business going (anda world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for the younger family members, the struggle humans to lead the life theycathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures''d like) causes more than by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the odd sleepless nightfears that exist for humanity today. Son Supratik has succeeded in choosing It is a different path though. He's tired of the endless consumption and acquisition and leaves home shocking novel that still manages to follow his Marxist beliefs, exchanging family living for discomfort and dangerfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701186291</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|titleisbn=Problems with People1803363002|author=David GutersonEric LaRocca|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesHorror|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 ''Problems with PeopleBig Bad'' , whether that is a meandering exploration home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the relationships, big and smallstory, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that we form across . It is a lifetime. Ranging from that collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of parent illness, grief and child to humiliation. Horrors that between landlord linger and tenant, Guterson’s observation of the complexities and nuances involved in how we navigate these personal links is extremely sharp and true are harder to lifedefeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408859963</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Clara's DaughterMadelaine Lucas|authortitle=Meike ZiervogelThirst for Salt|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Clara’s DaughterLove, I'', in the short space of 144 pagesd read, paints the portrait of the relationships threatening was supposed to destroy be a family unit. The intensity is conveyed with sharp stabs from Ziervogel’s spare sentences.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907773797</amazonuk>}}light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=WreakingMichael Grothaus|authortitle=James ScudamoreBeautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=A derelict mental hospital, gloomy railway arches, the bleak countryside of the English coast. It all comes at us in grey flashes. If ''Wreaking'' was a film, But fearing something and having it would saturated with cool tonescome to pass are two different things. It’s an easy novel And I'm willing to visualise: Scudamore’s sparebet most of what we fear will never happen, elegant style creates an almost palpable atmosphereor we can take steps to change it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009952385X</amazonuk>}}''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David MitchellJennifer Saint|title=The Bone ClocksAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Holly Sykes is 15 and has found true love with an older man in his twenties - until she finds him in bed with her best mate''I was as worthy as any one of them. Upset and disorientatedI would get on board that ship, she runs away from homeI vowed. This may enable her to escape from I would take my place, not just in the unfaithful Vinny and her overbearing family but not name of the weirdnessgoddess. She's not the only one though: Hugo It was for the studentsake of my name, conman and lothario thought he was only doing someone a good turn when the weirdness started for himtoo. There is a point to it though: eventually battle lines will be drawn and itAtalanta's anyone's guess as to who will win, despite what the Anchorites may say. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340921609</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alison MooreAmanthi Harris|title=He WantsBeautiful Place|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Lewis Sullivan is close to retirementPadma, a young Sri Lankan, but elderly beyond his years and widowed. Edie's death seems has returned to have had practical implications - he's not getting the food he used to enjoy - but beyond that it's difficult to see quite what they had in common other than Villa Hibiscus on the librarysouthern coast of her home country. He used it and This is a place she worked there - but they didn't even enjoy the same booksspent her formative years. Lewis It is an RE teacher at not a place she was born into, but the same school where his father, Lawrence, used one she thinks of as home. How she came to teach - when they were both there be at the same time Villa, how it often confused became her home, and the paperwork. Lewis is beginning to wonder if he chose machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the wrong career, if he lives in the wrong place''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. He used Padma's present fails to be able to see escape her past and much like the house he grew up in from the bedroom window before it was demolished and replaced by musical score of a supermarket carparkfilm, but he's always dreamed of living by that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the sea. His adult daughter, Ruth visits him every day and brings him soup. He doesn't want soupVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907773819</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=The Narrow Road to the Deep NorthSea Defences|author=Richard FlanaganHilary Taylor|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they'The Narrow Road re held when you need to pick the Deep Northchildren 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. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the title parish - and she's in awe of both Flanaganthe vicar, Gail, but then she's Booker Prize-longlisted sixth novel been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a book by seventeenthwalk on the beach would do them some good -century Japanese poet Bashoit was stormy but it was probably what they needed. Poetry irradiates this often bleak story of Australian POWs building the Burma Death Railway during the Second World War, presenting beauty and love as counterpoints to gory descriptions of suffering and inhumanity And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701189053</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=1398515388|title=The Country of Ice Cream StarBoy and the Dog|author=Sandra NewmanSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary='My name be Ice Cream Fifteen Star and this be First of all, it was the tale of how I bring earthquake, deep in the cure to all ocean floor, which created the Nighted Statestsunami and this, save every poory childrenin turn, short for lifecaused the nuclear meltdown. Is how a city die for selfish love The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and rise the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from this same smallness. Be how their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the new America begin, in wars against all hope tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a country with no power in dog outside a world that hate its lifeconvenience store. So been He wasn't a dog person but the faith I sworn, convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and it ain't evils Tamon the dog jumped in no world nor cruelties in no red hell can change the vally heart of Ice Cream Star.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186429</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bilal Tanweer0989715337|title=The Scatter Here is Too GreatPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When ''Some frogs had gotten into the bomb exploded at well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the Karachi railway station causing intended death and mayhem, an aging reactionary poetfragrant water, naked except for his middle-aged sonbeaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, a child, a writer sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and a woman who relates more to stories than reality, are in barked down at the midst strange noise of it. Each experiences the blast buckets as differently as their experiences of life are from each other but each he filled them.''will'' be affected.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224099116</amazonuk>}}
}}
