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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sara Baume295967572X|title=Spill Simmer Falter WitherPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Every Tuesday he goes into townOur unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. This particular Tuesday he sees an advert for a rescue dog thatWhere they's been badly treated by its previous owner. Somewhere the ad strikes a resonance re going and he adopts what the dogpurpose of this journey is, calling it Oneeye (yes, one word, just like that)is uncertain. Gradually over shared meals a friendship grows Django found the tickets ''on the floor somewhere'' and develops over has persuaded our narrator to accompany him. Why not? Not much else is clear either - but we are probably in the seasons past as the spill of spring turns pair travel to summer's simmer, through the falter of autumn station by coach and on to withering winterthe train is a steam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0992817064</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael LaubMakenna Goodman|title=Diary Helen of the FallNowhere|rating=4.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Diary It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a hard-to-place feeling that something in your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a disgraced professor on the Fall brink of losing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a force which is a story about regretseductive, guilt radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and resentmentthe protagonist is indirect yet intimate. ItAs the former owner of the countryside house he's told from the point of view of an unnamed narratorconsidering, who reflects on not just Helen represents a volta in his own life but also , her past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house shares stories about Helen, and describes her as ''an entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Although she lives of his father and grandfatherin an assisted living facility now, Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the reader gets the sense are not altogether innocuous.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099581795</amazonuk>1804272205
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Antoine Laurain, Emily Boyce (translator) and Jane Aitken (translator)Olga Tokarczuk|title=The Red NotebookHouse of Day, House of Night
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Kabul 2007: Rahima and her sisters are followed home from school ''What's the good of a world that keeps changing like that? How can one day by a boy go on his bike. He taunts them innocently enough as little boys docalmly living in it?'' The title of this spellbinding work, ''House of Day, but with no sibling brotherHouse of Night'', somewhat reflects this notion of shifting realities - the girls are unchaperoned in this land that is ruled by small, subtle changes which govern our lives, like the laws of menshift from day to night, however quotidian, causing chaos. And as daughters in a household without sonsBut, the constant in a country that image is governed by fearthe house, stoic against the consequences will weigh heavily for them allancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0062244760</amazonuk>1804271918
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Norah VincentThea Lenarduzzi|title=Adeline: A Novel of Virginia WoolfThe Tower
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Back in 1999, when ''The HoursHow unctuous are the fats of another's life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream' won '. In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the Pulitzer Prizeidentity of T, Michael Cunningham set a precedent for depicting Woolfthe protagonist of this tale. Just as T's later life and suicide. Nicole Kidman won story is being told, the story of a second protagonist is unveiled: Annie, the daughter of a Best Actress Oscar for her role as Woolf wealthy family in the film version 19th century, who died of the novel; she is best remembered for wearing tuberculosis after being locked in a prosthetic nosetower, captures T's imagination. Fast forward 15 years. In 2014–2015 aloneAnnie's fate is, above all, three major novels about Virginia Woolf have been publishedan enticing story to T. That confluenceIt is a story which she consumes avariciously, especially both in a year that does not mark a significant anniversaryquest for truth and knowledge, speaks to a continuing interest and in Woolf's life service of myth, fable and writingsfantasy. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0349005648</amazonuk>1804271799
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ivan Repila Jon Fosse and Sophie Hughes Damion Searls (translator)|title=The Boy Who Stole Attila's HorseVaim
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you pick up a copy of this book you realise how small it is. You'll know, of course, that pockets hardly exist that are normally big enough to hold what we used to call a pocket book, but here is the exception to prove the rule'All was strange''. It's wee. The story is on a hundred pages. The concision is partly down to it starting after This haunting phrase encapsulates the beginningpervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, a fictional fishing village in Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for we first meet Big Jatgeir and SmallEline, two brothers, once they're stuck down a large well in the middle of a forest. Tasked with a family errand, they're trapped at the bottom of a natural Erlenmeyer flask, and even a desperate move cannot get either out. This is the story of the next three months protagonists caught in their existence, as they brave hunger, delirium, loss of language, and the brute and unstinting human selfishness needed for existenceits melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782271015</amazonuk>1804271829
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jamie KornegayClaire-Louise Bennett|title=SoilBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=34.5|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction|summary=Jay Mize Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is a scientific man with a particular interest steeped in soil anguish and agriculturedistortion. He decides he is the one to pioneer Even a kiss, usually a revolution in farming techniques symbol of intimacy and uproots his wife and son to set up an experimental farm on a plot closeness, becomes evidence of land in love lost. When the country. Jay narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me,'' it is also less an obsessive man and his plans take over, becoming his only focus and causing his family invitation than a desperate attempt to leave himconfirm her emotional numbness. Then flooding ruins his crops and he The imagined recipient of this plea is left at the end of his tether; things only get worse when Jay finds Xavier, her ex-partner, a dead body on his land and his tenuous grip on his sanity is releasedghost she conjures to test her detachment.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473607035</amazonuk>1804271934
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Karen CampbellHelene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=RiseLili is Crying|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Justine First published in 1953 in French, this novel is running for her life. She's had enough of being someone else's property, of being subjected to a timeless text which wrenches the kind hearts of love that has seen her tattooed its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and owned and beaten and rented out to others to earn her keep. So she's taken what isn't hers, but then was never actually his either, sentences from their proper position on the page and she's packed a bagpositions them elsewhere, waited until he is drunk-enough asleep not to hear her say goodbye to the dogdisjointed, and has lefttruncated.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408857928</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Dorthe Nors|title=Karate Chop, and Minna Needs Rehearsal Space|rating=3.5|genre=Short Stories|summary=The reviewer picks up Like the book.<br>The book is called ''Minna Needs Rehearsal Space''.<br>The book is entirely made out lives of one-sentence paragraphs.<br>The one-sentence paragraphs are very seldom poeticher characters, but normally they are grammatically correct sentences.<br>The one-sentence paragraphs on the whole have just one verb, unless regarding that from reported or unreported speech.<br>The book concerns a middle-aged musician and composer who does indeed need rehearsal space.<br>The book concerns a woman who suddenly gets more space than she wants when her boyfriend leaves her.<br>The boyfriend's departure causes a lot of people crowding around Minna, which causes a problem.<br>The problem might be resolved by a trip away from her city flat.<br>The title of the book might be ironicoften left tragically incomplete.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782271198</amazonuk>1804271675
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chigozie ObiomaJonathan Buckley|title=The FishermenOne Boat
|rating=4
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=This book ''One Boat'' is essentially a cautionary family tale deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of four brothers philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. Set against the evocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the way they react magic of its setting and its power to a prophecy about them by provoke profound introspection. Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the reason she has visited it after the local madmandeath of both her parents. It Prompted by her mourning, her narrative voice is also, in a sense, a coming-ofmeditative and deeply self-age story where Benaware, inviting the young narrator, is plunged reader into premature adulthood under the most brutal of circumstancesher labyrinthine cogitations. And it It is about brotherly love. None a book that not only requires but inspires depth of these descriptionsthought, however, convey the fact that this book since its narrative structure is written by an exciting new voice in African literary fictionfragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0957548850</amazonuk>1804271764
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer ClementEowyn Ivey|title=Prayers for the StolenBlack Woods Blue Sky
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ladydi Garcia Martínez lives in rural Chilpancingo''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, Mexico, with her the young mother, Ritaof toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a cleaning lady for bar waitress, a rich familysetting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Like many of the men Described as a ''wild card'', she feels stuck in their town who left her day-to find work-day life, Ladydi's father crossed and yearns to cross the Wolverine river into America, where he is rumoured and live on the North Fork to have another familyfulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. As a resultWhen she meets Arthur Nielson, this is very much a matriarchal community. Rita describes the situation for Ladydi's teacher: 'You men don't get itstrange, yettaciturn and solitary man, do you? This is who says he has a land of women. Mexico belongs cabin over there, she feels called to womengo - and bring Emaleen with her.Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099587599</amazonuk>1472279042
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David GrossmanSally Rooney|title=Falling Out of TimeIntermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Like Sally Rooney has studied the central characters in ''Falling Out chessboard of life and is something of Time'', Israeli author David Grossman lost his son, a soldier named Uri, during the Middle East conflict. In this multifaceted examination of bereavement, grandmaster at putting it seems that everyone has lost a childinto words. The genre-bending mixture of poetry, absurdist Her dialogueis gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, and an inverted fairy tale reflects as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the difficulty of ever capturing grief in language. Each many relationships woven into this story and each strategy , the central one for readers to unravel is like a new way of approaching the unspeakablefraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099583720</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Samantha Ellis|title=How To Be A Heroine: OrIvan, what I've learned from reading too much|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''How to be a Heroine'' is socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a pleasant and addictive readsuccessful lawyer living in Dublin. Playwright Samantha Ellis looks back at her childhood as Following their father's passing after a voracious reader and remembers long battle with cancer, the characters that influenced her. These are as diverse as Sylvia Plath, brothers''Little Women'' and Scheherazadealready strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099575566</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ian WalthewFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=The Complex Chemistry of LossWhite Nights
|rating=5
|genre=General FictionShort Stories|summary=Deep As always in rural France James Kerr was admitted to a psychiatric clinic. His mental problems were deep and intractableDostoyevsky, the character work is sublime. Superficially he seemed One is never to have got over the sudden death of his mother and sister when he was left wondering what a child character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and after their death his relationship temperaments with his father had deteriorated because his father refused to speak of their loss. There were additional factors too: Kerr had spent some time in Afghanistan in a secret capacity. In fact much of his life since he went to university had involved putting up a front, but doing something else in the backgroundremarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00OLMHCW2</amazonuk>0241619785
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michael ChristieJames Baldwin|title=If I Fall, If I DieGiovanni's Room
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It probably tells you a lot about the atmosphere of this book that for the whole time I was reading it, I thought the title was ''If I Fall, I DieGiovanni''. That missing second ''Ifs Room'' is probably at follows the crux of the whole talenarrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>043402306X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Virginia Burges|title=The Virtuoso|rating=3.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=The title character of ''The Virtuoso'' While David is Isabelle Bryantengaged to Hella, a professional violinist who has earned the affectionate nickname of 'Beethoven's Babe'. She was is travelling in Spain, the youngest-ever winner of real tension in the BBC Young Musician of novel arises not from his infidelity but from the Year competition and gave her first solo performance, of Beethoven's violin concerto, at Royal Albert Hall. 'Her violin represented another limb to her, it was that preciousdeeper conflict within himself. It felt so natural, like an extension of her body.' It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that the violin is IsabelleDavid's lifecrippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>B00R07U0B0</amazonuk>0141186356
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Adam FouldsAlba de Cespedes |title=In The Wolf's MouthForbidden Notebook
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In Sicily, bandits steal This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the sheep of a young shepherd. Distraughtmoment our protagonist, he seeks out his local Mafioso for help. Sixteen years laterValeria Cossati, two men are traveling to Sicily - one, a young English officerpurchases her forbidden notebook, and learns about herself in the other an American infantryman. They are all soon thrust into a war that is greater and more terrible than anything they could have dreamed, most intimate and they all must find different revealing ways to survive its terrors.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009958686X</amazonuk>1782278222
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eliza RobertsonOttessa Moshfegh|title=Wallflowers|rating=4|genre=Short Stories|summary=Eliza Robertson won the Man Booker Scholarship and Curtis Brown Prize while completing her MA in Creative Writing at the University My Year of East Anglia. ''Wallflowers'' is already a bestseller in Robertson's native Canada. There is quite some variety across the seventeen stories. Broadly speaking, though, there are a few themes: moving on from loss, finding love in the midst of gentle madness, Rest and interactions with the natural world, often on the edge of Canada's British Columbia wilderness.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408856794</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Edith Pearlman|title=Honeydew|rating=4|genre=Short Stories|summary=American short story writer [[:Category:Edith Pearlman|Edith Pearlman]] brings us a compilation of stories that have only been seen separately in magazines over the years. This follows on from the huge success of ''Binocular Vision'' (in 2013), the short story collection that led to Ms Pearlman being presented with the National Critics' Circle Award. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444797018</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Robert Schneider|title=Brother of SleepRelaxation|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Brother At best, this novel is a scathing critique of Sleep'' tells modern society and reveals the story fragility of Elias Johannes Alderhuman relationships; at worst, a child born into a god forsaken village high in it is the Austrian Vorarlbergcynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. He came into the world as This unlikely heroine, a silent childslim, while his mother was screaming attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the midwife wasn't really paying attention. It took a couple of loud intonations of the Te Deum from the neglectful nurse before he finally uttered a soundworld, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, her solution lies in her hibernation. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715649205</amazonuk>1784707422
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Edwidge DanticatMatthew Tree|title=Claire of the Sea LightWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Claire Limye Lamne (Claire Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of the Sea Light) is born in the fishing village his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of Ville Rose, Haiti as her mother diesself confidence. Her father NoziasSo Tim applied himself to his studies, a poor fisherman, spends cultivated his life trying to make a better life for abilities rather than his baby to such an extent that he eventually encourages a local fabric seller to take Claire. This happens on the night of Claire's 7th birthday; the night that little Claire goes missing before the fabric seller can take herdaydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782068511</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rebecca LeeB0C47LV1PC|title=Bobcat and Other StoriesFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=3.54|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=The first story in Can you make a ''BobcatYo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the title storyquestion should you make it? Or is the question if you did, and this alone would it land? The catch is worth that the price of admissionanswer for both could well be.... Plaster it with prizes, put it in anthologies; it deserves every accolade it can getno. However ''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, the last story echoes the firstOregon, and cautiously begins to emerge from the five tales in between are strangely repetitive, most with Midwestern North American narrators and 1980s university settings. Moreover, all seven are in restrictions imposed during the first-person; I would have appreciated more variety of perspective.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1922182311</amazonuk>covid pandemic
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mary CostelloMosby Woods|title=Academy StreetA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It is 1944. Tess LohanThe West isn's mother has just died at age 40, of tuberculosist the dominant force it once was. Seven-year-old Tess Nobody in the West is one quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of six children in a rural Irish familyaction. Governments are flailing. They live at EasterfieldA war here, a centuries-old manor housepush for climate action there. A teacher later tells Tess the history of her home: built feeling that nobody is in 1678actual charge. Imagine then, it there was a famine hospital man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in the 1840sthis asset; there are numerous corpses buried on the landa man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. He hints there may That man would be many ghosts on the propertyvaluable, but right? Perhaps the only one that haunts Tess is her dead mother. 'Memories and traces of her mother must linger all over the house – most valuable asset in rooms and halls and landingshistory. The dent of her feet on a rug. On a cupImagine then, the mark of her handthat this man loses this ability.'What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782114181</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Rob Doyle0571379559|title=Here Are the Young MenThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''Here The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the Young Menhouse on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it'' surges forwards stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, oozing edginessstruggles to grow his vegetables, from to complete the very first sentencedelivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. Is that a bad thing? Probably not They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. It just means People don't believe that readers may at times slip out of the storythey're related, feel themselves taking a step back much less twins and admiring the spare coolness of the novel before easing back into the narrativethere's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408863731</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Robert EdricClaire North|title=SanctuaryHouse of Odysseus|rating=35|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=Everyone knows Charlotte''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, Emily with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and Annethen by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Not many know Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that this famous trio of literary sisters also had a brotherClytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Patrick Branwell Brontë, born Queen Penelope is on the year after Charlotte and brink of a year before Emilyfragile peace. Like his sistersOne that shatters however with the return of Orestes, he had literary ambitions: he wrote juvenile storiesKing of Mycenae, poems and translations from the Greek; he also trained as a painter (you have most likely seen his famous painting of his sisters). Again like his sisterssister Elektra, however, he was destined to die youngseeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857522876</amazonuk>0356516075
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Takashi HiraideKay Chronister|title=The Guest CatDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''The Guest CatDesert Creatures'' had me at by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the cover. The reflective green material makes the cat's eyes glow and glint eerily in the lightfears that exist for humanity today. There It 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 shocking novel that decides to adopt them has become an international best-seller and I was keen still manages to find out whyhope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447279409</amazonuk>1803364998
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{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Susan HillEric LaRocca|title=Black SheepThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionHorror|summary=Mount of Zeal Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a mining village, way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and no mistakeprocess them. Three concentric semi-circular streets align across the side of Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a hillghost, like the rows of seats in an amphitheatreit usually something tangible and, with little thought at all allowed for the life above by the crest end of the hillstory, and a lot of effort and dreams focused on the coal mine at the villagebeatable. Eric LaRocca's core. ''The Howker family (and how evocative Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that name . It is, so akin to the noise a collection of hawking coal dust from one's lungs), and Ted and Rose, short stories more interested in the youngest horrors of the clan, in particularillness, will face the destiny the environment they grow up in gives them – with only the merest glimmers of hope grief and the faintest of sparks to latch on to as regards a likeable futurehumiliation. But if Horrors that is a faint spark, then how safe is it so close linger and are harder to the tinderbox of a coal mine?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009953956X</amazonuk>defeat than any ''Big Bad''.
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue PeeblesMadelaine Lucas|title=Snake RoadThirst for Salt|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=No one listened when Peggy Kirkpatrick began talking about ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a baby called Eleanor light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year- well, no one except long relationship that once defined her granddaughter Agatha. You seeOverlaid with later wisdom, Peggy is elderly and she has dementiathe narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. No one has heard Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''EleanorThirst for Salt'. Some days are better than others, but none are particularly good. Peggy's unpredictable and sometimes it is details the 24- quite literally year- a fight to wash her and sheold narrator'll either go outside in her nightdress or wear multiple skirts indoors. The burden is carried most of the time by s deepening relationship with her daughterolder lover, Marydepicting its all-consuming nature, but how it's Aggie who attends the dementia carers' group in changed her place perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it was probably this that provoked her into listening more carefully to what her Gran was saying and trying to learn more about altered her history in the hope of keeping Peggy in the presentirrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099575841</amazonuk>0861546490
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Favel ParrettMichael Grothaus|title=When 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 Night Comesquestion 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}}{{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Saint|title=Atalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Little Isla has moved to Hobart''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, Tasmania from not just in the name of the goddess. It was for the Australian mainland with her mother and younger brothersake of my name, too. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Bo Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a chef on formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Nella DanArgonauts, a Danish ship supplying fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the Antarctic expeditionschance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. Their meeting What follows is just one a whirlwind of lifechallenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis's little moments fatal warning: that carry a greater effect than anyone realises at the timeif she marries, whether for the better or the worstit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848548540</amazonuk>1472292154
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=By Night The Mountain BurnsAmanthi Harris|authortitle=Juan Tomas Avila LaurelBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Sometimes Padma, a novel will startle because it tackles a topic totally unknown young Sri Lankan, has returned to us or tells us the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of lives previously un-imaginedher home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, but the case with By Night one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the Mountain Burns. HoweverVilla, what is most remarkable about Juan Tomás Ávila Laurel’s novel is how easy it is to slip into became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the story of a child growing up on an isolated island in Equatorial Guinea. We are not reading about mysterious 'others'score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. We’re reading about people Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like ourselvesthe musical score of a film, who live in a different place which has that strand weaves its own constraints – namely poverty and isolationway through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908276401</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=178563335X|title=AsunderSea Defences|author=Chloe AridjisHilary Taylor|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Marie, the narrator of Chloe AridjisWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's second novela trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they''Asunder'', is a guard at re held when you need to pick the National Gallery in Londonchildren up. It is a simple Her husband, subdued life she leads in this 'tiny kingdom'Christopher, but it suits collects six-year-old Hannah and her: 'I had always sought quiet in the world and there were few movements quieterelder brother, I realisedJamie, than paint cracking over timewhilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma' Most would find s daughter-in-law won't let her see her work tediousgrandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but over her nine years at Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the museum parish - and she has adjusted to the routine; 'unlike some s in awe of the new guardsvicar, Gail, I but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do not suffer from boredom or listlessnessthem some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099572753</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Neel Mukherjee1398515388|title=The Lives of OthersBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0989715337
|title=Papa on the Moon
|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= ''Some frogs had gotten into the well.'SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2014' ''Many generations of Walter stood waist-deep in the Ghosh family live together in a single house in 1960's Calcuttafragrant water, albeit a very big single housenaked except for his beaten leather hat. Life may be materially comfortable but not easyLong strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Jealousy, in-fighting, Two of the struggle to keep dogs leaned over the family business going (opening and, for barked down at the younger family members, strange noise of the struggle to lead the life theybuckets as he filled them.'d like) causes more than the odd sleepless night. Son Supratik has succeeded in choosing a different path though. He's tired How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the endless consumption form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and acquisition laconic to wistful and leaves home musing, turning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, who has the most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to follow his Marxist beliefs, exchanging family living for discomfort and dangergo on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186291</amazonuk>
}}
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