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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Emma GeenJeremy Cooper|title=The Many Selves of Katherine NorthDiscord|rating=3.5|genre=Science Literary Fiction|summary=As Discord: a Bristol-area 'phenomenaut'lack of agreement or harmony (as between persons, things, nineteen-year-old Kit projects herself into or ideas) The principal example of discord within the lab-grown bodies novel, as with most instances of all sorts discord, is easily located. The two protagonists of creaturesthe novel, Rebekah Rosen and Evie Bennet, are as different as they come. She's recently spent Rebekah is an uptight, traditional and no-nonsense composer close to retirement, while Evie is a lot force of time nature, bounding onto the musical scene as a fox (appropriate given her nickname) precocious saxophonist, oozing with talent and charm. The two, predictably, don't always see eye to eye, their approaches different and got particularly close Evie's progressive views at odds with Rebekah's conservative leaning. However, something connects them beyond just their musical project: a vixen named Tomokosort of fragile alliance formed within the clamour. It|isbn=1804272264}}{{Frontpage|author=Polly Barton|title=What Am I, A Deer?|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Polly Barton's becoming much harder for her debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, newly relocated from London to leave Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the animal world behind process of localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a new audience. Barton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at the end risk of her 'jumps'disappearing altogether. Even after BuckleyFrom this, the novel opens out into a wider, resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, accepted, or loved?|isbn=1804272175}}{{Frontpage|author=Maria Stepanova and Sasha Dugdale (Translator)|title=The Disappearing Act|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Despite her neuroengineeranonymisation of place names and people, signals her Stepanova's message in this short work of autofiction is unmistakable. A novelist named M travels from B (ostensibly Berlin) to the town of F for a literary festival she is to 'Come home' be a guest speaker at. Detoured by erratic train schedules and she resumes nudged by forces beyond her control, her original bodyjourney slowly bends toward a traveling circus. Swept up in this series of events, she M eventually offers to step in for a circus performer who has trouble giving up animal tendencies like territorialismunexpectedly left the show. The train functions as a motif of transience and impermanence, toileting outdoors while the circus embodies the reshaping of identity and raiding binsa retreat into fantasy, an impulse that lies at the very heart of the novel form itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408858436</amazonuk>1804272329

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Sjon and Victoria Cribb (translator)295967572X|title=Moonstone: The Boy Who Never WasPale Pieces|author=G M Stevens

|summary=Sixteen-year-old Mani Stein - Moonstone in translation - existed on Our unnamed narrator is about to begin a train journey with his companion Django. Where they're going and what the fringes purpose of societythis journey is, is uncertain. He lived in Reykjavik and in 1918 Django found the tickets ''on the night sky (floor somewhere'' and the day for that matter) was lit by the eruptions of the Katla volcanohas persuaded our narrator to accompany him. The Great War was raging, or possibly grinding on, Why not? Not much else is clear either - but life we are probably in the capital carried on much past as usual. There were shortages, such as coal, but there was the new fashion and it was for the movies that Mani lived, seeing every production he could, sometimes several times. He dreamed about the films, changing them pair travel to suit his tastes, working his own life into the plots. But there was another reason why Mani was a misfit: Mani was gay station by coach and frequently made a living as the train is a sex workersteam locomotive.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1473613132</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Conor O'CallaghanMakenna Goodman|title=Nothing on EarthHelen of Nowhere

|summary=On It could be argued that the pervading theme of this book is malaise - a sweltering night hard-to-place feeling that something in what your life is not quite right. The protagonist, a blisteringly hot summer disgraced professor on the brink of losing both his career and his relationship, embodies this feeling. However, Goodman counteracts his discomfort with a young girl hammers at a manforce which is seductive, radical and unnerving: Helen. The connection between Helen and the protagonist is indirect yet intimate. As the former owner of the countryside house he's door and when let into considering, Helen represents a volta in his life, her past tied to his potential fresh start. The realtor who shows the protagonist around the house tells him that shares stories about Helen, and describes her father has disappeared as ''tooan entity that is pure consciousness, beyond form''. Gradually her story emergesAlthough she lives in an assisted living facility now, of a home on one of those estates so common in Ireland after the collapse of Helen has powers beyond comprehension which the Celtic Tiger with only reader gets the occasional house occupied and others only part builtsense are not altogether innocuous. It could be any one |isbn=1804272205}}{{Frontpage|author=Olga Tokarczuk|title=House of hundreds Day, House of Irish towns at that time and its main feature is Night|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''What's the lack good of hope a world that keeps changing like that ? How can one go on calmly living in it will never be any better. Our narrator tells her story?'' The title of this spellbinding work, much''House of Day, he saysHouse of Night'', as it was told to him and we hear somewhat reflects this notion of a life on shifting realities - the edge of povertysmall, subtle changes which govern our lives, with strange noises in like the shift from day to night, words written however quotidian, causing chaos. But, the constant in that image is the dust on house, stoic against the windows mirrored by those written in blue ink on her skinancient diurnal cycle which nonetheless controls how it is perceived.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1781620342</amazonuk>1804271918

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Per Olov Enquist and Deborah Bragan-Turner (translator)Thea Lenarduzzi|title=The Parable BookTower|rating=3.5

|summary=It's not only springtime when a man'How unctuous are the fats of another's fancies turn to thoughts of love – he can also do it life, how dizzying their sugars in our bloodstream''. In this compelling novel, Thea Lenarduzzi assumes the autumn identity of his lifeT, as does the man involved hereprotagonist of this tale. But Just as T's story is being a well-known authortold, and being beholden to silence, can he really put his thoughts on paper? It happened the story of a long time agosecond protagonist is unveiled: Annie, and he only met the woman concerned daughter of a couple wealthy family in the 19th century, who died of times, but with it tuberculosis after being such a powerful event and such locked in a slightly unusual circumstancetower, what should he do? It takes a notebook of his fathercaptures T's imagination. Annie's love poems fate is, above all, an enticing story to his motherT. It is a story which she consumes avariciously, that he finds both incomplete in a quest for truth and scorchedknowledge, to give him the green light – the voice from the past that says to himand in service of myth, 'go for it'fable and fantasy. And what we read here is a result.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857059912</amazonuk>1804271799

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Maggie O'FarrellJon Fosse and Damion Searls (translator) |title=This Must Be the PlaceVaim

|summary=Maggie O'Farrell's globe-trotting seventh novel opens in 2010 with Daniel Sullivan, an American linguistics professorAll was strange''... He lives with his wife Claudette, a French actress who retreated from This haunting phrase encapsulates the limelightpervading sense of otherworldliness which permeates this story set in Vaim, and their two children in a remote home fictional fishing village in Donegal. It was 10 years ago that he first came here Norway which paradoxically could not feel more real for Jatgeir and met Claudette by chance when her van had a flat tire; he struck up a conversation with her son Ari and gave Eline, two of the boy tips for dealing with his stutter. Now, preparing to fly back to Brooklyn for his father's ninetieth birthday party, he's protagonists caught short by a long-lost voice he hears on the radio. It belongs to Nicola Janks, a former lover he last saw 24 years ago; when he learns that she died soon after they were together, he determines to figure out whether he played a role, even if he doesn't like what he findsin its melancholic current.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755358805</amazonuk>1804271829

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joanne HarrisClaire-Louise Bennett|title=Different ClassBig Kiss, Bye-Bye |rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Everything in this book, however sweet or seemingly innocent, is steeped in anguish and distortion. Even a kiss, usually a symbol of intimacy and closeness, becomes evidence of love lost. When the narrator cries out internally, ''come over here and kiss me,'' it is less an invitation than a desperate attempt to confirm her emotional numbness. The imagined recipient of this plea is Xavier, her ex-partner, a ghost she conjures to test her detachment.|isbn=1804271934}}{{Frontpage|author=Helene Bessette and Kate Briggs (translator)|title=Lili is Crying|rating=4.5

|summary= St Oswald's Grammar School For Boys is First published in 1953 in crisis. A murdered schoolboyFrench, this novel is a procession timeless text which wrenches the hearts of new Head Masters, a(nother) new Head Master, a Crisis Intervention Team its readers just as Bessette wrenches words and a potential merger with St Oswald's all female counterpart, Mulberry House. Roy Straitley is not altogether dismayed at sentences from their proper position on the prospect of delaying his retirement; St Oswald's has been his lifepage and positions them elsewhere, man and boy and a crisis is a crisis after all is said and donedisjointed, isn't it? It's probably his duty to stay and right the shiptruncated. So when Like the latest lives of the new Head Masters and his duo of crisis managers walk into the staff roomher characters, Straitley can't quite believe his old eyesthey are often left tragically incomplete. The new Head is an ex-pupil of St Oswald's; a boy who, in his time at the esteemed old School caused such an uproarious scandal that one of the Masters ended up in prison! |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0385619235</amazonuk>1804271675

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Bill BeverlyJonathan Buckley|title= DodgersOne Boat|rating= 54|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Judging a book by its cover can mislead. It can especially mislead if you don't look closely at the cover and are just grabbed by the ''feel'' or ''styleOne Boat'' is a deeply introspective novella that defies traditional narrative structure, drawing the reader into a contemplative realm of philosophical musings and fragmented memories flowing from our narrator and protagonist, Teresa. Set against the design evocative backdrop of a small coastal Greek town, this work masterfully captures the thing. Being misled is not necessarily a bad thingmagic of its setting and its power to provoke profound introspection. For reasons best left in Teresa herself recognises these qualities as the depths of my addled brain, reason she has visited it after the styling death of Dodgers had me thinking 'noir'both her parents. I was expecting late fiftiesPrompted by her mourning, early sixtiesher narrative voice is meditative and deeply self-aware, inviting the reader into her labyrinthine cogitations. If I'd looked closerIt is a book that not only requires but inspires depth of thought, I'd have seen that it since its narrative structure is much more contemporary than thatfragmentary and ironically relies on analepsis for its propulsion. Then again…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1843448572</amazonuk>1804271764

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alice AdamsEowyn Ivey|title=Invincible SummerBlack Woods Blue Sky

|summary=As Alice Adams's debut novel opens in 'Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the summer young mother of 1995toddler Emaleen, four university friends are lounging on Bristol's Brandon Hillwho longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, drinking a setting which enables her bad habits and contemplating what the future holdsher accidental neglect of Emaleen. ThereDescribed as a ''wild card''s Eva Andrews, raised she feels stuck in Sussex her day-to-day life, and yearns to cross the 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 single father; siblings Sylvie and Lucien Marchantstrange, neglected by their alcoholic mother; taciturn and Benedict Waverleysolitary man, a rich kid whose parents have a holiday home on Corfu. Eva who says he has a crush on Luciencabin over there, while Benedict is besotted she feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with Evaher. Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1509814701</amazonuk>1472279042

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author= Birgul OguzSally Rooney|title= HahIntermezzo|rating= 34.5|genre= Literary General Fiction|summary= I was interested to receive this book for review as I knew it was written in a modern, interesting style, being effectively a collection Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of short stories, but appearing more in a novel structuregrandmaster at putting it into words. I wasHer dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, however, rather disappointed with the bookas her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Whilst it does have some very fine examples of prose writing within Among the storiesmany relationships woven into this story, I felt disconnected from the narrator, who central one for readers to unravel is the daughter of fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a recently deceased man who was involved in socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a Turkish military coup successful lawyer living in 1980Dublin. There is therefore a lot of examples of the narrator relating the conversations they had shared regarding ''revolution'', and the way this had affected the daughterFollowing their father's upbringing and childhood. Another 'story' then delves into passing after a seemingly disconnected wander through the townlong battle with cancer, whereby we see the narrator working at gutting fish, and talking about a man she finds repulsive, but who appears to be in love with herbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>9462380740</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chuck PalahniukFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=Make Something UpWhite Nights

|genre=Short Stories |summary=What are we to make of that subtitle-seeming writing on As always in Dostoyevsky, the front cover – character work is sublime. One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity.|isbn=0241619785}}{{Frontpage|author=James Baldwin|title=Giovanni's Room|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction |summary='stories you can't unreadGiovanni's Room'? Does that not apply to all good fiction? Clearly it is here due to ' follows the reputation of the authornarrator David, an American man living in Paris, and the baggage as he navigates his name brings to the page. We'd expect a dramatic approach from anything Palahniuk writestorturous affair with Giovanni, and an added frisson, an extra layer, from which we might be forced to shrink back. But Italian bartender he meets in a lot of the contents don't quite go that fargay bar. Yes, things are dramatic, when society starts attaching defibrillators to itself, While David is engaged to create the perfectHella, simple, care- (''The Price who is Right''-travelling in Spain, and Kardashian-) free happiness. A man buys a horse for his daughter – but boy is it the wrong horse to buy. A man falls real tension in love – yes, sometimes the plot summaries of these stories really are better off for being short (speaking of which, don't turn to novel arises not from his infidelity but from the three-page entrant here as a taster, it'll put you off by dint of being, almost uniquely here, a nothing story)deeper conflict within himself. A call centre worker can't convince people heIt is David's on the level crippling shame and even in their country – until someone starts riffing back to him. A housing estate report conveys bad regulation violations, but not as bad as the happenings at a 'Burning Man'-styled festival, in a very clever couple denial of tales. But many too are the instances where his sexuality that extra step has been takenultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099587688</amazonuk>0141186356

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Aliya WhiteleyAlba de Cespedes |title= The Arrival of MissivesForbidden Notebook|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=In the aftermath This Italian work of the Great War, Shirley Fearn dreams feminist fiction holds an air of challenging suspense and tension from the conventions of rural Englandmoment our protagonist, where life is as unchanging as the seasons. The scarred veteran Mr TillerValeria Cossati, left disfigured by an impossible accident on the battlefields of France, brings with him a message: part prophecypurchases her forbidden notebook, part warning. As Shirley's village prepares for the annual May Day celebrations, where a new queen will be crowned and learns about herself in the future reborn, she must choose between change most intimate and renewal – will the missives Mr Tiller brings prevent her mastering her identity?revealing ways.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907389377</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= P K LynchOttessa Moshfegh|title= ArmadillosMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating= 4.53|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Aggie At best, this novel is one a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the fragility of Texas' downtrodden. Dirt poor human relationships; at worst, it is the cynical, predictable and abusedslightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. ''This unlikely heroine, a 'sub' from a 'sub' family'' … ''Her father slim, attractive and brother enact that 'sub'-ness on newly orphaned girl in hertwenties is disillusioned with the world, week but resolves not to lose sleep over it: infact, week out.'' ''She has only the vaguest notion that there is something wrong with the abuse she endures.her solution lies in her hibernation.''|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>178507959X</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tarjei Vesaas, Torbjorn Stoverud and Michael Barnes (translators)Matthew Tree|title=The BirdsWe'll Never Know

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=We're somewhere in rural Scandinavia, on the shores of a large lake, but in a community relying on the farmland that is scattered in amongst the woods. Our chief concerns are brother and sister – Mattis and Hege. He, Mattis, is what the other villagers call 'simple' – sure, he knows a few things about life, and what makes a clever person and what makes a well-turned phrase, and how Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to talk to girls and when to not stare at them, but he is definitely not quite as the others would wish. Those others include be different from his sister, who is seeing her life waste away in listening to his chatter, knitting jumpers to make ends meetfather, a drunk and regretting in her own small way what has got her to middle-age in this situation. But from this galling introduction, you should take away the bigger picture – even if there is no way out, the life in this countryside is brilliantly conveyed, full chronic underachiever whose dreams of sun as well as shade, being exceptional at any of labour his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of idleness, and wit and charm as much as hardshipself confidence. I defy you So Tim applied himself to read this his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and think this corner of Scandinavia bleakset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0914671200</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nicola BarkerB0C47LV1PC|title=The Cauliflower®Fragility|author=Mosby Woods

|genre=Literary Fiction |summary=Nicola Barker teasingly refers to herself as this bookCan you make a ''s Yo birthing person'collagist'joke? And if you could, piecing together diverse documents to create a picture of Sri Ramakrishna (1836–1886)is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, a largely illiterate guru who attracted followers to his intense worship of would it land? The catch is that the goddess Kalianswer for both could well be.... His life story no. ''Fragility'' is a sticky mass set as the city of contradictions:|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785150669</amazonuk>Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Toni Morrison Mosby Woods|title= God Help the ChildA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=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 truly complex and emotionally raw portrayalwar here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that seeks to cover issues nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of racecircumstances. That man would be valuable, gender, and paedophiliaright? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. A slim volume, yesImagine then, but one that is powerful in its punchthis man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099555921</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jesus Carrasco and Margaret Jull Costa (translator)0571379559|title=Out in the OpenThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=35

|summary=Meet ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the boystory of four people. We never learn his name – Tess Hembry's roots are in fact we learn very little Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in this bookthe house on the riverbank, such built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as where or when we areit might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and whyfloods. What we do know is that he has left home. We get the feeling Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his father is too handy with punishmentvegetables, but that can't be to complete the only reason for him first hiding out delivery rounds - and to bring in an olive grove overnightsufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, then fleeing across the plains surrounding rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his familymother's villageJamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Especially as hePeople don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's chosen one of the most awkward, attritional times to cross said plains – the land an assumption when Max is in the middle of a horrendous droughtout with his mother that she's his nanny. When he tries to steal his first provisions from an aged goatherd, however, he finds some light and liquid, but is this substitute father figure ever going to be enough to help the boy flee what he needs to?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009958218X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Philip DentClaire North|title=Mutable Passions: Charlotte Bronte: A Disquieting AffairHouse of Odysseus|rating=35|genre=Historical Literary Fiction |summary=As the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë's birth approaches, it is a perfect time for reading about her. Philip Dent's second novel chooses a lesser known period of her life What could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to dramatize. All her siblings are now dead; during a hard winter when she is unable to visit her best friend, Ellen Nussey, Charlotte spends her time finishing the excellent ''VilletteIthaca'', her final novelpicks up a few months after where we left off. The family servantIn the palace of Odysseus, Tabby, ribs Charlotte about with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her romantic prospects – including Patrick Brontë's curatehusband, Arthur Bell Nichollswho sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. Charlotte responds with indignation: 'I could no more kiss As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the lips throne of a man with a beard as big as rooks' nests than I could yours, Tabbythe Western Isles.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178589093X</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Miroslav Penkov|title=Stork Mountain|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=A young man, his grandfather Having survived – politically and a stork with a broken wing are physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca''company of rebels'' at s shores, Queen Penelope is on the heart brink of this lively tale set in Bulgaria's Strandja Mountainsa fragile peace. The storks One that shatters however with the return to the mountains each spring are migrantsof Orestes, like so many King of the people that have passed through the region over the centuries. The young narrator is also in transitMycenae, born in Bulgaria, but raised and educated in America. The story opens with his return to Bulgaria in search of his grandfather who has broken off contact with his family in America. But the young man's motives are not as clear cut as first appearssister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473622182</amazonuk>0356516075

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Elisa AlbertKay Chronister|title= After BirthDesert Creatures

|genre= Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary= This book With a world that is definitely not becoming increasingly inhospitable for anyone who has humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a rosy picture of new motherhood. In factrobotic takeover, I would probably avoid it if you are contemplating giving birth in the near future. For any woman who has ever struggled through the first few months a world devoid of motherhood, however, water or a partner of somebody who is going through itnuclear holocaust, it this genre is an astounding and revelatory reada way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. Never before have I read ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a more searing, honest and open discussion new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the emotional upheaval fears that exist for humanity today. It is a woman often goes through after giving birthshocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009959014X</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Ayelet Gundar-GoshenEric LaRocca|title= Waking LionsThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There

|genre= Literary FictionHorror|summary= If the point of 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 ''literatureBig Bad'' - as opposed to the less exalted though just-as-worthwhile forms of writing - , whether that is to force you to think about the real worlda home invader, the political worlda monster or a ghost, the painful life-as-we-know-it worldusually something tangible and, whilst catching you up in a by the end of the story about something , beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that never really happened. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, but, you know, might well have done so…and if you think grief and humiliation. Horrors that matters, then you must read this booklinger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782271562</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yan LiankeMadelaine Lucas|title=The Four BooksThirst for Salt

|summary=''The Four BooksLove, I'' is d read, was supposed to be a difficultlight and weightless feeling, challenging novel and not but I had always longed for the feint heartedgravity'' Told from a retrospective view, or for someone looking for a pageyoung woman unravels the year-turnerlong relationship that once defined her. It really challenges Overlaid with later wisdom, the reader's perceptions and opens up narrator relives the affair with a gateway man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to an era that is difficult to imagine for anyone brought up in a western cultureits sorrowful end the summer after. Set in Maoist China it tells against the story backdrop of four protagonists and a memorable antagonist. The four, found guilty of anti-revolutionary crimes are undergoing re-education in a work camp governed by the child. With an Orwellian feel, isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'The Four Books'details the 24-year-old narrator' will come to be regarded as an undoubted masterpieces deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099569493</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yann MartelMichael Grothaus|title=The High Mountains of PortugalBeautiful Shining People

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Tomas is being thrust into the twentieth Century, ''But fearing something and he doesn't like having itcome to pass are two different things. He has given himself the job And I'm willing to bet most of seeking something out in the High Mountains of Portugalwhat we fear will never happen, based on an ancient religious diary he found working in an archive, and or we can take steps to do so he needs change it.'' ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the use question of his uncle's brand new car to get him there identity and back in timeacceptance. His jaw drops when he learns he will have Of what it means to do the driving himself, for he cannot make head nor tail of be human. Of what anything on the infernal machine does is real and why. It what is of course a certain kind of progress, a looking forwardartificial, which has become quite anathema to him – for ever since he lost his beloved wife, beloved child and father, all in whether the space development of a week, he has walked everywhere backwards – shielding himself from what really technology is ahead with a padded behind, and never letting sight of what he has lostexciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1782114696</amazonuk>191458564X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Antonio Moresco and Richard Dixon (translator)Jennifer Saint|title=Distant LightAtalanta|rating=4.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Our unnamed narrator might ''I was as worthy as well be the only person aliveany one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. He knows he's I would take my place, not – he still goes down to just in the nearest inhabited village to buy things to eat and other necessities, and he sees planes spreading their contrails over name of the remote area he lives in – but he might as well begoddess. A lot It was for the sake of his thoughts are about life, howevermy name, too. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. Abandoned at birth for he has little to do except notice the nature around himbeing born a daughter rather than a son, from Atalanta is raised under the smell protective eye of lilies burgeoning with nobody else to see them in this deserted villagethe goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the swallows darting across the ravines Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the countryside. Life Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and the nature carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of a light challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that he sees spring into activity every night at what he thought was a totally lifelessif she marries, empty forest area on land separated from his lookout post in his back garden by a deep, wooded gorge…it will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0914671421</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tania JamesAmanthi Harris|title=The Tusk That Did the DamageBeautiful Place|rating=3.5

|summary=Tania James Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was a Fulbright Fellow in New Delhi in 2011–12born into, but the one she thinks of as home. For this How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her second novel after life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''Atlas of Unknownsscore'' (shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian literature) this gentle and the story collection yet subtly violent novel. Padma''Aerogrammes'', she clearly draws on s present fails to escape her personal knowledge past and much like the musical score of India in all a film, that strand weaves its contradictions, especially when it comes to environmental policy. The novel alternates between three perspectives: a third-person account of an elephant named way through everything that happens at the Gravedigger and first-person narratives from a poacher and a documentary filmmakerVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1784700584</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Anakana Schofield178563335X|title= Martin John|rating= 4|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I had heard much about this novel before I read it for review, by which I mean I had heard it was profane, strange and had a daring subject matter accompanied by elements of humour. I have to say that whilst I agree it is certainly profane and strange and incredibly innovative, I didn't find much humour in it at all.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276665</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewSea Defences|author=Jon Kalman Stefansson and Philip Roughton (translator)|title=The Heart of ManHilary Taylor|rating=35

|summary=What could be better than an existentialist book from rural IcelandWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, full of gnomic comments about how close life sitting in on a PCC meeting and death are, that has as its core a journey taken bywondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, amongst othersChristopher, a naïve collects six-year-old Hannah and hormonal teenaged lad and a full coffin? Whyher elder brother, I hear you cryJamie, whilst Rachel holds a trilogy concerning the samesobbing parishioner. Yes, itThelma's the obvious answer, really – why else would we come to this third partdaughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, where on the survivors of the expedition rest upNorfolk coast, note the women giving them helpis a lovely place, and see how eminently close the circle of life but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the figure parish - and she's in awe of a snake swallowing its tail throughthe vicar, among other thingsGail, dogs rutting in but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a church below walk on the coffin's bier?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184866236X</amazonuk>beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Joanna Walsh1398515388|title= VertigoThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary General Fiction|summary= The short stories First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in Joanna Walsh's collection have the overall effect of disparate streams of consciousness of a woman laying bear her very soulocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, whilst often going about seemingly mundane activities of caused the ordinary nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and every dayutter devastation. The narrative voice appeared to me to be deaths were uncountable, and the same woman speaking throughout, playing different roles, though I'm not sure this loss of livelihoods was meant to be the casewidespread. The style fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the stories is that of short vignettes, mostly written in tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a modernist, stream of consciousness styleconvenience store. Sometimes, 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 prose appears almost poeticdog jumped in. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908276800</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kristopher Jansma0989715337|title=Why We Came to Papa on the CityMoon|author=Marco North|rating=4.5

|summary='We came to 'Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the city because we wished to live haphazardlyfragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, to reach sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he filled them.'' How is that for only an opening? The style of this novel in the least realistic form of our desires, interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to see if we could not learn what our failures had to teach, wistful and notmusing, when we came to liveturning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, discover that we had never died. We wanted to dig deep and suck out all who has the marrow most wonderful turn of lifephrase, starts as he means to be overworked and reduced to our last witgo on.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0525426604</amazonuk>