==Literary fiction==
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{{newreview
|author=Alison Pick
|title=Far to Go
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=At the risk of sounding trite, a story set in 1938 Czechoslovakia on the eve of Nazi occupation, centred on a Jewish family is always going to put the reader through an emotional journey. Add in a young child and it's almost certain that you are going to be reaching for the Kleenex at some point. But Alison Pick makes some interesting creative choices that add more layers to this story. Some will surprise the reader but the overall impact is a wonderfully moving story with wholly believable characters.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755379411</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Madeline Miller
|summary=A Clockwork Orange comes under the heading of "books you feel you ought to have read by now". Mostly these are books that you don't necessarily want to read, but are considered such classics that an inability to pass any kind of comment upon them suggests a gaping hole in your education.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241951445</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Anna Gavalda
|title=Breaking Away
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Garance is on her way to a family wedding. In the car with her brother and his wife she thinks about all her siblings, what's happened in their lives and who they have all become. Throughout the journey she finds herself bickering constantly with her sister-in-law who always rubs her up the wrong way, and for the first time Garance senses some tension from her brother too who is usually calm and collected at all times. Is everything okay in his life or is his wife finally beginning to wear his patience thin? They take a detour en route to pick up another sibling, much to Carine's annoyance, and then on reaching the wedding there's a surprise in store for all of them as the four siblings find themselves on an unplanned escape, together once again, rediscovering their youthful selves in a fun, brief break from their real lives.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906040400</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Haley Tanner
|title=Vaclav and Lena
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Vaclav and Lena are both children of Russian immigrants, growing up in Brooklyn. Vaclav dreams of becoming a fantastic magician, with his friend Lena as his assistant, and as children they practise their routine together, making lists of the things they'll need, the costumes they will wear and the tricks they will perform. Vaclav is confident and happy, but Lena is quiet, withdrawn and struggles with speaking English. Yet Vaclav believes, always, that they are destined to be together. Even when Lena disappears one day and is gone from his life for many years still he hopes that, somehow, he will find her again.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434020443</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Neil Jordan
|title=Mistaken
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The front cover photograph and the blurb on the back cover give this book a misty, floaty, ethereal feel. The story starts at the end, if you get my drift. The adult Kevin attends a local funeral but he's careful to remain low-key, hidden almost. Why is that? And whose funeral is it anyway? As early as page 6, Jordan's poetic and atmospheric style is apparent in lines such as ' ... close to the line of yew trees, were the massed umbrellas of the mourners, retreating, like so many mushrooms come alive in a fairy-tale forest.'
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848544197</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Helen Humphreys
|title=The Reinvention of Love
|rating=4
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary='The Reinvention of Love' is one of those stories that is so bizarre and strange that it could only be based on factual events. Essentially it is a good, old-fashioned love triangle set mostly in Paris in the period from the 1830s to the 1860s; a world where fighting duels is a commonplace event. The triangle features the great French literary writer Victor Hugo, his wife Adèle and the altogether strange critic Charles Saint-Beuve who narrates much of this story, with brief breaks for Adèle's side of events and some letters written by the Hugo's youngest daughter, also called Adèle (but let's call her, as she was known to her family, Dédé to avoid confusion).
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687985</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Wesley Stace
|title=Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary="Nothing in recent fiction prepared me for the power and the polish of this subtle tale of English music in the making, a chiller wrapped in an enigma [New Statesman]"
"His handling of dry comic dialogue and cynical affectation is reminiscent of P G Wodehouse… an intelligent, fun and thoughtful piece of fiction [Independent on Sunday]"
Just two of the previous reviews that adorn the back cover of 'Charles Jessold…'
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546574</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Roy Jacobsen, Don Bartlett (translator) and Don Shaw (translator)
|title=Child Wonder
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=1961 was a year of change, a time, as Jacobsen puts it, ''when men became boys and housewives women''. At the outset Finn and his mother are leading a quiet, rather timorous life in a working class Oslo suburb. Then change overwhelms them, not through world events, but in the form of a mysterious child who is Finn's half sister. Linda is not like other children and Finn's attempt to deal with her impact on his family is the central thread in this quintessential story of growing up.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050184</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Salman Rushdie
|title=Luka and the Fire of Life
|rating=4
|genre=Confident Readers
|summary=Back in 1990, Salman Rushdie followed up his controversial 'Satanic Verses' with a book dedicated to his then nine year old son, Zafar, called 'Haroun and the Sea of Stories'. Now, his second son, Milan, finally gets a book of his own, although he had to wait until he was 13 for his father to get around to it. 'Luka and the Fire of Life' is very much a follow up to 'Haroun' and it is certainly helpful, although not necessary, if you have read that book as many of the events in the first book are referred to here.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555328</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Manuel de Lope and John Cullen (Translator)
|title=The Wrong Blood
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Although de Lope has written over a dozen novels, this is the first to be translated into English. The cover is as pretty as a picture and screams 'Spanish.' So far, so good. But I have to admit that on the whole most of the European novels I've read over the last year or so, have fallen short of the mark for me. Will this one prove to be different?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551853</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Aravind Adiga
|title=Last Man In Tower
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Following a Man Booker winning book like [[The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga|The White Tiger]] is always going to be a daunting challenge for any writer, let alone one when that book was the author's first novel. In 'Last Man in Tower' Adiga perhaps sensibly turns to a proven structure that allows his story-telling skills to flourish. Gone are clever structural ideas, like 'The White Tiger's' letter format and instead we get a straightforward engaging story set in modern day Mumbai where a rich builder is seeking to force residents of an old apartment block to sell their flats to enable redevelopment.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848875169</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Christos Tsiolkas
|title=Loaded
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ari is just nineteen, of Greek descent but living in Melbourne with his family. He's gay, unemployed and not in education. He wants to get away from the traditional Greek life of his parents and their friends but has no idea how to do it. He falls back on the only life that he knows: clubs, parties, anonymous sex, a cocktail of drugs and alcohol. But will even this be enough to dull the pain? Told vividly in the first person and sexually explicit it's a short book – a novella – which grabs you and has no intention of letting you go until it spits you out at the other end.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099757710</amazonuk>
}}
