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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tishani DoshiMatthew Tree|title=The Pleasure SeekersWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5

|summary=Essentially this is Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a love story between two people - Babo from Madras drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and Sian from small-town Waleswho had endless crises of self confidence. You could argue that two more disparate cultures would be hard So Tim applied himself to imagine. Factor in that the novel opens in the headyhis studies, free love days of the 1960s cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and a very entertaining story starts to unfoldset himself high but achievable ambitions. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0747590923</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Yasmina KhadraB0C47LV1PC|title=What the Day Owes the NightFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=54

|summary=Nine year old Algerian Muslim Younes Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is devastated when his father's farm the question should you make it? Or is destroyed and his family have to move to the slum of Jenane Jato. Howeverquestion if you did, while would it land? The catch is that the rest of his family struggle, this turns out to answer for both could well be something of a blessing in disguise for Younes,who is rescued by his wealthy uncle, a pharmacist. Renamed Jonas, he moves to live with his uncle and aunt in the vibrant European district of Rio Salado. There, he meets new friends Jean-Christophe, Simon, and Fabrice. But what seems to be an unbreakable friendship is tested to its limits by the return to the area of the beautiful Emilie, and the boys' problems increase as Algeria fights for its independence from France. The book is narrated by Jonas at a much older age, lookingback at his life, although the epilogue brings us to the present day as he visits a graveno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434019933</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Barbara Trapido|title=Sex and Stravinsky|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Josh and Caroline and their daughter Zoe live on an old red bus in Oxford, even though both have quite well paid jobs ''Fragility'' is set as an academic and headteacher. Caroline has spent her adult life deferring her plans for the future in order to support her widowed mother who lives in a house nearby. Josh’s job in the drama department city of Bristol University does offer him some opportunities to escape abroad thoughPortland, Oregon, this time cautiously begins to a conference in his native South Africa.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408802325</amazonuk>emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Samantha HuntMosby Woods|title=The SeasA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=''The SeasWest isn'' follows t the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the story of a nameless nineteen-year old girl who West is lonely and adrift in a cruel coastal town so far quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the north best course of the USA that the roads only run southaction. Governments are flailing. She misses her fatherA war here, an absent alcoholic sailor, while her silence-loving mother, who grew up on an isolated island with deaf parents, worries deeply about hera push for climate action there. Early on in the story we get the distinct impression A feeling that our narrator nobody is not deemed 'normal' by her peersin actual charge. Imagine then, who call her all sorts of unflattering thingsthere was a man with precognition. With nothing to do Imagine the strategic advantage in her small town, and no one to do it with, she spends her time pining for this asset; a local alcoholic called Jude man who is fifteen years her senior, and who refuses her amorous advances on the grounds that it can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be wrong. As the story unfoldsvaluable, Jude and right? Perhaps the girl's relationship grows and changesmost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, sometimes in unexpected waysthat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849013934</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Lionel Shriver0571379559|title=We Need To Talk About KevinThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|summary=Politicians continue to argue that ''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 solution to social issues lies with house on the familyriverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, so it is timely that at the heart of Lionel Shriver's 2005 Orange Prize winning novel is stood the issue passage of nature vs nurture time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - what makes a person like he or she is? Is Sonny and Max, the eponymous Kevin born evil or is he influenced by rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's coldness towards himJamaican heritage. There are no clear answers Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and thatthere's what gives this brave book, which tackles the taboos an assumption when Max is out with his mother that some mothers donshe't bond with their children, such powers his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687349</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Ben Okri|title=Tales of Freedom|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Tales of Freedom is The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a book few months after where we left off. In the palace of two halvesOdysseus, with a short story entitled Comic Destiny taking up delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the majority throne of the bookWestern Isles. Comic Destiny Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is made up on the brink of a series fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of short pieces that follow on from each other Orestes, King of Mycenae, and are probably best described as being closer to prose poetry than anything elsehis sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846041597</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Fernando PessoaKay Chronister|title=The Book of DisquietDesert Creatures|rating=54|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=If you try to read 'The Book of Disquiet' from cover to coverWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is almost oppressively melancholic. Nothing much happensa robotic takeover, and what we have is a collection world devoid of reveries and thoughts - almost water or a diarynuclear holocaust, but not quite - of existential musings about life, loneliness and the human condition. It's so introspective that after this genre is a while the monotony of the writer's mundane existence starts way for humans to wear on the readercathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'But''' I would urge you not to read this book like that. Rather, dip into it at random and you will find by Kay Chronister is a new work of undeniable geniuspost-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It's quite simply is a masterpiece of modernist writingshocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687357</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Jeanne PetersonEric LaRocca|title=Falling to HeavenThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Emma 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 Gerald Kittredge are either very brave or very naiveprocess them. TheyMost horror fiction feature a 've made 'Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the long journey from America to Tibetend of the story, beatable. Hardly on the tourist trail and theyEric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There''re is not missionaries, so why are they there? This novel like that. It is a serious collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and sweeping narrative trying to answer humiliation. Horrors that very question - linger and many moreare harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>185168736X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Carsten JensenMadelaine Lucas|title=We, the DrownedThirst for Salt

|summary=In 1848''Love, Laurids Madsen and other men of the smalltown of Marstal go I'd read, was supposed to war to fight the Germans, be a light and an explosionflings him up to heavenweightless feeling, as far as anyone can tell. But Lauridsreturns, claiming his sea boots were too heavy but I had always longed for him to stay upthere – only to be lost to Marstal anyway, as he abandons his familyto sail the high seas.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846550963</amazonuk>}}gravity''

{{newreview|author=Matthew Hooton|title=Deloume Road|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=A tinyTold from a retrospective view, rural community a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a handful of characters is at man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the heart of this novelsummer after. And Set against the thing that binds them all together is Deloume Road. Hooton gives over every chapter (and some are very short) to one backdrop of his characters an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24- Ireneyear-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, Andydepicting its all-consuming nature, the butcher. Each is very different from the otherhow it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224087657</amazonuk>0861546490

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Trevor ByrneMichael Grothaus|title=Ghosts and LightningBeautiful Shining People

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Denny comes home to Dublin from Wales after his mum dies suddenly, ''But fearing something and hangs around drinking and taking drugs with his sister, her girlfriend and some of their mates, while he wonders what having it come to do with himself. There pass are some practical matters to sort out too, such as the nasty older brother who owns their house and wants his siblings outtwo different things.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847673309</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Helen Dunmore|title=The Betrayal|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Andrei is a perceptive and deeply conscientious doctor, a young rheumatologist and paediatrician working in a Leningrad hospital just after the terrible siege, during the last days of Stalin’s dictatorship. He is as quick And I'm willing to notice symptoms in his colleagues as in his young patients. When he is approached by Russov, a fellow physician, he registers his confrere’s pervading smell bet most of what we fear. This is all part of the pathology of the times; life as it is lived under a tyrannical dictatorship. A dictatorship determined to pursue a purge – a vendetta directed against doctorswill never happen, particularly Jewish doctors. The sweating Russov manages or we can take steps to inveigle Andrei Aleksayev into treating a very sick child, Gorya, the son of Volkhov, who is a tyrannical and high ranking secret police officer. Therapeutic failure, in all probability, could result in vengeance, arrest and devastating effects on Andrei’s loving wife Anna and her young adolescent brother, Kolya.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905490593</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Mari Strachan|title=The Earth Hums in B Flat|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Choosing a child as the viewpoint character of a novel requires confidence and imagination. To succeed is to convince the reader of events at two levels – the child's world within the adult world surrounding herchange it. The very best novels about childhood, like say Harper Lee's classic, 'To Kill a Mockingbird', also reflect a wider cultural truth. In 'The Earth Hums in B Flat', a claustrophobic Welsh village is both protection and straitjacket as the characters struggle to cope with their family secrets. If that sounds a bit tacky, fear not, because the viewpoint character, Gwenni, is all whippet and sharp corners.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847673058</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Philip Sington|title=The Einstein Girl|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The two central characters are (and we've come across it many times before) a psychiatrist (in this case Kirsch) and his patient (known as 'Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the Einstein Girl) question of identity and hence the novel's titleacceptance. The case of this girl is intriguing, not least because both doctor and patient had accidentally met prior Of what it means to her admission to hospital. Kirsch appears immediately smitten - which may be a problemhuman. He's already spoken for. In a nutshell, the Einstein Girl has lost her memory. Kirsch finds more Of what is real and more of his professional time given over to her recoverywhat is artificial, back to mental well-being. It becomes a long and complicated journey, for both whether the development of themtechnology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099535793</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=David MitchellJennifer Saint|title=The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de ZoetAtalanta

|summary='The belly craves food'I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the tongue craves water, name of the goddess. It was for the heart craves lovesake of my name, and the mind craves storiestoo.Atalanta''

This is the book to satisfy that last cravingPrincess. It is rich in stories from the graphic opening chapter to the poignant closing linesWarrior. Everyone has a tale to tell and even minor characters are fleshed out with histories that amuse, horrify or enthralLover. Their stories made me think about how sometimes what at the time seems to be an insignificant choice can define the course of a lifeHero. Here the characters’ choices unleash a cascade of consequences. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340921560</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Michelle Lovric|title=The Book of Human Skin|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=''Ye can't take the slither out ovva snake.''

So says Gianni, valet in Abandoned at birth for being born a wealthy eighteenth century Venetian household. The master, daughter rather than a merchantson, divides his time between Italy Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and Perufashioned into a formidable huntress, where he deals in silverone who longs for adventure. But When the merchant isn't opportunity comes – to join the serpent - his son Minguillo is. On Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the night an earthquake ripped through Peru and deposited fanatical nun Sor Loreta at Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the convent chance to fight in Arequipa, Minguillo was born - a serpent Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in his family's midsthistory. His own mother couldnWhat follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis't bear to nurse him and his father went into denialfatal warning: that if she marries, making more and more frequent trips to a South American home free of sociopathic progenyit will be her undoing. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>140880588X</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreview|author=Elif Shafak|title=The Forty Rules of Love|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=This is a sixth novel from best-selling Turkish author, Elif Shafak. Set in twelfth century Anatolia, two famous characters from Islamic history meet in a gorgeously real world. A delicate contemporary US love story is wrapped around the rich, meaty historical fiction. Don't be misled by the dodgy-sounding title!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918733</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Rebecca Goldstein|title=36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction |rating=2|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='Atheist with a Soul' Cass Seltzer has achieved sudden celebrity thanks to his new bestselling book. This has led to a job offer from Harvard, and he waits for his girlfriend to return, while thinking back on past experiences. Most of these experiences involved his old mentor Professor Klapper, an ex-lover, Roz Margolis, and a six year old genius mathematician Azarya. The characters frustrate and amuse in roughly equal measure, while the plot meanders towards a sort-of-conclusion as Cass debates the existence of God with Nobel laureate Felix Fidley.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848871538</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lorrie Moore|title=A Gate At The Stairs|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Bass-playing, 20 year-old Tassie Keltjin is studying an eclectic range of subjects (Geology, British Literature, Sufism, Soundtracks to War Movies and Wine Tasting) in post 9/11 USA when she lands a job as a child minder for chef, Sarah Bink who is adopting an African-American baby. A Gate at the Stairs is at times a very funny and at others a sad reflection of growing up in modern America.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057119530X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Eleanor CattonAmanthi Harris|title=The RehearsalBeautiful Place

|summary=If you are Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the type southern coast of person who wants their novels her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to start be at the beginningVilla, how it became her home, build character and plot before coming to a satisfying the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'they all lived happily ever after' ending, then avoid for this book at all costs. You will hate it. But I cannot remember when I last enjoyed a first time gentle and yet subtly violent novel as much as this one. It is ambitious, daring Padma's present fails to escape her past and complexmuch like the musical score of a film, and yet it works beautifullythat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847081398</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Barbara Kingsolver178563335X|title=The LacunaSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor

|summary=Ten years ago, Barbara KingsolverWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's [[The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver|Poisonwood Bible]] revealed the grim politics a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the Congochildren up. The Lacuna has Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a similarly political themesobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, this time turning her focus on Mexico the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the USA in vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the 1940s job for more than thirty years. Rachel and 1950sChristopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057125263X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=David Eagleman1398515388|title=Sum: Tales from The Boy and the AfterlivesDog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=For some reason I find myself unable to start First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this review, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. So I'll mention this book starts with the end, The result was complete and see where we go from thereutter devastation. Of courseThe deaths were uncountable, that's and the key – this book does just loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that – starts with many pets were separated from their owners came far down the end of our human life here on Earth (or wherever you happen to be reading this) and posits forty possibilities list of what happens thereafter, in priorities but - six months after the hereaftertsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. ItHe wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's not so much 'Five People You Meet comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in Heaven' as 'Forty Heavens you Might Meet People In'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847674283</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=M J Hyland0989715337|title=This Is HowPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North

|summary=Things weren't going too badly for Patrick Oxtoby. He's intelligent and did Some frogs had gotten into the well at school. Then his Gran died. He started getting pains in his shoulder and things rapidly went downhill from there. He drops out of university to become a mechanic. By the time we meet him as a 23-year-old, he's become a loner who cannot communicate his feelings and who cannot seem to fit himself into society. Now his fiancee has left him (and you can see her point) and he finds himself in a seaside boarding house in an unnamed English town, hoping to start a new life. Then, one night he commits an act of violence (you can see it coming) and his life goes from bad to awful.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184767383X</amazonuk>}}'

{{newreview|author=John Buchan|title=Sick Heart River|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=This was a surprise ''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, naked except for mehis beaten leather hat. It’s rare for a book to come to my attention from the reviewing gods that’s a rerelease Long strands of a 1930s noveltheir eggs wove around him, and one that surfaced a couple sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of years ago now. But when it strikes me as startlingly Conradian, updated for the times, dogs leaned over the opening and perfectly able to stand alongside one barked down at the strange noise of literature’s greats, then it’s just a sign those reviewing gods are on the ballbuckets as he filled them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184697030X</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=Jim Crace|title=All That Follows|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Leonard Lessing How is a sofa socialist. He avoids corporate brands both in food and that for an opening? The style of this novel in clothes. He abides by all the right-on boycotts. He signs petitions. He does free gigs at benefit concerts. He gives donations - you know the kind form of thing. Onceinterconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, eighteen long years ago in Texas in 2006, he came very close to some real direct action. But he bottled itturning on a sixpence. And nowauthor Marco North, who has the frozen-shouldered jazzman-on-sabbatical finds his less-than-glorious radical past catching up with him right there in his living room, on the TV. Maxie Lermonmost wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he of Austin 2006 and no stranger means to violent agitprop, is in the UK, just up the road from Leonard, and he's taken a family hostage as a protest against the upcoming Reconciliation Summitgo on. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330445642</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ed HillyerDaisy Hildyard|title=The Clay DreamingEmergency|rating=4.5

|summary=Hillyer has taken several historical facts and seamlessly blended in a big dollop The summary of fiction this book doesn't come close to create a complex and riveting story. The title explaining what is suitably enigmatic, as is King Cole (or Brippoki). He and his fellow cricketers (who also have been given rather unkind nicknames) have sailed from the bottom of the world, to the bustling metropolis of London. Talk about extremes. And although they have all been diligently 'schooled' in all things English, nevertheless, they are the talk of the town. The novel has barely started and already done with the mind bogglespremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956251501</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Wendy Law-YoneSally Oliver |title=The Road to WantingWeight of Loss |rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=We first meet Na Ga in her hotel room in Wanting, on Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the Chinese side death of the border with Na Ga's native Burma (or Myanmar for the more geographically pedanticher sister, although Burma is used throughout this book). She is attempting she awakes to commit suicidefind strange, but is interrupted by news thick black hairs sprouting from the hotel receptionist who tells bones of her that spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her guide across the bordergrief, Mr Jiangrecommends she go to stay at Nede, has just committed suicide himselfan experimental new treatment centre in Wales. You might by now have Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the impression that this is not other patients at Nede: a cheery kind metamorphosis of book, and you'd be right up to a point, although it's certainly not without its light toucheskind. In fact itAs Marianne's often quite beautifulmemories threaten to overwhelm her, which makes the exposure Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a terrible price: that of the seedier side so much more shockingidentity itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184086</amazonuk>086154112X }} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Roddy DoyleNatalia Garcia Freire|title=The Dead RepublicThis World Does Not Belong To Us

|summary=Henry left in 1922Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, after a delight. I will agree with the Irish Civil War. It is now 1951. After his long exile, nothing first – tremendous is as he expected. He revisits an old home to find no trace that understatement – but 'a house ever stood there. The project that has brought him back delight' is not as he expected. The Quiet Man will be a hugely successful film for John Ford, but perhaps using the life portrayed expression in it is a way I'm not Henry Smart's life, and the portrait familiar with. I have to confess my ignorance of Irish politics and everyday life in the film is not one he recognisesSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. In his late 40s From the little I have read (in translation, he feels he is an old man already, alone with his memories of I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the wife and family he lostmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224090097</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreview|author=James Kelman|title=If it is Your Life|rating=3|genre=Short Stories|summary=''If This Is Your Life'' is not so much a collection of short stories as a collection of pieces of creative writing. Kelman doesn't really do 'stories'. In nineteen pieces of writing of varying length from just a single page to more lengthy pieces, such as the story that gives its title to this collection, Kelman writes (mostly) about people on the edge of society. He addresses issues such as class, politics, gender, age and ill health.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241142423</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Yoko Ogawa|title=The Housekeeper and the Professor |rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I never really got on with maths at school. Or sport. So a book that seems to deal with both baseball and mathematics ought to fly to the bottom of my 'to read' pile. However, this slim little Japanese novel slipped into my hands and into my heart as soon as I saw it. The premise is very simple - a young housekeeper is assigned to a job working for an elderly, brain damaged professor of mathematics. He has only eighty minutes of short-term memory, so he doesn't remember her from one day to the next, but his memory pre-1975 remains intact and somehow he continues to function, living through his obsession with numbers. Each morning he greets her at the door asking for her birth date and her telephone number. He finds puzzles and equations in everything, including shoe sizes and baseball, and the housekeeper becomes fascinated as she and her son also begin to see the beauty and the poetry in numbers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099521342</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Glen Duncan|title=A Day and a Night and a Day|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Augustus Rose was brought up in New York, but not in a des res, in an altogether grittier part of the city. ' ... his childhood in East Harlem, darkness framing the blistered stoop, the blinding asphalt, the smell of garbage cans and urine.' He's had an unfortunate start in life. Mother, white, father (unknown) black so that makes the young Augustus an in-between, a not-sure, a neither-one-colour-nor-the-other. Today, in the 21st century, no one would raise an eyebrow, bat an eyelid. But this novel is set in the 1960s where racial tensions abound. Yes, even in cosmopolitan cities such as New York.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847394175</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Eleanor Thom|title=The Tin-Kin|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Dawn is a single mother who has been avoiding a lot of things for a long time. When her aunt, who raised Dawn as a daughter, dies, Dawn finds the key to a cupboard which she was forbidden to look into as a child. Inside she finds clues to her family history, links to a Traveller Community, unearthing a journey that sees her finding her roots. We also witness her struggle to renew her complicated relationship with her family and her efforts to escape the ever-present memory of her abusive husband.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715639013</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Patricia DunckerJennifer Saint|title=The Strange Case of the Composer and His JudgeElektra

|summary=Revenge 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the Mooncake Vixen (ohheavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, how I love that title!) will almost certainly not be to everyone's tasteClytemnestra, but I confess and Elektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that I loved its originality, boldness, sassy style often the silent women have the most compelling stories and the humour of itmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241144612</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Paolo Giordano8409290103|title=The Solitude of Prime Numbers|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''The Solitude of Prime Numbers'' follows the lives of Alice and Mattia from childhood to middle age. Alice is a wilful anorexic, scarred by a childhood skiing accident and an overbearing father. Mattia is an reclusive self-harmer trying to live with the guilt of having been responsible for his disabled twin sister's death. Their paths cross at a school friend's party during a painful adolescence and their lives are destined to intertwine throughout the coming years, despite the chronic awkwardness of their courtship.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552775983</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewIf Only|author=Juli Zeh|title=Dark MatterMatthew Tree

|summary=''Dark Matter'' is translated from German and nothing has Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been 'lost in translation' here. The lives of two very bright academics are interwoven throughout. Students Sebastian and Oskar are sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the very best of friends; it's almost as if they share young man got on board the same heartbeat. However, as they grow into adulthood real life comes along boat and tends thereafter Patrick was to get in the waysend him a monthly allowance. Sebastian settles for domestic bliss. Their friendship cools off, becomes a little tense Patrick sent the money regularly and strained.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846552087</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Margaret Forster|title=Isa and May|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Isamay is a wouldcorrespondence -be academic and she's writing a thesis about grandmothers in history, inspired, one suspects, by her own grandmothers, Isa and May. Her efforts are constantly diverted by the present needs of her grandmothers and sorts - sprang up between the secrets two although we hear more about their pasts which rise what Lowry has to the surface when she least expects themsay than Patrick. There It wasn's another complication too. Isamay is in her thirties and has never wanted a child, but reconsiders, despite the fact t that her partnerLowry senior didn't care for his son, Ian, is adamant it was that he doesndidn't want care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and other children. The more Isamay delves, alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the more she realises that there are secrets in Ian's past tooyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184663</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kathryn StockettAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=The HelpRed is My Heart|rating=3.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=Jackson, Mississippi[[:Category: 1960. The talk at the bridge club Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and the tennis club is of what Jackie Kennedy is wearing. They're white women, of course and they're free to play because a coloured woman will be looking after the children, doing the shopping and cleaning the read in my house. They're trusted to bring the children upAnd so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, but they're not trusted to be honest about the silver. Aibileen and is raising her seventeenth , black and white child but something hardened in her heart when her son died whilst the white bosses looked the other wayand red. They took his body to the coloureds' hospital Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and rolled I think it off 's possible to say not one page lacks the back influence of the truck and leftsome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141039280</amazonuk>1913547183

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Olga GrushinB098FFFBH9|title=The Concert TicketSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright

|summary=Aatish Taseer Fourteen-year-old Rachel is probably best known for his journalism, publishing regularly her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the Indian pressanimal world. She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, in Prospecta lecturer at Imperial College, and perhaps most prolifically in Time magazine. He has won acclaim for his memoir: Stranger to History in which heLondon, raised by his Indian Sikh motherKate and her twin, traces his absent Muslim father across Nick. Kate runs the border family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Pakistan – and also for his translations Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of the short stories of Saadat Hasan Mantoinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918504</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom ConnollyYancey Williams|title=The Spider TrucesCrosshairs of the Devil

|summary=The title of this debut novel by Tom Connolly Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is enigmaticgetting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, mysterious. It draws the reader in finds himself living - just like a fly to a spideror imprisoned, from Eddie's web. And point of view - in fairness 'The Spider Truces' does exactly what it say on room 315 of the tin as the main characterGarden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, EllisJenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is obsessed and terrified going to keep Eddie from his stock-in equal measure-trade of writing though, of spiders. ... and when you live in an old houseso here, as the O'Rourke family doesfor his readers, there are plenty of spiders and other creepy crawlies abouthis wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956251528</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mary Yukari Waters0008421714|title=The FavoritesMrs March|author=Virginia Feito

|summary=This story is set in Kyoto, Japan, starting in June 1978. Fourteen year old Sarah Rexford and her Japanese mother, Yoko, have come back from The problem began just after the US publication of George March's most successful novel to stay with family for a few weeksdate. Sarah was born and brought up in Japan Everyone but has lived in the US with Mrs March (we know her mother and white American father for five years. She is very conscious of first name only on the differences between life in Kyoto and in Fielder's Butte, Californialast page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Here in Kyoto, Every day Mrs March went to the womenlocal patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, including Sarah and her mumPatricia asked, go shopping every day for food, and as she was wrapping the food is very different – in an opening scenebread, Sarah is trying to explain to her grandfather what she normally has for breakfast in ''but isn't this the USfirst time he's based a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, and becoming aware of the gulf between principal character had 'her life in Japan and in Californiamannerisms''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847392334</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Rose Tremain|title=Trespass|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Set in Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the hills of Southern France, Trespass fact that Johanna is a novel about sibling love and rivalry, disputed territory and ultimately revenge. In the French corner are Aramon Lunel, resident whore of the Mas Lunel, and his sister Audrun who lives in Nantes - ''a cottage in the grounds. In the English corner are Victoria Vereyweak, a garden designerplain, and her partnerdetestable, an untalented watercolouristpathetic, Kitty. The catalyst that brings these together is the arrival in France of Anthony Vereyunloved, Victoria's sister whose exclusive antiques business in London is failing and who decides to follow his sister in finding a new life in Franceunloveable wretch. Aramon is tempted to sell his family Mas by the lure of 'foreign' money even if that means that his sister's house has to be destroyed to secure the deal.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701177942</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Castle Freeman|title=All That I Have|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Castle Freeman may sound like two thirds of a firm of provincial solicitors but thankfully this Castle Freeman is a man very skilled in writing about the law rather than practicing it. In his latest novel Freeman tells an intriguing tale involving local Sheriff Lucian Wing and his practical yet low-key approach Move on to maintaining order in rural Vermont. Not for Wing the gung ho approach to fighting crime. He doesn't wear a uniform, he drives a battered old car rather than the standard issue sheriff's wagon and his gun, so ubiquitous in US law enforcement, is safely tucked away in his bottom drawer. Everyone in the area knows the sheriff and by and large they respect him and his slightly unorthodox way of doing business.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0715639021</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]