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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tea ObrehtMatthew Tree|title=The TigerWe's Wifell Never Know

|summary=Téa Obreht's 'The Tiger's Wife' comes with a fair degree of hype Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from the US, and largely it lives up to it, which is no small achievement. The main story is set in Yugoslavia and explores a young doctor, Natalia, seeking for the truth about her grandfather's deathhis father, while on a mission to deliver much needed medical aid to an orphanage in the war-ravaged Balkans. But what sets this book apart is the intricate weaving of reality with the myths drunk and stories chronic underachiever whose dreams of the region. In particular there are two myths that represent a good chunk being exceptional at any of the page count: the story of a tiger his artistic passions all failed miserably and who has escaped from captivity after the World War two bombing had endless crises of Belgrade and who has settled near a remote mountain village where Natalia's grandfather is growing upself confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and who develops a strange relationship with a deaf-mute girl who becomes known as 'the tiger's wife'; and a mysterious story of the 'Deathless Man' whom the grandfather encounters at various points in his life who appears to have the power to foresee others' death without being able to die set himselfhigh but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0297859013</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Graham SwiftB0C47LV1PC|title=Wish You Were HereFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=54

|summary=I cannot tell Can you exactly how long after I finished this book that I satmake a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, holding is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, in stunned silence would it land? The catch is that the answer for - but it was light when I finished it and dark when I put it downboth could well be... Some books can do that to you. This is one of themno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330535838</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=John Burnside|title=The Summer of Drowning|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The story ''Fragility'' is narrated in set as the first person by the daughter a decade or so after the tragedy. Socity of Portland, Oregon, she has a healthy dose of hindsight which shows itself time and time again with sentiments such as ... if only I'd have known back then ... and ...I thought it was a bit strange at the time ... if you get my drift. Burnside takes his time cautiously begins to set emerge from the scene (spartan) and his characters (a mere handful). His chosen location is restrictions imposed during the arresting emptiness of somewhere deep in the Arctic Circle so straight away he's caught my imagination - with his.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022406178X</amazonuk>covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Edward St AubynMosby Woods|title=At LastA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=In The West isn''At Last'', Edward St Aubyn returns to t the Melrose family, dominant force it once was. Nobody in the subject of both ''Some Hope'' and of his Booker-shortlisted [[Mother's Milk by Edward St Aubyn|Mother's Milk]]. I confess that I have still not got around West is quite sure how to reading mend this or even if mending it is the first best course of the trilogyaction. Governments are flailing. A war here, but loved ''Mother's Milk'' and found a push for climate action there. A feeling that I wasn't greatly disadvantaged by not having read nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the previous bookstrategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. ''At Last'' could also That man would be read as a stand-alone bookvaluable, but I wouldn't advise this approachright? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. You will miss out on so much Imagine then, that if you are planning on reading it, you really should read at least ''Mother's Milk'' firstthis man loses this ability. This isn't much of an inconvenience as What would governments do to get it's a terrific book.back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330435906</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Deborah Kay Davies0571379559|title=True Things About MeThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5

|summary=Take one benefit office worker; bored''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, listlessbut instead, a walking study she lives in destructive human behaviourthe house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Add a recently releasedInsubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, jobless ex-con with a glint in his eye storms and taste for masochismfloods. Throw all caution Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the wind delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and collide these two ingredients by means of visceralMax, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, brutal much less twins and almost wordless sex in there's an underground car park and you have the opening chapters of Deborah Kay Daviesassumption when Max is out with his mother that she's debut novelhis nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847678319</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Geraldine Brooks|title=CalebThe follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca's Crossing|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Let's start, as Geraldine Brooks has, with picks up a fact: in 1665 few months after where we left off. In the first Native Americanpalace of Odysseus, Caleb Cheeshateaumaukwith delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, graduated from Harvard Collegewho sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. Around this, Brooks has created a wholly fictional story (As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the known facts are so few that this is largely unavoidable). The stroke throne of genius here is to put the story into Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the words of the entirely fictitious Bethia Mayfield, the daughter of an English minister on what we now call Marthachaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's Vinyardshores, where Caleb lived in Queen Penelope is on the Wampanoag tribebrink of a fragile peace. At various points in her life, Bethia sets down events concerning her early secret friendship One that shatters however with Caleb on the islandreturn of Orestes, King of Mycenae, to accompanying him and her brother to Harvard and the subsequent eventshis sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007333536</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=David LodgeKay Chronister|title=Ginger, You're BarmyDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Jonathan With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a few days away from completing his National Service. Within the week he will dash off to Majorca with his girlfriendrobotic takeover, and who knowsa world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, he might even do more than chastely cup her breast under her clothingthis genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. But it's 'Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a bittersweet week for Jonathan, as he looks back on the beginnings new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of his two years spent most reluctantly in the army, and especially the time spent with his best companion, and his girlfriend's ex, Mikefears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099554135</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=David LodgeEric LaRocca|title=A Man of PartsThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=The man of parts in question here Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is HG Wells in this fictionalised biographyused as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. He was indeed Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a man of many talents home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and interests, although by the parts that most exercise the interest end of David Lodge are the great authorstory, beatable. Eric LaRocca's private parts. You see, ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not only was HG a prolific writer of fiction like that incorporated . It is a staggering amount collection of visionary ideas (tanks, airborne warfare and atomic bombs) - although admittedly some of his ideas have yet to come to pass such as time machines and Martian invasion - but he was also something of a political philosopher and idealist, being a central figure for a while short stories more interested in the Fabian movementhorrors of illness, grief and an ardent practitioner of the concept of free lovehumiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846554969</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=George Makana ClarkMadelaine Lucas|title=The Raw ManThirst for Salt|rating=45

|summary=The Prologue opens bang up ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to date: 2011. The language is poetic, liltingbe a light and weightless feeling, evocative but tinged with sadness and sets the tone I had always longed for the rest of the book. Lots of unanswered questions hang in the air throughout. The location is South Africa and section headings such as gravity'The Earthworks of the Universe' and 'The Story-Ghost' give a flavour of its contents.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224090461</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Delphine de Vigan|title=Underground Time|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Mathilde is unhappy at work. More than just unhappy actuallyTold from a retrospective view, because after expressing an opinion different to her boss he has frozen her out of the team and bullied her mentally and emotionally for months. Mathilde is a young woman on unravels the edge of breaking point, feeling increasingly browyear-beaten by both the demands of city life and long relationship that once defined her awful boss. Meanwhile Thibault is an emergency on-call doctorOverlaid with later wisdom, racing the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from one district its inception – the summer after finishing university – to another through its sorrowful end the nightmares summer after. Set against the backdrop of Parisian traffic, unhappy in his an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship and also strugglingwith her older lover, mentallydepicting its all-consuming nature, to survivehow it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably. Will today be the day that changes everything?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408811111</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreview|author=Siri Hustvedt|title=The Summer Without Men|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Sometime after Mia's husband of thirty years, Boris, suggests a marriage 'pauseBeautiful Shining People'', Mia goes mad and finds herself in a psychiatric hospital. Although this Brief Psychotic Disorder does not last long, she remains fragile and retreats to revolves around the town in Minnesota where she was brought up question of identity and where her elderly mother still livesacceptance. While Boris cavorts with the Pause, she struggles through the summer, learning Of what it means to live without himbe human. She builds relationships with her mother's friendsOf what is real and what is artificial, with her neighbours and with a group whether the development of teenage girls who form her creative writing class. Written in the first person, the book catalogues her progress using these friendships, her past, her reading and her shrink, Dr Stechnology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444710524</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Edward DocxJennifer Saint|title=The Devil's GardenAtalanta|rating=3.5

|summary=Set on a research station in an unnamed Amazonian country (although by the indigenous tribes mentioned, this is probably Peru), this first person narrative story is told by Dr Forle, who has come to the area to study ants - specifically the strange phenomenon of a type ''I was as worthy as any one of ant that appear to destroy their own environmentthem. It's sort of ants I would get on the deck in the jungleboard that ship, if you likeI vowed. However the scientific study is interrupted by the arrival of an army colonel and a judgeI would take my place, who at least on the surface of things is there to organize not just in the registration name of the local tribesgoddess. However when It was for the doctor witnesses a clear act sake of violence by the soldiers accompanying the colonelmy name, he becomes more engaged with the local goings ontoo.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330463500</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''

{{newreview|author=Mary Horlock|title=The Book of Lies|rating=3Princess.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Catherine Rozier is fifteen years old and she has a secretWarrior. Lover. Hero.

Secrets are Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a big thing on Guernseyson, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the small Channel Isle that is only three miles across at one point with a population goddess Athemis and fashioned into a little over 65formidable huntress,000 ione who longs for adventure.e. somewhat more than HerefordWhen the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, considerably less than Lincolna fierce band of warriors, or about half that of Norwich or Prestondescendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. Unlike any What follows is a whirlwind of those townschallenges and discovery and through it, Guernsey is an island. It is self-contained. It isnAtalanta must remember Artemis't just fatal warning: that everyone knows everyone else; they're almost certainly, quite closelyif she marries, relatedit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847678858</amazonuk>1472292154

  {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexi ZentnerAmanthi Harris|title=TouchBeautiful Place|rating=3.5

|summary=StephenPadma, an Anglican priest is writing a story of three generationsyoung Sri Lankan, a haunting tale of his childhood set in Sawgamet, an isolated clearing in has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the snowy forest expanse southern coast of North West Canadaher home country. It This is the evening before his mother's funeral. One loss brings up earlier losses; relating this deeply poignant tale he relates the disastrous event of his father's attempts to rescue his sister, Marie, when on a skating expedition place she falls through a dark hole in the thin ice at the turbulent confluence of two rivers. His terrified sister looks towards spent her father who plunges into the water and both perish in a catastrophe. Consequently, Stephen is to struggle with for many formative years to in some way to come to terms with this severe trauma. His grandfather, Jeannot, a resilient settler It is not a stalwart figure who keeps returning protectively place she was born into Stephen's life in order to resurrect his own lost love, Martine from but the hereafterone she thinks of as home. This love between Jeannot and Stephen's grandmother How she came to be at the Villa, Martinehow it became her home, and also the machinations that between Jeannothave flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's brother present fails to escape her past and future wife blossom through magical events involving much like the metamorphosis musical score of golda film, trees and mountains which move, and malevolent 'qualuplillumits' ogres from a richly various panoply of magical realismthat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701185465</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Yoko Ogawa178563335X|title=Hotel IrisSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=45

|summary=When I read [[The Housekeeper we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the Professor by Yoko Ogawa|The Housekeeper and the Professor]] by Ogawa I fell completely in love with the bookchildren up. It was gentleHer husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and beautifully writtenher elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won'Hotel Iris'' t let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is verya lovely place, very different and really ought but Rachel is struggling to have develop a warning label on real bond with the cover for those who simply recognise parish - and she's in awe of the authorvicar, Gail, but then she's name and pick it up hoping been doing the job for more! than thirty years. This is Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the story of a seventeen year old girl who is seduced by an old man in a sadistic, distressing mannerbeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548992</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Martin Amis1398515388|title=The Pregnant WidowBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=34.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=The bulk First of ''The Pregnant Widow'' is set in all, it was the summer of 1970 earthquake, deep in a beautiful Italian castle where the almost 21 year old Keith Nearingocean floor, an English Literature student, has come to spend which created the summer with his on/off girlfriend Lily tsunami and her more physically attractive best friend Scheherazade. Amongst the other attendees are a gay couplethis, a short Italian suitor to the ample chested Scheherezade who is waiting for the arrival of her boyfriend andin turn, critically for caused the story the ample bottomed Gloria nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and eventually her rich boyfriendutter devastation. If this all sounds like one of those enviously indulgent, middle class, sex filled summer of love stories, then partly it is The deaths were uncountable, but this being Martin Amis, there's a lot more depth and sadness attached to the storyloss of livelihoods was widespread. It's an investigation into The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the changing roles list of females and particularly their attitudes to sex, and for Keith in particular, priorities but - six months after the long term implications of this idyllic vacation are not going to be happy and Amis provides tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn'what happened nextt a dog person but the convenience store owner' s comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to bring each of open his characters up to present daycar door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099488736</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louise Welsh0989715337|title=Naming Papa on the BonesMoon|author=Marco North|rating=4.5

|summary=Murray Watson is a Doctor of English Literature embarking on a year-long sabbatical to pursue his long-held dream of writing the definitive biography of Archie Lunan and, as a specifically intended by-product, restore Lunan's poetry to its rightful place in 'Some frogs had gotten into the high canon of Scots creativitywell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847672566</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=Nicole Krauss|title=Great House|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Great House'' is unashamedly literary Walter stood waist-deep in style and while undoubtedly not everyone's cup of teathe fragrant water, it's hard not to admire the cleverness of Kraussnaked except for his beaten leather hat. It also covers such broad issues that it's not the easiest Long strands of books to sum up in a few words. Certainlytheir eggs wove around him, to enjoy this book you will need to have a tolerance for cerebral fictionsticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. You will also need to appreciate the role of the book in commenting on aspects Two of the human condition rather than just telling a good story. This is most certainly not a plot driven book. You should also be prepared that dogs leaned over the stories told are unremittingly dark, sad, opening and almost oppressively depressing. But while all of this sounds negative, barked down at the payoff is a book strange noise of exceptional cleverness and shot through with lovely and often beautifully observed writing about the human condition and in particular about memorybuckets as he filled them. It would be wrong to say that it's cerebral with no heart: there's plenty of emotional heart here, but unless you buy into the cerebral game, then it's a book that will infuriate you before you reach it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919322</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Ruta Sepetys|title=Between Shades of Gray|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The central character, a teenage girl called Lina: her younger brother and mother are being forced from their home. All How is confusion, suspicion and fear but they obey orders anyway. To disobey would be to lose their lives. Torture or murder - or both. Unthinkable. that for an opening? The small family unit style of three mix with many other families caught up in this situation. They collect novel in the streets form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and are rounded up - like sheep. It will be some time before any of them feel remotely like human beings. Their names are laconic to wistful and musing, turning on some sort of 'list'a sixpence. Even a young mother And author Marco North, who has just given birththe most wonderful turn of phrase, is manhandled starts as he means to go on to the waiting transport.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141335882</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Gail JonesDaisy Hildyard|title=Five BellsEmergency

|summary=It is a lovely sunny day in Circular Quay, a tourist hotspot in Sydney, Australia. This novel is about the thoughts and memories The summary of four people, three women and a man who visit the place that day. None are locals. Ellie and James were teenage lovers in Western Australia, and are meeting up again after not seeing each other for years. Catherine has recently this book doesn't come close to the city from Ireland. Pei Xing is a Chinese immigrant, now settled in Sydney. The novel explaining what is full of descriptive visual imagery from the first page onwards, and it is significant that three of the four characters are seeing Circular Quay for done with the first timepremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846554020</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Philippe Claudel Sally Oliver |title=The Weight of Loss |rating=4 |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and Euan Cameronvolume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself.|isbn= 086154112X }} {{Frontpage|author=Natalia Garcia Freire|title=Monsieur Linh and His ChildThis World Does Not Belong To Us

|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=From Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a war-ravaged country delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a bit like a Vietnam or a Cambodia an old man carries delight' is perhaps using the fragile frame of his granddaughter aboard expression in a refugeeway I's ship, staring at m not familiar with. I have to confess my ignorance of the receding horizon all the weeks it takes to arrive at a city a bit like a Seattle or a New YorkSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. He and she are given From the basics of a new life together but itlittle I have read (in translation, I don's up t read Spanish) there does seem to him, Monsieur Linh, to find friendship, which he does, accepting uncomprehendingly be a tendency towards the fantastical – the chatty company of a fellow mourner called Barkmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906694990</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kathleen WinterJennifer Saint|title=AnnabelElektra

|summary=The back cover blurb has praise for this debut novel from two of my favourite authors: [[:Category:Joseph O'Connor|Joseph OElektra'Connor]] and [[:Category:A L Kennedy|A L Kennedy]] so things were definitely off to a good start. The front cover is rather unsettling (as it's meant to be) - some may say disturbing: it's by Jennifer Saint tells the story of an adolescent, but neither three women who live in the heavily male nor female but rather a fusion dominated world of the two sexesAncient Greece. And the question is right up there before I've even opened the book - how would such an individual (and family members and society as a whole) deal and interact with such a person. It's not an easy question to answerCassandra, if I'm honest.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224091271</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Karen Russell|title=Swamplandia!|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ava Bigtree is a teenage alligator wrestler. Her older sister Ossie is in love with a ghost. They have grown up on a Florida island theme park with their parentsClytemnestra, their grandfather and their big brother Kiwi. Now though, Elektra are all they have known is threatened. Their mother Hilola was the star attraction, but she died a few months before, not bit players in the jaws story of an alligator but of ovarian cancerthe Trojan War. As well as being Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the glamorous figure on billboards who everyone came to see, she ran the show and did all silent women have the jobs that needed to be done, most compelling stories and the family is lost without hermost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>070118602X</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Allen Ginsberg8409290103|title=Howl: A Graphic NovelIf Only|author=Matthew Tree

|summary=In this engaging novelTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, Tim Pears tackles many challenging themescotton-broker AO Lowry: sibling rivalryhe asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, time and change in to ensure that the countryside, facing terminal illness, reflections young man got on board the isolation of academic life boat and undertaking risky financial investmentthereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. This is not Patrick sent the money regularly and a portrayal correspondence - of a rural idyll sorts - sprang up between the two although much of the most lyrical writing concerns the colours of the Shropshire countryside and this is strengthened by reference we hear more about what Lowry has to the layers of the archaic past say than Patrick. It wasn't that underlies this disputed borderland territory. In attempting such a multi-layered narrative in a relatively short novelLowry senior didn't care for his son, it is not surprising was that for instance, the traumatic shocks he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the epic tale are diminished by random, experimental shifts in the tone of the narrativeyoung man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434020818</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Denis KehoeAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Walking on Dry LandRed is My Heart

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ana has grown up mostly in Portugal, but now lives [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in Dublin where she teaches film studies and is writing her PHDmy house. HoweverAnd so was this one, she although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was born in Anglola (then a Portuguese colony), the result of an extra-marital relationship of her fatherand is, who then adopted her with his wifeblack and white and red. When her adopted mother, Helena, dies, she decides to trace her birth mother in Angola, where her brother now livesYes, but he has nothing much to go an artistic collaborator on but a photocopy of a photograph of two Angolan girlsthis piece, and I think it's possible to say not one page lacks the influence of which may, or may not, be her mother, and a name: Solange Mendes. We follow Ana as she attempts to trace her real mother while in alternating chapters exploring her parents' developing relationship and ultimately how her unusual past evolvedsome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687810</amazonuk>1913547183

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Camilla GibbB098FFFBH9|title=The Beauty of Humanity MovementSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright|rating=4.5

|summary=The novel opens with an elderly man as he scrapes a meagre living in Vietnam. He Fourteen-year-old Rachel is really dirt-poor but I could tell that he still had his pride. Heher school's not afraid of hard work. In fact, gruelling days of labour animal rights project leader and she and very early risings have been her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the norm for him since he was a young boy. His passion is cooking. Nothing is too much trouble way in order to create his famous Vietnamese noodle soupwhich human beings exploit the animal world. And there's She gets a terrific line on the back cover which says 'They say that the history great deal of Vietnam can be found in support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a bowl of pho and Old Man Hu'ng makes the best in all Hanoi'. We get some background on Hu'ng and discover that his life has been hardlecturer at Imperial College, very hard. But he doesn't complainLondon, it's simply not in his nature. Such is the pull mother Kate and the draw of Gibb's lovelyher twin, lyrical writing that I was drawn right into the life of this enchanting elderly man right from the start of the bookNick. Gibb feeds us tiny morsels about Vietnam on a regular basis: Kate runs the culturefamily business, the peoplea toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, the troubled history for example, but itwhich is where we's written in such effortless prose that itll meet Rachel's a joy to read. And her descriptions are so apt, so poetic and so original main (but without being in your faceif unsuspected) that it all shines on the page. I gobbled it all upsource of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848877935</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=David SzalayYancey Williams|title=SpringCrosshairs of the Devil

|summary=Narrated from a variety of points of viewAward-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, ''Spring'' relates the relationship of James despite his strenuous objections and Katherine. He is an often failed entrepreneurial character who falls for the charms of Katherinethanks to his daughter, currently working in a London luxury hotel as an interim jobfinds himself living - or imprisoned, and separated from her photographerEddie's point of view -husband. The problem for James is that Katherine is only interested in the pursuit room 315 of that perfect happiness scenario and so analyses her feelings constantly - much to the distress Garden of James. But this is a lot more than a 'males don't understand females' tale.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224091263</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Manuel Rivas|title=Books Burn Badly|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I normally start Eden nursing home, with only a brief summary of the novel I’m reviewingtrusty nursing aide, Jenkins, but Rivas’ sprawling epic for palatable company. Nothing is close going to impossible to do anything ‘brief’ with. While it starts keep Eddie from his stock-in 1881-trade of writing though, it’s the book burning witnessed by Hercules the boxer during the Spanish Civil War in 1936 which gives this novel its title and it floats through several other erasso here, eventually finishing more than a century after it started. Along the wayfor his readers, we meet a young washerwoman who sees souls in the river, Olinda the matchgirl, Gabriel the stammerer, and the Judge of Oklahoma, star of a series of Western novels Gabriel’s father readsare his wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099520338</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Edward Hogan0008421714|title=The Hunger Trace|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=We're plunged into a crisis straight away. Some of the animals from the wildlife park have escaped and are now running amok. They are Maggie's responsibility and she has to try to round them up without danger to either human or themselves. It's a tough, physical duty so it's a good job she can rely on her neighbour Louisa as an extra pair of hands. Christopher is unreliable to say the least, he's never there when you need him. But is Louisa any better?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847371248</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMrs March|author=Stephen Kelman|title=Pigeon EnglishVirginia Feito|rating=4.5

|summary=Eleven-year-old Harri is The problem began just after the fastest boy in Year 7. Itpublication of George March's truemost successful novel to date. He won Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the race and everythinglast page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Harri is quite new Every day Mrs March went to London. He, his mother and his big sister Lydia have come from Ghana the local patisserie to make a new life and live buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the ninth floor of bread, ''but isn't this the first time he's based a tower block character on a sink estate. Harriyou?''s father and little sister Agnes are still in Ghana She mentioned that Johanna, saving up the air fareprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''. Perhaps this would not have mattered, which except for the fact that Johanna is taking quite the whore of Nantes - ''a long timeweak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch. Agnes is beginning to talk already. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408810638</amazonuk>''

{{newreview|author=Linden MacIntyre|title=The Bishop's Man|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Duncan MacAskill (he eschews the title ''Father'' whenever he can get away with it) is ostensibly dean of a Catholic university in Nova Scotia. It's a job he enjoys. Approaching fifty years of age, he is, in general, happy with his life.But the Catholic Church is strong Move on history and MacAskill cannot escape his own. The son of a bastard father and a foreign mother, he was lucky even to be able to follow his vocation and enter the church at all. For most of his career he has been "The Bishop's Man". |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224089722</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Aamer Hussein|title=The Cloud Messenger|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Mehran, growing up in Karachi, hears his father and sister speaking about London all the time, as if it were an exotic location. He ends up living there as an adult, but in the rainy, dreary climate he turns back to the poetry of his homeland, dreaming of other places. As he travels between Italy, India, Pakistan and London we watch his relationships grow and die and wonder if he will ever truly find a place where he'll feel that he belongs.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846590892</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=P G Wodehouse|title=The Crime Wave at Blandings|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=There's a crime wave at Blandings Castle and bumbling Lord Emsworth is right at its centre. This is somewhat surprising as Emsworth (or 'Clarence!' to his sister Constance) is really only happy when he's reading his favourite book, Whiffle's 'The Care of the Pig'. It frequently soothes where other restoratives fail. The problem began with an air rifle and an unwanted tutor, but before the afternoon was out most of the inhabitants of Blandings Castle seemed to have shot, been shot at or left. If it hadn't been written by P G Wodehouse it would all be most confusing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141196289</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]