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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jenn AshworthMatthew Tree|title=Cold LightWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5

|summary=''Cold Light'' is the story of three teenage girls who become involved in a predatory adult world. As the story opens we're looking back on what happened Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a decade later drunk and we know that one chronic underachiever whose dreams of the girls, Chloë, died in a Valentine's Day suicide pact. The town council has finally decided on a memorial to Chloë – it's to be a summerhouse being exceptional at the side any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of the pond where she drowned, although it's difficult to understand quite why anyone would want self confidence. So Tim applied himself to sit there. The ground-breaking ceremony is being televised when it becomes obvious that something has gone terribly wrong. But Lolahis studies, our narrator, knows that they've found a body. She also knows who it iscultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444721445</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alain MabanckouB0C47LV1PC|title=Broken GlassFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=3.54

|summary=In the Congolese bar of Credit Gone WestCan you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the owner Stubborn Snail wants a record of question should you make it? Or is the lives of those who drink there. The man he chooses to write question if you did, would itland? Disgraced schoolteacher Broken Glass, who fills up a notebook with The catch is that the stories of the bar’s patrons – or at least their versions of those talesanswer for both could well be.... no.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668675X</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=David Bezmozgis|title=The Free World|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It's 'Fragility'' is set as the late 1970's and a family city of Latvian JewsPortland, the KrasnanskysOregon, are emigrating cautiously begins to emerge from the Soviet Union. They're made to stay in Rome whilst they apply to live in restrictions imposed during the States and they find themselves trapped in a strange migratory limbo, belonging nowhere and tied to no-one but each other.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670920053</amazonuk>covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jennifer EganMosby Woods|title=A Visit From the Goon Squad|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Apparently there's a saying that 'time's a goon' - no, I'd never heard of it and to be fair, neither had the first character to whom it is said in Jennifer Egan's 'A Visit from the Goon Squad', but together with a pair of epigraphs from Proust, it's clear that time is very definitely what is being explored here. Egan's subject area is all loosely based around the music world. Her central character, if one can be said to exist, is Bennie Salazar, a music mogul who we encounter both directly and tangentially at various stages of his up and down career. ''Goon Squad'' is also the title of an Elvis Costello track, continuing the music theme as Egan uses the music industry as a lens to examine time.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849010331</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Lauren Liebenberg|title=The West Rand Jive Cats Boxing ClubWhirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=Best friends Tommy and Chris 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 12 years oldflailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. It A feeling that nobody is 1958 and they are growing up in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a small mining town near Johannesburgman who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, South Africaright? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. They are learning Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to box and to dance to rock and roll music.get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844084892</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=James Frey0571379559|title=The Final Testament House of the Holy BibleBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=3.5

|summary=''The Rabbis say that all the signs are there from the birth House of Ben Zion Avrohom that he Broken Bricks'' is the Messiahstory of four people. That Tess Hembry's a lot roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of anyone to cope with andbroken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, like Jesus, thereit's much stood the passage of Ben's early life that is untold heretime, storms and floods. When he is involved in an horrific accident on a building site that he miraculously survives Her husband, albeit with terrible scaringRichard, the prophecies appear struggles to be true. He develops a form of epilepsy during which he appears grow his vegetables, to speak complete the delivery rounds - and to Godbring in sufficient money. He is fluent in ancient languages despite never learning them They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, knows all the Holy books by heart rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and yet distains all forms of religion, instead spreading there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his message of love to all who meet him in modern day New Yorknanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848543174</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Mirza Waheed|title=The Collaborator|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The Collaborator of follow-up to the title is our narrator, excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a sensitive bookish young manfew months after where we left off. He is In the son palace of Odysseus, with 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 headman of a small village in a side valley throne of the KashmirWestern Isles. The heritage of Having survived – politically and physical – the people chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is that on the brink of nomads. The village has been settled for less than a generationfragile peace. Everything they have has been built by One that shatters however with the sheer hard graft return of the people themselves… including the recently completed mosqueOrestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670918954</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alan WarnerKay Chronister|title=The Stars in the Bright SkyDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=In 1999With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, Alan Warner introduced us to a wonderful set world devoid of characters in 'The Sopranos' when water or a school choir from nuclear holocaust, this genre is a backwater town in Scotland went on a trip way for humans to the big city. Much debauchery ensuedcathartically experience their most existential fears. 'The Stars in the Bright Sky' once again reunites most Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the original gang and there fears that exist for humanity today. It is no need a shocking novel that still manages to have read the first book to pick up on the diverse characters. Now though, they've grown up (or at least got older!) and are gathered at Gatwick Airport to set off on a girls' holidayfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009946182X</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Elia Barcelo and David Frye (Translator)Eric LaRocca|title=The Goldsmith's SecretTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=3.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=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 ''The GoldsmithBig Bad's Secret' has , whether that is a wonderfully romantic beginning; alone on home invader, a snowy night in New Yorkmonster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the craftsman is puzzling over how to tell his story, and how to separate reality from the overwhelming memories in his mindbeatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The romance continues as Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the story unfolds, with the goldsmith taking us back to the town and time horrors of his youthillness, grief and the chance meeting humiliation. Horrors that led him linger and are harder to find the love of his life. Telling the tale of romance from many perspectives, we learn the town of Villasanta has labelled his love, the mysterious Celia, as defeat than any 'a marked woman' and the Big Bad'black widow'. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050052</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Peter SalmonMadelaine Lucas|title=The Coffee StoryThirst for Salt

|summary=Teddy Everett''Love, head of Everett and Sons Coffee is dyingI'd read, slowly was supposed to be a light and painfully, of cancer. The Coffee Story is his story, told in his own (very descriptive) words. It goes from (although not necessarily in this order) his childhood in England, his adolescence in Ethiopia and then his life in the USA and Cuba. It's his time in Cuba which has put him where he is now – in prison. For his crimes he would normally have suffered the death penaltyweightless feeling, but his sentence was commuted because of his illness and now the doctors try to save him. Or perhaps it's that theyI had always longed for gravity're trying to persuade Teddy that they're trying to save him – whether he wants to be saved or not.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444724703</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Andrew Miller|title=Pure|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I've read Miller's ''Oxygen'' and ''The Optimists'' so I was looking forward to reading this novelTold from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. The story opens in Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the opulence of summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the Palace of Versaillessummer after. We are given vivid descriptions of both Set against the scale backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the palace and its grandeur. Jean24-Baptiste Baratte, the young engineer, seems completely overyear-awed by the whole occasion. Even although heold narrator's not entirely sure what is expected of him in Parisdeepening relationship with her older lover, he accepts. He needs to eatdepicting its all-consuming nature, after allhow it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444724258</amazonuk>0861546490

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anne EnrightMichael Grothaus|title=The Forgotten WaltzBeautiful Shining People

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Anne Enright's 2007 Booker prize winning [[The Gathering by Anne Enright|The Gathering]] addressed the gloomy subjects of the three D's; death, depression But fearing something and dysfunctional familieshaving it come to pass are two different things. Her latest book, ''The Forgotten Waltz'And I', set in Dublin in 2009, sees her turning her attentions to a love affair. A more uplifting subject you might think. Well only up m willing to a point. The affair in question you see is that bet most of her narratorwhat we fear will never happen, Gina, who is already married or we can take steps to the generally good, if undynamic, Connor, while on the other end, the subject of the affair is the older, Seán, also married and neighbour of Ginachange it.'s sister. In case your moral compass isn't stretched quite enough by this, Seán and his wife Aileen, also have a young daughter who suffers from epilepsy.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022408903X</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Leila Aboulela|title=Lyrics Alley|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The front cover photograph is eye-catching and lovely and has the appeal of saying to potential readers - read me. The book's title is both poetic and enigmatic. I was keen to get reading but before I could, I'm faced with a page listing the ''Principal CharactersBeautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and another page setting out the Abuzeid family treeacceptance. It did put me off slightly, I have Of what it means to admitbe human. I tend to think that with a modern, average-paged work of fiction a list of characters Of what is real and what is wellartificial, a list too far. So, yes, for and whether the first couple development of chapters I was constantly flicking back and forth to remind myself who everyone was. Not so good for those lazy readers out there, I'm thinkingtechnology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0297860097</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shehan KarunatilakaJennifer Saint|title=ChinamanAtalanta

|summary=After the 1996 World Cup, dying sports journalist WG Karunasena decides that the world needs 'a half decent documentary 'I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on Sri Lankan cricket'board that ship, I vowed. He sets out to make I would take my place, not just in the said documentary, focusing on name of the goddess. It was for the mysterious Pradeep Mathewsake of my name, the 1980too. Atalanta's spin bowler he considers to have been his country's greatest ever player. But Mathew disappeared some time ago and everywhere Karunasena turns he is faced with more complications as he tries to find out more on what happened to him…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022409145X</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Tessa Hadley|title=The London Train|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Part one focuses on Paul - a rather self obsessed and aimless character, who is less than honest with his family, using various friends to cover up his movementsPrincess. He has several daughters, and on learning that one is having problems, goes to visit her in London - and ends up staying with her, for several weeks, leaving both his (second) wife, and the mother of this daughter (first wife), completely in the dark as to what is happeningWarrior. Initially we feel that he is acting in a protective manner towards his daughter, who is struggling to come to terms with her pregnancy - but in fact his motives are far less altruistic, thereby alienating the reader from his taleLover. The squalor in which her daughter is living, would appal most parents - yet he seems to take it all in his stride, and attempts to join the hippy-style commune - yet more irritation with this deeply flawed character therefore emergesHero.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224090976</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Emma Henderson|title=Grace Williams Says it Loud|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Grace, aged elevenAbandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is sent to raised under the protective eye of the Briar Mental Institute as her parents can no longer cope with her care. She is befriended there by goddess Athemis and fashioned into a young boy, Danielformidable huntress, one who is epileptic and also has no arms after a terrible accidentlongs for adventure. Together we see When the horrors opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a fierce band of life warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in the BriarArtemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, and also their slowly growing love affair with each otherit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>144470401X</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreview|author=Roma Tearne|title=The Swimmer|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ria, solitary, middle-aged poet, was idly watching the river one night when she saw a swimmer. It wasn't just the time of day which was unusual, but the river was hardly clean – and then she heard a noise downstairs. In this remote part of Suffolk it wasn't unusual to leave doors unlocked and the following morning she realised that a loaf of bread had been stolen. It was strange that she didn't really feel fear, but when the visits and minor thefts continued she waited up to catch the swimmer, who stole small amounts of food – and played the piano like an angel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007301596</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tea ObrehtAmanthi Harris|title=The Tiger's WifeBeautiful Place|rating=4.5

|summary=Téa Obreht's 'The Tiger's Wife' comes with Padma, a fair degree of hype from the USyoung Sri Lankan, and largely it lives up has returned to it, which is no small achievementthe Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. The main story This is set in Yugoslavia and explores a young doctor, Natalia, seeking for the truth about place she spent her grandfather's death, while on a mission to deliver much needed medical aid to an orphanage in the war-ravaged Balkansformative years. But what sets this book apart It is not a place she was born into, but the intricate weaving one she thinks of reality with as home. How she came to be at the myths Villa, how it became her home, and stories of the region. In particular machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there are two myths that represent a good chunk of the page count: the story of a tiger who has escaped from captivity after provide the World War two bombing of Belgrade and who has settled near a remote mountain village where Natalia's grandfather is growing up, and who develops a strange relationship with a deaf-mute girl who becomes known as 'the tigerscore's wife'; for this gentle and a mysterious story of the yet subtly violent novel. Padma'Deathless Man' whom s present fails to escape her past and much like the grandfather encounters musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at various points in his life who appears to have the power to foresee others' death without being able to die himselfVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0297859013</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Graham Swift178563335X|title=Wish You Were HereSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor

|summary=I cannot tell When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you exactly how long after I finished this book that I satneed to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, holding itJamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in stunned silence -law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on 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 vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was light when I finished it and dark when I put it down. Some books can do that to youprobably what they needed. This is one of them And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330535838</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Burnside1398515388|title=The Summer of DrowningBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=The story is narrated First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the first person by ocean floor, which created the daughter a decade or so after tsunami and this, in turn, caused the tragedynuclear meltdown. So, she has a healthy dose of hindsight which shows itself time The result was complete and time again with sentiments such as ... if only I'd have known back then ..utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and ...I thought it the loss of livelihoods was a bit strange at the time ... if you get my driftwidespread. Burnside takes his time to set The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the scene (spartan) and his characters (tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a mere handful)convenience store. His chosen location is the arresting emptiness of somewhere deep in He wasn't a dog person but the Arctic Circle so straight away heconvenience store owner's caught my imagination - with comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open hiscar door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022406178X</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Edward St Aubyn0989715337|title=At LastPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North

|summary=In ''At Last'', Edward St Aubyn returns to the Melrose family, 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 to reading the first of the trilogy, but loved ''Mother's Milk'' and found that I wasn't greatly disadvantaged by not having read frogs had gotten into the previous book. ''At Last'' could also be read as a stand-alone book, but I wouldn't advise this approach. You will miss out on so much that if you are planning on reading it, you really should read at least ''Mother's Milk'' firstwell. This isn't much of an inconvenience as it's a terrific book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330435906</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Deborah Kay Davies|title=True Things About Me|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Take one benefit office worker; bored''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, listless, a walking study in destructive human behaviournaked except for his beaten leather hat. Add a recently releasedLong strands of their eggs wove around him, jobless ex-con sticky gray pearls with a glint in his eye and taste for masochismtadpoles inside them. Throw all caution to Two of the dogs leaned over the wind opening and collide these two ingredients by means barked down at the strange noise of visceral, brutal and almost wordless sex in an underground car park and you have the opening chapters of Deborah Kay Daviesbuckets as he filled them.''s debut novel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847678319</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Geraldine Brooks|title=Caleb's Crossing|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Let's start, as Geraldine Brooks has, with a fact: in 1665 the first Native American, Caleb Cheeshateaumauk, graduated from Harvard College. Around this, Brooks has created a wholly fictional story (the known facts are so few How is that this is largely unavoidable). for an opening? The stroke style of genius here is to put the story into this novel in the words form of the entirely fictitious Bethia Mayfieldinterconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, the daughter of an English minister turning on what we now call Martha's Vinyard, where Caleb lived in the Wampanoag tribea sixpence. At various points in her lifeAnd author Marco North, Bethia sets down events concerning her early secret friendship with Caleb on who has the islandmost wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to accompanying him and her brother to Harvard and the subsequent eventsgo on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007333536</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=David LodgeDaisy Hildyard|title=Ginger, You're BarmyEmergency|rating=4.5

|summary=Jonathan The summary of this book doesn't come close to explaining what is a few days away from completing his National Service. Within the week he will dash off to Majorca done with his girlfriend, and who knows, he might even do more than chastely cup her breast under her clothing. But it's a bittersweet week for Jonathan, as he looks back on the beginnings of his two years spent most reluctantly in the army, and especially the time spent with his best companion, and his girlfriend's ex, Mikepremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099554135</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=David LodgeSally Oliver |title=A Man The Weight of PartsLoss |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 volume. 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=This World Does Not Belong To Us|rating=5

|summary=The man of parts in question here is HG Wells in Early comments on this fictionalised biographydebut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. He was indeed I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a man of many talents and interests, although delight' is perhaps using the parts that most exercise the interest expression in a way I'm not familiar with. I have to confess my ignorance of David Lodge are the great author's private partsSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. You see, not only was HG a prolific writer of fiction that incorporated a staggering amount of visionary ideas From the little I have read (tanksin translation, airborne warfare and atomic bombsI don't read Spanish) - although admittedly some of his ideas have yet to come there does seem to pass such as time machines and Martian invasion - but he was also something of be a political philosopher and idealist, being a central figure for a while in tendency towards the Fabian movement, and an ardent practitioner of fantastical – the concept of free lovemystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846554969</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=George Makana ClarkJennifer Saint|title=The Raw ManElektra

|summary=The Prologue opens bang up to date: 2011'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. The language is poeticCassandra, liltingClytemnestra, evocative but tinged with sadness and sets Elektra are all bit players in the tone for the rest story of the bookTrojan War. Lots of unanswered questions hang in Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the air throughout. The location is South Africa most compelling stories and section headings such as 'The Earthworks of the Universe' and 'The Story-Ghost' give a flavour of its contentsmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224090461</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Delphine de Vigan8409290103|title=Underground TimeIf Only|author=Matthew Tree

|summary=Mathilde is unhappy at work. More than just unhappy actuallyTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, because after expressing an opinion different to her boss he has frozen her out of ensure that the young man got on board the team boat and bullied her mentally and emotionally for monthsthereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. Mathilde is Patrick sent the money regularly and a woman on the edge correspondence - of breaking point, feeling increasingly browsorts -beaten by both sprang up between the demands of city life and her awful bosstwo although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. Meanwhile Thibault is an emergency on-call doctor It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, racing from one district it was that he didn't care to another through the nightmares of Parisian traffic, unhappy have him in this country where he might be a danger to his relationship wife and also struggling, mentally, to surviveother children. Will today be The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the day that changes everything?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408811111</amazonuk>young man on his way.

 {{newreviewFrontpage|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 'pause', 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 the town in Minnesota where she was brought up and where her elderly mother still lives. While Boris cavorts with the Pause, she struggles through the summer, learning to live without him. She builds relationships with her mother's friends, with her neighbours and with a group of teenage girls who form her creative writing class. Written in the first person, the book catalogues her progress using these friendshipsAntoine Laurain, her past, her reading Le Sonneur and her shrink, Dr S.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444710524</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Edward DocxJane Aitken (translator)|title=The Devil's GardenRed is My Heart

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Set on a research station [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in an unnamed Amazonian country (my house. And so was this one, although by the indigenous tribes mentionedI could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, this and is probably Peru), this first person narrative story is told by Dr Forleblack and white and red. Yes, who he has come to the area to study ants - specifically the strange phenomenon of a type of ant that appear to destroy their own environment. It's sort of ants an artistic collaborator on the deck in the junglethis piece, if you like. However the scientific study is interrupted by the arrival of an army colonel and a judge, who at least on the surface of things is there I think it's possible to organize the registration of the local tribes. However when say not one page lacks the doctor witnesses a clear act influence of violence by the soldiers accompanying the colonel, he becomes more engaged with the local goings onsome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330463500</amazonuk>1913547183

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mary HorlockB098FFFBH9|title=The Book of Lies|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Catherine Rozier is fifteen years old and she has a secret.  Secrets are a big thing on Guernsey, the small Channel Isle that is only three miles across at one point with a population a little over 65,000 i.e. somewhat more than Hereford, considerably less than Lincoln, or about half that of Norwich or Preston. Unlike any of those towns, Guernsey is an island. It is self-contained. It isn't just that everyone knows everyone else; they're almost certainly, quite closely, related.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847678858</amazonuk>}}  {{newreviewSnowcub|author=Alexi Zentner|title=TouchGraham Fulbright|rating=34.5

|summary=Stephen, an Anglican priest Fourteen-year-old Rachel is writing her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a story of three generations, a haunting tale of his childhood set in Sawgamet, an isolated clearing competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the snowy forest expanse of North West Canadaanimal world. It is the evening before his mother's funeral. One loss brings up earlier losses; relating this deeply poignant tale he relates the disastrous event She gets a great deal of his support from her family: father's attempts to rescue his sisterPip Harrison, Marie, when on a skating expedition she falls through a dark hole in the thin ice lecturer at the turbulent confluence of two rivers. His terrified sister looks towards Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her father who plunges into the water and both perish in a catastrophe. Consequentlytwin, Stephen is to struggle with for many years to in some way to come to terms with this severe traumaNick. His grandfather, Jeannot Kate runs the family business, a resilient settler is a stalwart figure who keeps returning protectively into Stephen's life toy shop called Cornucopia in order to resurrect his own lost lovePutney, Martine from the hereafter. This love between Jeannot and Stephenwhich is where we's grandmother, Martine, and also that between Jeannotll meet Rachel's brother and future wife blossom through magical events involving the metamorphosis of gold, trees and mountains which move, and malevolent 'qualuplillumits' ogres from a richly various panoply main (if unsuspected) source of magical realisminformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701185465</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Yoko OgawaYancey Williams|title=Hotel Iris|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=When I read [[The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa|The Housekeeper and the Professor]] by Ogawa I fell completely in love with the book. It was gentle, and beautifully written. ''Hotel Iris'' is very, very different and really ought to have a warning label on the cover for those who simply recognise the author's name and pick it up hoping for more! This is the story of a seventeen year old girl who is seduced by an old man in a sadistic, distressing manner.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548992</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Martin Amis|title=The Pregnant Widow|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The bulk of ''The Pregnant Widow'' is set in the summer of 1970 in a beautiful Italian castle where the almost 21 year old Keith Nearing, an English Literature student, has come to spend the summer with his on/off girlfriend Lily and her more physically attractive best friend Scheherazade. Amongst the other attendees are a gay couple, a short Italian suitor to the ample chested Scheherezade who is waiting for the arrival of her boyfriend and, critically for the story the ample bottomed Gloria and eventually her rich boyfriend. If this all sounds like one Crosshairs of those enviously indulgent, middle class, sex filled summer of love stories, then partly it is, but this being Martin Amis, there's a lot more depth and sadness attached to the story. It's an investigation into the changing roles of females and particularly their attitudes to sex, and for Keith in particular, the long term implications of this idyllic vacation are not going to be happy and Amis provides a 'what happened next' to bring each of his characters up to present day.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099488736</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Louise Welsh|title=Naming the BonesDevil

|summary=Murray Watson Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is a Doctor of English Literature embarking getting on a year-long sabbatical in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to pursue his longdaughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's point of view -held dream in room 315 of writing the definitive biography Garden of Archie Lunan andEden nursing home, as with only a specifically intended bytrusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in-producttrade of writing though, restore Lunanso here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's poetry to its rightful place in the high canon of Scots creativitywork.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847672566</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Nicole Krauss0008421714|title=Great HouseMrs March|author=Virginia Feito

|summary=''Great House'' is unashamedly literary in style and while undoubtedly not everyone's cup The problem began just after the publication of tea, itGeorge March's hard not most successful novel to admire the cleverness of Kraussdate. It also covers such broad issues that it's not Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the easiest of books last page) seemed to sum up in a few wordseither be reading it or had already done so. Certainly, Every day Mrs March went to enjoy this book you will need the local patisserie to have a tolerance for cerebral fiction. You will also need to appreciate the role of the book in commenting buy olive bread but on aspects 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 the stories told are unremittingly darkparticular morning, sadPatricia asked, and almost oppressively depressing. But while all of this sounds negativeas she was wrapping the bread, the payoff is a book of exceptional cleverness and shot through with lovely and often beautifully observed writing about the human condition and in particular about memory. 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 isn't this the cerebral game, then itfirst time he's based a book that will infuriate character on 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 is confusionShe mentioned that Johanna, suspicion and fear but they obey orders anyway. To disobey would be to lose their lives. Torture or murder - or both. Unthinkable. The small family unit of three mix with many other families caught up in this situation. They collect in the streets and are rounded up - like sheep. It will be some time before any of them feel remotely like human beings. Their names are on some sort of principal character had 'her mannerisms'list'. Even a young mother who has just given birthPerhaps this would not have mattered, is manhandled on to except for the waiting transport.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141335882</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Gail Jones|title=Five Bells|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It is a lovely sunny day in Circular Quay, a tourist hotspot in Sydney, Australia. This novel is about the thoughts and memories of four people, three women and a man who visit the place fact 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 come to the city from Ireland. Pei Xing Johanna is a Chinese immigrant, now settled in Sydney. The novel is full of descriptive visual imagery from the first page onwards, and it is significant that three whore of the four characters are seeing Circular Quay for the first time.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846554020</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Philippe Claudel and Euan Cameron|title=Monsieur Linh and His Child|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=From a warNantes -ravaged country a bit like a Vietnam or a Cambodia an old man carries the fragile frame of his granddaughter aboard a refugee's ship, staring at the receding horizon all the weeks it takes to arrive at a city a bit like a Seattle or a New York. He and she are given the basics of 'a new life together but it's up to himweak, Monsieur Linhplain, to find friendshipdetestable, which he doespathetic, accepting uncomprehendingly the chatty company of a fellow mourner called Bark.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906694990</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kathleen Winter|title=Annabel|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The back cover blurb has praise for this debut novel from two of my favourite authors: [[:Category:Joseph O'Connor|Joseph O'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 of an adolescentunloved, but neither male nor female but rather a fusion of the two sexes. 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 personunloveable wretch. It's not an easy question to answer, 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 Move on a Florida island theme park with their parents, their grandfather and their big brother Kiwi. Now though, all they have known is threatened. Their mother Hilola was the star attraction, but she died a few months before, not in the jaws of an alligator but of ovarian cancer. As well as being the glamorous figure on billboards who everyone came to see, she ran the show and did all the jobs that needed to be done, and the family is lost without her.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>070118602X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Allen Ginsberg|title=Howl: A Graphic Novel|rating=4.5|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=I first came across Howl as a short film animating one of Ginsberg's own recordings of it. If memory serves, it was a scratchy, jazzy piece, full of spiky, spunky shapes and movements, and low on colour. Now for 2011 and for Penguin Modern Classics' first ever 'graphic novel' comes a very different animation. OK, the real moving animation is only to be seen in the movie Howl, but to call this merely an illustrated companion to the film is to be very unflattering.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141195703</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]