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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Helen HumphreysMatthew Tree|title=The Reinvention of LoveWe'll Never Know|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction|summary='The Reinvention of Love' is one of those stories that is so bizarre and strange that it could only be based on factual events. Essentially it is a good, old-fashioned love triangle set mostly in Paris in the period from the 1830s to the 1860s; a world where fighting duels is a commonplace event. The triangle features the great French literary writer Victor Hugo, his wife Adèle and the altogether strange critic Charles Saint-Beuve who narrates much of this story, with brief breaks for Adèle's side of events and some letters written by the Hugo's youngest daughter, also called Adèle (but let's call her, as she was known to her family, Dédé to avoid confusion).|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687985</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Wesley Stace|title=Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer|rating=3.5|genre=Crime|summary="Nothing in recent fiction prepared me for the power and the polish of this subtle tale of English music in the making, a chiller wrapped in an enigma [New Statesman]"  "His handling of dry comic dialogue and cynical affectation is reminiscent of P G Wodehouse… an intelligent, fun and thoughtful piece of fiction [Independent on Sunday]"  Just two of the previous reviews that adorn the back cover of 'Charles Jessold…'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546574</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Roy Jacobsen, Don Bartlett (translator) and Don Shaw (translator)|title=Child Wonder|rating=5

|summary=1961 was a year of change, a time, as Jacobsen puts it, ''when men became boys and housewives women''. At the outset Finn and Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his mother are leading a quietfather, rather timorous life in a working class Oslo suburb. Then change overwhelms them, not through world events, but in the form of a mysterious child who is Finn's half sister. Linda is not like other children drunk and Finn's attempt to deal with her impact on his family is the central thread in this quintessential story chronic underachiever whose dreams of growing up.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050184</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Salman Rushdie|title=Luka and the Fire being exceptional at any of Life|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Back in 1990, Salman Rushdie followed up his controversial 'Satanic Verses' with a book dedicated to his then nine year old son, Zafar, called 'Haroun artistic passions all failed miserably and the Sea who had endless crises of Stories'self confidence. Now, So Tim applied himself to his second son, Milanstudies, finally gets a book of cultivated his own, although he had to wait until he was 13 for abilities rather than his father to get around to it. 'Luka daydreams and the Fire of Life' is very much a follow up to 'Haroun' and it is certainly helpful, although not necessary, if you have read that book as many of the events in the first book are referred to hereset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099555328</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Manuel de Lope and John Cullen (Translator)B0C47LV1PC|title=The Wrong BloodFragility|author=Mosby Woods

|summary=Although de Lope has written over Can you make a dozen novels''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, this is the first to be translated into English. question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The cover catch is as pretty as a picture and screams 'Spanish.' So far, so good. But I have to admit that on the whole most of the European novels I've read over the last year or so, have fallen short of the mark answer for meboth could well be.... no. Will this one prove to be different?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099551853</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Aravind Adiga|title=Last Man In Tower|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Following a Man Booker winning book like [[The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga|The White Tiger]] is always going to be a daunting challenge for any writer, let alone one when that book was the author's first novel. In 'Last Man in TowerFragility' Adiga perhaps sensibly turns to a proven structure that allows his story-telling skills to flourish. Gone are clever structural ideas, like 'The White Tiger's' letter format and instead we get a straightforward engaging story is set in modern day Mumbai where a rich builder is seeking to force residents as the city of an old apartment block Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to sell their flats to enable redevelopment.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848875169</amazonuk>emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic

 {{newreview|author=Christos Tsiolkas|title=Loaded|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ari is just nineteen, of Greek descent but living in Melbourne with his family. He's gay, unemployed and not in education. He wants to get away from the traditional Greek life of his parents and their friends but has no idea how to do it. He falls back on the only life that he knows: clubs, parties, anonymous sex, a cocktail of drugs and alcohol. But will even this be enough to dull the pain? Told vividly in the first person and sexually explicit it's a short book – a novella – which grabs you and has no intention of letting you go until it spits you out at the other end.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099757710</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alain MabanckouMosby Woods|title=Memoirs of a PorcupineA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=The protagonist of this novel is an ordinary Congolese porcupine until Papa Kibandi performs an ancient ritual involving a hallucinogenic cocktail called West isn''mayamvumbi'', and transforms him into his son's harmful doublet the dominant force it once was. The insecure younger Kibandi becomes more and more embittered as his life goes on, and sends his porcupine Nobody in the West is quite sure how to 'eat' anybody he feels mend this or even if mending it is the least bit threatened bybest course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a process whereby push for climate action there. A feeling that person's life essence nobody is sucked outin actual charge. Imagine then, killing them instantlythere was a man with precognition. Over one hundred victims later and following his master's death at Imagine the hands strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of a vengeful babycircumstances. That man would be valuable, our narrator retires to right? Perhaps the hollow of a baobab tree where he writes most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this confessionalability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687675</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Julie Myerson0571379559|title=ThenThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=45

|summary=''The front cover House of Broken Bricks'' is graphic the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and tellingfloods. A frozen London with its skyscrapers emitting black smoke Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and random fires across a desolate landscapeto bring in sufficient money. As early as the second paragraph we see that something is wrongThey have twin boys - Sonny and Max, something cataclysmic has happened with the lines rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother'People are eating the birds s Jamaican heritage.Max takes after his father.. fighting over a handful of scorched sparrows. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there' The story s an assumption when Max is told in the first person by the central character which gives it immediacy and draws the reader straight inout with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224093754</amazonuk>

{{newreview|title=Whatever|author=Michel Houellebecq|rating=3The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Interviewed by BBC film critic Mark Kermode shortly before his 60th birthday, Woody Allen gave In the bequiffed one this somewhat startling piece palace of adviceOdysseus, ''You get with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to my agerule without her husband, you realise that when you die you're really not losing who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that much.'' Those words sprang Clytemnestra brought to mind while reading ''Whatever'Ithaca's shores, first novel by Michel HouellebecqQueen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. The main protagonist in ''Whatever'' may be only half One that shatters however with the age return of the film directorOrestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, but the outlook on life shared by both men seems strikingly similarseeking refuge. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687845</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Sag HarborKay Chronister|authortitle=Colson WhiteheadDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Colson Whitehead wanted to write something personal With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for his fourth bookhumanity, so he chose post-apocalyptic fiction can become an autobiographical novelalmost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, based on his experiences as this genre is a vacationing youngsterway for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. Sag Harbor really does exist ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post- at the far end apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of Long Island and next to the up-market Hamptonsfears that exist for humanity today. It has is a history of whaling and an association with John Steinbeck. Within easy reach of New York, in 1985 it was an affluent black enclave within a large, white middle-class holiday areashocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099531887</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Carlos AlbaEric LaRocca|title=The Songs of Manolo EscobarTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=45|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Antonio Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is the second-born son used as a way to Spanish parents, living in Glasgowreflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. HeMost horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad''s embarrassed to be anything other than Scottish, and he tries everything to hide his family background from friends at schoolwhether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, refusing to speak Spanish with his parents it usually something tangible and struggling to forge his own identity in life. In his middle age, he suddenly finds his life falling apart around him as his marriage begins to fail and his increasingly frail father becomes obsessed with by the proper burial end of his parents back in Spainthe story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. Antonio continues to play It is a rather emotionally distant part collection of short stories more interested in his parents' livesthe horrors of illness, but then finds himself drawn further grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and further into the truth about his fatherare harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''s past which, ultimately, leads him to question his own past and the path his future might take.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184697173X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ann PatchettMadelaine Lucas|title=State of WonderThirst for Salt

|summary=Anders Eckman is dead. The news has been delivered in the form an aerogram – remember those blue paper-cum-envelope things we used ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to use to write to foreign pen-pals when the notion of befriending be a person youlight and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''d never met in a foreign country still seemed exotic?

This flimsy piece Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of paper was delivered to Eckmanan isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's employers. After deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all -consuming nature, how it was them that had sent him down to the Brazilian Amazon to find the enigmatic changed her perspective on both romantic and evasive Dr Annik Swenson, familial relationships and more precisely find out exactly how she was getting on with developing the drug that was costing the firm so much of their research budgetit altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408818590</amazonuk>0861546490

''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.|isbn=191458564X}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jean RhysJennifer Saint|title=Wide Sargasso SeaAtalanta

|summary=In the late eighteen thirties the father of an English gentleman conspires to marry him off to a landed Jamaican Creole ''I was as worthy as a means any one of giving his second son an estate and stopping him being a burden them. I would get on the familyboard that ship, I vowed. Written I would take my place, not just in the nineteen sixties, 'Wide Sargasso Sea' was inspired by Rochester's first wife in ''Jane Eyre'', and is an impressionistic, hallucinatory account name of that woman's alienation and subsequent descent into madness that can be read as a prequel to the Bronte novelgoddess. The book covers Antoinette's childhood in Jamaica and her honeymoon on a small Caribbean island with her new husband and their domestic servants, and It was for the point sake of view shifts between Antoinette and her husbandmy name, too.Atalanta''|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241951550</amazonuk>}}Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero.

{{newreview|author=Douglas Kennedy|title=The Moment|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=After I'd read Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the blurb on protective eye of the back cover I gave goddess Athemis and fashioned into a bit of a shrug as if formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to sayjoin the Argonauts, well, I've read quite a number fierce band of books recently where undying love has been found in war-torn Europewarriors, so was this book going descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to be different, or better? Thomas Nesbitt, middle-aged, disillusioned with love fight in Artemis' name and more than a tad world-weary is trying to move on carve out her own legendary place in his lifehistory. His marriage of more than twenty years What follows is dissolving before his very eyes. But rather than being upset, he's feeling as if a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. He whirlwind of challenges and discovery and his wife were never really ''in love'' in the true sense of the phrasethrough it, despite having a daughter together. And thereAtalanta must remember Artemis's a very good reason as to why Thomas is like this and the rest of the book tells us whyfatal warning: that if she marries, warts and allit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091795842</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Aminatta FornaAmanthi Harris|title=The Memory of LoveBeautiful Place

|summary=The setting for this story Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leoneplace she was born into, soon after but the government has declared an end to an 11 year civil warone she thinks of as home. How can people come she came to terms with be at the terrible things Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that have happened? Actuallyflowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, can they come to terms with those things?that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408809656</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jenn Ashworth178563335X|title=Cold LightSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor

|summary=When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they'Cold Light'' is re held when you need to pick the story of three teenage girls who become involved in a predatory adult worldchildren up. As the story opens we're looking back on what happened from a decade later Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and we know that one of the girlsher elder brother, ChloëJamie, died in whilst Rachel holds a Valentinesobbing parishioner. Thelma's Day suicide pactdaughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. The town council has finally decided Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a memorial lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to Chloë – itdevelop a real bond with the parish - and she's to be a summerhouse at the side in awe of the pond where vicar, Gail, but then she drowned, although it's difficult to understand quite why anyone would want to sit therebeen doing the job for more than thirty years. The groundRachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good -breaking ceremony is being televised when it becomes obvious that something has gone terribly wrong. But Lola, our narrator, knows that was stormy but it was probably what they've found a bodyneeded. She also knows who it isAnd then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444721445</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alain Mabanckou1398515388|title=Broken GlassThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=34.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=In First of all, it was the Congolese bar of Credit Gone Westearthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the owner Stubborn Snail wants a record of tsunami and this, in turn, caused the lives of those who drink therenuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The man he chooses to write it? Disgraced schoolteacher Broken Glassdeaths were uncountable, who fills up a notebook with the stories of and the bar’s patrons – or at least their versions loss of those taleslivelihoods was widespread.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668675X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=David Bezmozgis|title= The Free World|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It's fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the late 1970's and a family list of Latvian Jews, priorities but - six months after the Krasnanskys, are emigrating from the Soviet Uniontsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. TheyHe wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner're made s comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to stay in Rome whilst they apply to live in open his car door and Tamon the States and they find themselves trapped dog jumped in a strange migratory limbo, belonging nowhere and tied to no-one but each other.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670920053</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jennifer Egan0989715337|title=A Visit From Papa on 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>}} {{newreviewMoon|author=Lauren Liebenberg|title=The West Rand Jive Cats Boxing ClubMarco North

|summary=Best friends Tommy and Chris are 12 years old''Some frogs had gotten into the well. It is 1958 and they are growing up in a small mining town near Johannesburg, South Africa. They are learning to box and to dance to rock and roll music.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844084892</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=James Frey|title=The Final Testament of ''Walter stood waist-deep in the Holy Bible|rating=3fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The Rabbis say that all the signs are there from the birth Long strands of Ben Zion Avrohom that he is the Messiahtheir eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. That's a lot Two of anyone to cope with the dogs leaned over the opening and, like Jesus, there's much barked down at the strange noise of Ben's early life that is untold here. When he is involved in an horrific accident on a building site that he miraculously survives, albeit with terrible scaring, the prophecies appear to be true. He develops a form of epilepsy during which buckets as he appears to speak to God. He is fluent in ancient languages despite never learning filled them, knows all the Holy books by heart and yet distains all forms of religion, instead spreading his message of love to all who meet him in modern day New York.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848543174</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=Mirza Waheed|title=How is that for an opening? The Collaborator|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The Collaborator style of the title is our narrator, a sensitive bookish young man. He is the son of the headman of a small village this novel in a side valley of the Kashmir. The heritage form of the people is that of nomads. The village has been settled for less than interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a generationsixpence. Everything they have And author Marco North, who has been built by the sheer hard graft most wonderful turn of the people themselves… including the recently completed mosquephrase, starts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918954</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alan WarnerDaisy Hildyard|title=The Stars in the Bright SkyEmergency

|summary=In 1999, Alan Warner introduced us to a wonderful set The summary of characters in 'The Sopranosthis book doesn' when a school choir from a backwater town in Scotland went on a trip t come close to the big city. Much debauchery ensued. 'The Stars in the Bright Sky' once again reunites most of the original gang and there explaining what is no need to have read done with 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' holidaypremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009946182X</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Elia Barcelo and David Frye (Translator)Sally Oliver |title=The Goldsmith's SecretWeight of Loss |rating=3.54 |genre=Literary Fiction|summary='The Goldsmith's Secret' has a wonderfully romantic beginning; alone on a snowy night in New YorkMarianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, the craftsman is puzzling over how she awakes to tell his storyfind strange, and how to separate reality thick black hairs sprouting from the overwhelming memories bones of her spine which steadily increase in his mindsize and volume. The romance continues Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as the story unfoldsa physical reaction to her grief, with the goldsmith taking us back recommends she go to the town and time of his youthstay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the chance meeting that led him to find the love other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of his lifea kind. Telling the tale of romance As Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from many perspectives, we learn the town this cycle of Villasanta has labelled his love, the mysterious Celia, as 'memory and pain—but only at a marked woman' and the 'black widow'terrible price: that of identity itself. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857050052</amazonuk>086154112X }} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Peter SalmonNatalia Garcia Freire|title=The Coffee StoryThis World Does Not Belong To Us

|summary=Teddy Everett, head of Everett and Sons Coffee is dying, slowly and painfullyEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, of cancera delight. The Coffee Story I will agree with the first – tremendous 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. Itno understatement – but 'a delight's his time in Cuba which has put him where he is now – perhaps using the expression in prisona way I'm not familiar with. For his crimes he would normally I have suffered the death penalty, but his sentence was commuted because to confess my ignorance of his illness and now the doctors try to save himSpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. Or perhaps itFrom the little I have read (in translation, I don's that they're trying t read Spanish) there does seem to persuade Teddy that they're trying to save him be a tendency towards the fantastical – whether he wants to be saved or notthe mystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444724703</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andrew MillerJennifer Saint|title=PureElektra

|summary=I've read MillerElektra's ''Oxygen'' and ''The Optimists'' so I was looking forward to reading this novel. The by Jennifer Saint tells the story opens of three women who live in the opulence heavily male dominated world of the Palace of VersaillesAncient Greece. We Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are given vivid descriptions of both all bit players in the scale story of the palace and its grandeurTrojan War. Jean-Baptiste Baratte, Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the young engineer, seems completely over-awed by most compelling stories and the whole occasion. Even although he's not entirely sure what is expected of him in Paris, he accepts. He needs to eat, after allmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444724258</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Anne Enright8409290103|title=The Forgotten WaltzIf Only|author=Matthew Tree|rating=4.5

|summary=Anne Enright's 2007 Booker prize winning [[The Gathering Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by Anne Enright|The Gathering]] addressed the gloomy subjects of the three D's; deathhis father, depression and dysfunctional families. Her latest bookcotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, ''The Forgotten Waltz''Mr Patrick, set in Dublin in 2009, sees her turning her attentions to a love affair. A more uplifting subject you might think. Well only up to a point. The affair in question you see is ensure that of her narrator, Gina, who is already married to the generally good, if undynamic, Connor, while young man got on board the other end, boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. Patrick sent the subject money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the affair is the older, Seán, also married and neighbour of Ginatwo although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn's sister. In case your moral compass isnt that Lowry senior didn't stretched quite enough by this, Seán and care for his wife Aileenson, also it was that 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 young daughter who suffers from epilepsyman on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022408903X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Leila AboulelaAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Lyrics AlleyRed is My Heart|rating=43.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The front cover photograph is eye-catching [[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and lovely white and has the appeal of saying to potential readers - read mein my house. The book's title is both poetic and enigmatic. I And so was keen to get reading but before this one, although I could, I'm faced with a page listing the ''Principal Characters'' and another page setting out the Abuzeid family tree. It did put me off slightly, I have to admit. I tend to think spelled that with a modernmore accurately – this one was, average-paged work of fiction a list of characters and is well, a list too farblack and white and red. SoYes, yeshe has an artistic collaborator on this piece, for the first couple of chapters I was constantly flicking back and forth to remind myself who everyone was. Not so good for those lazy readers out there, Ithink it'm thinkings possible to say not one page lacks the influence of some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0297860097</amazonuk>1913547183

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shehan KarunatilakaB098FFFBH9|title=ChinamanSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright|rating=4.5

|summary=After Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the 1996 World Cup, dying sports journalist WG Karunasena decides that way in which human beings exploit the animal world needs '. She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a half decent documentary on Sri Lankan cricket'lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, Nick. He sets out to make Kate runs the said documentaryfamily business, focusing on the mysterious Pradeep Mathewa toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, the 1980which is where we's spin bowler he considers to have been his countryll meet Rachel's greatest ever playermain (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys. 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>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tessa HadleyYancey Williams|title=The London TrainCrosshairs of the Devil|rating=34.5

|summary=Part one focuses on Paul Award- a rather self obsessed and aimless character, who winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is less than honest with his family, using various friends to cover up his movements. He has several daughters, and getting on learning that one is having problems, goes to visit her in London - years and ends up staying with her, for several weeks, leaving both despite his (second) wife, strenuous objections and the mother of this daughter (first wife), completely in the dark as thanks to what is happening. Initially we feel that he is acting in a protective manner towards his daughter, who is struggling to come to terms with her pregnancy finds himself living - but in fact his motives are far less altruisticor imprisoned, thereby alienating the reader from his tale. The squalor in which her daughter is living, would appal most parents Eddie's point of view - yet he seems to take it all in his strideroom 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, and attempts to join the hippy-style commune - yet more irritation with this deeply flawed character therefore emerges.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224090976</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Emma Henderson|title=Grace Williams Says it Loud|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Graceonly a trusty nursing aide, aged elevenJenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is sent going to the Briar Mental Institute as her parents can no longer cope with her care. She is befriended there by a young boykeep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though, Danielso here, who is epileptic and also has no arms after a terrible accident. Together we see the horrors of for his readers, are his wanderings through his life in the Briar, and also their slowly growing love affair with each other's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>144470401X</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roma Tearne0008421714|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>}} {{newreviewMrs March|author=Tea Obreht|title=The Tiger's WifeVirginia Feito

|summary=Téa Obreht's 'The Tigerproblem began just after the publication of George March's Wife' comes with a fair degree of hype from most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the US, and largely it lives up last page) seemed to either be reading it, which is no small achievementor had already done so. The main story is set in Yugoslavia and explores a young doctor Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, NataliaPatricia asked, seeking for as she was wrapping the truth about her grandfatherbread, ''but isn's death, while on a mission to deliver much needed medical aid to an orphanage in the war-ravaged Balkans. But what sets t this book apart is the intricate weaving of reality with the myths and stories of the region. In particular there are two myths that represent a good chunk of the page count: the story of a tiger who has escaped from captivity after the World War two bombing of Belgrade and who has settled near a remote mountain village where Nataliafirst time he's grandfather is growing up, and who develops based a strange relationship with a deaf-mute girl who becomes known as character on you?'the tiger's wife'; and a mysterious story of She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'Deathless Manher mannerisms' 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 himself.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297859013</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Graham Swift|title=Wish You Were Here|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I cannot tell you exactly how long after I finished Perhaps this book that I satwould not have mattered, holding it, in stunned silence except for - but it was light when I finished it and dark when I put it down. Some books can do the fact that to you. This Johanna is one the whore of them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330535838</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=John Burnside|title=The Summer of Drowning|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The story is narrated in the first person by the daughter Nantes - ''a decade or so after the tragedy. Soweak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, she has a healthy dose of hindsight which shows itself time and time again with sentiments such as .unloveable wretch.. 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 to set the scene (spartan) and his characters (a mere handful). His chosen location is the arresting emptiness of somewhere deep in the Arctic Circle so straight away he's caught my imagination - with his.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022406178X</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Edward St Aubyn|title=At Last|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=In ''At Last'', Edward St Aubyn returns Move on to the Melrose family, the subject of both ''Some Hope'' and of his Booker-shortlisted [[Mother's Milk by Edward St Aubyn|Mother's MilkNewest Paranormal Reviews]]. 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 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'' first. This isn't much of an inconvenience as it's a terrific book.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330435906</amazonuk>}}