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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Neil JordanMatthew Tree|title=MistakenWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The front cover photograph and the blurb on the back cover give this book a misty, floaty, ethereal feel. The story starts at the endTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, if you get my drift. The adult Kevin attends a local funeral but he's careful to remain low-key, hidden almost. Why is that? And drunk and chronic underachiever whose funeral is it anyway? As early as page 6, Jordan's poetic dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and atmospheric style is apparent in lines such as ' who had endless crises of self confidence... close So Tim applied himself to the line of yew treeshis studies, were the massed umbrellas of the mourners, retreating, like so many mushrooms come alive in a fairy-tale forestcultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848544197</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Helen HumphreysB0C47LV1PC|title=The Reinvention of LoveFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=1961 was Can you make a year of change, a time, as Jacobsen puts it, ''when men became boys and housewives womenYo birthing person''. At the outset Finn and his mother are leading a quietjoke? And if you could, rather timorous life in a working class Oslo suburb. Then change overwhelms them, not through world events, but in is the form of a mysterious child who question should you make it? Or is Finn's half sister. Linda is not like other children and Finn's attempt to deal with her impact on his family the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the central thread in this quintessential story of growing upanswer for both could well be.... no.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050184</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Manuel de Lope and John Cullen (Translator)Mosby Woods|title=The Wrong BloodA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Although de Lope has written over a dozen novels, 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 first to be translated into Englishbest course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. The cover A feeling that nobody is as pretty as a picture and screams 'Spanishin actual charge.' So farImagine then, so goodthere was a man with precognition. But I have to admit that on Imagine the whole most strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of the European novels I've read over the last year or socircumstances. That man would be valuable, have fallen short of right? Perhaps the mark for memost valuable asset in history. Will Imagine then, that this one prove man loses this ability. What would governments do to be differentget it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099551853</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Aravind Adiga0571379559|title=Last Man In TowerThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Following a Man Booker winning book like [[''The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga|The White Tiger]] House of Broken Bricks'' is always going to the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be a daunting challenge for any writerhappier there, but instead, let alone one when that book was she lives in the house on the authorriverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's first novelstood the passage of time, storms and floods. In 'Last Man in Tower' Adiga perhaps sensibly turns Her husband, Richard, struggles to a proven structure that allows grow his storyvegetables, to complete the delivery rounds -telling skills and to flourishbring in sufficient money. Gone are clever structural ideas They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, like the rainbow twins. Sonny'The White Tigers colouring reflects his mother'sJamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they' letter format re related, much less twins and instead we get a straightforward engaging story set in modern day Mumbai where a rich builder there's an assumption when Max is seeking to force residents of an old apartment block to sell their flats to enable redevelopmentout with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848875169</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the 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 throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christos TsiolkasKay Chronister|title=LoadedDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Ari With a world that is just nineteenbecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, of Greek descent but living in Melbourne with his family. He's gay, unemployed and not in educationpost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. He wants to get away from the traditional Greek life of his parents and their friends but has no idea how to do Whether it. He falls back on the only life that he knows: clubs, parties, anonymous sexis a robotic takeover, a cocktail world devoid of drugs and alcohol. But will even water or a nuclear holocaust, this be enough genre is a way for humans to dull the pain? Told vividly in the first person and sexually explicit itcathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures''s by Kay Chronister is a short book – a novella – which grabs you and has no intention new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of letting you go until it spits you out at the other endfears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099757710</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Alain MabanckouEric LaRocca|title=Memoirs of a PorcupineThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=45|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=The protagonist of this novel Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is an ordinary Congolese porcupine until Papa Kibandi performs an ancient ritual involving used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a hallucinogenic cocktail called ''mayamvumbiBig Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and transforms him into his son, by the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's harmful double''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. The insecure younger Kibandi becomes It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and more embittered as his life goes on, humiliation. Horrors that linger and sends his porcupine are harder to defeat than any 'eat' anybody he feels the least bit threatened by, a process whereby that personBig Bad's life essence is sucked out, killing them instantly. Over one hundred victims later and following his master's death at the hands of a vengeful baby, our narrator retires to the hollow of a baobab tree where he writes this confessional.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687675</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julie MyersonMadelaine Lucas|title=ThenThirst for Salt|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The front cover is graphic and telling. A frozen London with its skyscrapers emitting black smoke and random fires across a desolate landscape. As early as the second paragraph we see that something is wrong''Love, something cataclysmic has happened with the lines I''People are eating the birds ... fighting over d read, was supposed to be a handful of scorched sparrows.light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' The story is told in the first person by the central character which gives it immediacy and draws the reader straight in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224093754</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Sag HarborMichael Grothaus|authortitle=Colson WhiteheadBeautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Colson Whitehead wanted to write ''But fearing something personal for his fourth book, so he chose an autobiographical novel, based on his experiences as a vacationing youngster. Sag Harbor really does exist - at the far end of Long Island and next having it come to the up-market Hamptonspass are two different things. It has a history of whaling and an association with John Steinbeck. Within easy reach And I'm willing to bet most of New Yorkwhat we fear will never happen, in 1985 or we can take steps to change it was an affluent black enclave within a large, white middle-class holiday area.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099531887</amazonuk>}}''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ann PatchettJennifer Saint|title=State of WonderAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Anders Eckman is dead. The news has been delivered in the form an aerogram – remember those blue paper-cum-envelope things we used to use to write to foreign pen-pals when the notion of befriending a person you'd never met in a foreign country still seemed exotic? This flimsy piece of paper was delivered to Eckman's employers. After all it I was as worthy as any one of them . I would get on board that had sent him down to ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the Brazilian Amazon to find name of the enigmatic and evasive Dr Annik Swenson, and more precisely find out exactly how she goddess. It was getting on with developing for the drug that was costing the firm so much sake of their research budgetmy name, too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408818590</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Aminatta FornaAmanthi Harris|title=The Memory of LoveBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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>
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{{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 earthquake, deep in the Congolese bar of Credit Gone Westocean 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 and the stories loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the bar’s patrons – or at least their versions list of those talespriorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668675X</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=David Bezmozgis|title=The Free World|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It's the late 1970's and a family of Latvian Jews, the Krasnanskys, are emigrating from the Soviet Union. They're made to stay in Rome whilst they apply to live in 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>}} {{newreview|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
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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>}}''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alan WarnerDaisy Hildyard|title=The Stars in the Bright SkyEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In 1999, Alan Warner introduced us to a wonderful set of characters in 'The Sopranos' when a school choir from a backwater town in Scotland went on a trip to the big city. Much debauchery ensued. 'The Stars in the Bright Sky' once again reunites most summary of the original gang and there is no need to have read the first this book to pick up on the diverse characters. Now though, theydoesn've grown up (or at least got older!) and are gathered at Gatwick Airport t come close to set off on a girls' holiday.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009946182X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Elia Barcelo and David Frye (Translator)|title=The Goldsmith's Secret|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='The Goldsmith's Secret' has a wonderfully romantic beginning; alone on a snowy night in New York, the craftsman explaining what is puzzling over how to tell his story, and how to separate reality from the overwhelming memories in his mind. The romance continues as the story unfolds, done with the goldsmith taking us back to the town and time of his youth, and the chance meeting that led him 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 'a marked woman' and the 'black widow'premise. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857050052</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Peter SalmonSally Oliver |title=The Coffee StoryWeight 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 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
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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>
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{{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
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Shehan KarunatilakaB098FFFBH9|title=ChinamanSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tessa HadleyYancey Williams|title=The London TrainCrosshairs of the Devil|rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|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>
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