Changes

[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Haley TannerMatthew Tree|title=Vaclav and LenaWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5

|summary=Vaclav Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and Lena are both children chronic underachiever whose dreams of Russian immigrants, growing up in Brooklyn. Vaclav dreams being exceptional at any of becoming a fantastic magician, with his friend Lena as his assistant, artistic passions all failed miserably and as children they practise their routine together, making lists who had endless crises of the things they'll need, the costumes they will wear and the tricks they will performself confidence. Vaclav is confident and happy, but Lena is quiet, withdrawn and struggles with speaking English. Yet Vaclav believes, always, that they are destined So Tim applied himself to be together. Even when Lena disappears one day and is gone from his life for many years still he hopes thatstudies, somehow, he will find her againcultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434020443</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Neil JordanB0C47LV1PC|title=MistakenFragility|author=Mosby Woods

|summary=The front cover photograph and the blurb on the back cover give this book Can you make a misty, floaty, ethereal feel. The story starts at the end, ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you get my drift. The adult Kevin attends a local funeral but he's careful to remain low-keycould, hidden almost. Why is thatthe question should you make it? And whose funeral Or is the question if you did, would it anywayland? As early as page 6, Jordan's poetic and atmospheric style The catch is apparent in lines such as ' that the answer for both could well be....no. close to  ''Fragility'' is set as the line city of yew treesPortland, were Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the massed umbrellas of restrictions imposed during the mourners, retreating, like so many mushrooms come alive in a fairy-tale forest.'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848544197</amazonuk>covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Helen HumphreysMosby Woods|title=The Reinvention of LoveA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary='The Reinvention of LoveWest isn' is one of those stories that is so bizarre and strange that t the dominant force it could only be based on factual eventsonce was. Essentially it is a good, old-fashioned love triangle set mostly in Paris Nobody in the period from the 1830s West is quite sure how to the 1860s; a world where fighting duels mend this or even if mending it 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 best course of this storyaction. Governments are flailing. A war here, with brief breaks a push for Adèle's side of events and some letters written by the Hugo's youngest daughter, also called Adèle (but let's call herclimate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, as she there 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=3man with precognition.5|genre=Crime|summary="Nothing Imagine the strategic advantage in recent fiction prepared me for the power and the polish of this subtle tale asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of English music in circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the making, a chiller wrapped most valuable asset in an enigma [New Statesman]"  "His handling of dry comic dialogue and cynical affectation is reminiscent of P G Wodehouse… an intelligenthistory. Imagine then, fun and thoughtful piece of fiction [Independent on Sunday]"  Just two of the previous reviews that adorn the this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back cover of 'Charles Jessold…'?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099546574</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roy Jacobsen, Don Bartlett (translator) and Don Shaw (translator)0571379559|title=Child WonderThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|summary=1961 was a year ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of changefour people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, a timeshe lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as Jacobsen puts itmight look, it''when men became boys s stood the passage of time, storms and housewives women''floods. At Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the outset Finn delivery rounds - and his mother are leading a quiet, rather timorous life to bring in a working class Oslo suburbsufficient money. Then change overwhelms them, not through world eventsThey have twin boys - Sonny and Max, but in the form of a mysterious child who is Finnrainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's half sisterJamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. Linda is not like other children People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and Finnthere's attempt to deal an assumption when Max is out with her impact on his family is the central thread in this quintessential story of growing upmother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050184</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Salman Rushdie|title=Luka and The follow-up to the Fire of Life|rating=4|genre=Confident Readers|summary=Back in 1990, Salman Rushdie followed up his controversial excellent ''Ithaca'Satanic Verses' with picks up a book dedicated to his then nine year old son, Zafar, called 'Haroun and few months after where we left off. In the Sea palace of Stories'. NowOdysseus, his second son, Milan, finally gets a book of his ownwith delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, although he had who sailed to wait until he was 13 war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for his father to get around to itthe throne of the Western Isles. 'Luka Having survived – politically and physical – the Fire of Lifechaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca' s shores, Queen Penelope is very much on the brink of a follow up to 'Haroun' fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and it is certainly helpful, although not necessaryhis sister Elektra, if you have read that book as many of the events in the first book are referred to hereseeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099555328</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Manuel de Lope and John Cullen (Translator)Kay Chronister|title=The Wrong BloodDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Although de Lope has written over With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a dozen novelsnuclear holocaust, this genre is the first a way for humans to be translated into Englishcathartically experience their most existential fears. The cover ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is as pretty as a picture and screams 'Spanish.' So far, so good. But I have to admit new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that on the whole most aligns many of the European novels I've read over the last year or so, have fallen short of the mark fears that exist for mehumanity today. Will this one prove It is a shocking novel that still manages to be different?find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099551853</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Aravind AdigaEric LaRocca|title=Last Man In TowerThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Following Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a Man Booker winning book like [[The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga|The White Tiger]] is always going way to be reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a daunting challenge for any writer''Big Bad'', let alone one when whether that book was is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the authorend of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's first novel. In 'Last Man in Tower' Adiga perhaps sensibly turns to a proven structure that allows his story-telling skills to flourish. Gone are clever structural ideas, like 'The White TigerTrees Grew Because I Bled There's' letter format and instead we get is not like that. It is a straightforward engaging story set collection of short stories more interested in modern day Mumbai where a rich builder is seeking to force residents the horrors of an old apartment block illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to sell their flats to enable redevelopmentdefeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848875169</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christos TsiolkasMadelaine Lucas|title=LoadedThirst for Salt|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>}} {{newreview|author=Alain Mabanckou|title=Memoirs of a Porcupine|rating=4

|summary=The protagonist of this novel is an ordinary Congolese porcupine until Papa Kibandi performs an ancient ritual involving a hallucinogenic cocktail called ''mayamvumbi''Love, and transforms him into his sonI's harmful double. The insecure younger Kibandi becomes more and more embittered as his life goes ond read, was supposed to be a light and sends his porcupine to 'eat' anybody he feels the least bit threatened byweightless feeling, a process whereby that personbut I had always longed for gravity'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>}}

{{newreview|author=Julie Myerson|title=Then|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The front cover is graphic and telling. A frozen London with its skyscrapers emitting black smoke and random fires across Told from a retrospective view, a desolate landscape. As early as young woman unravels the second paragraph we see year-long relationship that something is wrongonce defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, something cataclysmic has happened with the lines ''People are eating narrator relives the birds ... fighting over affair with a handful of scorched sparrows.'' The story is told in man twenty years her senior from its inception – the first person by summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the central character which gives it immediacy and draws the reader straight in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224093754</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Whatever|author=Michel Houellebecq|rating=3summer after.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Interviewed by BBC film critic Mark Kermode shortly before his 60th birthday, Woody Allen gave Set against the bequiffed one this somewhat startling piece backdrop of advice, ''You get to my age, you realise that when you die youan isolated Australian coastal town 're really not losing that much.'Thirst for Salt' Those words sprang to mind while reading ''Whatever'details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, first novel by Michel Houellebecq. The main protagonist in ''Whatever'' may be only half the age of the film directordepicting its all-consuming nature, but the outlook how it changed her perspective on life shared by both men seems strikingly similarromantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687845</amazonuk>0861546490

 {{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Sag HarborMichael Grothaus|authortitle=Colson WhiteheadBeautiful Shining People

|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>}}''

{{newreview|author=Carlos Alba|title=The Songs of Manolo Escobar|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Antonio is the second-born son to Spanish parents, living in Glasgow. He's embarrassed to be anything other than Scottish, and he tries everything to hide his family background from friends at school, refusing to speak Spanish with his parents and struggling to forge his own identity in life. In his middle age, he suddenly finds his life falling apart 'Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around him as his marriage begins to fail and his increasingly frail father becomes obsessed with the proper burial question of his parents back in Spainidentity and acceptance. Antonio continues Of what it means to play a rather emotionally distant part in his parents' lives, but then finds himself drawn further be human. Of what is real and further into the truth about his father's past whichwhat is artificial, ultimately, leads him to question his own past and whether the path his future might takedevelopment of technology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184697173X</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ann PatchettJennifer Saint|title=State of WonderAtalanta

|summary=Anders Eckman is dead''I was as worthy as any one of them. The news has been delivered I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the form an aerogram – remember those blue paper-cum-envelope things we used to use to write to foreign pen-pals when name of the goddess. It was for the notion sake of befriending a person youmy name, too. Atalanta''d never met in a foreign country still seemed exotic?

This flimsy piece of paper was delivered to Eckman's employersPrincess. After all it was them that had sent him down to the Brazilian Amazon to find the enigmatic and evasive Dr Annik Swenson, 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 budgetWarrior. Lover. Hero.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408818590</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Jean Rhys|title=Wide Sargasso Sea|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=In the late eighteen thirties the father of an English gentleman conspires to marry him off to Abandoned at birth for being born a landed Jamaican Creole as daughter rather than a means of giving his second son an estate and stopping him being a burden on the family. Written in the nineteen sixties, 'Wide Sargasso Sea' was inspired by Rochester's first wife in ''Jane Eyre'', and Atalanta is an impressionistic, hallucinatory account raised under the protective eye of that woman's alienation the goddess Athemis and subsequent descent fashioned into madness that can be read as a prequel formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the Bronte novel. The book covers Antoinettechance to fight in Artemis's childhood in Jamaica name and carve out her honeymoon on own legendary place in history. What follows is a small Caribbean island with her new husband whirlwind of challenges and discovery and their domestic servantsthrough it, and the point of view shifts between Antoinette and Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her husbandundoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241951550</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreview|author=Douglas Kennedy|title=The Moment|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=After I'd read the blurb on the back cover I gave a bit of a shrug as if to say, well, I've read quite a number of books recently where undying love has been found in war-torn Europe, so was this book going to be different, or better? Thomas Nesbitt, middle-aged, disillusioned with love and more than a tad world-weary is trying to move on in his life. His marriage of more than twenty years 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 and his wife were never really ''in love'' in the true sense of the phrase, despite having a daughter together. And there's a very good reason as to why Thomas is like this and the rest of the book tells us why, warts and all.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091795842</amazonuk>}} {{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 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>

{{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

|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 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 movements. 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 Crosshairs of this daughter (first wife), completely in the dark as 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 - but in fact his motives are far less altruistic, thereby alienating the reader from his tale. 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 emerges.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224090976</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Emma Henderson|title=Grace Williams Says it LoudDevil|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Grace, aged eleven, is sent to the Briar Mental Institute as her parents can no longer cope with her care. She is befriended there by a young boy, Daniel, who is epileptic and also has no arms after a terrible accident. Together we see the horrors of life in the Briar, and also their slowly growing love affair with each other.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>144470401X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Roma Tearne|title=The Swimmer|rating=45

|summary=RiaAward-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, solitarydespite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, middlefinds himself living -aged poetor imprisoned, was idly watching the river one night when she saw a swimmer. It wasnfrom Eddie't just s point of view - in room 315 of the time Garden of day which was unusualEden nursing home, but the river was hardly clean – and then she heard with only a noise downstairstrusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. In this remote part of Suffolk it wasn't unusual Nothing is going to leave doors unlocked and the following morning she realised that a loaf keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of bread had been stolen. It was strange that she didn't really feel fearwriting though, so here, but when the visits and minor thefts continued she waited up to catch the swimmerfor his readers, who stole small amounts of food – and played the piano like an angelare his wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007301596</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Tea Obreht0008421714|title=The Tiger's WifeMrs March|author=Virginia 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 last page) seemed to either be reading it lives up or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to itbuy olive bread but on that particular morning, which is no small achievement. The main story is set in Yugoslavia and explores a young doctorPatricia asked, Nataliaas she was wrapping the bread, seeking for ''but isn't this the truth about her grandfatherfirst time he's deathbased a character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, while on a mission to deliver much needed medical aid to an orphanage in the war-ravaged Balkansprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''. But what sets Perhaps this book apart is the intricate weaving of reality with the myths and stories of would not have mattered, except for the region. In particular there are two myths fact that represent a good chunk of the page count: the story of a tiger who has escaped from captivity after Johanna is the World War two bombing whore 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 deafNantes -mute girl who becomes known as 'the tiger's wife'; and a mysterious story of the weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.'Deathless Man' whom the grandfather encounters at various points in his life who appears to have the power to foresee others' death without being able to die 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 this book that I sat, holding it, in stunned silence for - but it was light when I finished it and dark when I put it down. Some books can do that to you. This is one 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 a decade or so after the tragedy. So, she has a healthy dose of hindsight which shows itself time and time again with sentiments such as ... if only I'd have known back then ... and ...I thought it was a bit strange at the time ... if you get my drift. Burnside takes his time 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>}}