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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Susan HillMatthew Tree|title=The Woman in BlackWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5

|summary=Arthur Kipps is a young solicitor working in a fog-bound London and soon Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be married. All looks rosy for Arthur until one day he is called into different from his boss' office where he is tasked with the affairs father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of the deceased recluse Alice Drablow. Alice Drablow his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had lived in the melancholy village endless crises of Crythin Gifford in an isolated house on the remote Eel Marsh, a house only accessible by a strange causeway when the tide is outself confidence. It is here Arthur must travel So Tim applied himself to firstly represent his firm at her funeral studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and then to sift through Mrs Drablow's house to ensure all her legal paperwork is in orderset himself high but achievable ambitions. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846685621</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Julian BarnesB0C47LV1PC|title=The Sense of an EndingFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=4.5

|summary=Can you make a ''The Sense of an EndingYo birthing person' is almost more of a novella - it's a slim volume but exquisitely written, as joke? And if you might expect from Julian Barnes. It starts off describing the relationships between four friends at schoolcould, narrated by one of is the friends, Tony Webster, but quickly question should you make it becomes clear that this ? Or is written many years later. Barnes has long been a terrific observer of the English middle classes and his style invariably contains satire and dry humour. And this being Barnesquestion if you did, this school clique would it land? The catch is intellectual in interest, as that the narrator recalls English and History teachers and student philosophisinganswer for both could well be.... no.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224094157</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Adam Levin|title=The Instructions|rating=2.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Now, I know that size isn't everything, but the first thing that strikes you about 'The InstructionsFragility'' is that it is a brick set as the city of a book. It comes in at a wrist-challenging 1030 pages that almost encourages me Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to invest in an e-reader. It's also hugely ambitious for a first time writer not least that emerge from the book's action takes place over just a few days and restrictions imposed during the narrator is a ten year old child. While it starts encouragingly, it too rapidly becomes repetitive and dull and I found it a slog to get through. There are some great passages but these get too easily lost in this huge tome.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857861360</amazonuk>covid pandemic

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=A L KennedyMosby Woods|title=The Blue BookA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=Despite not being The West isn'quoits and gin slings and rubbers t the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of bridge people' Elizabeth and Derek have embarked on action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a cruisepush for climate action there. Derek A feeling that nobody is probably hoping to proposein actual charge. Imagine then, but things do not go as plannedthere was a man with precognition. From Imagine the moment they encounter strategic advantage in this asset; a stranger as they board man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the shipmost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, the cruise proves that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to be revelationary for all concerned.get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224091409</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Richard Beard0571379559|title=Lazarus is DeadThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams

|summary=''The title certainly got my attention and when I read that Beard House of Broken Bricks'' is the Director 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 National Academy riverbank, built of Writing, London I was expecting great things from himbroken bricks. IInsubstantial as it might look, it'm also thinking in s stood the very next breath how audacious passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to write a fictional book about a towering biblical character but thengrow his vegetables, many to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have done just twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother thatshe's his nanny. Will he pull it off though?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184655506X</amazonuk>

{{newreview|author=Thierry Jonquet|title=Tarantula: The Skin I Live In|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=In a large French country house, an expert in facial reconstruction surgery keeps follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a beautiful woman locked up in her bedroomfew months after where we left off. He placates her with opiumIn the palace of Odysseus, but barks orders through hugely powerful speakers and an intercom. She tantalises him with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her sexualityhusband, which he tries who sailed to ignore, except war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for when he seems to abuse it in a sort the throne of S/M way when he does let her into society, as he forces her to prostitute herselfthe Western Isles. Elsewhere, a young, inept bank robber holes himself up in a sunny house, waiting for Having survived – politically and physical – the heat chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to die. And finallyIthaca's shores, a young man Queen Penelope is held chained up in on the brink of a cellar at fragile peace. One that shatters however with the hands return of Orestes, King of an unknown possessorMycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687942</amazonuk>0356516075

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amy WaldmanKay Chronister|title=The SubmissionDesert Creatures|rating=54|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=The front cover of the book With a world that I received is becoming increasingly inhospitable for review is subtle (as befitting the sensitive contents) and I humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can see the two twin towers (as was) depicted in grey in the title word submissionbecome an almost masochistic thrill. The back cover announces that Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this novel will be genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Published in time for the 10th anniversary of 9/11.Desert Creatures'' No pressure thenby Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. I open the book with It is a certain amount of trepidation, I have to admit and feel slightly as if I'm about shocking novel that still manages to tread on (literary) eggshellsfind hope. Heavens - what if I don't like the book?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434019321</amazonuk>1803364998

 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Bernard BeckettEric LaRocca|title=AugustThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=45|genre=TeensHorror|summary=In an alternate worldHorror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', Tristan and Grace come from The Citywhether that is a home invader, a closed monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and enclosed society in which religion dominates, by the end of the story, beatable. Tristan had been an acolyte at St AugustineEric LaRocca's''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. He spent It is a childhood being drilled collection of short stories more interested in philosophical discussion the horrors of free will by the Rector. A star pupilillness, a single event made him question everything he had been taughtgrief and humiliation. Grace had spent the first part of her childhood in the convent, but a single act of kindness led Horrors that linger and are harder to her excommunicationdefeat than any ''Big Bad''. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857387898</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Daisy WaughMadelaine Lucas|title=Last Dance with ValentinoThirst for Salt

|summary=When I read on the front cover that this book is described by the Sunday Times as ''A grippingLove, bittersweet love storyI'' it wasn't a particularly good statement for me to d read. As a rule I don't generally 'do' love stories. If I happen , was supposed to read one every once in be a while then that's fine by me light and weightless feeling, but I donhad always longed for gravity''t encourage them! But, both the lovely title and the front cover did their job and pulled me in - just a little.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>000739120X</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Maile Chapman|title=Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=American nurse Sunny Taylor needed to get away Told from home and everything familiar. She takes a gamble into retrospective view, a young woman unravels the unknown and ends up in Finland. The language barrier seems to be the least of year-long relationship that once defined her problems. As a healthyOverlaid with later wisdom, relatively young female she sees on the narrator relives the affair with a daily basis ailments, minor and major, imagined and otherwiseman twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''SuvantoThirst for Salt'' (which gives the novel its title) is the name of details the well24-known and wellyear-regarded hospital. It operates on a tier system - those who can pay well for medical care and those who are less wellold narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-off. And the accommodationconsuming nature, level of nursing how it changed her perspective on both romantic and medical care familial relationships and even the food also operate on this tiered systemhow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099548674</amazonuk>0861546490

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Steven AmsterdamMichael Grothaus|title=Things We Didn't See ComingBeautiful Shining People

|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=This book has gained praise from the likes of the Washington Post ''But fearing something and the Financial times so I was really looking forward to a good - even great read. But did I get having it? I think that opening on the eve of the millennium (the most recent one) is pretty special in itself and should be a good 'hook' come to draw the reader in. The narrator, young, male (not named as yet) and his family pass are packing the family car for the journey aheadtwo different things. The poor car is full to bursting. Dad is a sceptic and he's taking no chances with this millennium situation and heAnd I's instructed his family m willing to pack more than the usual festive presents this time. They've (well, dad has) made the decision to get as far away from London as they can - just in case. Just in case bet most of what exactly is we fear will never mentionedhappen, only impliedor we can take steps to change it. So it's New Year celebrations with the grandparents.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009954704X</amazonuk>}}'

{{newreview|author=Alexander Maksik|title=You Deserve Nothing|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Does the world need another 'inspirational teacher lets down students' story? ItBeautiful Shining People's debatable, but this one is really rather good.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848545703</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Judith Hermann|title=Alice|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Alice'' is a collection of five short stories, linked thematically since they all deal with revolves around the subject question of death, but they are also linked because the central character, Alice, is the same in each storyidentity and acceptance. So rather than feeling like short stories the book has a hint of the novel Of what it means to itbe human. Of what is real and what is artificial, yet and whether the stories are never completed development of technology is exciting or fully told so it's a novel where you're not always sure what's going onfrightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>184668529X</amazonuk>191458564X

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=S J WatsonJennifer Saint|title=Before I Go To SleepAtalanta

|summary=Rather ironically, 'Before 'I was as worthy as any one of them. I Go To Sleep' is not a book would get on board that you will forget in a hurryship, I vowed. ImagineI would take my place, if you will, waking up every morning with no memory not just in the name of who you are, where you are, or who the person lying next to you in bed isgoddess. You can remember things during It was for the daysake of my name, but once you go to sleep, your mind is effectively wiped cleantoo. This is the slightly unusual form of amnesia that the narrator, Christine suffers from in WatsonAtalanta''s first novel that is a daring and gripping literary thriller.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857520172</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Amos Oz|title=My Michael|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The Introduction to this book has a lovely sub-heading - 'Forty Years Later' where Oz admits freely that now, today, he wouldn't attempt or Princess.Warrior.Lover. 'dare write an entire novel in a female voiceHero.' But I found his open telling of why and how he came to write the book in the first place interesting and rather enchanting and whetted my appetite to get on and read the book. For example, Oz wrote most of the book in the cramped confines of a toilet, would you believe. But for me what caught my attention was the fact that he tells his readers that Hannah, the central character, was in his head and determined to he heard. 'Just shut up and write' she tells him. A Translator's Note follows before we get to the story proper.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009952905X</amazonuk>}}

{{newreview|author=Jacqueline Yallop|title=Obedience|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The story opens with Abandoned at birth for being born a much younger Sister Bernard - no more daughter rather than a girl really. The daily lives son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the nuns is regulatedgoddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, with long hours one who longs for prayeradventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, meditation descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and solitudecarve out her own legendary place in history. Everyone What follows is housed, fed a whirlwind of challenges and watered adequately discovery and that's as far as through it goes. No little luxuries to speak of. Nothing to temper the harshness and the silence. Visits from family members are forbidden also. However, the young Sister Bernard appears to not only be coping very well with all of this but even embracing it. She doesnAtalanta must remember Artemis't grumble or complain about anything. However, even although she may appear saintly fatal warning: that if she is humanmarries, just like the rest of us and temptation does come along in the shape of a young manit will be her undoing. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857891014</amazonuk>1472292154

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Aatish TaseerAmanthi Harris|title=NoonBeautiful Place|rating=45

|summary=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 place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''Noonscore' sits somewhere between a collection of related short stories ' for this gentle and a full blown yet subtly violent novel in that it tells four different episodes in Rehan Tabassum. Padma's lifepresent fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, spread over a couple of decades. It explores some large issues thoughthat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330540416</amazonuk>1784631930

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Louis B Jones178563335X|title=Radiance|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Mark Perdue took his daughter, Carlotta – or Lotta, as she's known – on an indulgent fantasy weekend in Los Angeles. Lotta and some other teenagers were going to live the celebrity lifestyle for a few days, with gigs, recordings and stretch limos to ferry them around. Mark's got problems of his own. He ''was'' an eminent physicist but illness has taken its toll. His wife is still suffering the emotional effects of a late-term abortion – the family called the foetus 'Noddy' – and Lotta can't reconcile how she feels about the loss of her unborn sibling, even going as far as to say that she would have given up the next ten years of her life to look after the child. And Mark? Well, on the tarmac at LAX it dawns on him that a heart attack would be a convenient way out of everything.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>158243736X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSea Defences|author=Alice LaPlante|title=Turn of Mind|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=This is a beautifully-presented book with its eye-catching front cover and poetic title. Jennifer has had a busy and fulfilling professional life as a well-respected medical surgeon. Until now. She's gradually losing bits of her mind to Alzheimer's. Her family is supportive and keep popping in on a regular basis plus there's now a live-in carer, Magdalena, so that daily life and daily chores are just about covered.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846554632</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jose Saramago and Margaret Jull Costa|title=The Elephant's JourneyHilary Taylor|rating=3.5

|summary=This novel is inspired by When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a real event – the marriage gift of an elephant from Dom João III of Portugal PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to his cousin Maximilian, pick the Hapsburg Archduke of Austriachildren up. When the gift was acceptedHer husband, the elephant SolomonChristopher, his mahout Subhro collects six-year-old Hannah and numerous soldiersher elder brother, oxen and portersJamie, walked from Lisbon to Vienna to deliver the present, arriving whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in 1552-law won't let her see her grandson. This Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the story parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that journeya walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099546884</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Ross Raisin1398515388|title=WaterlineThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=Raisin has an enviable portfolio for one so youngFirst of all, it was the earthquake, having been named ''Sunday Times Young Writer Of The Year 2009'' deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and his [[God's Own Country by Ross Raisin|previous novel]] receiving fulsome praise. No pressure then with this book, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The story opens with all members of the Little family paying their respects to Cathyresult was complete and utter devastation. Some have travelled further than others as they all squeeze into Mick's modest houseThe deaths were uncountable, somewhere in Glasgowand the loss of livelihoods was widespread. A lessThe fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but -thansix months after the tsunami -posh partKazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. Mick is obviously numb with He wasn't a dog person but the shock of it all (even although his wife's death was not sudden - she had been ill for some time). Itconvenience store owner's clear comment that some of he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the family, distant members, feel uncomfortable and don't quite know how to actdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917354</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jamil Ahmad0989715337|title=The Wandering FalconPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North

|summary="In ''Some frogs had gotten into the tangle of crumbling, weather-beaten and broken hills, where the borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan meet, is a military outpost…" Thus begins the tale of Tor Baz, the Black Falcon. To this desolate place come two wanderers, a man and a woman seeking refugewell. ''

Refuge is denied them''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, since it places duties that the fort commander cannot acceptnaked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, but instead he offers sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them shelter from . Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the wind strange noise of a hundred and twenty days. For the buckets as long as they want it. Shelter, and foodhe filled them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241145155</amazonuk>}}''

{{newreview|author=Anthony Burgess|title=A Clockwork Orange|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=A Clockwork Orange comes under How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the heading form of "books you feel you ought interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to have read by now"wistful and musing, turning on a sixpence. Mostly these are books that you don't necessarily want to readAnd author Marco North, who has the most wonderful turn of phrase, but are considered such classics that an inability starts as he means to pass any kind of comment upon them suggests a gaping hole in your educationgo on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241951445</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anna GavaldaDaisy Hildyard|title=Breaking AwayEmergency

|summary=Garance is on her way The summary of this book doesn't come close to a family wedding. In the car with her brother and his wife she thinks about all her siblings, explaining what's happened in their lives and who they have all become. Throughout the journey she finds herself bickering constantly is done with her sister-in-law who always rubs her up the wrong way, and for the first time Garance senses some tension from her brother too who is usually calm and collected at all times. Is everything okay in his life or is his wife finally beginning to wear his patience thin? They take a detour en route to pick up another sibling, much to Carine's annoyance, and then on reaching the wedding there's a surprise in store for all of them as the four siblings find themselves on an unplanned escape, together once again, rediscovering their youthful selves in a fun, brief break from their real livespremise. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906040400</amazonuk>1913097811}}

{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Haley TannerSally Oliver |title=Vaclav The Weight of Loss |rating=4 |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and 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 Lenathe 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

|summary=Vaclav and Lena are both children of Russian immigrantsEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, growing up in Brooklyna delight. Vaclav dreams of becoming a fantastic magician, I will agree with his friend Lena as his assistant, and as children they practise their routine together, making lists of the things they'll need, the costumes they will wear and the tricks they will perform. Vaclav first – tremendous is confident and happy, no understatement – but Lena 'a delight' is quiet, withdrawn and struggles perhaps using the expression in a way I'm not familiar with speaking English. Yet Vaclav believes, always, that they are destined I have to be togetherconfess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. Even when Lena disappears one day and is gone from his life for many years still he hopes thatFrom the little I have read (in translation, somehow, he will find her againI don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434020443</amazonuk>0861541901

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Neil JordanJennifer Saint|title=MistakenElektra

|summary=The front cover photograph and the blurb on 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the back cover give this book a misty, floaty, ethereal feel. The story starts at of three women who live in the end, if you get my driftheavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. The adult Kevin attends a local funeral but he's careful to remain low-keyCassandra, hidden almost. Why is that? And whose funeral is it anyway? As early as page 6Clytemnestra, Jordan's poetic and atmospheric style is apparent Elektra are all bit players in lines such as ' the story of the Trojan War... close to Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the line of yew trees, were silent women have the massed umbrellas of most compelling stories and the mourners, retreating, like so many mushrooms come alive in a fairy-tale forestmost extreme furies.'|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1848544197</amazonuk>1472273915

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Helen Humphreys8409290103|title=The Reinvention of LoveIf Only|author=Matthew Tree|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary='The Reinvention of Love' is Twenty-one of those stories that is so bizarre and strange that it could only be based on factual events. Essentially it is a good-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, oldcotton-fashioned love triangle set mostly in Paris in broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the period from young man got on board the 1830s boat and thereafter Patrick was to the 1860s; send him a world where fighting duels is a commonplace eventmonthly allowance. The triangle features Patrick sent the great French literary writer Victor Hugo, his wife Adèle money regularly and the altogether strange critic Charles Sainta correspondence -Beuve who narrates much of this story, with brief breaks for Adèle's side of events and some letters written by sorts - sprang up between the Hugotwo although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn's youngest daughter, also called Adèle (but lett that Lowry senior didn's call hert care for his son, as she it was known that he didn't care to her family, Dédé 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 avoid confusion)get the young man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687985</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Wesley StaceAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Charles Jessold, Considered as a MurdererRed is My Heart

|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction |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[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]"  "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|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=1961 was a year of change, a time, as Jacobsen puts it, ''when men became boys books have always been black and housewives women''. At the outset Finn white and his mother are leading a quiet, rather timorous life read in a working class Oslo suburbmy house. Then change overwhelms themAnd so was this one, not through world eventsalthough I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, but in the form of a mysterious child who is Finn's half sister. Linda is not like other children and Finn's attempt to deal with her impact on his family is the central thread in this quintessential story of growing up.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050184</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Salman Rushdie|title=Luka , black and the Fire 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 white and the Sea of Stories'red. NowYes, his second son, Milan, finally gets a book of his own, although he had to wait until he was 13 for his father to get around to it. 'Luka 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 here.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555328</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Manuel de Lope and John Cullen (Translator)|title=The Wrong Blood|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Although de Lope has written over a dozen novelsan artistic collaborator on this piece, this is the first to be translated into English. The cover is as pretty as a picture and screams I think it'Spanish.' So far, so good. But I have s possible to admit that on say not one page lacks the whole most influence of the European novels I've read over the last year or so, have fallen short of the mark for mesome striking visual ideas. Will this one prove to be different?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099551853</amazonuk>1913547183

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Aravind AdigaB098FFFBH9|title=Last Man In TowerSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright

|summary=Following a Man Booker winning book like [[The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga|The White Tiger]] Fourteen-year-old Rachel is always going to be a daunting challenge for any writer, let alone one when that book was the authorher school's first novel. In 'Last Man in Tower' Adiga perhaps sensibly turns to animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a proven structure that allows his story-telling skills competition entry to flourishhighlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. Gone are clever structural ideas She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, like 'The White Tiger's' letter format mother Kate and instead we get her twin, Nick. Kate runs the family business, a straightforward engaging story set toy shop called Cornucopia in modern day Mumbai Putney, which is where a rich builder is seeking to force residents we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of an old apartment block to sell their flats to enable redevelopmentinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848875169</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christos TsiolkasYancey Williams|title=LoadedCrosshairs of the Devil

|summary=Ari Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski 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 getting 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 years 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|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The protagonist of this novel is an ordinary Congolese porcupine until Papa Kibandi performs an ancient ritual involving a hallucinogenic cocktail called ''mayamvumbi'', and transforms him into despite his son's harmful double. The insecure younger Kibandi becomes more strenuous objections and more embittered as thanks to his life goes ondaughter, and sends his porcupine to 'eat' anybody he feels the least bit threatened byfinds himself living - or imprisoned, a process whereby that personfrom Eddie's life essence is sucked out, killing them instantly. Over one hundred victims later and following his master's death at the hands point of view - in room 315 of a vengeful baby, our narrator retires to the hollow Garden 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 a desolate landscape. As early as the second paragraph we see that something is wrongEden nursing home, something cataclysmic has happened with the lines ''People are eating the birds ... fighting over only a handful of scorched sparrows.'' 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>}} {{newreview|title=Whatever|author=Michel Houellebecq|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Interviewed by BBC film critic Mark Kermode shortly before his 60th birthdaytrusty nursing aide, Woody Allen gave the bequiffed one this somewhat startling piece of adviceJenkins, ''You get to my age, you realise that when you die you're really not losing that muchfor palatable company.'' Those words sprang Nothing is going to mind while reading ''Whatever'', first novel by Michel Houellebecq. The main protagonist in ''Whatever'' may be only half the age of the film director, but the outlook on life shared by both men seems strikingly similar. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687845</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|title=Sag Harbor|author=Colson Whitehead|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Colson Whitehead wanted to write something personal for keep Eddie from his fourth book, so he chose an autobiographical novel, based on his experiences as a vacationing youngster. Sag Harbor really does exist stock- at the far end of Long Island and next to the up-market Hamptons. It has 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 area.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099531887</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Carlos Alba|title=The Songs trade of Manolo Escobar|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Antonio is the second-born son to Spanish parentswriting though, living in Glasgow. He's embarrassed to be anything other than Scottishso here, and he tries everything to hide for his family background from friends at schoolreaders, refusing to speak Spanish with his parents and struggling to forge his own identity in life. In are his middle age, he suddenly finds wanderings through his life falling apart around him as his marriage begins to fail and his increasingly frail father becomes obsessed with the proper burial of his parents back in Spain. Antonio continues to play a rather emotionally distant part in his parents' lives, but then finds himself drawn further and further into the truth about his father's past which, ultimately, leads him to question his own past and the path his future might take.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184697173X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ann Patchett|title=State of Wonder|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 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 budgetwork.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408818590</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jean Rhys0008421714|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 a landed Jamaican Creole as 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 is an impressionistic, hallucinatory account of that woman's alienation and subsequent descent into madness that can be read as a prequel to the Bronte novel. 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 the point of view shifts between Antoinette and her husband.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241951550</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMrs March|author=Douglas Kennedy|title=The MomentVirginia Feito

|summary=After IThe problem began just after the publication of George March'd read the blurb s most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only 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 last page) seemed to either be different, reading it or better? had already done so. Thomas NesbittEvery day Mrs March went to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, middle-agedPatricia asked, 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 upsetas she was wrapping the bread, ''but isn't this the first time he's feeling as if based a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. character on you?'' He and his wife were never really 'She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'in loveher mannerisms'' in the true sense of the phrase, despite having a daughter together. And there's a very good reason as to why Thomas Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is like this and the rest whore of the book tells us whyNantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, warts and allunloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0091795842</amazonuk>''

{{newreview|author=Aminatta Forna|title=The Memory of Love|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The setting for this story is a hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone, soon after the government has declared an end to an 11 year civil war. How can people come to terms with the terrible things that have happened? Actually, can they come to terms with those things?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408809656</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jenn Ashworth|title=Cold Light|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Cold Light'' is the story of three teenage girls who become involved in a predatory adult world. As the story opens we're looking back Move on what happened from a decade later and we know that one of the girls, Chloë, died in a Valentine's Day suicide pact. The town council has finally decided on a memorial to Chloë – it's to be a summerhouse at the side of the pond where she drowned, although it's difficult to understand quite why anyone would want to sit there. The ground-breaking ceremony is being televised when it becomes obvious that something has gone terribly wrong. But Lola, our narrator, knows that they've found a body. She also knows who it is.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444721445</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]