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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Colson WhiteheadMatthew Tree|title=Zone OneWe'll Never Know|rating=4|genre=Horror|summary=To start, for once, with the book's style - this has probably the least dialogue of any book you'll read this year. There are some comments from characters, but they're few and far between - as are those characters that can actually speak. For we're in a devastated New York, later this century, and our three main protagonists are cleaning up after a worldwide plague of zombies. The active ones have mostly been gunned down by the military, but there are a few still locked away in hidden corners - as well as inactive ones, called stragglers, who seem stuck in one instant, whether finishing off their last office job for the millionth time, or like a ghost haunting a place relevant to them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846555981</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Michela Murgia and Silvester Mazzarella (Translator)|title=Accabadora|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This beautifulTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, slim volume has won no less than six literary prizes. Murgia paints an early a drunk and evocative picture chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of the young central character, Maria as she makes mud tarts. But this innocent activity is about to come to an abrupt halt. Her birth mother struggles to feed and clothe his artistic passions all her children (Maria is the fourth child failed miserably and is really a nuisance) so when an opportunity arises which 'solves the problem of Maria' if you like, then she grabs it with both hands. Maria is quickly and rather unceremoniously adopted by an older woman who just happens to be a widow. She has no children had endless crises of her own and seems to lead a rather lonely, insular lifeself confidence. She is old enough So Tim applied himself to be a grandmotherhis studies, let alone a mother. Will she be able to cope with a noisy youngster under her roof? You wonder why she'd want to take in a raggedy child, or any child for that matter, in the first placecultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857050451</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Khaled HosseiniB0C47LV1PC|title=The Kite Runner (Graphic Novel)Fragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Graphic NovelsLiterary Fiction|summary=A confession. If thereCan you make a ''Yo birthing person's one book I'm not likely to readjoke? And if you could, is the question should you make it's that which everyone else ? Or is reading. If it turns into a hugely popular film for all the left-wing chattering classes to rave overquestion if you did, then that's just more grist to my mill – I'll always have a chance to would it land? The catch up on it later on, even if I never take is that opportunitythe answer for both could well be... I'm not alone in acting like this – see a friend and colleague's similar admission when reviewing [[White Teeth by Zadie Smith]]. But at least, through the medium of the graphic novel, the book reviewing gods have conspired to let me see just what I'm missing, with this adaptation, by Italian artists, of a hugely successful – and therefore delayable – novelno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408815257</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Jaimy Gordon|title=Lord ''Fragility'' is set as the city of Misrule|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=West Virginia, 1970. We're at a rundown race trackPortland, of the dusty kind rundown horses and their rundown owner/trainers fetch up living inOregon, with the occasional race cautiously begins to interrupt emerge from the boredom. Into things comes a young upstart hoping to surprise all with his four unknown quantities and make a packet before fleeing. His girlfriend is here too to help out, and naively eager for success and knowledge, but old hands like Medicine Ed have seen it all before. Also in restrictions imposed during the background are some small-time gangsters who are not too keen at for once not knowing who is doing what and how races are going to be run and won.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857386697</amazonuk>covid pandemic
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joan LeegantMosby Woods|title=Wherever You GoA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Religion kicks off The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this book, or even before the first page. The title if mending it is from a passage from the Book best course of Ruthaction. The only female central characterGovernments are flailing. A war here, Yona a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is travelling from her home in America to visit her sister and large familyactual charge. She's not really looking forward to itImagine then, there was a man with precognition. She's nervous. The two sisters live very different lives and haven't seen each other for Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a decademan who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. Leegant tells us all about That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the massive rift most valuable asset in their relationshiphistory.Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0393339890</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Charles Frazier0571379559|title=NightwoodsThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you have read Charles Frazier's 'Cold MountainThe House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, or indeed seen but instead, she lives in the house on the filmriverbank, then you'll have a fair idea what to expect from his latest offering - 'Nightwoods'built of broken bricks. As with Insubstantial as it might look, it'Cold Mountain', s stood the landscape passage of the Appalachians is the dominant charactertime, this time set in the 1950sstorms and floods. He even manages Her husband, Richard, struggles to get grow his requisite bear into vegetables, to complete the story although thankfully it fares rather better than delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the unfortunate beast in rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his first bookfather. The dark People don't believe that they're related, oppressing majesty much less twins and beauty of the mountains and woods pervades the whole storythere's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444731246</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
{{newreview|author=Shuichi Yoshida|title=Villain|rating=3.5|genre=Crime|summary=Well, I suppose IThe follow-up to the excellent ''d better begin with the bad which was there were moments at the start of this novel when I thought I couldnIthaca't possibly read it right to the end. It's written in such picks up a stiltedfew months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, factual style with details about 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 road networks throne of the local area Western Isles. Having survived – politically and exactly how much anyone pays for anything they eat or buy or rent! Faced, for example, with physical – the paragraph ''cars setting out from Nagasaki chaotic storm that take the pass road Clytemnestra brought to save money take the Nagasaki Expressway from Nagasaki to OmuraIthaca's shores, then to Higashi-Sonogi and Takeo, and get off at Queen Penelope is on the Saga Yamato interchangebrink of a fragile peace. Intersecting this east-west Nagasaki Expressway at One that shatters however with the interchange is Route 263'' I thought I'd never manage to read more than a couple return of Orestes, King of lines before falling asleep! StillMycenae, I persisted and actuallyhis sister Elektra, I'm glad I didseeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099526654</amazonuk>0356516075
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mike FrenchKay Chronister|title=The Ascent of Isaac StewardDesert Creatures|rating=34|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Isaac With a world that is married to Rebekah. They have sonsbecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, Esau and Jacob, naturallypost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. There Whether it is a half-brother Ishmael and robotic takeover, a back-story of marital betrayal and the out-casting of sons.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956881017</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=A Portsmouth|title=The Beautiful Torment world devoid of water or a Dream|rating=3|nuclear holocaust, this genre=Literary Fiction|summary=This is a beautifully presented book with its enigmatic front cover and equally enigmatic titleway for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. After reading the blurb on the back cover I was left with ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a feeling new work of wishypost-washiness however, as regards the storyline. Unfortunately, apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the contents confirmed this fears that exist for me.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956493602</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kevin Wilson|title=The Family Fang|rating=4humanity today.5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Annie Fang and her brother Buster are back living at home with their parents - where they never thought they'd ever be again. But it has come to this - her film actress career It is on the rocks with the kind of self-destruction so much enjoyed by tabloid writers, and he - well, he's here because of a jumbo spud gun. Neither want life back at home, as throughout their childhood they were used by their parents - without much planning, without any consideration of feelings, or consent - in a whole career of performance art pieces, designed shocking novel that still manages to enact a point of life or just cause havocfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447202384</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Philip RothEric LaRocca|title=NemesisThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=General FictionHorror|summary=1944, Newark, New JerseyHorror taps into something primeval within us. SummerIt is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Hot. Bucky CantorMost horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a young Jewish manmonster or a ghost, is gym teacher it usually something tangible and playground attendant-cum-sports instructor for , by the end of the districtstory, helping all those beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested become fit young men, able to do what his eyesight prevents him from doing - serving in the forces. Things would be fine if his girlfriend were closer at hand, if it were coolerhorrors of illness, grief and if there were no polio epidemic happeninghumiliation. But there is, Horrors that linger and nobody knows what is causing itare harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''. Is it flies? Is it a gang of taunting Italian kids spreading it from neighbourhood to neighbourhood? Is it blacks, germs on money - is it in fact Cantor himself, draining all the youthful vigour from his charges under a blistering sun?|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099542269</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom WolfeMadelaine Lucas|title=A Man in FullThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I'll hold my hands up right now and say that no, I haven't read Wolfe's much-acclaimed [[The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe|The Bonfire of the Vanities]]. I've heard a lot about it, over the yearsLove, in newspapers etc that I almost feel that I ''have'' d read it, mind you. So I'm really pleased to have the chance was supposed to read this much-awaited novel. At be a stonking 700+ pages most of which are packed tight with Wolfelight and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity's particular style of prose, It's a veritable feast for readers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554771</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=J M Coetzee|title=Scenes From Provincial Life|rating=4Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='Scenes Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from Provincial Life' is a compilation its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of JM Coetzeean isolated Australian coastal town 's three fictionalised memoirs: 'BoyhoodThirst for Salt' first published in 1997, 'Youthdetails the 24-year-old narrator' published in 2002 s deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and [[Summertime by J M Coetzee|Summertime]] published in 2009. In one sense they clearly belong together in this single edition familial relationships and yet they were initially published separately. What strikes the reader of this compilation is the change in style and focus of the third book in the serieshow it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846554853</amazonuk>0861546490
}}
{{Frontpage
|author= Michael Grothaus
|title=Beautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.''
{{newreview|author=Henning Mankell|title=Daniel|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=A young Hans Bengler has decided to leave his homeland ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of Sweden identity and make an expedition across the inhospitable Kalahari Desertacceptance. Brave - or extremely foolishOf what it means to be human. I'm sticking with the latter. My reasons are that Bengler Of what is real and what is portrayed by Mankell as a rather dullartificial, insular and unimaginative young manwhether the development of technology is exciting or frightening. He doesn't really get along with his family (such as they are) nor does he seem to have many friends. It's also plain that he's desperate to leave his cold Sweden for warmer climes. But at what cost?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009948143X</amazonuk>191458564X
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Mohammed HanifJennifer Saint|title=Our Lady of Alice BhattiAtalanta|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Alice is nervous''I was as worthy as any one of them. She's being interviewed for a job at the local hospitalI would get on board that ship, I vowed. Even although her nursing skills are far from idealI would take my place, she believes she's not just in with a shoutthe name of the goddess. She presents herself at her charming best and it seems to workIt was for the sake of my name, too. SheAtalanta's now employed and earning some much-needed money. She knows she'll have to work really hard and probably long hours too. The hospital in question is in downtown Karachi: a seething mass of patients many of whom have no choice but to lie in corridors etc.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224082051</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Evelio Rosero|title=Good Offices|rating=3Princess.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Here is a church in Bogota nobody seems to want to leaveWarrior. In part one it is a large group of the elderly, given a weekly, tasteless meal from the charitable funds, but bitterly refusing to quit the place, making our main character Tancredo fear for his passivityLover. In part two it is the congregation, as a rare need for a stand-in priest seems to be a blessingHero. And in part three it is that priest himself, stuck among the household of Tancredo, the girl who loves him, and chorus of three weird old women.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050672</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Barry Unsworth|title=The Quality of Mercy|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='The Quality of Mercy' picks up Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the story protective eye of the author's Booker Prize-winning 'Sacred Hunger' although if you haven't read the first bookgoddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, you won't be greatly disadvantaged as one who longs for adventure. When the relevant story lines are explained. What you might miss out on is some of opportunity comes – to join the feeling for Argonauts, a few fierce band of the main characterswarriors, most notably the Irish fiddler, Sullivan who, when this book picks up in spring 1767, has just escaped descendent from prison where the remaining shipmates of the slave ship, Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis'Liverpool Merchant' await their trial of piracyname and carve out her own legendary place in history. Slavery and abolition thereof remains What follows is a central theme whirlwind of this sequelchallenges and discovery and through it, but the book draws some poignant similarities with those in bondage due to povertyAtalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, and particularly those working in the coal mines of County Durhamit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091937124</amazonuk>1472292154
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Zadie SmithAmanthi Harris|title=White TeethBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Some books sneak up Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on youthe southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. Others are thrown at you from every corner It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of the media as home. How she came to be at the extent that you almost make a conscious decision NOT to read themVilla, or at leasthow it became her home, not and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yetsubtly violent novel. Let Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the furore die down. If they're still around in musical score of a few yearsfilm, your subconscious whispers, maybe we'll go see what all that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the fuss was aboutVilla. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0241954576</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Michael Ondaatje178563335X|title=The Cat's TableSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=For When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the first half or so of this bookchildren up. Her husband, Christopher, which sees an 11 collects six-year -old boy called Michael (or Mynah to his friends) leave his home of Ceylon to travel to school in EnglandHannah and her elder brother, Jamie, I wasn't really sure if it even had whilst Rachel holds a plotsobbing parishioner. Focusing on his journey in the 1950 Thelma's aboard the ship to England, although occasionally leaping forward to his later life where he gives us tantalising glimpses as to what happened to his fellow passengers after the voyage, this originally seems to be nothing more than a series of incredibly welldaughter-in-drawn character sketcheslaw won't let her see her grandson. In fairness Holthorpe, I should say that ''nothing more'' is rather harsh in this case – on the menNorfolk coast, women and children Ondaatje creates, from a supposedly cursed rich man seeking is a curelovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a friendly thief, to Michaelreal bond with the parish - and she's beautiful cousin Emilyin awe of the vicar, are so beautifully conjured that I could have lived without a plot perfectly happily. HoweverGail, we eventually realise therebut then she's a little been doing the job for more to this narrative, than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that this skilful author has been foreshadowing a walk on the events at the novel's climax all alongbeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224093614</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Patrick McGuinness1398515388|title=The Last Hundred DaysBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary='The Last Hundred Days' First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in question here are the final days of Ceausescu's Romania ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in late 1989. Narrated by an unnamed young British expat who has a job offer from the English department of Bucharest Universityturn, despite never having interviewed for caused the jobnuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, we get an insight into and the life under communist rule as Eastern bloc countries all around start to open up after loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the fall list of priorities but - six months after the Berlin Walltsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. We are told He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that McGuinness lived in Romania in the years leading up he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the revolution, and this is no surprise as there is an authenticity here that could only have come from some level of inside knowledgedog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115413</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jane Rogers0989715337|title=The Testament of Jessie LambPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The subject matter of 'The Testament of Jessie Lamb' ensures that this is not a comfortable readSome frogs had gotten into the well. Set '' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the near futurefragrant water, Rogers has imagined a truly terrifying virus that affects pregnant women, known as Maternal Death Syndrome or MDSnaked except for his beaten leather hat. Everyone carries this illness but the effects, a cross between AIDS and CJDLong strands of their eggs wove around him, ensure that all pregnant mothers will die - without exceptionsticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Scientists have found a way to save some Two of the unborn children, but only by placing their mothers in a chemically induced coma from which they won't recover. Now though, dogs leaned over the scientists have also discovered a way of immunising frozen, pre-MDS embryos which, if they can be placed in a willing volunteer, may ultimately allow opening and barked down at the survival strange noise of the human racebuckets as he filled them. However, the volunteers need to be under 16½ or the likely success rates are too low. Step forward one Jessie Lamb.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905207581</amazonuk>}}''
{{newreview|author=Sebastian Barry|title=On Canaan's Side|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Each chapter of 'On Cannan's Side' represents a day after the death of the narrator, Lilly Bere's, grandson, Bill. Initially the reader How is bombarded by a stream that for an opening? The style of half thoughts but soon Lilly begins to outline her own life story from being the daughter of a police officer this novel in Ireland at the end form of the First World War, her subsequent flight interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to the USAwistful and musing, to ultimately living in retirement as a domestic cook to turning on a wealthy Americansixpence. It's a remarkable storyAnd author Marco North, full who has the most wonderful turn of tragic eventsphrase, but for all its hardships, Lilly is from a time when such things are starts as he means to be endured rather than dwelt go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571226531</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chuck PalahniukDaisy Hildyard|title=DamnedEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary='Are you there, Satan? It's me, Madison'. I'm a spunky, lively tweenage girl, except I'm a dead one, and I'm in Hell, to my surprise. While I'm here I'll find out just where it is all those cold-calling telegraphers ring you from just while you're settling down to your evening meal, and where the world's wasted sperm and discarded toenail clippings fetch up. I'll have very hairy encounters with demons of Satan's and mankind's making, and with some superlative plotting and flashbacks I'll find a clearer approach to why I was put here in the first place.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224091158</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Alison Pick
|title=Far to Go
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=At the risk The summary of sounding trite, a story set in 1938 Czechoslovakia on the eve of Nazi occupation, centred on a Jewish family is always going to put the reader through an emotional journey. Add in a young child and itthis book doesn's almost certain that you are going t come close to be reaching for the Kleenex at some point. But Alison Pick makes some interesting creative choices that add more layers to this story. Some will surprise the reader but the overall impact explaining what is a wonderfully moving story done with wholly believable charactersthe premise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755379411</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Madeline MillerSally Oliver |title=The Song Weight of AchillesLoss |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=Before Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I started will agree with the book, first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the expression in a way I'm not familiar with. I looked out have to confess my copy ignorance of Homer's ''The Iliad'' and skimthe Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. From the little I have read its one page introduction (yes, yet another book in my 'must-read' pile but it's been on it for about ahemtranslation, ten years). Having said that, it is rather dry and scholarly which didn't really inspire me to get on with this book as I wasndon't really looking for a 'heavy' read, especially on Spanish) there does seem to be a nice summer's day. Onwards ..tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408816032</amazonuk>0861541901
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 {{newreview|author=Tiziano Scarpa|title=Stabat Mater|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Translated by Shaun Whiteside from Scarpa's 2008 Italian original, 'Stabat Mater' is set in a Venetian orphanage for girls run by nuns in what would have been around the 1700s. The girls at the 'Ospedale' are trained as musicians and singers who play from a hidden gallery in the adjoining church for the patrons of the Instituto della Pietà. However, this is a highly stylised little book, bordering on the almost poetic, narrated from the point of view of one of the orphans, a young violinist named Cecilia who goes on to tell of the impact of the appointment of a new in-house composer, one Don Antonio, or Vivaldi as most of us know him.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687691</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Christien Gholson|title=A Fish Trapped Inside the Wind|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The front cover is lovely with its blue and turquoise suggesting languid waters. The author of 'The Jane Austen Book Club' (which I've read incidentally) 'fell in love with this novel.' High praise indeed. I'm hoping to do the same. Everything about this book stinks (and I use the word explicitly). All of the chapters have the word 'fish' somewhere or other and there's a quote right at the beginning which gives the book its quirky and unusual title. (As I'm a fishy Piscean does that bode well for a good or sympathetic review, I wonder).|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906998906</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Patrick deWittJennifer Saint|title=The Sisters BrothersElektra
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Invariably, the Booker Prize longlist contains one book that is more on the side of light reading than the more worthy and overtly literary fare that it is usually associated with. 'The Sisters BrothersElektra' is by Jennifer Saint tells the 2011 choice. Set story of three women who live in the US in 1851heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, it details the adventures of two brothersClytemnestra, Eli and Charlie Sisters, who Elektra are hired hands for a mysterious boss known only as all bit players in the Commodorestory of the Trojan War. Narrated by Eli, who has slightly more of a conscience than his older brother, Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the story starts with most compelling stories and the Commodore ordering a hit, for reasons unknown, on a certain Hermann Kermit Warmmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1847083188</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Alan Hollinghurst8409290103|title=The Stranger's ChildIf Only|author=Matthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Alan Hollinghurst's BookerTwenty-one-nominated and longyear-awaited 'The Stranger's Child' is without doubtold Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, as one might expect from this writer, beautifully written. Almost every page offers something to smile about either in terms of the comments of cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his characters oraccountant, more oftenMr Patrick, to ensure that the wry descriptions that young man got on board the author offersboat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. The structure Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of the book is episodic, split into five parts covering presorts -World War One, sprang up between the 1920s, the 1960s, the 1980s and finally the early 2000stwo although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It offers a thoughtful and well observed picture of changes in society and culture over this period and in particular of attitudes to homosexual relationshipswasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, although admittedly Hollinghurstit was that he didn's subjects tend t care to fall into have him in this country where he might be a narrow band of well educated, artistic danger to his wife and often aristocratic members of societyother children. Writers, poets and artists are the subject matter rather than The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the young man on the street. His male characters are invariably homosexual while his females mostly either remain unmarried or have dysfunctional marriagesway.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330483242</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lisa SeeAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Dreams of JoyRed is My Heart|rating=43.5|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=It's the late 1950s[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in my house. And so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, and is, black and America's teenagers (the very idea a brand new concept) are beginning to live the all-American dream. For some of them however it isn't all 'Happy Days' diners white and rock'n'rollred. For the second generation Chinese immigrants there's Yes, he has an alternative: back 'home' there's a brave new world being forgedartistic collaborator on this piece, a world where 'we'd work in the fields and sing songs. WeI think it'd do exercises in s possible to say not one page lacks the park. We'd help clean the neighbourhood and share meals. We wouldn't be poor and we wouldn't be rich. We'd all be equalinfluence of some striking visual ideas.' |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408822296</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christine Dwyer HickeyB098FFFBH9|title=The Cold Eye of HeavenSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I reviewed HickeyFourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's [[Last Train From Liguria by Christine Dwyer Hickey| Last Train From Liguria]] so was keen animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to see if I'd enjoy this book too. The front cover says that Farley ''unravels highlight the warp and weft of his life'' way in which is a great phrase - wish I'd though of it. Hickey lives in Dublin so I'm kind of expecting good characterization (as human beings exploit the book's location is Dublin) and a nice line in put-me-down wit. But will I get it? Time to find out .animal world..|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857890301</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Leon Jenner|title=Bricks|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Let me start on a positive: this slim volume is exquisitely presented and has She gets a lovely 'traditional' feel about it. Very covetable for book lovers. The front cover is also a bit great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a paradox - what with the workmanlike one-word title ''Bricks'' lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and the almost mystical/biblical-esque graphicsher twin, Nick. Will this all help to draw Kate runs the reader family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia inPutney, well, Iwhich is where we'll meet Rachel'm not too sures main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444706284</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=David AlmondYancey Williams|title=The True Tale Crosshairs of the Monster Billy DeanDevil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''This tale Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is told by 1 that died at birth by 1 that came into the world getting on in days of endles war & at the moment of disaster... I am not clevayears and, so forgiv my folts despite his strenuous objections and my mistayks. I am Billy Dean. This is the truth. This is my tale.'' The Monster Billy Dean tells the story of Billythanks to his daughter, a boy born into the dystopia of a warfinds himself living -torn town and the product of an illicit liaison between a young woman and her priest. His birth coincided with an apocalyptic bombing and his parents have hidden him away or imprisoned, from the ruins and the catastrophe in a single room, both out of shame and in the belief that his coming into the world and surviving at such a violent moment signifies a sacred future. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919055</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Andrew Kaufman|title=The Tiny Wife|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It all begins with a bank robbery. Only this isnEddie't your typical sort s point of bank robbery since the robber demands not money but instead each person view - in the bank must give him the item room 315 of most sentimental value that they have with them. These range from photographs and a key through to a calculator...and on taking these items he says he is also taking fifty percent of their souls, and it is up to the victims to find the way to get their souls back, or to die trying.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007429258</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Yvvette Edwards|title=A Cupboard Full Garden of Coats|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''He just knockedEden nursing home, that was all, knocked and the front door and waited, like the fourteen years since I'd killed my mother hadn't happened...'' Jinx is cold and she knows it. She cleans obsessively - with only a largely pointless task, since there is little mess to clean since her husband and young sontrusty nursing aide, tired of her frigidityJenkins, moved out. She cooks beautifully balanced meals that look aesthetic on the platefor palatable company. But her food offers sustenance, not comfort. In fact, Jinx feels most at home amongst the dead people she works with as a funeral home cosmetologist. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851688382</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Claudie Gallay|title=The Breakers|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The book Nothing is in the first person, told by a woman who is a relative newcomer going to this tiny village, no more than a cluster of homes and a few basic amenities. The story opens keep Eddie from his stock-in the lead-up to a horrendous storm. The narrator has seen nothing like it before and is both afraid and excited. The locals take it all in their stride. They're a hardy bunch trade of disparate individuals and we get to know more themwriting though, so here, one by onefor his readers, as the story developsare his wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906694710</amazonuk>0986031658
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Susan Hill0008421714|title=The Woman in Black|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Arthur Kipps is a young solicitor working in a fog-bound London and soon to be married. All looks rosy for Arthur until one day he is called into his boss' office where he is tasked with the affairs of the deceased recluse Alice Drablow. Alice Drablow had lived in the melancholy village of Crythin Gifford in an isolated house on the remote Eel Marsh, a house only accessible by a strange causeway when the tide is out. It is here Arthur must travel to firstly represent his firm at her funeral and then to sift through Mrs Drablow's house to ensure all her legal paperwork is in order. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685621</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewMarch|author=Julian Barnes|title=The Sense of an EndingVirginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='The Sense of an Ending' is almost more problem began just after the publication of a novella - itGeorge March's a slim volume most successful novel to date. Everyone but exquisitely written, as you might expect from Julian BarnesMrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. It starts off describing Every day Mrs March went to the relationships between four friends at schoollocal patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, narrated by one of as she was wrapping the friends, Tony Websterbread, ''but quickly it becomes clear that isn't this is written many years later. Barnes has long been the first time he's based a terrific observer of character on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, the English middle classes and his style invariably contains satire and dry humourprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''. And Perhaps this being Barneswould not have mattered, this school clique except for the fact that Johanna is intellectual in interestthe whore of Nantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, as the narrator recalls English and History teachers and student philosophisingunloveable wretch.|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 Instructions' is that it is a brick of a book. It comes in at a wrist-challenging 1030 pages that almost encourages me Move on to invest in an e-reader. It's also hugely ambitious for a first time writer not least that the book's action takes place over just a few days and 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>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]

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