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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jonathan EvisonMatthew Tree|title=West of HereWe'll Never Know|rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The town of Port BonitaTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, located on the Pacific coast of Washington State, is the setting – a drunk and almost a character itself, such is its importance – chronic underachiever whose dreams of Jonathan Evison’s newest novel. In a massively ambitious narrative, we start being exceptional at the Elwha River Dam in 2006, before just two pages later being transported back into the 1880’s, to see the town’s founding. A hundred pages or so later, we’re brought back to the 21st century, then returned to the 19th, any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and the cuts between scenes get faster and more furious as we seem to flip forwards and backwards in time without giving us much time to catch our breathwho had endless crises of self confidence. By 2006, the Dam is about So Tim applied himself to be destroyedhis studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and we see the effect its construction has had on the local community and how the descendants of the original characters have turned outset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780331967</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Janette JenkinsB0C47LV1PC|title=Little BonesFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Julia Rosenthal whilst visiting her childhood hauntsCan you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is invited to go around what used to be her family home. As she wanders around the roomsquestion should you make it? Or is the question if you did, she relives her past and seeks to understand why her parents (particularly her mother) were as they werewould it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be. Julia also desperately seeks reassurance that she has not, in turn, damaged her own daughter, Susanna. Meanwhile the reader is given the privilege of knowledge unavailable to Julia. Via transcriptions of discussions with counsellor, the reader learns about Julia's mother first hand. Slowly, in alternating chapters, whilst Julia goes over her far from normal 1970s upbringing, her mother haltingly and touchingly reveals the secret life which almost destroyed herno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956559964</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Fabrice HumbertMosby Woods|title=The Origin of ViolenceA Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Fabrice Humbert's French Orange Prize winning 'The Origin of ViolenceWest isn' has a young French teacher as a narrator who, while leading a school trip t the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to Buchenwald concentration campmend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, sees a photograph of a Jewish prisoner taken in 1941 and push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is struck by the similarity in appearance of the actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man to his own fatherwith precognition. However, he discovers that not only does Imagine the man strategic advantage in the photo have this asset; a different name to hisman who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, but right? Perhaps the man died most valuable asset in 1942history. Clearly there are dark family secrets afoot Imagine then, that he sets about discoveringthis man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846687500</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Helen Gordon0571379559|title=Landfall|rating=4|genre=Women's Fiction|summary='Most people at one time or another of their lives get a feeling that they must kill themselves; as a rule they get over it in a day or two' ('How Girls Can Build Up The Empire: the handbook for Girl Guides' 1912) Excerpts from the handbook precede each section House of ''Landfall'' and it is hard to know what to make of them – other than to take on board that women are not, by any stretch, the weaker sex, just the more emotional one 'They can even…shoot tigers, if they can keep cool'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905490828</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewBroken Bricks|author=Conny Braam|title=The Cocaine Salesman|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Picture a world of hellish exclusion, nightmarish noise and images, and horrid violence. Picture one person trying to live through the sleepless nights, the isolation among his peers, the permanent sense of dreadful threat. Picture him needing drugs. His best friend might even be called Charlie. But don't picture an inner city slum, 2012, but a man on the front in World War One.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907822054</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Bruce Duffy|title=Disaster was my GodFiona Williams|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The life House of Arthur Rimbaud must be one Broken Bricks'' is the story of the most outrageous four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in literary historyJamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, more scandalous than Wildebut instead, more self-destructive than Malcolm Lowery, Rimbaud was she lives in the boy poet and iconoclast who took house on the literary establishment at end riverbank, built of the nineteenth century and wonbroken bricks. So Duffy Insubstantial as it might look, it's fictional account, based closely around stood the actual facts passage of Rimbaud's lifetime, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, was bound to be an exciting complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and furiousMax, 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 he doesnthere't disappoint. This s an assumption when Max is a difficult book to put downout with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685273</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=German SadulaevKay Chronister|title=I Am A Chechen!Desert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=That exclamation mark in the title says With a lot. It says world thatis becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, in spite of everythingpost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, in spite a world devoid of Sadulaev leaving his homelandwater or a nuclear holocaust, it still tugs at his heartstrings - and will probably do so throughout the rest of his lifethis genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. The short author's note at the beginning ends with the arresting sentence - 'Desert Creatures'Sadulaev's by Kay Chronister is a new work has unleashed heated debate in Russiaof post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today.'' And I'm thinking, brave author indeed and I also couldn't wait It is a shocking novel that still manages to find out what all the fuss was abouthope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099532352</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Mark MustianEric LaRocca|title=The GendarmeTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Historical FictionHorror|summary=There are times when you will want Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to shut reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'The Gendarme' , whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and just walk away from , by the despair and disgust that this account end of genocide engendersthe story, beatable. DonEric LaRocca'ts ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. Ultimately this tale It is a collection of an old Turk revisiting his terrible past is both touching and important - an exploration short stories more interested in the horrors of memory illness, grief and forgiveness humiliation. Horrors that shouldnlinger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''t be missed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851688390</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Otto de KatMadelaine Lucas|title=JuliaThirst for Salt|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The book opens with Chris as an elderly man who is nearing the end of his life. Turn a page or two and he is''Love, in factI'd read, dead. Suicide apparently. It's all very sad. He lived alone was supposed to be a light and a paid employeeweightless feeling, his young driver, found him in his study. but I had always longed for gravity'Suicide for the posh' his driver thinks looking at the corpse. But we have to travel back down the decades to find out why. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050559</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{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.''
}}
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=At the heart ''I was as worthy as any one of the very black comedy them. I would get on board that is ''Catch 22'' is Captain Yossarianship, a World War II American bombardierI vowed. I would take my place, who wants to survive not just in the warname of the goddess. Flying repeated combat missions is undermining his sanity, and surely a mad man should be grounded? But if he asks to be groundedIt was for the sake of my name, he demonstrates an absolutely sane concern for his own safetytoo. If he is sane, he canAtalanta''t be grounded. This, his doctor tells him, is catch 22.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099529114</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alice HoffmanAmanthi Harris|title=The DovekeepersBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Helene adores her father but hates her motherPadma, a young Sri Lankan, who neglects has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her and sees her as nothing more than an inconveniencehome country. She grows up with the realisation that the only way that her mother can hurt her This is to sack a place she spent her French governess – the only person who has ever tried to give Helene a stable upbringingformative years. The winds of war blow them all from It is not a fictional Kievplace she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to a harsh St Petersburg be at the Villa, how it became her home, and on to a snowy Finland to end up – finally – in France at the end of machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the First World War''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Helene Padma's father has made present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a lot of money from mining in Siberia but whilst film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the family might have money – ridiculous amounts of it – they have nothing elseVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701185570</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Per Petterson178563335X|title=It's Fine By MeSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We 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 children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see Audun start his new school in Osloher grandson. The buildingHolthorpe, on the classroomsNorfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the teachersvicar, even Gail, but then she's been doing the other pupils all seem to scare himjob for more than thirty years. He refuses to conform Rachel and insists Christopher hoped that a walk on wearing his sunglasses the beach would do them some good - indoorsit was stormy but it was probably what they needed. It's not an affectation though, apparently he has some facial scarring around his eyesAnd then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846553695</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John O'Connell1398515388|title=The Baskerville Legacy: A NovelBoy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=1900First of all, it was the earthquake, and a man on a ship coming back from deep in the Boer War to edit ocean floor, which created the Daily Express meets one of his heroes tsunami and this, in turn, caused the form nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of Arthur Conan Doylelivelihoods was widespread. With similar experiences and interests yet different enough to bounce off each other they take up The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the idea list of collaborating on priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a plotconvenience store. When they do fix on time to do so, it leads to literary prospects, which lead to He wasn't a weekdog person but the convenience store owner's research together on Dartmoor, which leads comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to ''The Hound of open his car door and Tamon the Baskervilles''. But perhaps dog jumped in a way that only one of them intended.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907595465</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Kenzaburo Oe0989715337|title=The Silent CryPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Featuring rioting and looting of corporate supermarkets and anger against immigrants, this is a timely re-issue of Nobel Prize for Literature winner’s Kenzaburo Óe’s 1967 classic ''The Silent CrySome frogs had gotten into the well.'' which was cited by the Nobel committee as his key work.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846688078</amazonuk>}}
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=William GiraldiDaisy Hildyard|title=Busy MonstersEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=General Literary Fiction
|summary=
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Colson WhiteheadSally Oliver |title=Zone OneThe Weight of Loss |rating=4|genre=HorrorLiterary Fiction |summary=To startMarianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, for onceshe awakes to find strange, with thick black hairs sprouting from the book's style - this has probably the least dialogue bones of any book you'll read this yearher spine which steadily increase in size and volume. There are some comments from charactersHer GP, but they're few and far between - diagnosing the odd phenomenon as are those characters that can actually speak. For we're in a devastated New Yorkphysical reaction to her grief, later this centuryrecommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and our three main protagonists are cleaning up after the other patients at Nede: a worldwide plague metamorphosis of zombiesa kind. The active ones have mostly been gunned down by the militaryAs Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, but there are Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at 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 themterrible price: that of identity itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846555981</amazonuk>086154112X }} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Michela Murgia and Silvester Mazzarella (Translator)Natalia Garcia Freire|title=AccabadoraThis World Does Not Belong To Us
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This beautifulEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, slim volume has won no less than six literary prizesa delight. Murgia paints an early and evocative picture of I will agree with the young central character, Maria as she makes mud tarts. But this innocent activity first – tremendous is about to come to an abrupt halt. Her birth mother struggles to feed and clothe all her children (Maria is the fourth child and is really no understatement – but 'a nuisance) so when an opportunity arises which delight'solves is perhaps using 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 of her own and seems to lead a rather lonely, insular life. She is old enough to be a grandmother, 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 expression in a raggedy child, or any child for that matter, in the first place. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050451</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Khaled Hosseini|title=The Kite Runner (Graphic Novel)|rating=4|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=A confession. If there's one book way I'm not likely to read, it's that which everyone else is readingfamiliar with. If it turns into a hugely popular film for all I have to confess my ignorance of the leftSpanish-wing chattering classes to rave over, then that's just more grist to language literary tradition so forgive my mill – I'll always have a chance to catch up on it later on, even if I never take that opportunitygeneralisation here. From the little I'm not alone have read (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 noveltranslation, the book reviewing gods have conspired to let me see just what Idon'm missing, with this adaptation, by Italian artists, of t read Spanish) there does seem to be a hugely successful tendency towards the fantastical – and therefore delayable – novelthe mystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408815257</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jaimy GordonJennifer Saint|title=Lord of MisruleElektra
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=West Virginia, 1970. We're at a rundown race track, Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the dusty kind rundown horses heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and their rundown owner/trainers fetch up living Elektra are all bit players in, with the occasional race to interrupt story of the boredomTrojan War. 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 Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have seen it all before. Also in the background are some small-time gangsters who are not too keen at for once not knowing who is doing what most compelling stories and how races are going to be run and wonthe most extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857386697</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreview|author=Joan Leegant|title=Wherever You Go|rating=4Frontpage|genreisbn=Literary Fiction8409290103|summary=Religion kicks off this book, even before the first page. The title is from a passage from the Book of Ruth. The only female central character, Yona is travelling from her home in America to visit her sister and large family. She's not really looking forward to it. She's nervous. The two sisters live very different lives and haven't seen each other for a decade. Leegant tells us all about the massive rift in their relationship.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393339890</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewIf Only|author=Charles Frazier|title=NightwoodsMatthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you have read Charles Frazier's 'Cold Mountain'Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, or indeed seen to ensure that the young man got on board the film, then you'll have boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. Patrick sent the money regularly and a fair idea correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to expect from his latest offering - 'Nightwoods'say than Patrick. As with It wasn'Cold Mountaint that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, the landscape of the Appalachians is the dominant character, it was that he didn't care to have him in this time set in the 1950scountry where he might be a danger to his wife and other children. He The alcohol problem was obvious even manages before Patrick managed to get his requisite bear into the story although thankfully it fares rather better than the unfortunate beast in young man on his first book. The dark, oppressing majesty and beauty of the mountains and woods pervades the whole storyway.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444731246</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shuichi YoshidaAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=VillainRed is My Heart
|rating=3.5
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction |summary=Well[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in my house. And so was this one, although I suppose I'd better begin with the bad which could have spelled that more accurately – this one was there were moments at the start of this novel when I thought I couldn't possibly read it right to the end. It's written in such a stilted, factual style with details about the road networks of the local area and exactly how much anyone pays for anything they eat or buy or rent! Facedis, for example, with the paragraph ''cars setting out from Nagasaki that take the pass road to save money take the Nagasaki Expressway from Nagasaki to Omura, then to Higashi-Sonogi black and Takeo, white and get off at the Saga Yamato interchangered. Intersecting Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this east-west Nagasaki Expressway at the interchange is Route 263'' I thought piece, and Ithink it'd never manage s possible to read more than a couple say not one page lacks the influence of lines before falling asleep! Still, I persisted and actually, I'm glad I didsome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099526654</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mike FrenchB098FFFBH9|title=The Ascent of Isaac StewardSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright|rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Isaac Fourteen-year-old Rachel is married her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to Rebekahhighlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. They have sons She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, Esau mother Kate and Jacobher twin, naturallyNick. There Kate runs the family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is a half-brother Ishmael and a back-story of marital betrayal and the out-casting where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of sonsinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956881017</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=A PortsmouthYancey Williams|title=The Beautiful Torment Crosshairs of the Devil|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's point of view - in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a Dreamtrusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's work.|isbn=0986031658}} {{Frontpage|isbn=0008421714|title=Mrs March|author=Virginia Feito|rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This is a beautifully presented book with its enigmatic front cover and equally enigmatic titleThe problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. After Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the blurb local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the back cover I was left with bread, ''but isn't this the first time he's based a feeling of wishy-washiness howevercharacter on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, as regards the storylineprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''. UnfortunatelyPerhaps this would not have mattered, except for the contents confirmed this for mefact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956493602</amazonuk>''
}}
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