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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Lauren GroffMatthew Tree|title=ArcadiaWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Back in the seventies a group of idealists (wellTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, hippies) founded a commune in the grounds drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of Arcadia House, a decaying mansion in western New York State. In the early days the renovation being exceptional at any of the house his artistic passions all failed miserably and the funding who had endless crises of the commune was hopefulself confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, ''energising'' - the American dream encapsulated in bricks, crops cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and hard work - set himself high but as with many, if not most, such enterprises it was not to last. Power corrupted, personalities changed and commitment waivered. We see the commune and the people who made it through the early, hard-working days to its precarious peak and into its inevitable declineachievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0434019623</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Francesca KayB0C47LV1PC|title=The Translation of the BonesFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Can you make a ''The Translation of the BonesYo birthing person'' revolves around four womenjoke? And if you could, all connected with is the Church of question should you make it? Or is the Sacred Heartquestion if you did, Battersea. Mary Margaret, not the sharpest knife in would it land? The catch is that the box, lives between two poles. When she isn't in church, she's caring answer for her flat-bound, morbidly obese mother, Fidelmaboth could well be. Alice Armitage, happily married to Larry, counts the days until their son will be home from a tour of duty in Afghanistan. The fourth woman, Stella, lives in a loveless marriage to MP Rufus and spends her time wishing the days away till she can collect her 10 year old son from boarding school. Father Diamond ministers to these women and the church community in general, but whilst worrying about his own adequacy and faith. However, their problems thus far are nothing compared to the devastation to comeno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297865080</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Noah Hawley|title=The Good Father|rating=5|genre=Crime|summary=Dr Paul Allen ''Fragility'' is more than happy with his life. His second wife, Fran, is efficient, a good manager, a good mother to their young twins and not overly emotional set as Ellen (Wife No. 1) was. In fact you could say that his life runs like clockworkthe city of Portland, which is just how he likes it. Paul hates chaos and the unexpectedOregon, but he's about cautiously begins to be visited by both. As the Allens sit in horror watching news footage of the charismatic presidential front-runner being gunned down, there's a knock at the door. Their real horror is beginning; the FBI believes the son he had with Ellen is emerge from the guy who pulled restrictions imposed during the trigger.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444730363</amazonuk>covid pandemic
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Stephen MayMosby Woods|title=Life! Death! Prizes!A Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=BillyThe West isn's mum is deadt the dominant force it once was. Billy Nobody in the West is 19 years old when his mum resists a mugger; quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the last thing she ever does, leaving Billy with 6 year old Oscar to face life togetherbest course of action. They'll be fineGovernments are flailing. For a startA war here, their life isn't as bad as the 'Life! Death! Prizes!' type magazines at supermarket check-outs. Billy has a job at the local history museum, Oscar's doing ok at school, so, despite their Aunt Toni, despite Oscar's recently reappearing father, despite the PTA mothers at the school gatespush for climate action there.A feeling that nobody is in actual charge.Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. and social services... and Imagine the fact that the mugger is strategic advantage in this asset; a local lad that Billy sees around.man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances.That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. yepImagine then, they'll be finethat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408819139</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Susan Hill0571379559|title=In the Springtime The House of the YearBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ben and Ruth had been married for just a year when he was killed in a tragic accident''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. One of the other foresters came to tell Ruth about what had happenedTess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in truth she had known before he arrivedthe house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. From feeling deliriously happy she had descended within moments into Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the depths passage of despair time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and felt so ill that she could barely moveto bring in sufficient money. The confirmation was just that They have twin boys - Sonny and Ruth was bereftMax, the rainbow twins. She couldnSonny't share her feelings with Bens colouring reflects his mother's familyJamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. ItPeople don's politic to say t believe that they were dealing 're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with their grief in their own way but more truthful to admit his mother that they had never liked her and were disinclined to extend more than the socially-required gestures now that Ben was deadshe's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099570483</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.|isbn=0356516075}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Roopa FarookiKay Chronister|title=The Flying ManDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=''The Flying Man'' opens with the now elderly Maqil Karam writing With a letter in his budget hotel in the South of France and facing death. His story takes in many locations, from his native Punjab, to New York, Cairo, Londonworld that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, Paris and Hong Kongpost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. In each locationWhether it is a robotic takeover, Maqil adopts a different nameworld devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, including Mike Cram, Mehmet Kahn, Miguel Caram and Mikhail Leethis genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. Often he acquires ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a different wife as well, Carine, Samira and Bernadette, although he doesn't go to new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the bother of divorcing them, he just simply walks awayfears that exist for humanity today. He It is a chancer and a gambler, avoiding attachment, responsibility and commitment throughout his lifeshocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755383389</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Cynthia OzickEric LaRocca|title=Foreign BodiesThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=45|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Bea Nightingale's brother Marvin wants her - Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is haranguing her - used as a way to retrieve his errant son Julian from post-war Parisreflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', to where he has decamped in an effort to escape parental control. Beawhether that is a home invader, a New York high school teachermonster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, is an unlikely candidate for by the role end of rescuer - she and her brother have been estranged for the best part of twenty yearsstory, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. But she capitulates to his demands and sets off on It is a journey collection of short stories more interested in which her presence will affect not only Julianthe horrors of illness, but his sister who also runs off grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to Paris, his girlfriend, a displaced Eastern European Jew, his mother (also escaping Marvin, but this time in a psychiatric facility) and Beadefeat than any ''Big Bad''s own ex-husband Leo. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848877366</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jane HarrisMadelaine Lucas|title=Gillespie and IThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The 'I' in the title of Jane Harris's ''Gillespie and Love, I'' is Harriet Baxter. Now elderly and residing in London in 1933, she is finally telling her events of what happened in the early 1880s in Glasgow and her relationship with the Gillespie family. At the timed read, a spinster of independent means, she arrived in Glasgow to visit the International Exhibition and became a champion of and friend was supposed to be a young Scottish painter, Ned Gillespie light and his young family. We know from early on that tragedy struck the Gillespie family leading to Ned destroying his careerweightless feeling, but Harriet wants to set the record straight with regard to her involvement in events. You may or may not believe her story.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571238300</amazonuk>}}I had always longed for gravity''
{{newreview|author=Anna Stothard|title=The Pink Hotel|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The phone call came when she was 17. Her mother had died; the mother who had just been a flimsy memory of Told from a touchretrospective view, an impression and a faded photographyoung woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Not satisfied Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her father and grandma's biased recollections of 'senior from its inception – the slut', she steals her step-mother's credit card and catches a flight summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the funeral in Los Angelessummer after. Unfortunately she arrives too late Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the funeral, but finding the pink hotel her mother owned, she walks in on the wake. Rooms full of drunken, drug24-year-sodden eyes stare at her whilst she makes her way through the building to what must have been her motherold narrator's bedroom. It's then she decides, as deepening relationship with her step-father liesolder lover, semidepicting its all-consciousnessconsuming nature, how it changed her perspective on the bed. She takes some of her mother's clothes, shoes both romantic and letters. Once she has a chance to read them, she realises they're cards familial relationships and love letters from men who may be able to build how it altered her a picture of the woman who gave her life but not a lot elseirrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846881757</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=Karin Altenberg|title=Island of Wings|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Rev Neil MacKenzie has been assigned to ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the Hebridian island question of St Kildaidentity and acceptance. His mission is to bring the locals back Of what it means to the Victorian idea of God and proprietybe human. He Of what is real and his pregnant wife Lizzie not only have to fight the elements but also centuries of superstition that have trickled into the islanders' Christian faith. Life what is made harder for Neil by a secret guilt emanating from the death of a friend years ago. However, the going becomes harder still for Lizzieartificial, isolated by an inability to speak the local language and whether the burgeoning fear engendered by Neil's behaviour and attitudesdevelopment of technology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857382322</amazonuk>191458564X
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Georgina HardingJennifer Saint|title=Painter of SilenceAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=A young, anonymous, vagrant collapses on the steps of a hospital in Romania. He doesn't speak and remains a mystery to the staff that tries to treat his obvious symptoms but can't seem to reach the silent person beneath. However, Safta, a nurse, suggests that he may be deaf and produces drawing materials. Coincidentally, the man is able to draw beautifully, but this is no coincidence to Safta. There are reasons why she can't disclose it, but she knows this man. They grew up together in pre-war Romania, a whole world away when the country had a king, beautiful cities untouched by bombing and being able to read a foreign language wasn't punishable by imprisonment in work camps... or worse.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408821125</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Elanor Dymott
|title=Every Contact Leaves a Trace
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We learn from the prologue that the narrator, Oxford educated lawyer, Alex's wife has been murdered'I was as worthy as any one of them. We also know I would get on board that Alex knew little of his wifeship, Rachel's past, particularly of the time that they spent together at Worcester CollegeI vowed. This is critical in understanding who may have killed herI would take my place, and why. What follows is Alex learning about this hidden past. ''Every Contact Leaves a Trace'' is partly a thriller and partly a whodunnit although the structure adopted by Elanor Dymott is somewhat unusual.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224094033</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Andrew Motion|title=Silver: Return to Treasure Island|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Even if you have not read Robert Louis Stevenson's 1883 classic ''Treasure Island'', or you have read it a long time ago, just in the chances are that you will be broadly familiar with the story and in particular some name of the rich characters he created because they have entered into the culture of our image of piratesgoddess. Before Johnny Depp convinced us that pirates looked like Keith Richards, it It was for the terrifying image of Long John Silver and his parrot, squawking 'pieces sake of eight'my name, double dealing his way to buried treasure and the innocence of young narrator Jim Hawkins that conjures up what we think of in terms of pirate adventuretoo. But Stevenson left some tantalizing threads to his tale, not least the fact that Silver made off with only the majority of the treasure and left the remaining silver behind together with three marooned pirates to fend for themselves. Setting the story 40 years after these events, Andrew Motion picks up the tale and has the offspring of Hawkins, in the form of his son also called Jim and Long John SilverAtalanta's daughter Natty returning to collect the remaining bounty. Of course, it's never going to be that simple.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224091190</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Sadie Jones|title=The Uninvited Guests|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=On a spring evening in 1912 preparations were being made for a supper party to celebrate the twentieth birthday of Emerald TorringtonPrincess. It was taking place at Sterne, the much-loved home of the family, although finances were uncertain and no one was quite sure how much longer they would be able to stay in the houseWarrior. Emerald's mother had hopes that she would be able to marry Emerald off to John Buchanan, a local entrepreneur, but Emerald was far from convincedLover. Her step-father was in Manchester trying to raise the funds to keep the house going but Emerald and her brother Clovis, Patience Sutton and her brother Ernest along with Buchanan and the household staff prepared for what they hoped would be a delightful eveningHero.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186712</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Etgar Keret|title=SuddenlyAbandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, a Knock on Atalanta is raised under the Door |rating=4|genre=Short Stories|summary=In protective eye of the openinggoddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, titular story, Keret is forced by several people one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to create, and alterjoin the Argonauts, a short short story. It's a plain metaphor for the history fierce band of Israelwarriors, but it proves that this modern Scheherazade is not too far removed geographically descendent from the originalGods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. And what What follows are probably the sort is a whirlwind of shortchallenges and discovery and through it, tantalisingAtalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, open-ended, rough-round-the-edges and surreal results of being compelled to carry on telling tall tales on a nightly basisit will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701186674</amazonuk>1472292154
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Rachel JoyceAmanthi Harris|title=The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold FryBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Harold and Maureen Fry were unremarkable: one long marriagePadma, one adult offspring and a long retirement stretching out in front young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of them like a prison sentenceher home country. One morning everything changedThis is a place she spent her formative years. The catalyst It is not a place she was a letter from Queenieborn into, an ex-colleague but the one she thinks of Haroldas 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 ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's. He knew he needed present fails to respond escape her past and thought that posting much like the musical score of a letter would suffice. Howeverfilm, a chat with a girl that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the local petrol station made him realise that a letter couldn't be enough. He had to provide Queenie with hope... he had to walkVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857520644</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John Lanchester178563335X|title=CapitalSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=With When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a gentle nod trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the great commentator of London life of 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 her grandson. Holthorpe, on the pastNorfolk coast, John Lanchester sets his wonderfully entertaining state of the nation book around Pepys Road. With is a huge cast of characterslovely place, he looks as but Rachel is struggling to develop a cross section real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of London life the vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and while in Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some ways not quite perfect, good - it was stormy but it comes pretty darn closewas probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0571234607</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Russell Banks1398515388|title=Lost Memory of Skin|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Some readers may understandably be deterred from reading Russell Banks's ''Lost Memory of Skin'' due to its controversial subject matter and there's no doubt that it's a morally complex read. The main character, known only to us at 'the Kid' is a young man who is a convicted sex offender. Set in south Florida, he is forced to reside, with other offenders and his pet Iguana, under a causeway. While living here, he encounters a huge Boy and enigmatic man, known only as 'the Professor' from the local university who is apparently studying homelessness amongst sex offenders and the two form an uneasy friendship. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685761</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewDog|author=Anne Tyler|title=The Beginner's GoodbyeSeishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Aaron's wifeFirst of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, Dorothyin turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was killed in an accidentcomplete and utter devastation. An oak tree fell on their homeThe deaths were uncountable, demolishing and the sun porch where Dorothy happened to be at the timeloss of livelihoods was widespread. He worried The fact that if he had done things differently (a matter many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of some biscuits and priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a television set) Dorothy might not have been where she was and might still be alive and for dog outside a while he camped out in the wrecked house until further damage forced him to move in with his sisterconvenience store. It was then that he realised that Dorothy He wasn't really dead - well, not dead as we understand it - as she materialised in odd places, wearing a dog person but the clothes she used convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to wear open his car door and eventually staying with Aaron for longer periods of time. And gradually they began to bicker, just like a long-married couple..Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701187190</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Christopher Burns0989715337|title=A Division of Papa on the LightMoon|author=Marco North|rating=3.54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Gregory Pharoah is a professional photographer whose genre is sometimes photojournalism, but more commonly portraiture or nudes. Like his job, his nature is towards ''Some frogs had gotten into the superficialwell. One day, returning from photographing a bishop (for clarity, this is a portrait assignment and not a nude!) he is the only witness to a street robbery where Alice Fell is the victim. Alice is a fatalist who believes in some kind of divine plan that means there is a reason for everything. She's enigmatic, by nature and by design as this is a quality that she enjoys cultivating. Thus these two different characters become part of the same story and what happens in the following six months is ultimately surprising and even shocking.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857386352</amazonuk>}}'
{{newreview|author=Chochana Boukhobza|title=The Third Day|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Set in Jerusalem ''Walter stood waist-deep in the late 1980sfragrant water, an elderly, Jewishnaked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, celebrated cellist Elisheva is visiting Israel sticky gray pearls with her protégé, Rachel, ostensibly to give a concert performancetadpoles inside them. It quickly becomes apparent that Elisheva survived the Nazi camps by playing her music for Two of the feared camp commander, known as dogs leaned over the Butcher of Majdanek, opening and while on barked down at the surface she survived this ordeal well, it is clear that she has a darker intent with her three day visit. Through an underground network strange noise of Nazi hunters, she has managed to lure the Butcher from his home in Venezuela to visit Israelbuckets as he filled them. Will they meet and what will happen when they do? |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050966</amazonuk>}}''
{{newreview|author=Tan Twan Eng|title=How is that for an opening? The Garden style of Evening Mists|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Malay Chinese Teoh Yun Ling travels to this novel in the Cameron Highlands form of Malaya interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to meet the legendary Japanese garden designer wistful and expertmusing, Nakamura Aritomoturning on a sixpence. As the sole survivor of a World War II Japanese slave labour campAnd author Marco North, Yun Ling who has many reasons to hate the Japanese but some things are stronger than hatred. For, whilst in the camp, she promised her sister a Japanese garden. When life became difficult during interment, the sisters discussed and visualised the finished result to keep them hanging on. Ling's sister perished but the dream most wonderful turn of a memorial garden drives her on. Nothing is that straightforwardphrase, though. The designer refuses the commission. Instead starts as he suggests that she stays, as his apprentice, learning the art in order means to become her own designer. Yun Ling agrees and discovers more than horticultural finessego on. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905802625</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreview|author=Jane Urquhart|title=Sanctuary Line|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Entomologist Liz Crane has returned to her family's property on the Canadian shores of Lake Erie where she's studying the migratory patterns of the monarch butterfly, which flies south, reproduces, dies, repeats this and a further generation returns to Lake Erie and the process begins again. As Liz works she reminisces about the family of which she's a part - almost incidentally - and how they have migrated. Foremost in her mind is her cousin, Amanda Butler, a gifted military strategist, who came home from Afghanistan is a flag-covered coffin, but moves on to her uncle who disappeared a decade or so before, the Mexican workers who came each year for the harvest and those members of the Butler family who came Ireland - some to grow fruit and others to become lighthouse keepers.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051245</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Jon BauerDaisy Hildyard|title=Rocks in the BellyEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jon Bauer's first novel, ''Rocks in the Belly'The summary of this book doesn', is an emotional journey. The narrator is a man in his late 20s who has returned from Canada t come close to visit his mother who has cancer of the brain. The narrator himself explaining what is emotionally damaged from the relationship that he had with his mother from childhood when she and her husband fostered children and, interspersed done with the narrative, is the voice of narrator at eight years old and in particular telling the experience of one foster boy, Robert, who we know from early on in the book suffered a significant tragedy while in their care. What that event was will be revealed in due course, but it is clear that the young boy suffered hugely from jealousy of his mother's love for these foster childrenpremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846688450</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Adam JohnsonSally Oliver |title=The Orphan MasterWeight of Loss |rating=4 |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As Marianne's Sonmemories 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=''The Orphan Master's Son'' follows the adventures of Jun Do who has been born without any say in his future. For Early comments on this is North Korea, where all is organised for the good of the state or at the whim of the Dear Leaderdebut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, Kim Jong Il.  Jun Do starts his adult life as a member of a state-sanctioned kidnap squad before joining a fishing boat as a 'listener', basically a spy monitoring and translating foreign radio trafficdelight. His troubles start when he discovers that being a good citizen isn't enough and sometimes a person needs something else to believe in and fight for. This I will agree with the first – tremendous is an incredibly hard book to sum up, no understatement – but I also realise this will be an awfully short review if I don't try, so here goes... |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857520555</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Gerbrand Bakker|title=The Detour|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Gerbrand Bakker's Dutch novel, ''The Detour'a delight' translated by David Colmer, is a very odd story indeed. Mostly set perhaps using the expression in Snowdonia, the book tells the story of a Dutch woman, who gives her name as Emilie, who rents a remote farm. Sheway I's clearly on the run from something, perhaps an affair m not familiar with a student at the university where she was researching the works of Emily Dickinson, but it increasingly becomes clear that this is only part . I have to confess my ignorance of the storySpanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. Certainly her husband and parents back in From the Netherlands little I have no clue where she has gone - or why. Once these details are establishedread (in translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the book takes a turn to fantastical – the seriously odd which is more of a full blooded journey rather than a mere 'detour'mystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846556392</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
 {{newreview|author=Angela Carter|title=Burning Your Boats|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary='Burning your Boats' brings together Carter's early works and her uncollected short stories, alongside the collections 'Fireworks', 'The Bloody Chamber', 'Black Venus' and 'American Ghosts'. Carter's ability to take the everyday and transform it into the fantastic is evident in stories that range from a cautionary tale of a musician in love with his instrument to a lost motorist whose journey ends in nightmarish circumstances in the Snow Pavilion.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099592916</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ada WilsonJennifer Saint|title=Red Army Faction BluesElektra
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ada Wilson admits that his fascination with 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the period is what drove his work on this novel, and it is story of three women who live in the wealth heavily male dominated world of detail and background that strikes one when reading his account of Peter UrbachAncient Greece. Cassandra, the undercover agent whose role was to act as an agent provocateur to the Red Brigade. Urbach is revealed from the outset as a plantClytemnestra, an undercover operative who needs to keep and Elektra are all events bit players in the story of the group 'noted and filed' for his mastersTrojan War. And throughout the first half of the novel we see Urbach recording Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the changes and developments, silent women have the complex web of political ideology, naivety most compelling stories and the pure egocentricity of youth which created the happening of the Baader-Meinhof gangmost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1901927482</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Matthew Green8409290103|title=Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=Max is 8 years old. He likes Lego and Star Wars and playing with toy soldiers. He can tell you 102 words that rhyme with tree. He scarfs down grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken and rice. He does not like physical contact. He lives with his mum and dad who argue about what is best for him and why he’s not normal like other boys and girls.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0751547875</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewIf Only|author=Shalom Auslander|title=Hope: a TragedyMatthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet Solomon KugelTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, who is almost universally known by cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his surname. He is about accountant, Mr Patrick, to join ensure that the young man got on board the list of kvetching Jewish heroes of comedy fiction, boat and at thereafter Patrick was to send him a very esteemed position in that listmonthly allowance. He's Patrick sent the money regularly and a man who worries that by having had a kid he's betraying correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the boytwo although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn's soul by bringing it into a world such as this. Het that Lowry senior didn's forced to live with t care for his motherson, who continually expects a second Holocaust and complains about suffering from the first, although she it was not born then. Hethat he didn's faced with the eternal dilemma of not finding gluten-free matzo bread for t care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his observanceswife and other children. He's moved The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to a rural location, and found houses like his are get the young man on the hit-list of an arsonist, but his new home has an even more unusual secret..way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447207653</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Grace McCleenAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=The Land of DecorationRed is My Heart|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Grace McCleen's debut novel[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in my house. And so was this one, ''The Land of Decoration'' paints an originalalthough I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, unsettlingand is, sometimes dark black and generally rather wonderful picturewhite and red. Narrated by ten year old JudithYes, raised by her father who is a fundamental religious follower of the end of the world is nigh varietyhe has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and I think it looks at bullying, both at school and in more general society, faith and the 's possible rejection thereof and to say not one page lacks the strength influence of childhood imaginationsome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>070118681X</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dasa Drndic and Ellen Elias-Bursac (translator)B098FFFBH9|title=Trieste|rating=5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Haya Tedeschi, an 82 year old woman, sits alone in Italy, waiting. She waits for the adult son she hasn't seen since he was a baby. As Haya waits, she goes through her red basket of photographs and memorabilia, hanging ''out her life on an imaginary washing line''. She then takes the reader back in time, back to her life as a Catholicised Jew, before, during and after World War II in an area called Trieste.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050222</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSnowcub|author=Charles Dickens|title=The Mystery of Edwin DroodGraham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you have never come across Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school'Drood' before, there s animal rights project leader and she and her friend are certain significant factors producing a competition entry to highlight the way in which make this human beings exploit the animal world. She gets a 'must read'. It is Dickens' last workgreat deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, and he died without completing it. Given that this is a detective storylecturer at Imperial College, one of the very first in that traditionLondon, it is doubly intriguing, because although we are clearly being fed clues mother Kate and hints throughouther twin, at the point where the text ends we aren't even fully sure even if a crime has been committedNick. So as Kate runs the basis for endless speculation about what really happens this novel could hardly be bettered. We certainly have potential villains and victimsfamily business, but we also have a number of likely red herrings; complex threads of romantic interesttoy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, but again it which is by no means clear exactly which way these will resolve; and a shadowy detective figure, whose speculations certainly have no sense where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of conclusioninformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849904278</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alexander MacLeodYancey Williams|title=Light LiftingCrosshairs of the Devil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=Short stories may not be everyone's cup of tea. Sometimes, particularly with first time authors, there is an annoying tendency to be overly experimental. Not so with Alexander MacLeod's stunningly assured debut. True he has genetic 'form' in that he is the son of novelist and short story writer [[:Category:Alistair MacLeod|Alistair MacLeod]], but even so, the quality of this collection, is remarkable. The collection of seven stories is not overly themed, although certain issues and concerns do reappear, but what binds the stories together is a very human approach to adversity.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224093940</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Terri Armstrong
|title=Standing Water
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Dom has made the long flight from London to Australia and he's shattered, physically and emotionally. He's been busy Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on with his shiny new life in cosmopolitan London years and has barely spared a thought for the folks back home. He's not relishing meeting up again with , despite his brother Neal. Neal took over the family farm strenuous objections and land when their father died. The two brothers are like chalk and cheese. They had nothing in common as young boys growing up and when Dom left for Europethanks to his daughter, Neal was relieved. But there is still an unsolved issue between them and it's a biggy. Now that they're older and hopefully wiserfinds himself living - or imprisoned, will they manage to talk about it and even resolve it. Time will tell.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1908136006</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Andrea Gillies|title=The White Lie|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=One scorching hot summerfrom Eddie's afternoon Ursula Salter hurls herself into the drawing point of view - in room 315 of her parents' house and delivers the devastating news that she's killed her nephewGarden of Eden nursing home, with only a trusty nursing aide, MichaelJenkins, and that he's in the lochfor palatable company. But Nothing is this what's happened? Ursula might be going to keep Eddie from his stock-in her late twenties but she has the mind and understanding -trade of a child and – crucially – therewriting though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's no body to be found. There are contradictions and inconsistencies in what Ursula says – and evidence from someone else who might have this own agenda – all of which allows the Salters to close ranks and construct a version of what happened designed to protect Ursula and allow themselves to avoid the truthwork.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1780720394</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Patrick Flanery0008421714|title=AbsolutionMrs March|author=Virginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If Patrick FlaneryThe problem began just after the publication of George March's South African-set debut most successful novel ''Absolution'' is anything to go by, he could well be one of the next big names in literary fictiondate. It's complex and at times challenging, Everyone but ultimately an extremely rewarding Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading experienceit or had already done so.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857892002</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Angela Carter|title=Wise Children|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Dora and Nora Chance are Every day Mrs March went to the twin daughters of Shakespearean actor Melchior Hazard and Pretty Kittylocal patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the chambermaid at bread, ''but isn't this the theatrical boarding house where first time he was lodging in the First World War. 's based a character on you?'' Kitty died in childbirth and She mentioned that Johanna, the girls were brought up by the woman they knew as Grandmaprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''. As Perhaps this would not have mattered, except for Melchior, he preferred the fact that it be thought that his twin brother Peregrine was responsible and Perry was not unhappy to bear Johanna is the burden. What Melchior didnwhore of Nantes - 't know was that the twin daughters which his first wife produced were actually sired by Perry. If you're getting confuseda weak, plain, detestable, then bear in mind that there are more sets of twins to appear and that this is comedypathetic, not of the cheap canned laughter varietyunloved, but of the type written by the bard himselfunloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099981106</amazonuk>''
}}
{{newreview|author=Nicky Harlow|title=Amelia and the Virgin|rating=5|genre=Humour|summary=Amelia is 13 years old and lives with her mother, brother and extended family in 1980s Liverpool. Con, her great-uncle, is a psychiatrist with prestigious patients and a bit of a drink problem, Great-Aunt Edith is a devout Catholic with an inclination towards eccentricity and her brother, Julian, is a junky. Amelia's mother tries Move on to hold everyone together but becomes slightly distracted when she inherits a convent in Ireland, complete with nuns. Amelia has her own problems, though. She sees visions of the Goddess Irena and is pregnant with the next Messiah. (A girl this time as the original male Messiah didn't have much luck.)|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095600539X</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Helen Dunmore|title=The Greatcoat|rating=4|genre=Horror|summary=Set in 1952 in Yorkshire, a young couple move into a rented flat. Philip is the new, young doctor while his new wife Isabel struggles with the isolated life with no friends or family and Philip's frequent absence due to the demands of his job. Things take a turn to the spooky when, waking from under the warmth of the old greatcoat Isabel finds in the flat, she hears a tapping at the window and finds there an RAF pilot, Alec, who appears to know Isabel intimately.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099564939</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Caroline Brothers|title=Hinterland|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Aryan (14) and his brother Kabir (aged 8) are refugees, fleeing the horrors of their homeland, Afghanistan. Equipped only with some money sewn into a belt and stories of a promised land called England, they learn about desperation, misplaced trust and other lessons normally kept from children.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408817756</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]

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