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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Karen Joy FowlerMatthew Tree|title=We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves'll Never Know|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary= Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0C47LV1PC|title=Fragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=RosemaryCan you make a 's childhood 'Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is blighted by the disappearance of her sisterquestion should you make it? Or is the question if you did, Fernwould it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be. Rosemary went to stay with her grandparents and, on her return Fern was no longer there. Curiously enough, her mother and father don't speak of it. The knock on effect was the angry departure of Rosemary's older brother Lowell whom she also misses. As she grows to adulthood, Rosemary remembers trying to come to terms with this, the damage that being a daughter of a psychologist has wrought and the revealed secrets that will finally make sense of it allno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184668966X</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alison MooreMosby Woods|title=He WantsA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Lewis Sullivan is close to retirement, but elderly beyond his years and widowed. EdieThe West isn's death seems to have had practical implications - he's not getting t the food he used to enjoy - but beyond that dominant force it's difficult to see quite what they had once was. Nobody in common other than the library. He used West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it and she worked there - but they didn't even enjoy is the same booksbest course of action. Lewis is an RE teacher at the same school where his fatherGovernments are flailing. A war here, Lawrence, used to teach - when they were both a push for climate action there at the same time it often confused the paperwork. Lewis A feeling that nobody is beginning to wonder if he chose the wrong careerin actual charge. Imagine then, if he lives in the wrong placethere was a man with precognition. He used to be able to see Imagine the house he grew up strategic advantage in from the bedroom window before it was demolished and replaced by this asset; a supermarket carparkman who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, but he's always dreamed of living by right? Perhaps the seamost valuable asset in history. His adult daughterImagine then, Ruth visits him every day and brings him soup. He doesn't want soupthat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907773819</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0571379559|title=The Narrow Road to the Deep NorthHouse of Broken Bricks|author=Richard FlanaganFiona Williams|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The Narrow Road to the Deep NorthHouse of Broken Bricks'' is the title story of both Flanaganfour people. Tess Hembry's Booker Prizeroots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds -longlisted sixth novel and a book by seventeenthto bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys -century Japanese poet BashoSonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Poetry irradiates this often bleak story of Australian POWs building the Burma Death Railway during the Second World War Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, presenting beauty much less twins and love as counterpoints to gory descriptions of suffering and inhumanitythere's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701189053</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Bilal TanweerKay Chronister|title=The Scatter Here is Too GreatDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=When the bomb exploded at the Karachi railway station causing intended death and mayhemWith a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an aging reactionary poet, his middle-aged sonalmost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a childworld devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a writer and a woman who relates more way for humans to stories than reality, are in the midst of itcathartically experience their most existential fears. Each experiences the blast as differently as their experiences of life are from each other but each ''willDesert Creatures'' be affectedby Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224099116</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Emily MackieEric LaRocca|title=In Search of SolaceThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=3.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Jacob Little Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is many things used as a way to many people reflect our darkest emotions and how we as he goes through life, reinventing his personae humans react and nameprocess them. Who exactly is he? Perhaps heMost horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad's unsure but the thing he's certain of , whether that is his love for a young woman he lived with for 2 years. It took her leaving home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and , by the end of the next decade apart for him to realise he loves her but now he wants to make up for lost timestory, beatable. She said her name was Solace so now heEric LaRocca's (all together now) ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in search the horrors of Solaceillness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0340992522</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=The Sixteenth of JuneMadelaine Lucas|authortitle=Maya LangThirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=On June 16th''Love, 1904I'd read, James Joyce was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had his first date with his future wife, Nora Barnacle – an occasion he commemorated by choosing it as the one-day setting always longed for his ''magnum opus'', gravity''Ulysses''; main character Leopold Bloom gives his name to the annual Joyce celebration that takes place around the world on June 16th.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1476745749</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=FireflyMichael Grothaus|authortitle=Janette JenkinsBeautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I read ''Firefly'' wanting But fearing something and having it come to be charmedpass are two different things. Sat at home, wishing And I was in Jamaica'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, idly humming or we can take steps to change it.'Mad Dogs and Englishmen'.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099575043</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Karin AltenbergJennifer Saint|title=Breaking LightAtalanta|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Gabriel Askew retires to the village ''I was as worthy as any one of Mortfordthem. I would get on board that ship, the I vowed. I would take my place , not just in which he grew up and from where childhood ghosts haunt him to this daythe name of the goddess. It’s a conscious decision: Gabe, ostracised as a child due to his hair lipIt was for the sake of my name, returns to face these demons that have controlled his life and forced him to do the unthinkable but now he wants peace… if it's not too late.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780877153</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''
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{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Beautiful FoolsAmanthi Harris|authortitle=R Clifton SpargoBeautiful Place|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Famous writers' wives have had something Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a literary revival in recent place she spent her formative years. Paula McLain's ''The Paris Wife'' and Naomi Wood's ''Mrs Hemingway'' imagine It is not a place she was born into, but the lives one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the various Hemingway womenVilla, how it became her home, while the vogue for flappers and [[The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald|The Great Gatsby]] has led to a spate of books about Zelda Fitzgerald. Fans of the Roaring Twenties machinations that have been spoiled for choice, what with [[Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler]], flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''Call Me Zeldascore'' by Erika Robuck, for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma''Guests on Earth'' by Lee Smiths present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1468308807</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Roopa Farooki178563335X|title=The Good ChildrenSea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=The Saddeq family are an example of success for their friends When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and neighbours in Lahorewondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Mr Saddeq is a doctor with his own practiceHer husband, Christopher, sons Sully collects six-year-old Hannah and Jakie are studying medicine in the US and UK respectively and daughters Mae and Lana have made good marriage matchesher elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. However the four Thelma'goods daughter-in-law won' children would view their success differentlyt let her see her grandson. Each reacts differently Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the futures that their caring father parish - and calculating mother have mapped out for them and plough their own furrows as far as theyshe're permitted but s in awe of the gravitational pull of home remains a constant through their lives and alsovicar, to some extentGail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the generation that followsbeach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755383427</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Dinaw Mengestu 1398515388|title=All Our DaysThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Isaac is a refugee from Ethiopia who finds a home First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in Uganda. At the university he's taken under ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the wing of a political activist also called Isaacnuclear meltdown. The 1970s is a dangerous time to be in Uganda as their world is about to exploderesult was complete and utter devastation. Years later Isaac the Ethiopian finds himself in America The deaths were uncountable, and lives under the care loss of social worker Helenlivelihoods was widespread. Slowly they form a less than professional relationship and Helen realises The fact that what little she knows many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of him may not be priorities but - six months after the truthtsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. Gradually his past is revealed as He wasn't a dog person but the guilt convenience store owner's comment that he carries comes would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the surfacedog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444793772</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0989715337|title=Never Any End to ParisPapa on the Moon|author=Enrique Vila-MatasMarco North|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There is never any end to Paris. The sentence pops up, hypnotic, through most of the book. At times ironic, thoughtful or questioning, it is a quote from Hemingway’s novel, ''A Moveable Feast'', in which Some frogs had gotten into the American author looked back at his days in Paris, where he was ‘very poor and very happywell.’ The narrator of ''Never Any End to Paris'' tells us that when he lived in Paris, he was ‘very poor and very unhappy.’|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846558042</amazonuk>}}
''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he filled them.''
}}
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The relationship between a mahout and his elephant is close: some have said that it's rather like a marriage. On the surface it seems almost idyllic with an obvious affection between man and beast - "that their spirits were water summary of the same pool", but all is not quite as it seems. Iravatha was the magnificent elephant who, year in, year out, led the Maharajah's parade only this year there was a dreadful accident and Annayya, his mahout, slipped beneath the elephantbook doesn's foot - and was killed. They'd been together for more than half a century and beautiful, intelligent Iravatha knew t come close to explaining what this meantis done with the premise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1909273090</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=TaraShea NesbitSally Oliver |title=The Wives Weight of Los AlamosLoss |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=1943: In the US a group of men, women and children are uprooted Early comments on this debut novel from their homes with hardly any notice and after being sworn to total secrecy. Their destination is a hastily knocked upEcuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, unfinished small town in the New Mexico desert; a place where muddy water drips from delight. I will agree with the taps and their lives are turned upside down for nearly 3 years. This isnfirst – tremendous is no understatement – but 't mass abduction by a malevolent power but delight' is perhaps using the US governmentexpression in a way I's plan to end WWIIm not familiar with. The men (and some I have to confess my ignorance of the women) are scientists, Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. From the place is Los Alamos, the site of the project that will result little I have read (in Robert Oppenheimer stating ''Nowtranslation, I am become Death, don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the destroyer of worlds." His story has been well documented in the past; now the voices belong to fantastical – the Los Alamos Wivesmystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1408845997</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreview|title=OrfeoFrontpage|author=Richard Powers|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='No one thinks twice about the quiet, older bohemian in the American Craftsman at 806 South Linden…people take up all kinds of hobbies in retirement.' Seventy-year-old Peter Els is an out-of-work composer in Pennsylvania. He teaches music appreciation at a senior centre, but much of his spare time is devoted to chemistry experiments. As a college student he agonised over the choice between chemistry and music, in fact, and these days he wonders if he got it wrong. His avant-garde compositions, such as a three-hour opera based on medieval German history, were infrequent and never very well received. Should he have gone into biochemistry after all? Thus, thanks to a few thousand dollars' worth of semi-professional equipment purchased off the Internet, Els is now engaged in a new kind of composition – with bacterial DNA taking the place of musical notes.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782391614</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Ron ButlinJennifer Saint|title=Ghost MoonElektra|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Maggie sits 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in an elderly persons' care home tgryig to exist through the ever tightening grip heavily male dominated world of dementiaAncient Greece. Her sonCassandra, TomClytemnestra, visits trying to jog her memory but she doesn't even recognise him. To Maggie, Tom is 'Michael' a name that means nothing to a son getting more desperate to break through to his mother once againand Elektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. However there was once a Michael, in a life Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that bubbles with secrets that even Tom doesn't know; for once, long ago, Maggie was youngoften the silent women have the most compelling stories and the most extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907773770</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=8409290103|title=The One I WasIf Only|author=Eliza GrahamMatthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In 1939Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, before to ensure that the outbreak of young man got on board the Second World War, boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a boy arrived at Harwich docksmonthly allowance. He was Patrick sent the money regularly and a Kindertransport refugee fleeing correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the anti-Semitism in Nazi Germanytwo although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. Benjamin Goldman would change It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his name to Benny Gault when his idea son, it was that the war wouldnhe didn't happen and he could go home care to Germany came to nothing, but have him in the meantime this country where he was adopted by Lord might be a danger to his wife and Lady Dornerother children. Six boys were The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to live at their country home - Fairfleet - and be educated by a private tutor. On get the face of it Benny's luck could not have worked out better, but he was hiding a secretyoung man on his way. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910229016</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Indecent ActsAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|authortitle=Nick BrooksRed is My Heart
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Meet Grace. She's in her forties, living with a hit-[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and-miss family in a Glasgow council flat, white and read in the middle of a whole host of issuesmy house. She has issues about her parentsAnd so was this one, and their moving on or death; she has issues about her sister who might or might not although I could have had a much superior life pattern than Grace; she has issues about her children spelled that more accurately – Francis who has left Grace with her own daughter to spend time with drink or drugs insteadthis one was, and son Vincentis, who will like as not create an issue by joining the army black and white and moving on himselfred. Grace also Yes, he has issues with the fact that she is nearly as blind as a batan artistic collaborator on this piece, and can neither read nor write. SheI think it's started the novel where she shouldn't be – at home in Glasgow, struggling, as she was due possible to fly to meet her sister at last, yet packed her glasses in say not one page lacks the case that must be the other end, and completely missed her flightinfluence of some striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908754451</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=B098FFFBH9|title=A Well-Tempered HeartSnowcub|author=Jan-Philipp SendkerGraham Fulbright|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ten years on from Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the previous episode, Julia Win, successful corporate lawyer specialising way in intellectual property rights is exhausted, unhappy and alonewhich human beings exploit the animal world. Somewhat distant in all senses She gets a great deal of the wordsupport from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, if not exactly estrangedLondon, from her mother Kate and brotherher twin, Nick. Kate runs the family business, she has recently left a relationship that should have worked but just didntoy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel't and her only real connection is with her artist friend Amy Lees main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>184697285X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|titleauthor=Something Like HappyYancey Williams|authortitle=John BurnsideCrosshairs of the Devil
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short StoriesLiterary Fiction|summary=How do you pick a name for a short story collection? It seems Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to me the ''...and other stories'' addhis daughter, finds himself living -on is like picking a favourite childor imprisoned, a promotion from Eddie's point of one portion view - in room 315 of the content above the rest. [[:Category:John Burnside|John Burnside]] has got Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a title story heretrusty nursing aide, Jenkins, but such for palatable company. Nothing is the mood going to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of the book that he seems to have nailed the matterwriting though, so here, for his readers, and picked the most apposite name. ''Something Like Happy'are his wanderings through his life' could in a way be the title for practically every piece heres work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099575590</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|isbn=0008421714|title=Brief Loves That Live ForeverMrs March|author=Andrei MakineVirginia Feito
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Chitralekha Guraamaa is preparing for The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her 84th birthday celebrations - her Chaurasi - and her grandchildren (first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or rather grandadults as they are now) arrive from around the worldhad already done so. They Every day Mrs March went away in search of a better life to the local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the bread, ''but better comes at isn't this the first time he's based a costcharacter on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, the principal character had 'her mannerisms''. Baghwati married beneath her castePerhaps this would not have mattered, Manasa except for the fact that Johanna is resentful the whore of an apparently helpless disabled father-inNantes -law and Agastaya hides ''a man-sized secret. All have one thing in common: the dread of facing their manipulativeweak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, powerful grandmother and their inability to get on with each otherunloveable wretch. Worlds may collide but let the festivities commence!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780872984</amazonuk>''
}}