Newest General Fiction Reviews

General fiction

Tell-All by Chuck Palahniuk

[[:Category:GeMeet Katherine Kenton. A movie star of great renown, she's always on TV as someone famous - or the wife of somebody who happens to be famous and male, whether they were actually ever wedded. She herself has had copious real-life marriages, making somebody out of a nobody on many an instance. Her shelves of 'best lifetime' awards are groaning, and their dusting is a job akin to painting the Forth bridge. The person who dusts them is narrator for this book, but she does more than that. She is everything to "Miss Kathie" - general housekeeper, housemate, and string-puller. But what might those strings be being pulled for? When Katherine meets a new toyboy, and our narrator seems to get in the way, to what purpose might this be?|GeMeet Katherine Kenton. A movie star of great renown, she's always on TV as someone famous - or the wife of somebody who happens to be famous and male, whether they were actually ever wedded. She herself has had copious real-life marriages, making somebody out of a nobody on many an instance. Her shelves of 'best lifetime' awards are groaning, and their dusting is a job akin to painting the Forth bridge. The person who dusts them is narrator for this book, but she does more than that. She is everything to "Miss Kathie" - general housekeeper, housemate, and string-puller. But what might those strings be being pulled for? When Katherine meets a new toyboy, and our narrator seems to get in the way, to what purpose might this be?]]

{{{summary}}} Full review...

In the Falling Snow by Caryl Phillips

General Fiction

We are introduced to the central character Keith right away and discover lots about him. His personal and professional CV is laid bare before us. He's one mixed up, middle-aged, not-quite-middle-class man. He appears to be rather weak-willed and almost seems to fall into situations, rather than choose to be part of them. When in his marital relationship (now on a downward spiral), his wife most definitely wore the trousers. I found Keith a very infuriating person. I wanted to take him by the scruff and give him a good old shake and then shout 'wake up and smell the coffee, before it's too late.' Full review...

The Valley of the Vines by Mark Neilson

General Fiction

The reader discovers that Sophie, the central character is living in rural isolation. She's supposed to be living the dream. She's separated from her husband and her two daughters are at boarding school back in the UK. She's also now a one-woman organization. And she's failing practically and financially for many reasons. Apparently, according to Neilson, there's a very small window in which to carry out the vital work of harvesting the grapes for wine. We are also told at frequent intervals about the enigmatic 'Old Ones'. They are 'The timeless custodians of the vines.' I'm afraid I found their too-frequent references rather annoying. Full review...

The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell

General Fiction

Lexie Sinclair was sent down from university for the crime of going through a door reserved for men. She could not graduate until she apologised and this she was not going to do. Home was not an option either but when she met the sophisticated Innes Kent she made up her mind to go to London and make her way there. It was the nineteen fifties and Lexie and Innes made a life for themselves in Soho.

In the present day Elina and Ted are struggling to recover from the difficult birth of their first child. Elina is an artist and she’s finding it difficult to come to terms with being a mother. Ted does his best to help but he is having to cope with disturbing visions and memories of his own childhood which don’t seem to agree with what he’s been told by his parents. The further he looks, the stranger are the links which he uncovers. Full review...

The Death of Lomond Friel by Sue Peebles

General Fiction

Rosie was a successful radio presenter when her father, Lomond Friel, had a stroke. Whether or not Rosie was always reckless and impulsive isn't entirely clear, but once she heard about the stroke she took a break from work and began to build her life around making a future for herself and her father. There are two problems here: Rosie isn't really all that capable of looking after herself, never mind her father and Lomond is quietly plotting his own death. He might not be able to speak, to move very much, but he has plans. Full review...

The Last Patriarch by Najat El-Hachmi

General Fiction

Najat El-Hachmi's debut novel, The Last Patriarch is a difficult book - both in terms of content and style. It's a story of physical and sexual abuse in a patriarchal Moroccan family, an immigrant story, when first the father and then the family move to Catalonia, and ultimately a story of the narrator, the patriarch's daughter, breaking free of her past as she takes on different cultural values. Narrated entirely from the perspective of the patriarch, Mimoun Driouch's unnamed daughter, the story is also concerned with cultural and imagined histories, and the importance of origin stories. Full review...

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

General Fiction

The reader is in no doubt that a war is raging. 'And bombs were falling on Coventry, London and Kent. Sleek metal pellets shaped like the blunt tipped ends of pencils ...' The Americans however, are carrying on with their daily lives regardless. They are completely unfazed and uninvolved. Apart from one or two, namely radio reporter Frankie. She reports from London as it happens and she is gradually becoming more and more concerned that her fellow Americans will be called upon. But she seems to be a lone voice blowing in the wind. Also, as you may expect, there are plenty of raised eyebrows as to why a woman is doing a man's job. She should be at the kitchen sink or having babies, shouldn't she? Full review...

April and Oliver by Tess Callahan

General Fiction

After spending their childhoods together, April and Oliver haven't seen each other for many years. It is only after the death of April's little brother that they find their lives overlapping again. April is reckless, damaged, and struggling from one day to the next whereas Oliver is mature and sensible. He is now a law student, engaged to the sweet, gentle Bernadette who is the antithesis of April. Seeing April's life in tatters, Oliver tries to rescue her from herself, yet the more entangled he becomes the more his own seemingly perfect life starts to fall apart. Full review...

The Waiting Room by F G Cottam

General Fiction

On the outskirts of ex rock star Martin Stride's country estate lies the disused Shale Point Station. Abandoned in the 1960s the railway line has been dug up and removed and all that remains is the crumbling platform and eerie waiting room. Martin is quick to employ Britain's top ghost hunter Julian Creed to investigate the strange and threatening occurrences of the waiting room that he and his children have witnessed – the sound and smell of a steam train, male voices singing a famous World War One song, and most frightening of all, the leering face of a soldier at the waiting room window. Full review...

Light Boxes by Shane Jones

General Fiction

You will have to go a long way to find a more magical and quirky novella than ‘Light Boxes’. Set in a far off land, as all good fairy stories should be, the balloon-loving residents suffer a ban on all forms of flight. But the culprit is not some unpronounceable Icelandic volcano, but rather February. And this February - who takes both the form of a person and a season - has lasted for more than three hundred days. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he has also started making children disappear. One man, Thaddeus Lowe, is determined to do something about it. Full review...

In The Rooms by Tom Shone

General Fiction

The book jacket for this novel is of New York by night, a cityscape par excellence. It also boasts Toby Young's comment as laugh-out-loud funny. I have a lot of time for Toby Young. I find him witty and entertaining. But I usually approach claims such as this with a healthy dose of 'we'll-wait-and-see' scepticism. However, he was right. And I am truly impressed with Shone's ability to make me laugh out loud and at the very beginning of the novel too. A very good sign of delights to come, I thought. Full review...

Repeat After Me by Rachel DeWoskin

General Fiction

September 1989: It is a few months after the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, China. Aysha is teaching English at a private language school in New York City. She makes friends with some of her students. Da Ge is angry and disruptive yet attractive and interesting at the same time, and they quickly become involved, although his interest in her is not as romantic as, perhaps, she would like it to be. He asks her to marry him so he can stay in the country. Aysha agrees, although there is still a lot she does not know about the mysterious, unstable Da Ge. Full review...

The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim by Jonathan Coe

General Fiction

Meet Maxwell Sim. Actually, perhaps I should rephrase that so that it doesn't sound like an imperative instruction - for if you do meet him, you might not like the experience. An ex-salesman, he's now in after sales (ie he's stuck on a customer returns counter in a department store); however he is completely awful with regards to other people. His wife has run off with their daughter, all his few friends have forsaken him (and his Facebook wall). We start the book with him trying to patch things up with his father, who's safely in Australia. He finds all those who know of him are already aware he's depressed. Those who don't know him can find him painfully shy, or able to talk away their will to live, gabbling on and on about Watford. But a lot is about to change. He's about to be combined with some people excited about green toothbrushes. Full review...

The Eloquence of Desire by Amanda Sington-Williams

General Fiction

The novel starts in the post-war austerity years in England and centres around a middle-class, traditional family unit. Sington-Williams gives the reader a detailed description of that period - the bland food, the monotony of commuting to London (some things don't change) and of course, the rain. George, his wife Dorothy and their teenage daughter Susan don't really talk to each other. They tend to skirt round issues and walk on eggshells. Appearances are everything. So a suitably fabricated story is told to their small, family circle of George's company move. George has no choice in the matter. So he does what he always has done up till now, he puts a brave face on for the world and grins and bears it. It's a huge change in their domestic situation. Uprooted to a strange, foreign, tropical country they've only glimpsed in National Geographic. Full review...

Ellipsis by Nikki Dudley

General Fiction

Both the title and book cover are slick and glossy. Can the contents live up to this positive image? Straight away the reader is drawn into Daniel's life ... but the clock is ticking. He will soon be spoken about in the past tense. He dies and leaves many, many questions that his immediate family struggle to answer. But as the story progresses we discover that secrets have been kept for a long time. Why? Too disturbing to reveal? Full review...

Tony and Susan by Austin Wright

General Fiction

Edward Sheffield hadn't exactly been Susan's childhood sweetheart, but after a family tragedy left him homeless he came to live with Susan and her parents for a year so that he could finish school. Susan didn't particularly want him there but accepted that it was the right thing to do. Years later they met at university when Edward was studying law and after a short relationship they married. The marriage wasn't entirely successful; Edward gave up law to become a writer, relying on Susan's teaching income to support them, but whilst he spent a month away in a remote cabin 'to find himself' Susan found Arnold instead. Many years – and three children – later Susan receives a manuscript from Edward. She was, he said, always his best critic and he would like her opinion. Full review...

The Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter

General Fiction

There is a certain type of modern fiction I just cannot get along with. It's a narrative that features a concentration on a main character that goes through his plot with unhappiness, making wrong decisions perhaps, getting crapped on by life, and discussing his woes with the reader. I get to the end and think nothing of it, until I read the blurb, where I find the book was supposed to be hilariously funny, the character an insincere cypher for our lives and times, and the whole thing an ironic masterpiece - I should have been disbelieving, disagreeing and dis-everything else with the hapless hero. I hate such books - I always only see the sincerity in the narrative, and never the comedy. Thankfully, such is never the case with this book. Full review...

The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Confident Readers

During World War Two, Max's father decides to move the whole family to a seaside retreat he knows of - a wooden house far away from the city he's grown his family up in. Nobody seems too keen on the idea, neither of Max's sisters, his mother, nor he - and Max is gifted a pocket watch by his loving, talented mechanic cum engineer cum watchmaker of a father, enscribed as "Max's Time Machine". But the house they move to, and its surroundings, are full of more successful time machines - a stash of early home videos, a public clock that runs backwards, a sunken shipwreck, a yard full of statues of a stone circus... And let's not forget the mysterious, spider-eating cat that joins in with proceedings. Full review...

Angelology by Danielle Trussoni

General Fiction

The Nephilim have lived among the human race since before the days of the Great Flood. Horrific creatures, the hybrid children of humans and angels, their strength, beauty and cruelty are unmatched, and they have infiltrated human society completely. For centuries, a secret society, students in a branch of theology known as 'Angelology', have studied the ways of the heavens and the Nephilim, and waged a secret war against them – a war that has spanned every continent. But the Nephilim grow weak, their blood contaminated by the blood of their human ancestors. Full review...

Blueeyedboy by Joanne Harris

General Fiction

BB - or blueyedboy in his online persona - is a middle-aged man who lives with his mother in the Yorkshire town of Malbry. He has a dead-end job in a hospital although his mother would have it that he's of some importance. BB has a way of escaping his rather boring life; he writes murderous fantasies on his website in company with other misfits, some of whom he knows in real life. It might be fiction on badguysrock but he and Albertine share a troubled history and BB's manipulation of friends and enemies causes his past to unravel. Full review...

Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman

General Fiction

According to the blurb for Boxer, Beetle, 'This is a novel for people with breeding… It is clever. It is distinctive. It is entertaining. We hope you are too.' I like about half of it, so does that mean I'm on the way to being those things? Full review...

Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey

General Fiction

The title and central character of this book, Jasper Jones is a no-user, a trouble-maker and has, for some reason in his hour of need, sought help from an unlikely source. Charlie Bucktin. Charlie is a rather bookish, quiet, unassuming teenager. And although both boys live in the town of Corrigan, until now, they haven't spoken a word to each other. They live in different worlds. Until now, that is. Full review...

The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen

General Fiction

The country is in deep recession. The economy has collapsed. The banks are hated and there's 'the next round of politicians, assuring us they were not afflicted by the same lack of vision as their predecessors'. Does this sound at all familiar? But just when you think you have strayed into the non-fiction aisle, it all becomes clear. This is 1930s America - full of gangsters, speakeasies, tommy guns, fedoras, beautiful heiresses, bumbling cops and the newly formed FBI, daring bank robberies and kidnaps. Yes, the gang is all here, but 'The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers' is a lot more than your average gangster book and it's a hugely fun story. Full review...

The Dog Who Came In From The Cold (Corduroy Mansions) by Alexander McCall Smith

General Fiction

Ah, bliss! To sit down once more to an Alexander McCall Smith story and wish only for someone thoughtful to come and serve me tea and biscuits whilst I read! We are back, once again, with the residents of Corduroy Mansions to earwig on their conversations, their private thoughts and, of course, to catch up with what every one's favourite dog, Freddie de la Hay, has been getting up to. Written once again in serial format for The Daily Telegraph each short chapter is a gem, and all the characters we met previously in Corduroy Mansions are back again to entertain us. Full review...

The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan

General Fiction

Choosing a child as the viewpoint character of a novel requires confidence and imagination. To succeed is to convince the reader of events at two levels – the child's world within the adult world surrounding her. The very best novels about childhood, like say Harper Lee's classic, 'To Kill a Mockingbird', also reflect a wider cultural truth. In 'The Earth Hums in B Flat', a claustrophobic Welsh village is both protection and straitjacket as the characters struggle to cope with their family secrets. If that sounds a bit tacky, fear not, because the viewpoint character, Gwenni, is all whippet and sharp corners. Full review...

The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall

General Fiction

Golden Richards bursts onto the printed page. He is the central character and let's be honest, without him there would be no wives, no children, no complicated domestic life - make that, domestic lives. Immediately I pictured Golden in my mind's eye, as a Homer Simpson type - but with lots more children. He's a bumbling, blustering, bear of a man. It's as if he's just 'turned up' for the conception of his children, just idly ambled along when they were born. Full review...

The Stopping Place by Helen Slavin

General Fiction

How often do you pick up a book with no idea at all where it is likely to lead? How often does such a book still have you wondering a hundred pages in? Not bemused, not lost, absolutely sure that it is going to lead somewhere, but still with no clue as to exactly where. How often do you get to the end of a book and think, simply, "Wow!"? Full review...

The Lessons by Naomi Alderman

General Fiction

James has been used to being very clever at school, and it is a shock for him when he goes to Oxford University to find there are lots of people who are more able than he is. He is already struggling when he falls and seriously hurts his knee, and he is also very lonely. Then he meets Jess, who invites him to a party at Mark’s house. Mark soon invites Jess, James and other friends to move in to his run down mansion. Full review...

A Watermelon, a Fish and a Bible by Christy Lefteri

General Fiction

It is 20 July 1974 in the small coastal town of Kyrenia, Cyprus. The radio continues to report that the Turkish forces did not manage to invade, and that they were thrown back into the sea, even as the Greek Cypriot population realises that they have been invaded. The story of this novel is set over just eight days, and is told from the alternating viewpoints of three characters. Full review...

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi W Durrow

General Fiction

Set in 1980s America, The Girl Who Fell From The Sky is a story built around a tragic event in a young girl’s childhood. The opening scene introduces you to Rachel, an elusive young girl, not black, not white but light skinned-ed as she is packed off to live with her grandma after a devastating family event. Immediately, Durrow highlights race and identity as the primary themes, and we follow blue-eyed Rachel as she struggles between two worlds – the white world of her Danish mother, and the other black world of her African-American G.I. father. Full review...

Before the Storm by Diane Chamberlain

General Fiction

We're first introduced to Laurel's son, Andy. He's a teenager with some sort of mental disorder. He's the pivotal character of the story and he's also the undisputed star. I recently read Henry's Sisters by Cathy Lamb and decided that every family should have a Henry. Now I'll enlarge on that by saying that every family should have a Henry - or an Andy. Both of these teenagers are 99% innocent and adorable - it's that other 1% that is worrying. Andy's descriptions of people, places and situations are truly unique. He has a language all of his own. So immediately, as a reader, I was drawn right into the world of Andy and therefore right into the heart of the story. Full review...

The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist

General Fiction

Dorrit inhabits a world where society is split into two camps. Not male or female, or young or old, but those who are Necessary and an asset to their communities versus those who are Dispensable and a drain on civilization. It’s not a birth right, nor a class firmly established from childhood, and everyone gets the chance to make a good go of it. But, if you’re a childless woman of 50, or a childless man of 60, and not working in a ‘needed’ industry your time is up, and you are quietly, and without any fuss, transported to a Second Reserve Bank Unit for Biological Material (‘the Unit’) where you will spend the rest of your days. Here you will participate in any number of psychological and physiological experiments, donate cells for research and give up your body parts one by one as Needed people require them, until the day of your final donation when you ultimately and rather ironically become a valuable member of society by losing your life. Full review...

Cinema Blue by Sue Rulliere

General Fiction

Frankie is a twenty nine year old woman living in Paris and working in a supermarket while she tries to put her life back together after a split from her husband. The split, and what led up to it, was clearly distressing, and exactly what happened is revealed through a series of flashbacks to the time when Frankie was Francesca, whose life was controlled by her husband, JP. The news that JP has had an accident throws Frankie into confusion, because it seems that he turned to drink after she left him and she blames herself. In the meantime, Frankie is entering into a relationship with the enigmatic Antoine, who appears to be doing something rather strange in the flat below hers. Will Frankie be able to retain her new identity? Will the relationship with Antoine go anywhere, or is he just as bad for her as JP was? Full review...

Love, Revenge and Buttered Scones by Bobbie Darbyshire

General Fiction

Three people are travelling on a train heading to Inverness. Their destination is the town's library where the book group meets on the last Friday of each month. They each have their own reasons for going but none of them realise that the weekend is going to have far reaching consequences for them all. Full review...

Last Train From Liguria by Christine Dwyer Hickey

General Fiction

The heroine in this novel is Bella. She's a rather unassuming young woman who has had a rather unassuming childhood - save for the fact that she was motherless at an early age and her relationship with the father is a little strained, to say the least. Bella needs to breathe. So she leaves the drizzle of England for the blue skies and heat of Italy. Her father has propelled her into gentle employment there. She's tentative about the whole thing but warms to it by degrees. Full review...

Sum: Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman

Literary Fiction

For some reason I find myself unable to start this review. So I'll mention this book starts with the end, and see where we go from there. Of course, that's the key – this book does just that – starts with the end of our human life here on Earth (or wherever you happen to be reading this) and posits forty possibilities of what happens thereafter, in the hereafter. It's not so much 'Five People You Meet in Heaven' as 'Forty Heavens you Might Meet People In'. Full review...

Sick Heart River by John Buchan

General Fiction

This was a surprise for me. It’s rare for a book to come to my attention from the reviewing gods that’s a rerelease of a 1930s novel, and one that surfaced a couple of years ago now. But when it strikes me as startlingly Conradian, updated for the times, and perfectly able to stand alongside one of literature’s greats, then it’s just a sign those reviewing gods are on the ball. Full review...

River of Judgement by David Sartof

General Fiction

Finn Jackson is an oilman, an engineer and he's developed a new way of extracting oil which doesn't ravage the countryside in the way of traditional methods. He's set up a company to take advantage of this along with his friend Aaron Philips, who's the money man. He's short of an operations manager – and has been for a while – after the tragic death of Shufang Su in a site accident. She was a geologist but had apparently flouted safety regulations and you know that there are going to be repercussions from her death. Full review...

The Noise of Strangers by Robert Dickinson

General Fiction

In a dystopian Brighton where the Council and the Amex company are the only major employers, and council departments have very different purposes to those they have in our own country today - notably the sinister Parks - four couples share dinner parties and discuss as little as possible, due to the problems they have trusting each other. When a Councillor is killed in a car crash, and one of the couples witness it, it triggers a by-election which leads to political manouevring which they're all caught up in. Full review...

Croc-Attack by Assaf Gavron

General Fiction

Eitan Enoch is known as Croc to his friends. There's a good reason but it's about to become rather more famous than Croc would like. It's begins on the morning that he takes his regular bus to work – the Little Number 5 – and a fellow passenger worries about the dark-skinned man with a suit bag who's sitting at the front. Just before Croc gets off at his stop he asks why people are so paranoid and wonders whether it's impossible for dark-skinned guys with suit bags to get on buses any more. Full review...