==Literary fiction==
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{{newreview
|author=Linden MacIntyre
|title=The Bishop's Man
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Duncan MacAskill (he eschews the title ''Father'' whenever he can get away with it) is ostensibly dean of a Catholic university in Nova Scotia. It's a job he enjoys. Approaching fifty years of age, he is, in general, happy with his life.
But the Catholic Church is strong on history and MacAskill cannot escape his own. The son of a bastard father and a foreign mother, he was lucky even to be able to follow his vocation and enter the church at all. For most of his career he has been "The Bishop's Man".
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224089722</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Aamer Hussein
|summary= One thing you soon surmise from reading Raymond Carver is that he was an alcoholic. Carver's characters tend to drink excessively, and his stories often examine the negative impact of drinking on his central character's relationships. But nowadays, what we talk about when we talk about Carver is the role of his editor, Gordon Lish.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540320</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Carmine Abate
|title=The Homecoming Party
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Every year young Marco eagerly awaits his father's return, when he can for a few months spend precious time with him before he leaves again. Marco's father Tullio is a migrant worker forced through poverty to work in Northern France doing hard manual work. In this way he manages to earn enough to help his family have a decent living. The family, his eldest daughter Elise now at college, Marco his only son and a younger sister known only as 'la piccola' along with his wife and elderly mother live in Calabria, an economically depressed area of southern Italy. They belong to the minority Arberesh community, descended from Albanian immigrants settling small villages in the mountainous regions of La Sila. Just as the Calabrian people are looked down upon by other Italians the Arberesh people are even looked down upon by the Calabrians.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1933372834</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mark Macauley
|title=The House of Slamming Doors
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=My name is Justin Alexander Torquhil Edward Peregrine Montague, but my father calls me 'you little bollocks', or ‘you bloody twit’ or when he is in a really good mood, 'old cock'.
With this opening line, Mark Macauley clearly establishes his tone. Just entering his teens, Justin is the youngest of three children in a dysfunctional Anglo-Irish family. It is June 1963 and the US President, John F Kennedy, is visiting Ireland – his parents and their servants are very excited, although Justin is wrapped up in his own preoccupations, including a growing sexual awareness and his best friend Annie.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843511673</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Padgett Powell
|title=The Interrogative Mood
|rating=2.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=So, what is a novel? Does it need a plot, climax and resolution? Characters who grow? A setting? Themes which explore the human condition? And must it entertain? Padgett Powell challenges our perceptions of fiction with a book that explores what it is to be a novel, but without any preconditions. How far he succeeds is down to the individual reader. But I thought I'd give it a go.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846683661</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Colm Toibin
|title=The Empty Family
|rating=4.5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=In his first book since the pitch-perfect [[Brooklyn by Colm Toibin|Brooklyn]], Colm Toibin once more examines the great Irish theme of exile and homecoming in his new collection of short stories, 'The Empty Family'. As the title suggests, many of the stories also revolve around family relationships, and their sweet and sour Nature.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670918172</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Andrea Levy
|title=The Long Song
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=July's tale, The Long Song, opens with her mother Kitty's rape by Amity plantation's overseer, Tam Dewar. Nine months later, we find him striking the midwife who can't keep Kitty quiet during labour. And Kitty doesn't keep hold of her daughter for very long. Spotted by Caroline, the plantation owner's widowed sister on the side of the road, July is taken away from her mother to become a lady's maid. Deprived of both parent and name - Caroline renames her Marguerite - July learns how to avoid her mistress's needle stick punishments and finds a place among the other house servants.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755359402</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Howard Jacobson
|title=The Finkler Question
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Julian Treslove is a middle aged former BBC radio producer now working as a professional look alike but quite who he looks like varies. Although never married, he has fathered two sons, neither of whom he sees regularly. Dismissed from the BBC for being too morbid on his late night Radio 3 programme, he is given to depressing levels of self-analysis in his small flat that's not quite in Hampstead. What Treslove lacks is a sense of belonging and this, he notes his Jewish friends have in spades, particularly his old school friend and rival, the best-selling philosopher and TV personality, Sam Finkler. Treslove, by contrast, always feels on the outside of life.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408808870</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Alison Wong
|title=As the Earth Turns Silver
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This lyrical novel is set in Wellington, New Zealand just over a hundred years ago. In this country of then recent immigrants, there was a racial hierarchy, with those of British origin considering themselves superior to others, and an active Anti-Chinese League.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330465155</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Irene Nemirovsky
|title=The Dogs and the Wolves
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ada was part of the Sinner family. They lived in the sort of Ukrainian city which was rigorously divided by wealth and status. At the bottom of the hill lived the people who scratched a living; at the top were the wealthy whose businesses provided most of the livings and in between were those who struggled for a better existence. Ada's mother died when she was a child and her father did his best, but he was frequently hampered by having to take Ada with him as he worked. The arrival of Ada's widowed aunt and two young children in the household meant three more mouths to feed, but there was at least some care for the motherless child.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099507781</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Tom McCarthy
|title=C
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''C'' follows the life of Serge Carrefax. Set in the early part of the twentieth century, the reader encounters Serge at various key moments in his life and each of these is quite fascinating and engrossingly related. It's one of those books that is like Dr Who's Tardis - so much happens that when he recalls an earlier part of his life, I found myself thinking 'oh yes, that was in this book too, wasn't it?' The book has been described as post-structuralist but don't let that literary labelling put you off. Yes, it's a complex book that can be read at many levels, (and one which I know I'll come back to), but it's completely readable and not at all 'difficult'.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224090208</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Lorcan Roche
|title=The Companion
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Closeted away in the opulence of his parents' Madison Avenue apartment, Ed, bound to a wheel-chair because muscular dystrophy has laid claim to his body, spends his days veiled from the outside world. Ed's sadness manifests itself in curious ways, though largely, via spectacular, spoiled-brattish outbursts designed to get the parental attention he craves but that is palpably absent from his confined life. Then he meets Trevor.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1933372842</amazonuk>
}}
