Newest Literary Fiction Reviews

Call of the Undertow by Linda Cracknell

Literary Fiction

If you read a lot of books, then the fact of your life is that you are always part-way through at least one of them. You read all of the time. Over breakfast, in the bath, waiting for trains, on trains, between trains. You make a cup of tea in order to have an excuse to sit-and-read for half an hour. But even so, most of your reading is done in stolen moments – often in moments when a nagging voice from the gremlin-centre of your brain is reminding you that you should be doing something else. Full review...

Crow Blue by Adriana Lisboa

Literary Fiction

Having lost her mother at the age of thirteen, Evangelina embarks on a quest to not only find her biological father, but to delve into the past and discover things about her mother she never knew. Set predominantly in North America and Brazil, this novel explores Vanja's journeys, both physical and emotional, as well as her relationships with key characters, in particular, that of her Mother's ex husband, Fernando. Uprooting herself when barely a teenager, Vanja leaves her home country of Brazil to live with Fernando in Colorado, the only connection she has at her disposal to enable her to trace her roots and biological family. Narrated beautifully in the first person, the reader is propelled into the thoughts and feelings of the young but courageous, determined and, at times, very wise, adolescent girl. Full review...

Close Your Eyes by Ewan Morrison

Literary Fiction

1981: Emma remembers driving through a blizzard. That is, her mother was driving, she was just a child. She remembers her mother singing. Throughout everything, what she remembers, what everyone remembers, is how her mother sang. Actually, she remembers lots of other things about her mother. Snippets mostly. Then she remembers losing her… being dropped in London at her Dad's, who didn't really seem like the dad she remembered… then the Social taking her away. Full review...

The Commitments by Roddy Doyle

Literary Fiction

It's the mid to late 1980s, and Outspan, Derek and Ray have just formed a band. The trio is three days old, with 'Ray on the Casio and his little sister's glockenspiel, Outspan on his brother's acoustic guitar, [and] Derek on nothing', as he can't afford a bass. They already feel directionless. They don't mind Depeche Mode, but Derek and Outspan draw the line at The Human League, which is one of Ray's favourite groups. Such musical differences are already darkening the band's conception. There is also a problem with their name: And And And. Ray believes they should have an explanation mark after the second And, as it would 'look deadly on the posters'. Outspan, however, thinks Ray's an idiot, and tells him where to stick his second exclamation mark. But Outspan has a plan. They need to find Jimmy Rabbitte, for when it comes to music, Jimmy knows. Full review...

The Madonna on the Moon by Rolf Bauerdick

Literary Fiction

Things are certainly strange in the small rural town of Baia Luna; all the stereotypes one would suspect in a newly-Communist mountain village are turned on their head. People vocally feel free to dismiss the Soviet changes and technology, but secretly at the dead of night enter the fields to try and hear the sounds of Sputnik blipping its orbit overhead. Gypsy men willingly get baptised into the ways and religions of their gajo neighbours. The most forceful character is a teenager called Fritz, best friend of narrator Pavel, and son to an ethnic German photographer. Part of Fritz's power seems to rest on him knowing a lot more than others about the village schoolteacher – enough, perhaps, for her to disappear overnight? Full review...

The Color Master by Aimee Bender

Short Stories

Another parade of fascinating, unusual personalities and odd events from the author of Willful Creatures. This time out Aimee introduces us to people like Hans the fake Nazi, young William to whom all people look the same and Janet who decides to spice up her love-life with detrimental results. Among other things we also witness a less-than-altruistic anti-war demonstration and an odd occurrence in an orchard showing how odd an apple-only diet could make us. Full review...

Goat Mountain by David Vann

Literary Fiction

The eleven-year-old boy, his father, grandfather and Tom, a family friend, were on their annual hunting trip to the family's 640-acre ranch in northern California. Strictly the boy wasn't old enough to hunt but family lore said that this time he would be allowed to kill his first buck. On the way to their camp they spotted a poacher and the boy's father set up his rifle and loaded it - hoping that shooting the bolt would tell the poacher that he'd been spotted. The boy - we never know his name - was allowed to look through the rifle site, but he pulled the trigger. Nothing would ever be the same again. For any of them. Full review...

Over My Dead Body by Hazel McHaffie

Literary Fiction

The mother of a patient in dire need of a heart, and a pair of lungs, ceases to pray for the survival of her son for the following uncomfortable reason: 'Feels like you're asking for somebody else to die.' Though merely an extra in the main plot of McHaffie's Over My Dead Body, the situation of this mother quite successfully conveys just how complex the ethics of organ donation are. Full review...

The Best Book in the World by Peter Stjernstrom and Rod Bradbury (translator)

Literary Fiction

Titus Jensen may not have written many great novels for a while (if ever) but his festival readings of others' works are renowned. Why, his rendition of The Diseases of the Swedish Monarchs from Gustavas Vasa to Gustav V has been compared favourably to his offerings from Handbook for Volvo 245. However, one drunken night he and romantic poet Eddie X agree that their fame on the festival circuit would be insignificant by comparison if they could write the best book in the world; a combination of all genres, appealing to all tastes and making all the best seller categories. They start work on it the next day but, rather than collaborate, each wants the lone glory. The race (or should that be battle?) to the publishing date is on! Full review...

Betrayal by Adriaan van Dis

Literary Fiction

Dutchman Mulder renews his acquaintance with his old friend Donald as he returns to South Africa, a land he knew well in the days of apartheid. Life may have moved on and apartheid ceased but some things have worsened. Have Mulder and Donald made any difference at all? As they recall their shadier youth, they have one more chance to struggle for someone's freedom against all odds and a violent society. Full review...

Her Privates We by Frederic Manning

Literary Fiction

Ernest Hemingway called Frederic Manning's Her Privates We 'The finest and noblest book of men in war' he had ever read. But Hemingway wasn't a very trustworthy man, so we tend to defer judgement. He is, however, useful for contrast. Hemingway's tales of war (such as A Farewell to Arms and For Whom the Bell Tolls) usually involve macho misfits and trite love stories, feats of derring-do and filmic dialogue; all the things, in fact, that have no place in Manning's First World War novel. Why is this? Well, by the time Hemingway started driving a Red Cross ambulance on the Italian front (1918), Manning's service was already over. Nevertheless, unlike the illustrious (and self-mythologising) Hemingway, Manning spent his war deep in the trenches of the Somme, mixing it with the proletarian soldiery. As such, Her Privates We is a brutal novel concerning the 'subterranean, furtive, twilight life' of the average Tommy, a work of startling power, and one that completely eclipses the war novels of the romantic Hemingway. Full review...

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

Literary Fiction

Ruth finds a 'Hello Kitty' bag washed up on the shore of Whaletown, the small Canadian island that she and her husband Oliver call home. As Ruth opens it and begins reading the diary safely protected inside, she learns about Nao, a teenager in Japan. Through her writing Nao becomes real and the tales of her varied life, struggles at school and fascinating relatives compels Ruth to search for her, or at least to discover her fate. Full review...

A Possible Life by Sebastian Faulks

Literary Fiction

Geoffrey swaps a career as a public school master for an existence as an English officer behind German lines during WWII, an experience that will take a lifetime to expunge. Billy is a child sent to the workhouse to give his family a chance of survival. Elena has to come to terms with an adopted brother, Jeanne the French nursemaid lives in the shadow of a one-off encounter and Jack? He bears the indelible heart print of a girl who travels with a guitar. Five lives, five stories, one human, emotional thread. Full review...

Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw

Literary Fiction

China is a booming economy for people in a position to take advantage; people like Gary the pop star who once won a talent show, Yinghui the lingerie magnate or her childhood friend and property developer Justin who feels the weight of his family's expectations. Then there's Phoebe, moving to Shanghai from the country on a promise and a belief that to attract success one must act as if one already has it. Life will bring them into each other's orbit but it won't leave any of them the same as when they started. Full review...

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

Literary Fiction

Subhash and Udayan Mitra are brothers growing up in an India growing into its post-independence status. Subhash goes along with Udayan's ideas but it's Udayan who's the radical, fighting against the injustices of an elitism that remains once the British have left India. Eventually they go their separate ways, one studying abroad to avoid conflict and the other becoming more deeply embroiled. Life can't go on like this forever and it doesn't but the reverberations seem to, affecting generation after generation as Subhash realises that the search for peace isn't always an external thing. Full review...

TransAtlantic by Colum McCann

Historical Fiction

In 1845 ex-slave, black American Frederick Douglass visits Ireland for a lecture tour about freedom and emancipation only to discover he's not preaching to the converted after all. In 1919 Alcock and Brown climb into a rickety aircraft to fly the Atlantic and land in Limerick. In 1994 Senator George Mitchell also travels to Ireland watched by a world that's about to see a miracle of negotiation. Meanwhile through it all Lily and her descendants are also there, not only watching history but living it on both sides of the Atlantic. Full review...

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

Literary Fiction

Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries is set in the New Zealand gold rush of the late 1860s. It's a story about greed, power, gold, dreams, opium, secrets, betrayal and identity, but most of all, it's a celebration of the art of story telling, both in terms of Catton's book and the stories her characters have to tell. It's the kind of book that is perfect escapism and which wraps you up in its world. If you like big, chunky books that you can get lost in for hours, then this is one for you. Full review...

Four New Words for Love by Michael Cannon

Literary Fiction

Christopher meets Gina on Waterloo Bridge. He is newly widowed, she is newly homeless; he's an elderly Londoner, she's a young Glaswegian. It is a defining event in both their lives, but that only becomes clear in the future. Of pressing concern in the present is the rather rude policeman looking to move Gina on. The situation is nearing crisis. Sensing her desperation, Christopher impulsively asks her to come home with him, a proposal she tentatively accepts. Yet it is this one benevolent act that gives birth to an odd and platonic friendship, a relationship based on silences and lacunas, and one which Michael Cannon's fourth novel, Four New Words for Love, looks to delicately unravel. Full review...

The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris

Literary Fiction

After waiting till all her elder sisters' weddings were done and dusted in true ultra-orthodox Jewish style, it's now 19-year-old Chani's turn. She's only met Baruch, her fiancé, four times and he hasn't even seen her elbows but the match is made and the day eventually arrives. Baruch secretly studies forbidden gentile literature and Chani has an inquisitive streak often perceived as rebellious so God knows what the future holds. Perhaps they should take the Rabbi's marriage as an example? Or perhaps not… Full review...

Unexploded by Alison MacLeod

Literary Fiction

It's 1940 and Britain lives in fear of a Nazi invasion that could happen any day. In case the worst happens, Evelyn's husband Geoffrey has buried a little something for her and their young son Philip in the garden. He tells her the tin contains a bit of money and his favourite photo of them. As she digs it up from impulse rather than necessity, she discovers that there's no photo but what there is instead makes Evelyn doubt that she knows the man she married. The events that follow make Evelyn realise that indeed she doesn't. Meanwhile the war continues and a German does invade their lives, but not in the way that either of them could envisage. Full review...

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Crime (Historical)

Fridrik, Agnes and Sigridur are accused of murdering two men one Icelandic night in 1829 before setting fire to their home. Now Agnes awaits execution, imprisoned in the farm of a lowly local family who, rumour has it, wouldn't be too great a loss if the prisoner becomes dangerous. Margrit Jonsdottir (the farmer's wife) doesn't feel threatened and sets the shocked, malnourished Agnes to work. Gradually Agnes reveals the events of that night to Margrit and Toti, a young priest. Her version seems to be a little different from what everyone else concluded, predictably… Or perhaps not so predictably. Full review...

Harvest by Jim Crace

Literary Fiction

As harvest comes in, a village finds itself under threat. Invaded by a series of unfamiliar visitors, it will find itself utterly transformed over a short but apocalyptic seven days. We watch through the eyes of Walter Thirsk as three vagabonds escaping the enclosure of their fields are blamed for the trangressions of others, as the chartmaker Mr Quill enumerates the common land, and as Master Kent's benevolent rule is overtaken by a new owner, who comes with enforcers in the name of profit, progress and enterprise - or sheep farming as Walter quickly realises. Full review...

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer

Literary Fiction

Back in 1974 six teenagers met at summer camp and did all those things which you get to do when your parents are not around to stop you. They smoked pot, drank vodka and Tangs - and talked way into the night about anything and everything. Plays were put on, animations were perfected, but most importantly friendships were made that would last for years - for some it would be a lifetime. Back in 1974, as Nixon left the White House under a particularly heavy cloud, 'The Interestings', as one of their number called them, knew that they could achieve anything they set their minds to. For three summers they returned to Spirit-in-the-Woods and then they faced the real world. Full review...

Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson

Literary Fiction

In the late nineteen eighties sixteen year old Marina is a border at Combe school, destined - as she and all about her know - for Cambridge and the medical profession. After her first term she's wonders if she's made a mistake as it's definitely not like it was at Ealing Girls. There, a girl whose mother is emotionally fragile doesn't stand out, even if the mother gets to sleep on the sofa in her in-laws' flat because their son - her husband - upped and left her and their daughter. You would still fit in even if the family you're living with is Hungarian and hasn't entirely left the ways of the old country behind. At Combe there's too much about Marina that she could be mocked for - or could get her a cruel nickname. Marina simply doesn't fit in, but the family have sacrificed everything so that she can go there. Full review...

1Q84: The Complete Trilogy by Haruki Murakami

Literary Fiction

The 1Q84 trilogy is, without doubt, an impressive book. In many ways, the trilogy almost has to be read in this way as the three component books make little sense on their own. The first book in the series in particular is almost completely baffling if taken in isolation. It does, though, demand a degree of dedication, and if the prospect of a 1300 page novel in which not a huge amount happens in terms of plot and in which there is a significant level of repetition leaves you cold, then this might not be the best entry point into the wonderful world of Haruki Murakami. As often with Murakami though, it's possible to read this book at a number of levels. On the surface it's a love story set in a slightly fantastical setting with a little bit of crime thrown in. At a deeper level, he explores the thin lines between imagination and reality, life and death and what you might call yin and yang. It's a novel where balance and vacuums play a big part. It seems counter-intuitive to call a book of this magnitude 'delicate', but that's just how the story appears. Full review...

A Kind of Eden by Amanda Smyth

Literary Fiction

Martin Rawlinson has escaped from the cold dreary English weather to the exotic heat and exotic women of Trinidad. He might have a wife and a daughter back home, but home is a long way away and here is the young and beautiful Safiya. She's a journalist and could easily have just dismissed him as some sad old white guy, but somehow she didn't. Somehow they talked, and walked, and she showed him the real Trinidad and he fell in love with her, and with her home. Full review...

A Marker to Measure Drift by Alexander Maksik

Crime

Jacqueline roams the beaches of the Greek islands offering massages for money to ward off starvation. It helps but hunger is always with her, lurking alongside the memory of a former life in Liberia and the mind's ear voice of her mother. Jacqueline is at least alive and existing, but at what cost? Full review...

Familiar by J Robert Lennon

General Fiction

Is there a greater change in the life of a middle-aged woman than the death of her teenage son? Elisa might have thought not, having been forced to bury fifteen year old Silas, and try and move on with her husband Derek and the year-older son, Sam. But a greater change occurs on the way back from her annual, solo pilgrimage to his grave – something very weird happens to the universe. She pops from one car to another, from under a cloudless sky to a slightly greyer one – and from her self as Elisa to a world where people call her Lisa, where she is plumper, in a different job, stiil married to Derek in the same home – but still the mother of two young men… Full review...

The Sorrow of Angels by Jon Kalman Stefansson

Literary Fiction

Our decidedly unheroic main character has been at the café for three weeks now, so we are following on very closely from Heaven and Hell. After the tragedy and soul-searching of that first book, he seems settled in the ridiculous family that has formed around him there, finding employment, enjoying the literature, yet being very intrigued by the female body. The man who is still young enough to be known only as the boy might have latched on to stability for once, and replaced the family and best friend he had lost. But everything is restless in this environment, and once again he might just be tempted to go on a journey, with another male companion, despite the harshness of the surrounds. Full review...