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Newest Literary Fiction Reviews (view source)
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{{newreview
|title=1Q84: The Complete Trilogy
|author=Haruki Murakami
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=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.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099578077</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|title=A Kind of Eden
|summary=In Francesco Pacifico's translated Italian novel 'The Story of My Purity', Piero Rosini is a 30 year old, ultraconservative Catholic working for a radical Catholic publishing house. His marriage is devoid of physical contact, and he yearns for his virginal sister-in-law. Largely to escape these longings, he heads for Paris, never the first choice of one seeking to preserve their purity, where he is further tempted by a slightly unlikely group of girls, and one in particular, which is further complicated for him by the fact that she is Jewish. Almost living a separate life in his head, he cannot escape either the intellectual or physical constraints of his old life in Rome.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241145058</amazonuk>
}}