==Literary fiction==
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{{newreview
|author=James Kelman
|title=If it is Your Life
|rating=3
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=''If This Is Your Life'' is not so much a collection of short stories as a collection of pieces of creative writing. Kelman doesn't really do 'stories'. In nineteen pieces of writing of varying length from just a single page to more lengthy pieces, such as the story that gives its title to this collection, Kelman writes (mostly) about people on the edge of society. He addresses issues such as class, politics, gender, age and ill health.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241142423</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Yoko Ogawa
|summary=I've recently read the terrific short story collection ''The Female Of The Species'' also by Oates and couldn't wait to start her latest book. I felt sure that I was in for a literary treat - and I was. Firstly, the book itself, a hardback with a beautifully nostalgic cover is a book lover's delight.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847248586</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Dai Sijie
|title=Once on a Moonless Night
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A French female scholar, studying in China, finds herself caught up in the search for a lost, sacred text that was inscribed on an ancient scroll. The scroll was torn in two by Emperor Puyi years ago, and was lost. After falling in love with a young grocer called Tumchooq the young woman becomes caught up in tales within tales, as she finds that Tumchooq's father found and translated half of the missing scroll and became obsessed with finding the other half, and soon Tumchooq too becomes embroiled in the search.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099521326</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Thomas Trofimuk
|title=Waiting for Columbus
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I was hooked instantly by the title. Original, thought-provoking, quirky. The book revolves around a youngish man who has been admitted to an insane asylum (these two words alone make me want to shiver) in modern-day Spain. The staff have their work cut out. He doesn't remember his name or anything at all about his past. He's sporadically violent - and he says he is Christopher Columbus! As the Americans would say, go figure.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330518844</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Su Tong
|title=The Boat to Redemption
|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Ku Dongliang and his father, Ku Wenxuan, are forced to live on a barge on the river following Ku Wenxuan's fall from grace. Originally believed to be the son of a revolutionary martyr, it is eventually proved that Mr Ku was not so - as a result, his position in society takes a nose-dive. Dongliang suffers as a result of this, finding it hard to make friends within the barge community and on shore. Then an orphaned girl moves onto the barges and finds a place in Dongliang's apparently cold heart. Will she be able to take him out of himself? Or will she, too, turn her back on him?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>038561344X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Iain Banks
|title=The Steep Approach to Garbadale
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It took me a while to realise that Iain Banks is, most of all, a teller of tales - I would call him a story-teller had this term not became a compliment-cum-invective usually reserved for the Jeffrey Archers and Dan Browns of the modern publishing world. This ability to tell stories - not to plot as much as to weave a yarn - combines with a penchant for creating appealing contexts for Banks' narratives to unfold in (this gets magnificently realised in the world building of his [[:Category:Iain M Banks|Iain M. Banks]] alter-ego) and populating them with memorable, larger than life but usually short of caricature, characters.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0349119287</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mary McCarthy
|title=The Group
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='Given the attention paid to relations between the sexes, it would be tempting to call The Group a forerunner of today's chick lit. It's not.'
So writes Candace Bushnell, the writer behind the TV series Sex and the City, in the introduction to this new Virago Modern Classics edition of The Group by Mary McCarthy. First published in 1963, this novel is about the lives of a group of young women after leaving college in 1933, including careers, relationships, sex, babies, parents, and money.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844085937</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Janice Galloway
|title=Collected Stories
|rating=5
|genre=Short Stories
|summary=In this collection, stories are taken from two previous volumes, Blood and Where You Find It. The forty-two snap shots of life are mainly of women and young girls, struggling with emotions, sometimes realized and sometimes not. In all, there seems to be an underlying link of isolation and truth. The settings are varied, from a visit to the dentist to the place known as home, to a walk in the evening. We have a peek into the deepest darkest corners of everyday relationships, with lovers, partners and most of all ourselves.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540398</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Herta Muller
|title=The Passport
|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet Windisch. A miller in a small village, he trudges through there, and through his neighbours, and through his life, counting his days and hours, for reasons that are not initially clear. But he does want something - he is waiting for a passport so he can leave for other climes. The perks of his job are the bags of flour he leaves by the mayor's house with regularity, as an open bribe, but there might be a bigger sacrifice to have to make.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1852421398</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jennifer Johnston
|title=Truth or Fiction
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Caroline Wallace is not a happy woman. She has waited ten years for her lover to propose to her, and now just as he finally does, she has to go to Dublin to interview faded literary star Desmond Fitzmaurice. Desmond promises his tale will be brimful of 'sex and violence', but Caroline has no idea of the mystery that lies at the heart of his story.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755330544</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Julian Barnes
|title=Staring at the Sun
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jean's first Incident involved Uncle Leslie, hyacinths and golf tees. It's perhaps best forgotten, but Jean doesn't forget. Uncle Leslie figures large in her life - mostly on the golf course - until the War comes and he runs away to America. He's replaced by Tommy Prosser, a grounded pilot who once saw the sun rise twice in one day and excites as many questions in Jean as he ever answers. Tommy is replaced by Michael, a policeman, whom Jean eventually marries. He doesn't know why minks are excessively tenacious of life and he doesn't much care. But Jean does. She cares much less for the Dutch cap that Michael sent her off to obtain before the wedding and much less again for their rather disastrous adventures in the bedroom.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099540096</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Russell Celyn Jones
|title=The Ninth Wave (New Stories from the Mabinogion)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Pwyll rules a medieval-style fiefdom in a post-climate change Wales. Life is different in many ways - there's a new-but-old social order built on feudalism and horsepower is the main means of transport. But in many ways it's much the same - people still fight one another, towns still have sink estates, rich boys still have too much time on their hands and precious little meaning in their lives.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115146</amazonuk>
}}
