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==General fiction==
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{{newreview
|author=Maria Semple
|title=Where'd You Go, Bernadette
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Much like the missing question mark in the title it would seem, Bernadette has disappeared. Maria Semple's ''Where'd You Go, Bernadette'' works as both a physical and emotional question. Bernadette Fox is the wife of Elgie Branch, a star at Microsoft in Seattle, and mother of 15 year old, Bee. The narrative begins with Bee wondering where her mother had gone, but then quickly moves to an epistolary format told in e-mails, notes and messages between the major players, including some rather obnoxious mothers at Bee's school, one of whom also works at Microsoft with Elgie. We are taken back a few weeks to when Bernadette was around and a seemingly somewhat angry mother prior to her mysterious disappearance. One of the delights about the book, which along with being very funny on issues like helicopter parenting, corporate life and, er, Canadians, is that it emerges that Bernadette is more than a wife and mother but has a past career of her own as a talented architect which she has sacrificed for one reason or another. Thus, in many ways she disappeared long before her physical disappearance.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0316204269</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Christopher Currie
|summary=When Kate Gavier married Mark Brooker, she was full of optimism for their marriage and their future. However, from the first day of their marriage, her dreams were shattered as she realised that Mark was nothing more than a cruel bully. He even insisted on calling her Kathryn rather than Kate which is how she prefers to be known. There followed sixteen years of torment and torture as Mark strove to control his wife and punish her for any wrongdoings – of which there were many. To the outside world though, it looked as though Mark and Kathryn had the perfect loving marriage, mainly due to Kathryn’s resolve to spare her children, Dominic and Lydia, from knowing of and witnessing their father’s cruelty. One day though, she snapped and, for the first time in her life, fought back. Hours later, Mark was dead and Kathryn was locked up in a police cell being questioned about what happened.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781853789</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Joyce Carol Oates
|title=Daddy Love
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=A short while ago, I read [[The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares by Joyce Carol Oates]] and was moved by the sheer emotional impact of the stories it contained. This was especially true of the title story, which looked at the impact on a family torn by the disappearance of their daughter. The synopsis of ''Daddy Love'' suggested a similar impact, given the nature of the story and what I'd recently discovered about the power of Oates' writing.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1781850658</amazonuk>
}}

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