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[[Category:Historical Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Historical Fiction]]__NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->
{{newreview
|author=Julia Franck and Anthea Bell (translator)
|title=West
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Put yourself in the shoes of a young mother to two children, who declares her intention to leave the Communist East Germany for West Berlin, and thus loses her scientist job. What would you expect on the other side – shops full of attainable products, pleasant neighbourhoods, nice neighbours, an active and busy new life, where things might feel alien but at least you speak the same language? Well, for Nelly Senff, this is hardly the case. Once past the depressing Eastern exit procedures she is confronted with more desultory interrogations from those 'welcoming' her to the West, beyond which she and her children (their father, whom she never married, is long assumed dead by the authorities, if nobody else) are practically left in a shared accommodation in a transit camp. The shops are full of what is still unobtainable, the children hate their new school – and people still look down on them as being foreign, even if they have only moved across a city.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099554321</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Gregory Dowling
|summary=In February 1926 London was tense and divided between those who supported the principle of a general strike and those who were prepared to break it at whatever cost to themselves. Evelyn Gifford is a newly qualified solicitor and whilst she's sympathetic to the miners she's preoccupied by two cases from opposite ends of the social spectrum. Trudy Wright is a maidservant accused of theft and Evelyn has undertaken this case ''pro bono'': her argument is that the 'theft' was of a letter asking for a reference for Trudy, but she was too frightened to hand it to her bullying employer, so only she was the loser. The Wright family worm their way into Evelyn's life: the father is a bullying, drunken, wife beater, the mother is scared and brow beaten, but the son, Robbie, is deeply involved with the unions.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0297866036</amazonuk>
}}
