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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreview|author=John Burnside|title=A Summer of Drowning|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''A Summer of Drowning'' is a book in which for much of the time not a lot happens - but always spookily. Set on the Norwegian island of Kvaløya in the Arctic Circle, the story is narrated by Liv who is now 28 but who recalls events of a summer when she was 18. Liv resides with her artist mother in, if not isolation, then certainly seclusion. The book makes much of the midsummer madness that 24 hour daylight induces and in that respect it is wholly successful. It aims for a dream-like and timeless quality which it largely achieves.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>022406178X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue EcksteinMatthew Tree|title=Interpreters|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Julia Rosenthal whilst visiting her childhood haunts, is invited to go around what used to be her family home. As she wanders around the rooms, she relives her past and seeks to understand why her parents (particularly her mother) were as they were. Julia also desperately seeks reassurance that she has not, in turn, damaged her own daughter, Susanna. Meanwhile the reader is given the privilege of knowledge unavailable to Julia. Via transcriptions of discussions with counsellor, the reader learns about JuliaWe's mother first hand. Slowly, in alternating chapters, whilst Julia goes over her far from normal 1970s upbringing, her mother haltingly and touchingly reveals the secret life which almost destroyed her.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956559964</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Jennifer Johnston|title=Shadowstoryll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Polly grows up in an Anglo-Irish family in the years following World War II. Her Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father died in the war, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence. Her mother sends her off So Tim applied himself to spend school holidays with her grandparents at Kildarraghhis studies, a great house in the countryside, far away from Dublincultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755383478</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Fabrice HumbertB0C47LV1PC|title=The Origin of ViolenceFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Fabrice HumbertCan you make a ''s French Orange Prize winning Yo birthing person'The Origin of Violence' has a young French teacher as a narrator whojoke? And if you could, while leading a school trip to Buchenwald concentration camp, sees a photograph of a Jewish prisoner taken in 1941 and is struck by the similarity in appearance of question should you make it? Or is the man to his own father. However, he discovers that not only does the man in the photo have a different name to hisquestion if you did, but the man died in 1942. Clearly there are dark family secrets afoot that he sets about discovering.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687500</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Helen Gordon|title=Landfall|rating=4|genre=Women's Fiction|summary='Most people at one time or another of their lives get a feeling that they must kill themselves; as a rule they get over would it in a day or two' ('How Girls Can Build Up land? The Empire: the handbook for Girl Guides' 1912) Excerpts from the handbook precede each section of ''Landfall'' and it catch is hard to know what to make of them – other than to take on board that women are not, by any stretch, the weaker sex, just the more emotional one 'They can even…shoot tigers, if they can keep cool'answer for both could well be.... no.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905490828</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Conny Braam|title=The Cocaine Salesman|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=Picture a world ''Fragility'' is set as the city of hellish exclusionPortland, nightmarish noise and imagesOregon, and horrid violence. Picture one person trying cautiously begins to live through the sleepless nights, emerge from the isolation among his peers, the permanent sense of dreadful threat. Picture him needing drugs. His best friend might even be called Charlie. But don't picture an inner city slum, 2012, but a man on restrictions imposed during the front in World War One.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907822054</amazonuk>covid pandemic
}}
 {{newreview|author=Bruce Duffy|title=Disaster was my God|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The life of Arthur Rimbaud must be one of the most outrageous in literary history, more scandalous than Wilde, more self-destructive than Malcolm Lowery, Rimbaud was the boy poet and iconoclast who took on the literary establishment at end of the nineteenth century and won. So Duffy's fictional account, based closely around the actual facts of Rimbaud's life, was bound to be an exciting and furious, and he doesn't disappoint. This is a difficult book to put down.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685273</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Kevin Brophy|title=The Berlin Crossing|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It's the 1990s and Herr Doktor Ritter - to give Michael his full title - is about to lose his teaching job. Although a German national, he teaches English. Apparently the Social Review Committee has been doing some 'reviewing' lately and it doesn't look good for Michael.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755380851</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=German SadulaevMosby Woods|title=I Am A Chechen!Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=That exclamation mark The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the title says West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a lotpush for climate action there. It says A feeling that, nobody is in spite of everythingactual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in spite of Sadulaev leaving his homeland, it still tugs at his heartstrings - and this asset; a man who can tell you what will probably do so throughout the rest happen given any set of his lifecircumstances. The short author's note at the beginning ends with That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the arresting sentence - ''Sadulaev's work has unleashed heated debate most valuable asset in Russiahistory.'' And I'm thinkingImagine then, brave author indeed and I also couldn't wait that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to find out what all the fuss was about.get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099532352</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mark Mustian0571379559|title=The Gendarme|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=There are times when you will want to shut 'The Gendarme' and just walk away from the despair and disgust that this account House of genocide engenders. Don't. Ultimately this tale of an old Turk revisiting his terrible past is both touching and important - an exploration of memory and forgiveness that shouldn't be missed.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851688390</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewBroken Bricks|author=Otto de Kat|title=JuliaFiona Williams|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The book opens with Chris as an elderly man who House of Broken Bricks'' is nearing the end story of his lifefour people. Turn a page or two and he is Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in factthe house on the riverbank, deadbuilt of broken bricks. Suicide apparently. It Insubstantial as it might look, it's all very sadstood the passage of time, storms and floods. He lived alone and a paid employee Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his young drivervegetables, found him to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in his studysufficient money. 'Suicide for They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the poshrainbow twins. Sonny' s colouring reflects his driver thinks looking at the corpsemother's Jamaican heritage. But we have to travel back down the decades to find out whyMax takes after his father. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050559</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Howard J Booth (editor)|title=The Cambridge Companion to Rudyard Kipling|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Rudyard Kipling, born in India in 1865 People don't believe that they're related, is still the youngest ever Nobel literature laureate. He was a prolific author much less twins and at the turn of the century up to the first World War there's an immensely popular one. Even now he remains the most frequently quoted of all English authors (assumption when Max is out with the possible exception of Shakespeare) – albeit often taken out of contexthis mother that she's his nanny. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0521136636</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
{{newreview|author=Padgett Powell|title=You and I|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=IThe follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca''ve often wondered how men and women of letters can pack it all inpicks up a few months after where we left off. People churn out a career In the palace of fictionOdysseus, as well as reading all the classicswith delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and offering pages and pages then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of diaries and letters on their deaththe Western Isles. Padgett Powell can get to be a professor of books, Having survived – politically and therefore I assume is duty-bound physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to read and write lots, but still find time to knock out novels, however short. It was only a few months ago I was reading Ithaca''The Interrogative Mood'' for a review elsewheres shores, and here Queen Penelope is another new release from himon the brink of a fragile peace. Serpent's Tail will cheat in 2012 by giving One that shatters however with the British audience Powell's debut novelreturn of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, almost two decades oldseeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846688167</amazonuk>0356516075
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Art SpiegelmanKay Chronister|title=MetaMAUSDesert Creatures|rating=54|genre=Graphic NovelsDystopian Fiction|summary=Before the Holocaust was turned into [[The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne|With a child-like near-fable world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for all]]humanity, and before post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it was the focus of superb history books such as [[Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder|this]]is a robotic takeover, it became a family saga world devoid of water or a father relating his experiences to nuclear holocaust, this genre is a son, who then drew it all - featuring animals not way for humans - [[Maus to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Art Spiegelman|Maus]]. To celebrate the twentyKay Chronister is a new work of post-five years since then, we have this brilliant look back at apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the creation of an equally brilliant volumefears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670916838</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
 {{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Javier MariasEric LaRocca|title=While the Women are SleepingThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Short StoriesHorror|summary=The first thing the trivially minded will note Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that this is not a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the complete edition end of While the Women are Sleepingstory, for beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not all the like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the original Spanish volume are herehorrors of illness, grief and humiliation. You might think Horrors thatlinger and are harder to defeat than any 's because some have been hived off for a future 'best ofBig Bad' compilation. But if this isn't the best of Javier Marias, then I don't know what is. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099553929</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joseph HellerMadelaine Lucas|title=Catch 22Thirst for Salt
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=At the heart of the very black comedy that is ''Catch 22Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity' is Captain Yossarian' Told from a retrospective view, a World War II American bombardier, who wants to survive young woman unravels the waryear-long relationship that once defined her. Flying repeated combat missions is undermining his sanityOverlaid with later wisdom, and surely the narrator relives the affair with a mad man should be grounded? But if he asks twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to be grounded, he demonstrates its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an absolutely sane concern isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for his own safety. If he is sane, he canSalt'' details the 24-year-old narrator't be grounded. Thiss deepening relationship with her older lover, his doctor tells himdepicting its all-consuming nature, is catch 22how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099529114</amazonuk>0861546490
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Thomas E KennedyMichael Grothaus|title=Falling SidewaysBeautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Kennedy, although a New Yorker, has lived in Copenhagen for over twenty years so he'll have a good feel for the European slant on the novel, I would think. It is one of four called the Copenhagen Quartet. The top brass, the movers and the shakers at the 'Tank' are introduced to the reader one by one But fearing something and have a whole chapter devoted having it come to their individual lives, both professional and privatepass are two different things. So And I'm willing to bet most of what we get a very good idea indeed of their homesfear will never happen, their neighbourhoods, their families and perhaps more importantly, their thoughts on the Tank and of their colleaguesor we can take steps to change it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408812398</amazonuk>}}''
{{newreview|author=Hari Kunzru|title=Gods Without Men|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Quite literally at the heart of Hari Kunzru's latest novel stands not a person, but strange geographical feature in the California desert - three large rocks known as 'The PinnaclesBeautiful Shining People'. If you've ever looked at a feature revolves around the question of the landscape identity and wonder acceptance. Of what it has meant means to those who have gone beforebe human. Of what is real and what is artificial, then you will find a similar stance here. Kunzru's episodic narrative takes in various points in time from 1775 to 2009 all and whether the development of which centre around this rock structure which has had different meanings for different generations. There are echoes of the past in each new version, but no more than thattechnology is exciting or frightening.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>024114311X</amazonuk>191458564X
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Alice HoffmanJennifer Saint|title=The DovekeepersAtalanta
|rating=5
|genre=Historical Fiction
|summary=Set in the last desperate days before the Roman siege on Masada (70CE), the lives of four women collide and merge. They are Yael, the daughter of a Sicarii assassin; Revka, the wife of a gentle baker who witnessed her daughters' rape and murder; Aziza, raised as a boy with the skills of a great warrior and Shirah, born in Alexandria to a mother well versed in ancient magic. All four have crossed the heartless desert on separate journeys to arrive at the last outpost against the Roman Legion, where 900 Jews held out for many, many months. Here they have little power and less hope, but each refuses to be a victim. All are harbouring deep secrets about their pasts, as they become the Masada's dovekeepers. With supplies dwindling and certain death drawing near, their uneasy bonds to each other strengthen as their truths are unveiled. They find an uneasy comfort that becomes true loyalty and empowerment. While few in their company survive to recount the tale, their story has lived on to haunt the deepest of memories.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857205420</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Irene Nemirovsky
|title=The Wine of Solitude
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Helene adores her father but hates her mother, who neglects her and sees her ''I was as worthy as nothing more than an inconvenienceany one of them. She grows up with the realisation I would get on board that the only way that her mother can hurt her is to sack her French governess – the only person who has ever tried to give Helene a stable upbringingship, I vowed. The winds of war blow them all from a fictional KievI would take my place, to a harsh St Petersburg and on to a snowy Finland to end up – finally – not just in France at the end name of the First World Wargoddess. Helene's father has made a lot of money from mining in Siberia but whilst It was for the family might have money – ridiculous amounts sake of it – they have nothing elsemy name, too.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701185570</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''
{{newreview|author=Per Petterson|title=It's Fine By Me|rating=3Princess.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=We see Audun start his new school in OsloWarrior. The building, the classrooms, the teachers, even the other pupils all seem to scare himLover. He refuses to conform and insists on wearing his sunglasses - indoorsHero. It's not an affectation though, apparently he has some facial scarring around his eyes.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846553695</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=John O'Connell|title=The Baskerville Legacy: A Novel|rating=4|genre=General Fiction|summary=1900, and Abandoned at birth for being born a man on daughter rather than a ship coming back from the Boer War to edit son, Atalanta is raised under the Daily Express meets one protective eye of his heroes in the form of Arthur Conan Doyle. With similar experiences goddess Athemis and interests yet different enough to bounce off each other they take up the idea of collaborating on fashioned into a plotformidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When they do fix on time the opportunity comes – to do so, it leads to literary prospectsjoin the Argonauts, which lead to a week's research together on Dartmoorfierce band of warriors, which leads descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis''The Hound name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of the Baskervilleschallenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis''. But perhaps in a way fatal warning: that only one of them intendedif she marries, it will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1907595465</amazonuk>1472292154
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kenzaburo OeAmanthi Harris|title=The Silent CryBeautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Featuring rioting and looting Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of corporate supermarkets and anger against immigrants, this her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a timely re-issue place she was born into, but the one she thinks of Nobel Prize for Literature winner’s Kenzaburo Óe’s 1967 classic as home. How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'The Silent Cry'for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma' which was cited by s present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Nobel committee as his key workVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1846688078</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hector Tobar178563335X|title=The Barbarian Nurseries|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The Torres-Thompsons seem to have it all. A beautiful home, two healthy boys and enough money not to have to worry about practical matters. The cherry on the cake is their employment of their maid Araceli. She works like a trouper and keeps the large house spick and span. She is lucky enough to have her own private quarters (if small and rather basic) in the back garden area. She knows within herself that she should be grateful, should really be jumping up and down with glee and thanking her lucky stars to have this job. She's managed to escape the poverty and violence of Mexico after all. But as she goes about her daily housekeeping duties she feels like some alien living on another plant. Planet America. Araceli is young, single and childless and at times she misses the hustle and bustle of her old life. And here Tobar gives an excellent account of the affluent part of LA where the Torres-Thompson's live - ' ... in this house on a hill high above the ocean, on a cul-de-sac absent of pedestrians or playing children, absent of traffic ...'|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444726757</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSea Defences|author=Alistair MacLeod|title=No Great MischiefHilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=No Great Mischief is When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a novel which captures the essence of belonging PCC meeting and the wondering why they're held when you need to be pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a part of onesobbing parishioner. Thelma's historydaughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. This Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is the story of a small part of Clann Calum Ruadhlovely place, the people of Red Calum, emigrants but Rachel is struggling to Canada. It sweeps from contemporary Toronto to evoke Cape Breton in develop a real bond with the fifties parish - and back to the clearances she's in awe of Scottish history. MacLeod tells the tale with the dignity and stature of an ancient mythvicar, holding up to our gaze what it means to be a part of a raceGail, a family but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a placewalk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099283921</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=William Giraldi1398515388|title=Busy MonstersThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Charles Homar loves his Gillian. He's proved First of all, it to uswas the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, if not to herwhich created the tsunami and this, by going after her possessivein turn, jealous state trooper of an ex with caused the intent to kill - if only ended up rescuing a cat insteadnuclear meltdown. But lo The result was complete and beholdutter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, she's declared she's off to discover and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the real love list of her life priorities but - six months after the giant squidtsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. Failing to stop this, Charlie spends too long with He wasn't a Nessie obsessive, then goes on a hunt of his own - for Bigfoot, all dog person but the while, chapter by chapter, sending convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his narrative of car door and Tamon the same to a magazine as essays for one of those autobiographical, frivolous columnsdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393079627</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Colson Whitehead0989715337|title=Zone OnePapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Horror
|summary=To start, for once, with the book's style - this has probably the least dialogue of any book you'll read this year. There are some comments from characters, but they're few and far between - as are those characters that can actually speak. For we're in a devastated New York, later this century, and our three main protagonists are cleaning up after a worldwide plague of zombies. The active ones have mostly been gunned down by the military, but there are a few still locked away in hidden corners - as well as inactive ones, called stragglers, who seem stuck in one instant, whether finishing off their last office job for the millionth time, or like a ghost haunting a place relevant to them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846555981</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Michela Murgia and Silvester Mazzarella (Translator)
|title=Accabadora
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This beautiful, slim volume has won no less than six literary prizes. Murgia paints an early and evocative picture of ''Some frogs had gotten into the young central character, Maria as she makes mud tartswell. But this innocent activity is about to come to an abrupt halt. Her birth mother struggles to feed and clothe all her children (Maria is the fourth child and is really a nuisance) so when an opportunity arises which 'solves the problem of Maria' if you like, then she grabs it with both hands. Maria is quickly and rather unceremoniously adopted by an older woman who just happens to be a widow. She has no children of her own and seems to lead a rather lonely, insular life. She is old enough to be a grandmother, let alone a mother. Will she be able to cope with a noisy youngster under her roof? You wonder why she'd want to take in a raggedy child, or any child for that matter, in the first place. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050451</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Khaled Hosseini|title=The Kite Runner (Graphic Novel)|rating=4|genre=Graphic Novels|summary=A confession. If there's one book I'm not likely to readWalter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, it's that which everyone else is readingnaked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. If it turns into a hugely popular film for all Two of the left-wing chattering classes to rave dogs leaned over, then that's just more grist to my mill – I'll always have a chance to catch up on it later on, even if I never take that opportunity. I'm not alone in acting like this – see a friend the opening and colleague's similar admission when reviewing [[White Teeth by Zadie Smith]]. But barked down at least, through the medium strange noise of the graphic novel, the book reviewing gods have conspired to let me see just what Ibuckets as he filled them.''m missing, with this adaptation, by Italian artists, of a hugely successful – and therefore delayable – novel.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408815257</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Jaimy Gordon|title=Lord How is that for an opening? The style of Misrule|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=West Virginia, 1970. We're at a rundown race track, this novel in the form of the dusty kind rundown horses interconnected short stories goes from succinct and their rundown owner/trainers fetch up living in, with the occasional race laconic to interrupt the boredom. Into things comes a young upstart hoping to surprise all with his four unknown quantities wistful and make musing, turning on a packet before fleeingsixpence. His girlfriend is here too to help outAnd author Marco North, and naively eager for success and knowledgewho has the most wonderful turn of phrase, but old hands like Medicine Ed have seen it all before. Also in the background are some small-time gangsters who are not too keen at for once not knowing who is doing what and how races are going starts as he means to be run and wongo on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857386697</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joan LeegantDaisy Hildyard|title=Wherever You GoEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Religion kicks off this book, even before the first page. The title is from a passage from the Book of Ruth. The only female central character, Yona is travelling from her home in America to visit her sister and large family. She's not really looking forward to it. She's nervous. The two sisters live very different lives and haven't seen each other for a decade. Leegant tells us all about the massive rift in their relationship.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0393339890</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Charles Frazier
|title=Nightwoods
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you have read Charles Frazier's 'Cold Mountain', or indeed seen the film, then you'll have a fair idea what to expect from his latest offering - 'Nightwoods'. As with 'Cold Mountain', the landscape of the Appalachians is the dominant character, this time set in the 1950s. He even manages to get his requisite bear into the story although thankfully it fares rather better than the unfortunate beast in his first book. The dark, oppressing majesty and beauty of the mountains and woods pervades the whole story.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444731246</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Shuichi Yoshida
|title=Villain
|rating=3.5
|genre=Crime
|summary=Well, I suppose I'd better begin with the bad which was there were moments at the start of this novel when I thought I couldn't possibly read it right to the end. It's written in such a stilted, factual style with details about the road networks of the local area and exactly how much anyone pays for anything they eat or buy or rent! Faced, for example, with the paragraph ''cars setting out from Nagasaki that take the pass road to save money take the Nagasaki Expressway from Nagasaki to Omura, then to Higashi-Sonogi and Takeo, and get off at the Saga Yamato interchange. Intersecting this east-west Nagasaki Expressway at the interchange is Route 263'' I thought I'd never manage to read more than a couple of lines before falling asleep! Still, I persisted and actually, I'm glad I did.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099526654</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Mike French
|title=The Ascent of Isaac Steward
|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Isaac is married to Rebekah. They have sons, Esau and Jacob, naturally. There is a half-brother Ishmael and a back-story of marital betrayal and the out-casting of sons.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956881017</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=A Portsmouth
|title=The Beautiful Torment of a Dream
|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This is a beautifully presented book with its enigmatic front cover and equally enigmatic title. After reading the blurb on the back cover I was left with a feeling of wishy-washiness however, as regards the storyline. Unfortunately, the contents confirmed this for me.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956493602</amazonuk>
}}
 
{{newreview
|author=Kevin Wilson
|title=The Family Fang
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=
Annie Fang and her brother Buster are back living at home with their parents - where they never thought theyThe summary of this book doesn'd ever be again. But it has t come close to this - her film actress career explaining what is on the rocks done with the kind of self-destruction so much enjoyed by tabloid writers, and he - well, he's here because of a jumbo spud gun. Neither want life back at home, as throughout their childhood they were used by their parents - without much planning, without any consideration of feelings, or consent - in a whole career of performance art pieces, designed to enact a point of life or just cause havocpremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1447202384</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Philip RothSally Oliver |title=NemesisThe Weight of Loss |rating=4.5|genre=General Literary Fiction|summary=1944Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, Newarkshe awakes to find strange, New Jerseythick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Summer. Hot. Bucky CantorHer GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a young Jewish man, is gym teacher and playground attendant-cum-sports instructor for the districtphysical reaction to her grief, helping all those interested become fit young men, able recommends she go to do what his eyesight prevents him from doing - serving in the forces. Things would be fine if his girlfriend were closer stay at handNede, if it were cooler, and if there were no polio epidemic happeningan experimental new treatment centre in Wales. But there Yet something strange is, happening to Marianne and nobody knows what is causing it. Is it flies? Is it the other patients at Nede: a gang metamorphosis of taunting Italian kids spreading it from neighbourhood a kind. As Marianne's memories threaten to neighbourhood? Is it blacks, germs on money - is it in fact Cantor himselfoverwhelm her, draining all the youthful vigour Nede offers her release from his charges under this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a blistering sun?terrible price: that of identity itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099542269</amazonuk>086154112X }} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom WolfeNatalia Garcia Freire|title=A Man in FullThis World Does Not Belong To Us
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I'll hold my hands up right now and say that noEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I haven't read Wolfe's much-acclaimed [[The Bonfire of will agree with the Vanities by Tom Wolfe|The Bonfire of the Vanities]]. Ifirst – tremendous is no understatement – but 've heard a lot about it, over delight' is perhaps using the years, expression in newspapers etc that I almost feel that a way I ''have'' read it, mind youm not familiar with. So I'm really pleased have to have confess my ignorance of the chance to read this muchSpanish-awaited novellanguage literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. At a stonking 700+ pages most of which are packed tight with Wolfe's particular style of proseFrom the little I have read (in translation, ItI don's t read Spanish) there does seem to be a veritable feast for readerstendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099554771</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
 {{newreview|author=J M Coetzee|title=Scenes From Provincial Life|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary='Scenes from Provincial Life' is a compilation of JM Coetzee's three fictionalised memoirs: 'Boyhood' first published in 1997, 'Youth' published in 2002 and [[Summertime by J M Coetzee|Summertime]] published in 2009. In one sense they clearly belong together in this single edition and yet they were initially published separately. What strikes the reader of this compilation is the change in style and focus of the third book in the series.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846554853</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Henning MankellJennifer Saint|title=DanielElektra
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A young Hans Bengler has decided to leave his homeland 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of Sweden and make an expedition across three women who live in the inhospitable Kalahari Desertheavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Brave - or extremely foolish. I'm sticking with the latter. My reasons are that Bengler is portrayed by Mankell as a rather dullCassandra, Clytemnestra, insular and unimaginative young man. He doesn't really get along with his family (such as they Elektra are) nor does he seem to have many friendsall bit players in the story of the Trojan War. It's also plain Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that he's desperate to leave his cold Sweden for warmer climesoften the silent women have the most compelling stories and the most extreme furies. But at what cost?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>009948143X</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mohammed Hanif8409290103|title=Our Lady of Alice BhattiIf Only|author=Matthew Tree|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Alice is nervousTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the young man got on board the boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. She's being interviewed for Patrick sent the money regularly and a job at correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the local hospital. Even two although her nursing skills are far from ideal, she believes she's in with a shout. She presents herself at her charming best and it seems we hear more about what Lowry has to worksay than Patrick. She It wasn't that Lowry senior didn's now employed and earning some much-needed money. She knows shet care for his son, it was that he didn'll t care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to work really hard his wife and probably long hours tooother children. The hospital in question is in downtown Karachi: a seething mass of patients many of whom have no choice but alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to lie in corridors etcget the young man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224082051</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Evelio RoseroAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=Good OfficesRed is My Heart
|rating=3.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in my house. And so was this one, although I could have spelled that more accurately – this one was, and is, black and white and red. Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this piece, and I think it's possible to say not one page lacks the influence of some striking visual ideas.
|isbn=1913547183
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B098FFFBH9
|title=Snowcub
|author=Graham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Here Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a church competition entry to highlight the way in Bogota nobody seems to want to leavewhich human beings exploit the animal world. In part one it is She gets a large group great deal of the elderlysupport from her family: father Pip Harrison, given a weeklylecturer at Imperial College, tasteless meal from the charitable fundsLondon, but bitterly refusing to quit the placemother Kate and her twin, making our main character Tancredo fear for his passivityNick. In part two it is Kate runs the congregationfamily business, as a rare need for a stand-toy shop called Cornucopia in priest seems to be a blessing. And in part three it Putney, which is that priest himself, stuck among the household where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of Tancredo, the girl who loves him, and chorus of three weird old womeninformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050672</amazonuk>
}}
 {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Barry UnsworthYancey Williams|title=The Quality Crosshairs of Mercythe Devil|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='The Quality of Mercy' picks up the story of the author's Booker PrizeAward-winning 'Sacred Hunger' although if you haven't read the first bookcrime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, you wonfrom Eddie't be greatly disadvantaged as the relevant story lines are explained. What you might miss out on is some s point of view - in room 315 of the feeling for a few Garden of the main charactersEden nursing home, most notably the Irish fiddlerwith only a trusty nursing aide, Sullivan whoJenkins, when this book picks up for palatable company. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in spring 1767, has just escaped from prison where the remaining shipmates -trade of the slave shipwriting though, the 'Liverpool Merchant' await their trial of piracy. Slavery and abolition thereof remains a central theme of this sequelso here, but the book draws some poignant similarities with those in bondage due to povertyfor his readers, and particularly those working in the coal mines of County Durhamare his wanderings through his life's work.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091937124</amazonuk>0986031658}} {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Zadie Smith0008421714|title=White TeethMrs March|author=Virginia Feito|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Some books sneak up The problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on youthe last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Others are thrown at you from every corner of Every day Mrs March went to the media local patisserie to the extent buy olive bread but on that you almost make a conscious decision NOT to read themparticular morning, Patricia asked, or at leastas she was wrapping the bread, not yet. ''but isn't this the first time he's based a character on you?'' Let She mentioned that Johanna, the furore die downprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''. If theyPerhaps this would not have mattered, except for the fact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - ''re still around in a few yearsweak, plain, detestable, pathetic, your subconscious whispersunloved, maybe weunloveable wretch.''ll go see what all the fuss was about. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241954576</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview|author=Michael Ondaatje|title=The Cat's Table|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=For the first half or so of this book, which sees an 11 year old boy called Michael (or Mynah to his friends) leave his home of Ceylon to travel to school in England, I wasn't really sure if it even had a plot. Focusing Move on his journey in the 1950's aboard the ship to England, although occasionally leaping forward to his later life where he gives us tantalising glimpses as to what happened to his fellow passengers after the voyage, this originally seems to be nothing more than a series of incredibly well-drawn character sketches. In fairness, I should say that ''nothing more'' is rather harsh in this case – the men, women and children Ondaatje creates, from a supposedly cursed rich man seeking a cure, to a friendly thief, to Michael's beautiful cousin Emily, are so beautifully conjured that I could have lived without a plot perfectly happily. However, we eventually realise there's a little more to this narrative, and that this skilful author has been foreshadowing the events at the novel's climax all along.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224093614</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]