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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Chris WomersleyMatthew Tree|title=BereftWe'll Never Know|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Quinn WalkerTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a young Australian man fresh from fighting on the European front in World War One, returns to the very town he was drummed out drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of ten years before, after being accused exceptional at any of raping and killing his own younger sister. Two things have beaten him to the small settlement - one, the global flu pandemic; two a telegram saying he died bravely in action earlier in the war. And the less you know of what he meets and does back in Flint the better, the more to keep this fresh and brilliant book's many intrigues as secret as they were for me.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857386549</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Eric Orsenna|title=The Indies Enterprise|rating=4.5|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=As soon as you pick up a novel about Columbus's discovery of the Americas, certain expectations come to mind. Orsenna however is much more than your average writer artistic passions all failed miserably and he manages to subvert almost all who had endless crises of these by delivering a quiet, scholarly account of what seems at first a diversion, the art of map makingself confidence. But this book is not about Columbus So Tim applied himselfto his studies, but cultivated his abilities rather than his brother Bartholomew, daydreams and how he is swept into the excitement and ambition of his older siblingset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1906598932</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mahmoud DowlatabadiB0C47LV1PC|title=The ColonelFragility|author=Mosby Woods
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The novel opens at dead of night in Can you make a house in Rasht in Gilan province''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, Iran. It is pouring with rain and the colonel of question should you make it? Or is the title question if you did, would it land? The catch is in that the grip of extreme melancholiaanswer for both could well be.. Two policemen are knocking on the door. They are bringing news of his youngest daughter. This triggers a night of misery in which the colonel recalls his own past, and the tragic lives of his five childrenno.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906598894</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Louisa YoungMosby Woods|title=My Dear I Wanted to Tell YouA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It takes a while for The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the full power of Louisa Young's remarkable ''My Dear I Wanted To Tell You'' West is quite sure how to become apparent, but when mend this or even if mending it doesis the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, it can hardly fail to move youa push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Set just before and during World War OneImagine then, it's there was a story of love and human spirit against the oddsman with precognition. The impact of Imagine the book is strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what happens to the characters, so I don't want to give too much awaywill happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, but it's worth pointing out that it's not for right? Perhaps the overly squeamish reader particularly most valuable asset in some of the descriptions of surgical procedureshistory. Imagine then, which have clearly been meticulously researched by Youngthat this man loses this ability. The title itself What would governments do to get it taken from the opening words of the standard letters that the wounded were given to send to loved ones back home. The wounded were required to fill in the blanks.?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0007361432</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jonathan Evison0571379559|title=West The House of HereBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=35
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The town House of Port Bonita, located on Broken Bricks'' is the Pacific coast story of Washington Statefour people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, is she lives in the house on the setting – and almost a character itselfriverbank, such is its importance – built of Jonathan Evison’s newest novelbroken bricks. In a massively ambitious narrative Insubstantial as it might look, we start at it's stood the Elwha River Dam in 2006passage of time, before just two pages later being transported back into the 1880’sstorms and floods. Her husband, to see the town’s founding. A hundred pages or so laterRichard, we’re brought back struggles to the 21st centurygrow his vegetables, then returned to complete the 19th, and the cuts between scenes get faster delivery rounds - and more furious as we seem to flip forwards and backwards bring in time without giving us much time to catch our breathsufficient money. By 2006, the Dam is about to be destroyed, and we see the effect its construction has had on the local community and how the descendants of the original characters They have turned out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1780331967</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Janette Jenkins|title=Little Bones|rating=4|genre=Historical Fiction|summary=While this might sound like the afterlife of a brilliant twin boys - Sonny and unlikely cabaret mimicMax, it's notthe rainbow twins. ItSonny's a rich, evocative and engaging novel set in the last years of Victoriacolouring reflects his mother's reign, in the depths of her darkest LondonJamaican heritage. Fate - and being abandoned by, in turn, her mother and older sister - leaves Jane Stretch living with and working for a doctor and Max takes after his lumpen, housebound wifefather. Jane is alternatively called an People don'unfortunatet believe that they' re related, much less twins and a there'cripple' for her disabilities and distorted frame, but she has enough bookish intelligence to pass herself off as s an assistant to the doctor, who only ever does one operation - abortions, for music hall artistes. The plot assumption when Max is evidently gearing up to reveal how dangerous such a criminal business might be, for the both of themout with his mother that she's his nanny.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>070118194X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nick LakeClaire North|title=In DarknessHouse of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre=TeensLiterary Fiction |summary=Shorty is lying in the rubble of the great Haitian earthquake of 2010. If he's not rescued soon, he will die. Shorty is from Site Soley, the sprawling slum of Port-au-Prince. After the murder of his father and abduction of his twin sister, Shorty has allowed himself to fall further and further into the slum's gang culture. But Route 9 isnWhat could matter more than love?'t all about drug-dealing and gun-running - it's also about feeding the poor and educating the children. And Shorty has a great deal to teach his readers, as he recounts his life while waiting to die. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1408824183</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Sue EcksteinKay Chronister|title=InterpretersDesert Creatures|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=Julia Rosenthal whilst visiting her childhood haunts, With a world that is invited to go around what used to be her family home. As she wanders around the roomsbecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, she relives her past and seeks to understand why her parents (particularly her mother) were as they werepost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Julia also desperately seeks reassurance that she has notWhether it is a robotic takeover, in turna world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, damaged her own daughter, Susannathis genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. Meanwhile the reader ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is given the privilege a new work of knowledge unavailable to Julia. Via transcriptions post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of discussions with counsellor, the reader learns about Julia's mother first handfears that exist for humanity today. 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 herIt is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0956559964</amazonuk>1803364998
}}
{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Jennifer JohnstonEric LaRocca|title=ShadowstoryThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary=Polly grows up in an Anglo-Irish family in 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 is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the end of the years following World War IIstory, beatable. Her father died in the warEric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. Her mother sends her off to spend school holidays with her grandparents at Kildarragh, It is a great house collection of short stories more interested in the countrysidehorrors of illness, far away from Dublingrief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755383478</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Fabrice HumbertMadelaine Lucas|title=The Origin of ViolenceThirst for Salt|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Fabrice Humbert's French Orange Prize winning 'The Origin of ViolenceLove, I' has a young French teacher as a narrator whod read, while leading a school trip was supposed to Buchenwald concentration camp, sees a photograph of be a Jewish prisoner taken in 1941 light and is struck by the similarity in appearance of the man to his own father. However, he discovers that not only does the man in the photo have a different name to hisweightless feeling, but the man died in 1942. Clearly there are dark family secrets afoot that he sets about discovering.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687500</amazonuk>}}I had always longed for gravity''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|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>}} {{newreview|author=German SadulaevGrothaus|title=I Am A Chechen!Beautiful Shining People
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=That exclamation mark in the title says a lot. It says that, in spite of everything, in spite of Sadulaev leaving his homeland, it still tugs at his heartstrings - and will probably do so throughout the rest of his life. The short author's note at the beginning ends with the arresting sentence - ''Sadulaev's work has unleashed heated debate in RussiaBut fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things.'' And I'm thinkingwilling to bet most of what we fear will never happen, brave author indeed and I also couldn't wait or we can take steps to find out what all the fuss was aboutchange it.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099532352</amazonuk>}}''
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Otto de KatJennifer Saint|title=JuliaAtalanta|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The book opens with Chris ''I was as worthy as an elderly man who is nearing the end any one of his lifethem. Turn a page or two and he isI would get on board that ship, in fact, deadI vowed. Suicide apparently. It's all very sad. He lived alone and a paid employee, his young driverI would take my place, found him not just in his study. 'Suicide for the posh' his driver thinks looking at name of the corpsegoddess. But we have to travel back down It was for the decades to find out whysake of my name, too. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050559</amazonuk>}}Atalanta''
}}
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=At the heart of the very black comedy that is ''Catch 22'' is Captain YossarianPadma, a World War II American bombardieryoung Sri Lankan, who wants has returned to survive the warVilla Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. Flying repeated combat missions This is undermining his sanity, and surely a mad man should be grounded? place she spent her formative years. But if he asks It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to be groundedat the Villa, he demonstrates an absolutely sane concern how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for his own safetythis gentle and yet subtly violent novel. If he is sane, he can Padma't be grounded. Thiss present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, his doctor tells him, is catch 22that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099529114</amazonuk>1784631930
}}
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Helene adores her father but hates her motherWhen we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, who neglects her collects six-year-old Hannah and sees her as nothing more than an inconvenienceelder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. She grows up with the realisation that the only way that her mother can hurt Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her is to sack see her French governess – the only person who has ever tried to give Helene a stable upbringinggrandson. The winds of war blow them all from Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a fictional Kievlovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a harsh St Petersburg real bond with the parish - and on to a snowy Finland to end up – finally – she's in France at awe of the end of vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the First World Warjob for more than thirty years. Helene's father has made Rachel and Christopher hoped that a lot of money from mining in Siberia walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but whilst the family might have money – ridiculous amounts of it – was probably what they have nothing elseneeded. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701185570</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Per Petterson1398515388|title=It's Fine By MeThe Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating=34.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=We see Audun start his new school First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in Oslo. The buildingthe ocean floor, which created the classroomstsunami and this, in turn, caused the teachersnuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, even and the other pupils all seem to scare himloss of livelihoods was widespread. He refuses to conform and insists on wearing his sunglasses The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - indoorsKazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. ItHe wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's not an affectation though, apparently comment that he has some facial scarring around would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his eyescar door and Tamon the dog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846553695</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=John O'Connell0989715337|title=The Baskerville Legacy: A NovelPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Featuring rioting and looting of corporate supermarkets and anger against immigrants, this is a timely re-issue of Nobel Prize for Literature winner’s Kenzaburo Óe’s 1967 classic ''The Silent CrySome frogs had gotten into the well.'' which was cited by the Nobel committee as his key work.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846688078</amazonuk>}}
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=William GiraldiDaisy Hildyard|title=Busy MonstersEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=General Literary Fiction
|summary=
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Michela Murgia Sally Oliver |title=The Weight of Loss |rating=4 |genre=Literary Fiction |summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and Silvester Mazzarella (Translator)pain—but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself.|isbn= 086154112X }} {{Frontpage|author=Natalia Garcia Freire|title=AccabadoraThis World Does Not Belong To Us
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This beautifulEarly comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, slim volume has won no less than six literary prizesa delight. Murgia paints an early and evocative picture of I will agree with the young central character, Maria as she makes mud tarts. But this innocent activity first – tremendous is about to come to an abrupt halt. Her birth mother struggles to feed and clothe all her children (Maria no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the fourth child and is really expression in a nuisance) so when an opportunity arises which 'solves the problem of Mariaway I' if you like, then she grabs it m not familiar with both hands. Maria is quickly and rather unceremoniously adopted by an older woman who just happens I have to be a widow. She has no children confess my ignorance of her own and seems to lead a rather lonely, insular lifethe Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. She is old enough to be a grandmotherFrom the little I have read (in translation, let alone a mother. Will she be able to cope with a noisy youngster under her roof? You wonder why sheI don'd want t read Spanish) there does seem to take in be a raggedy child, or any child for that matter, in tendency towards the fantastical – the first placemystical realism. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857050451</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=West Virginia, 1970. We're at a rundown race track, Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the dusty kind rundown horses heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and their rundown owner/trainers fetch up living Elektra are all bit players in, with the occasional race to interrupt story of the boredomTrojan War. Into things comes a young upstart hoping to surprise all with his four unknown quantities and make a packet before fleeing. His girlfriend is here too to help out, and naively eager for success and knowledge, but old hands like Medicine Ed Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women 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 most compelling stories and how races are going to be run and wonthe most extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857386697</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreview|author=Joan Leegant|title=Wherever You Go|rating=4Frontpage|genreisbn=Literary Fiction8409290103|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>}} {{newreviewIf Only|author=Charles Frazier|title=NightwoodsMatthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you have read Charles Frazier's 'Cold Mountain'Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, or indeed seen to ensure that the young man got on board the film, then you'll have boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. Patrick sent the money regularly and a fair idea correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to expect from his latest offering - 'Nightwoods'say than Patrick. As with It wasn'Cold Mountaint that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, the landscape of the Appalachians is the dominant character, it was that he didn't care to have him in this time set in the 1950scountry where he might be a danger to his wife and other children. He The alcohol problem was obvious even manages before Patrick managed to get his requisite bear into the story although thankfully it fares rather better than the unfortunate beast in young man on his first book. The dark, oppressing majesty and beauty of the mountains and woods pervades the whole storyway.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1444731246</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Shuichi YoshidaAntoine Laurain, Le Sonneur and Jane Aitken (translator)|title=VillainRed is My Heart
|rating=3.5
|genre=CrimeLiterary Fiction |summary=Well[[:Category:Antoine Laurain|Antoine Laurain]] books have always been black and white and read in my house. And so was this one, although I suppose I'd better begin with the bad which could have spelled that more accurately – this one 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! Facedis, 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 black and Takeo, white and get off at the Saga Yamato interchangered. Intersecting Yes, he has an artistic collaborator on this east-west Nagasaki Expressway at the interchange is Route 263'' I thought piece, and Ithink it'd never manage s possible to read more than a couple say not one page lacks the influence of lines before falling asleep! Still, I persisted and actually, I'm glad I didsome striking visual ideas.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099526654</amazonuk>1913547183
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Mike FrenchB098FFFBH9|title=The Ascent of Isaac StewardSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright|rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Isaac Fourteen-year-old Rachel is married her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to Rebekahhighlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. They have sons She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, Esau mother Kate and Jacobher twin, naturallyNick. There Kate runs the family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is a half-brother Ishmael and a back-story of marital betrayal and the out-casting where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of sonsinformation: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956881017</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=A PortsmouthYancey Williams|title=The Beautiful Torment Crosshairs of the Devil|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Award-winning crime writer Eddie Jablonski is getting on in years and, despite his strenuous objections and thanks to his daughter, finds himself living - or imprisoned, from Eddie's point of view - in room 315 of the Garden of Eden nursing home, with only a Dreamtrusty nursing aide, Jenkins, for palatable company. Nothing is going to keep Eddie from his stock-in-trade of writing though, so here, for his readers, are his wanderings through his life's work.|isbn=0986031658}} {{Frontpage|isbn=0008421714|title=Mrs March|author=Virginia Feito|rating=34.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=This is a beautifully presented book with its enigmatic front cover and equally enigmatic titleThe problem began just after the publication of George March's most successful novel to date. After Everyone but Mrs March (we know her first name only on the last page) seemed to either be reading it or had already done so. Every day Mrs March went to the blurb local patisserie to buy olive bread but on that particular morning, Patricia asked, as she was wrapping the back cover I was left with bread, ''but isn't this the first time he's based a feeling of wishy-washiness howevercharacter on you?'' She mentioned that Johanna, as regards the storylineprincipal character had 'her mannerisms''. UnfortunatelyPerhaps this would not have mattered, except for the contents confirmed this for mefact that Johanna is the whore of Nantes - ''a weak, plain, detestable, pathetic, unloved, unloveable wretch.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0956493602</amazonuk>''
}}
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