[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]==Literary fiction==__NOTOC__{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Clare MorrallEowyn Ivey|title=The Man Who DisappearedBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=43.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I was drawn to this book straight away. Firstly''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the jacket cover is lovelyAlaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Emaleen. The subliminal message is read meDescribed as a ''wild card'', she feels stuck in her day-to-day life, please read me. We are introduced and yearns to cross the Kendall family; mother, father Wolverine river and three childrenlive on the North Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. All leading unremarkableWhen she meets Arthur Nielson, rather ordinary lives. The fathera strange, Felixtaciturn and solitary man, works hard who says he has a cabin over there, she feels called to provide for his family. He loves them all dearly. They all love him back. It is a secure family unit. Until go - completely out of the blue - he simply disappearsand bring Emaleen with her. His family is distraught Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and mystified. We all know that a person cannot simply disappear. But Felix Kendall has taken himself off the radarEmaleen's lives forever. Why?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340994274</amazonuk>1472279042
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Christopher IsherwoodSally Rooney|title=A Single ManIntermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=If you've ever wanted to know what goes on inside someone's mind you'll love this short novel, first published back in 1964. We join George Falconer just at Sally Rooney has studied the moment he awakes from sleep chessboard of life and witness his innermost thoughts as he goes about is something of a typical daygrandmaster at putting it into words. It all sounds pretty dull Her dialogue is gripping and monotonous but so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what makes they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this exciting story, the central one for readers to unravel is that George isn't just any old professor living the American Dreamfraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, oh noa socially awkward chess prodigy, he's so detached from the banal normality of the world that hecontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's almost outside of his own body at times.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099548828</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Angelica Garnett|title=The Unspoken Truth|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I would not normally start passing after a review long battle with the biography of the authorcancer, but The Unspoken Truth is presented as autobiographical fiction by a child of the Bloomsbury Group – in fact the subtitle is brothers'A Quartet of Bloomsbury Stories'. The blurb on the inside cover even identifies which character is based on the author in each of the four stories, just in case we are not surealready strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184353</amazonuk>0571365469
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Amos OzFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=Rhyming Life and DeathWhite Nights
|rating=5
|genre=Literary FictionShort Stories|summary=Rhyming Love and Death As always in Dostoyevsky, the character work is a kind of philosophical love letter to literature, or perhaps more so to fictionsublime. It One is never left wondering what a book about how to write, about the compulsion to write, character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and about the strange world that the writer of fiction must live intemperaments with remarkable clarity.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099521024</amazonuk>0241619785
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Paul MurrayJames Baldwin|title=Skippy DiesGiovanni's Room|rating=34.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Life ''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in Seabrook College is a mess. Some of the staff are young enough to remember their own school days thereParis, but many are certainly too old for that. A lot of the boys are victims of ragging and bullying for being too chunkyas he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, or too smart - but some are so chunky and smart there's an Italian bartender he meets in a certain kudos to themgay bar. The female of the species While David is a thing only spied from their own school next doorengaged to Hella, and only met by selling them ritalin as a weight-control pillwho is travelling in Spain, or meeting them at the very rare combined school disco.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241141826</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Tom Wolfe|title=The Bonfire of real tension in the Vanities|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=In novel arises not from his own mind, bond trader Sherman McCoy is a 'Master of infidelity but from the Universe'. He has a pleasant wife, a beautiful mistress, and a sweet six year old daughterdeeper conflict within himself. Henry Lamb It is a black student from the projects. Under normal circumstances, it's clear that McCoyDavid's world and Lamb's world would never overlap. But when McCoy crippling shame and denial of his mistress Maria Ruskin end up lost in the Bronx, and an accident leads to Lamb being hit by McCoy's Mercedes, a chain of events start which will lead to sexuality that ultimately dooms his downfallrelationship with Giovanni.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099548798</amazonuk>0141186356
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Kate Cole-AdamsAlba de Cespedes |title=Walking to the MoonForbidden Notebook
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We meet the main character Jessica, or Jess as she is usually called, deep in This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an emotional black hole. She can see no light at the end air of the tunnel. And right suspense and tension from the startmoment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, right from page onepurchases her forbidden notebook, we have a sense of the beautiful and poetic language of Cole-Adams. 'Time and I have a new arrangement. We leave each other alone.' And indeed time is not important learns about herself in this novel. We have all the time in the world would probably be the motto of the medical staff - if they had onemost intimate and revealing ways. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1849161348</amazonuk>1782278222
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Ru FreemanOttessa Moshfegh|title=A Disobedient Girl|rating=5|genre=General Fiction|summary=''A Disobedient Girl'' follows two women struggling to retain control My Year of their lives in the face of servitude. Latha is a servant girl to the affluent Vithanage family, whose daughter, Thara, is Latha's age. As children, the girls are the best of friends, but they are destined to be separated by class, which is made painfully obvious when boys come into the picture. Meanwhile, Biso serves a cruel Rest and drunken husband who beats her and terrorises her children, one of whom is another man's love child. Biso's husband murdered her lover in a hateful rage when he uncovered her affair and she realises that she must escape his house if she and her children are to live. Latha too seeks escape, but she finds it in the arms of Thara's boyfriend and this sets off a chain of events that will echo far into her future.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917958</amazonuk>}} {{newreview|author=Simon Robson|title=CatchRelaxation|rating=43
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Catharine's husband Tom At best, this novel is away on business in Birmingham, a scathing critique of modern society and so Catharine awakes alone for reveals the first time in their little cottage fragility of human relationships; at worst, it is the end cynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of their lanean unlikeable protagonist. They moved there This unlikely heroine, a few months previouslyslim, attractive and since then Catharine has spent her days quietly awaiting newly orphaned girl in her husband's return from work. She twenties is sure that she will figure outdisillusioned with the world, some day, what her purpose in life is. She thought it might be but resolves not to have a baby, but they have been trying for some time and lose sleep over it hasn't happened as yet. Meanwhile she waits, and thinks: in fact, and waits. In the lounge stands her piano, a stark reminder of the life she didn't manage to realise because although she studied music she found, quite quickly, that solution lies in spite of being passionate she lacked any kind of talent for it whatsoever. So, on this day, alone at home, Catharine finds herself tormented by the piano's presence and over-thinking every second of the day. She worries away at who she is, and what her life is, as her loneliness and the day itself unravel around herhibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0224090232</amazonuk>1784707422
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Joe MenoMatthew Tree|title=The Great PerhapsWe'll Never Know
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jonathan Casper faints when he sees clouds. His wife Madeline worries about everything, not least the way the pigeons that she is studying are murdering each other. Their seventeen year old daughter Amelia Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to overthrow the evil empire be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of capitalism being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and is making her own bomb, while fourteen year old Thisbe is looking for God and praying who had endless crises of self confidence. So Tim applied himself to him. Jonathan's fatherhis studies, seventy six year old Henry, is planning cultivated his abilities rather than his disappearance. Jonathan daydreams and Madeline may be on the verge of splitting up, to the dismay of both daughtersset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0330512471</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Elizabeth KostovaB0C47LV1PC|title=The Swan ThievesFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=24
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=1999 – A renowned painter, Robert Oliver, goes mad, attacking Can you make a painting with a knife. He's arrested'Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, and sent to a psychiatrist who would it land? The catch is also an artistthat the answer for both could well be... The psychiatrist, Andrew Marlowe, can't get his patient to talk to him, but tries to investigate what drove him to this by talking to his wife and his girlfriend, and reading some letters Oliver seems obsessed with. no.
1879 – Beatrice de Clerval''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, aspiring artistOregon, corresponds with her uncle-by-marriage Olivier Vignot, a more experienced painter. Their letters will be found by Robert Oliver, 120 years later, and will lead cautiously begins to his loss of sanity.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847442404</amazonuk>emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Atiq RahimiMosby Woods|title=The Patience StoneA Whirly Man Loses His Turn|rating=54
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Set in Afghanistan, ''The Patience StoneWest isn'' is a partly allegorical tale of a Muslim wife tending to her comatose soldier husband who has been shot in t the neckdominant force it once was. As she cares for him, for Nobody in the first time ever she West is able quite sure how to speak to him without fear mend this or even if mending it is the best course of censorship and he becomesaction. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for herclimate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, like there was a man with precognition. Imagine the mythical Patience Stone to which strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you tell your troubles and when what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the stone finally burstsmost valuable asset in history. Imagine then, you are free from your torments. But also that this man loses this might mean the Apocalypseability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184167</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Joyce Carol Oates0571379559|title=A Fair MaidenThe House of Broken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=I've recently read the terrific short story collection ''The Female Of The SpeciesHouse of Broken Bricks'' also by Oates and couldn't wait to start her latest bookis the story of four people. 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 loverTess Hembry'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 scholarroots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, studying in Chinabut instead, finds herself caught up she lives in the search for a lost, sacred text that was inscribed house on an ancient scroll. The scroll was torn in two by Emperor Puyi years agothe riverbank, and was lostbuilt of broken bricks. After falling in love with a young grocer called Tumchooq the young woman becomes caught up in tales within talesInsubstantial as it might look, as she finds that Tumchooqit's father found and translated half stood the passage of the missing scroll and became obsessed with finding the other halftime, storms 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 titlefloods. OriginalHer husband, Richard, thought-provokingstruggles to grow his vegetables, quirky. The book revolves around a youngish man who has been admitted to an insane asylum (these two words alone make me want complete the delivery rounds - and to shiver) bring in modern-day Spainsufficient money. The staff They have their work cut outtwin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. He doesnSonny't remember s colouring reflects his name or anything at all about mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his pastfather. HePeople don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's sporadically violent - and he says he an assumption when Max is Christopher Columbus! As the Americans would say, go figureout with his mother that she's his nanny. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0330518844</amazonuk>
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
{{newreview|author=Su Tong|title=The Boat to Redemption|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Ku Dongliang and his father, Ku Wenxuan, are forced follow-up to live on a barge on the river following Ku Wenxuanexcellent ''Ithaca''s fall from gracepicks up a few months after where we left off. Originally believed to be In the son palace of a revolutionary martyrOdysseus, it is eventually proved that Mr Ku was not so - as a resultwith delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, his position in society takes a nose-divewho sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. Dongliang suffers as a result As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of this, finding it hard to make friends within the barge community Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on shore. Then an orphaned girl moves onto the barges and finds brink of a place in Dongliang's apparently cold heartfragile peace. Will she be able to take him out One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of himself? Or will sheMycenae, tooand his sister Elektra, turn her back on him?seeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>038561344X</amazonuk>0356516075
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Iain BanksKay Chronister|title=The Steep Approach to GarbadaleDesert Creatures|rating=4|genre=Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary=It took me With a while to realise world that Iain Banks isbecoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, most of allpost-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a teller world devoid of tales - I would call him water or a story-teller had nuclear holocaust, this term not became genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a complimentnew work of post-cum-invective usually reserved for the Jeffrey Archers and Dan Browns apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the modern publishing worldfears that exist for humanity today. This ability to tell stories - not to plot as much as to weave It is a yarn - combines with a penchant for creating appealing contexts for Banks' narratives shocking novel that still manages 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, charactersfind hope.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0349119287</amazonuk>1803364998
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{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Mary McCarthy Eric LaRocca|title=The GroupTrees Grew Because I Bled There|rating=4.5|genre=Literary FictionHorror|summary='Given the attention paid Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to relations between the sexes, it would be tempting to call The Group reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a forerunner of today's chick lit. It's not.Big Bad'' So writes Candace Bushnell, the writer behind the TV series Sex whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and the City, in by the introduction to this new Virago Modern Classics edition end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Group by Mary McCarthyTrees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. First published in 1963, this novel It is about the lives of a group collection of young women after leaving college short stories more interested in 1933, including careers, relationships, sex, babies, parentsthe horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and moneyare harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844085937</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Janice GallowayMadelaine Lucas|title=Collected StoriesThirst for Salt
|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>
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{{newreview
|author=Herta Muller
|title=The Passport
|rating=3
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Meet Windisch. A miller in a small village''Love, he trudges through thereI'd read, was supposed to be a light and through his neighbours, and through his life, counting his days and hoursweightless feeling, but I had always longed 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 mayorgravity''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 Told from a retrospective view, a happy young womanunravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. She has waited ten Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years for her lover senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to propose to her, and now just as he finally does, she has to go to Dublin to interview faded literary star Desmond Fitzmauriceits sorrowful end the summer after. Desmond promises his tale will be brimful Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''sex and violenceThirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, but Caroline has no idea of the mystery that lies at the heart of his storydepicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0755330544</amazonuk>0861546490
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Julian BarnesMichael Grothaus|title=Staring at the SunBeautiful Shining People
|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 But fearing something and he runs away having it come to Americapass are two different things. HeAnd I's replaced by Tommy Prosserm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, 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 marriesor we can take steps to change it. 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 ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the Mabinogion) |rating=4question of identity and acceptance.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Pwyll rules a medieval-style fiefdom in a post-climate change WalesOf what it means to be human. Life Of what is different in many ways - there's a new-but-old social order built on feudalism real and horsepower what is artificial, and whether the main means development 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 livestechnology is exciting or frightening. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1854115146</amazonuk>191458564X
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{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Owen SheersJennifer Saint|title=White Ravens (New Stories from the Mabinogion)Atalanta|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In the old tale''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, Branwen is not just in the sister name of Bendigeidfran - the giant King of Britaingoddess. She marries It was for the King sake of Irelandmy name, who doesntoo. Atalanta''t treat her well. She manages to send Bendigeidfran a message via a tamed starling and war and killings ensue.
In this new tale, a young girl has just walked away from her brothers who, in the wake of the devastating foot and mouth outbreak, are despoiling their heritage by rustling and illegally slaughtering sheepPrincess. She meets an old man who tells her a story involving the superstitions about the ravens in the Tower of London, propaganda work during World War II, and an equally doomed love affairWarrior. Lover. Hero. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1854115030</amazonuk>}}
{{newreview|author=Shirley Jackson|title=We Have Always Lived In The Castle|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Mary Katherine Blackwood, also known as MerricatAbandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is eighteen, and lives with her older sister Constance in raised under the family home where 'Blackwoods had always lived'. Merricat quickly draws protective eye of the reader goddess Athemis and fashioned into her world by a series of matter of fact but bizarre statements – her likes include her sister and death cap mushroomsformidable huntress, and everyone else in her family is deadone who longs for adventure. The wealthy Blackwood family has always kept When the house 'steady against opportunity comes – to join the world'Argonauts, shutting out other peoplea fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and they live near carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a village. Merricat believes that 'The people whirlwind of the village have always hated uschallenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis', and tells us fatal warning: that if she hates them toomarries, it will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141191457</amazonuk>1472292154
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{{newreview|author=Deborah Gregory|title=Dancing With The Dead|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=I wanted to read ''Dancing with the Dead'', because I'm interested in family history. The blurb on the back of the book also mentioned Gill – our heroine of the piece – was moving from Bristol (my current home) to Lincolnshire (where I was born and brought up). I felt with all these links, the novel could not fail to interest me – but this was not the case.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529305</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Elizabeth BainesAmanthi Harris|title=Too Many MagpiesBeautiful Place|rating=45
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Becoming Padma, a mother brings a whole new world young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of fear into your lifeher home country. Suddenly you see the danger in every situation, and fear and trepidation can be become your constant companionsThis is a place she spent her formative years. In this novella, we meet a young mother who It is married to not a logical scientistplace she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. They attempt How she came to control their children's futures on a scientific basisbe at the Villa, how it became her home, growing their own fruit and vegetables, giving their children nothing sugary, eating no eggs the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for a whole year until any adverse affects from them were disprovedthis gentle and yet subtly violent novel. But after meeting with an enigmatic stranger our young mother begins Padma's present fails to struggle as he introduces ideas of freedom into escape her world. She begins an affair with him, begins to let things slip at home past and with much like the childrenmusical score of a film, yet finds she is still continuously haunted by that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the sense of an ever-present dangerVilla.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1844717216</amazonuk>1784631930
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Katherine May178563335X|title=Burning Out|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Violet has it all – a well-paid job, and a luxurious apartment all to herself. Everything is catered for; her meals, her clothes, and her health are all how she would like them to be. But the life she is leading is beginning to take its toll. On the verge of snapping, a drained and somewhat out-of-sorts Violet, withdraws back to her home town. There, she meets someone familiar, a ghost reminding her of how she used to be ten years earlier – a young carefree girl, full of life. Only this isn't a ghost, but a girl living the life Violet once lived – exactly the same. Haunted by the past Violet realizes history is repeating itself and is convinced events will happen again. Events that will in turn haunt the girl.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906727392</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewSea Defences|author=Tove Jansson|title=The True DeceiverHilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Most people of my age will have come across JanssonWhen 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, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's work unwittinglydaughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, via on the televised renditions Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the Moomin tales. The readers amongst us would vicar, Gail, but then have she's been entranced a few doing the job for more than thirty years ago to discover . Rachel and Christopher hoped that at last Thomas Teal had set about a walk on the translation into English, first of The Summer Book and beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then of a collection of short stories which were published as 'A Winter Book'Hannah went missing. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0954899571</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Daniel Kehlmann 1398515388|title=Me The Boy and the Dog|author=Seishu Hase and KaminskiAlison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary General Fiction|summary=After reviewing several long booksFirst of all, it's been refreshing to read such a fluent yet pared down story as 'Kaminski and Me'. In itwas the earthquake, Sebastian Zollnerdeep in the ocean floor, which created the obnoxious main charactertsunami and this, shoves himself forward in a desperate attempt to research a best seller which will re-ignite his career as an art critic. Kaminskiturn, caused the proposed subject, nuclear meltdown. The result was a fashionable painter long ago, but nowcomplete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, ancient and chronically ill, has virtually slid into oblivionthe loss of livelihoods was widespread. So The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the secondtsunami -rate writer is on Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a loser unless dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he can dig up some juicy details would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to hook open his car door and Tamon the art world and general publicdog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847249892</amazonuk>
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{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hilary Dixon0989715337|title=When Rooks Speak of LovePapa on the Moon|author=Marco North
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Arthur Transcombe is a middle-aged, grey-haired, self-effacing poet. Unremarkable really - on the outside. He has, however, managed to achieve some success with his poems. (Being a guest speaker at ''Some frogs had gotten into the Cheltenham Literary Festival is no mean feat)well. He is also a babe magnet!|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1904529429</amazonuk>}}''
{{newreview|author=David Malouf |title=Ransom|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Taking his theme from a small part of Homer's Iliad, Malouf tells the story of the king of Troy, Priam's griefWalter stood waist-stricken voyage into deep in the Greek camp to ransom Troy's wealth fragrant water, naked except for the body his beaten leather hat. Long strands of his fallen sontheir eggs wove around him, Hector, killed by sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the equally grief-stricken Achilles whose great friend Hector had killed in battle before Achilles took his cruel revenge. Malouf tells dogs leaned over the story in sparse, yet lyrical opening and poetic fashion suggesting barked down at the personal stories behind strange noise of the epic themes that Homer related. It is an exquisitely written piece managing to be both deeply moving buckets as well as a great piece of story tellinghe filled them.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701184159</amazonuk>}}''
{{newreview|author=David Vann |title=Legend How is that for an opening? The style of a Suicide|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=Some books defy categorisation and that's this novel in the case with ''Legend of a Suicide''. Is it Literary Fiction? Is it a series form of interconnected short stories linked by a common themegoes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, or turning on a novella with supporting pieces? Is it fiction with a strong autobiographical thread running through it? The simple answer to all these questions is ''yes'' – for the book is all that and moresixpence. It's also a compelling page-turner – I began reading at ten o'clock last night and finished it at three thirty this morningAnd author Marco North, resenting every moment away from who has the bookmost wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0141043784</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview|author=Milan Kundera|title=The Book of Laughter and Forgetting|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=It's with a somehow guilty feeling that I admit that I have never been particularly fond of Milan Kundera. He's certainly a very good writer and undoubtedly a very intelligent man capable of interesting philosophical insights. All those qualities contributed to a cult status accorded to Kundera, compounded by the frisson of political subversion – never a harmful thing for a writer from what used to be known as Eastern Europe (but which returned to its status as Middle (or Central) Europe with the fall of the Iron Curtain).|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057117437X</amazonuk>}} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Andrew Miller Daisy Hildyard|title=One Morning Like A BirdEmergency
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Tokyo in 1940 is a place that we British tend not to give a great deal The summary of thought this book doesn't come close to. Japan entered the war, we say, explaining what is done with the attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, completely forgetting that Japan, like most of the rest of the world, was already a country at war. She had been fighting in China since 1937 and was making in-roads into European colonial territory in the area as wellpremise.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0340825154</amazonuk>1913097811}}
{{newreviewFrontpage |author=Sadie Jones Sally Oliver |title=Small WarsThe Weight of Loss |rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Even though our world Marianne is ostensibly at peace, hundreds grieving. Traumatised after the death of localizedher sister, unwinnable conflicts continue she awakes to grumble on. Mostlyfind strange, we only hear and care about thick black hairs sprouting from the ones involving 'our boys', as if war was some giant game bones of footballher spine which steadily increase in size and volume. But it isn'tHer GP, and ''Small Wars'' reflects on diagnosing the casualties of war in odd phenomenon as a story set in Cyprus physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in the Two-Way Family Favourites era of the nineteen-fiftiesWales. It may turn out Yet something strange is happening to be an important book as Marianne and the public mood turns against the 'war on terror' in Afghanistanother patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. ItAs Marianne's certainly memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a prescient oneterrible price: that of identity itself.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0701184558</amazonuk>086154112X }} {{newreviewFrontpage|author=Evelyn WaughNatalia Garcia Freire|title=A Handful of DustThis World Does Not Belong To Us
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A complex class society which evolved into Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a highly sophisticated culture delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is invariably perhaps using the expression in a fertile ground for development of social satire, and British literature would way I'm not familiar with. I have been hugely depleted if all novels that can be regarded as such were suddenly to disappearconfess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. Evelyn Waugh made From the genre his ownlittle I have read (in translation, and I don''A Handful of Dust'' is t read Spanish) there does seem to be a sublime example of his mastery of ittendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0141183969</amazonuk>0861541901
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|author=William Trevor Jennifer Saint|title=Love and SummerElektra|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='Elektra'Love and Summer'' is set in by Jennifer Saint tells the small town story of Rathmoye three women who live in a rural Ireland 'some years after the middle heavily male dominated world of the last century'Ancient Greece. The novel charts the doomed love affair between EllieCassandra, a young farmer's wifeClytemnestra, and Florian, Elektra are all bit players in the Irish-Italian son story of two artists, but it as much about the place Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and time in which it is setthe most extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0670918245</amazonuk>1472273915
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Bryony Doran 8409290103|title=The China BirdIf Only|author=Matthew Tree|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Edward is a sad and solitary figure. Late middleTwenty-aged, twistedone-spined and humpyear-backed, a loner who works in the archive basement of the library, lodges with Mrs Ingrams who makes old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his tea and ruins his laundryfather, and hoards letters from cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his mother. Like many an unmarried man with an agingaccountant, widowed motherMr Patrick, Edward finds his relationship with her somewhat strainedto ensure that the young man got on board the boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. Unlike many Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of those mensorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, his relationship it was always that way. She is rude and demanding, and he either doesndidn't care to have the strength or the inclination him in this country where he might be a danger to force the issue with herhis wife and other children. Apart from an occasion half-hearted reprimand, he stands back, ignores, makes excusesThe alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the young man on his way.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>095556302X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jude Morgan B098FFFBH9|title=The Taste of SorrowSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The children were born in Thornton, Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a suburb of Bradford, and compared with where they were competition entry to go it was a soft living. Howarth was high up on highlight the Yorkshire Moors, industrialised and with weather way in which chilled to human beings exploit the boneanimal world. The parsonage was four-square but draughty She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and not exactly welcomingher twin, Nick. TheyKate runs the family business, of coursea toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, were the Brontë family. The father was the impoverished curate and his six children had somehow to be cared for after his wifewhich is where we'll meet Rachel's death from cancermain (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755338898</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Agnes Owens
|title=The Complete Novellas
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Who is Agnes Owens? A Scottish author who portrays working class life from the nineteen forties and fifties. Now an octogenarian, apparently Agnes Owens started writing at the age of 58. Here are five previously published stories collected into one new edition, a companion volume to her short stories, published in 2008. I don't think you'll be disappointed.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846971373</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview|author=J M Coetzee|title=Summertime|rating=4.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Summertime'' is the third of a series of fictionalised autobiographies by J M Coetzee, following Move on from ''Boyhood'' and ''Youth''. There, that sounds straightforward enough, doesn't it? Except, in this 'autobiography' (or 'autrebiography' as one critic described the earlier volumes) the subject is dead. So, clearly, this story isn't 'true'. But then, how true is an ordinary autobiography? And to what extent is it a function of the novel to use fiction to reveal truth? So many questions, and I haven't even begun.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846553180</amazonuk>}}[[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]