Difference between revisions of "Newest Literary Fiction Reviews"

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[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
 
[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]
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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__
==Literary fiction==
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{{Frontpage
__NOTOC__
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|author=Eowyn Ivey
{{newreview
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|title=Black Woods Blue Sky
|author=Natasa Dragnic and Liesl Schillinger (translator)
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|rating=3.5
|title=Every Day, Every Hour
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|genre=Literary Fiction
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|summary=''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Described as a ''wild card'', she feels stuck in her day-to-day life, and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man, who says he has a cabin over there, she feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.
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|isbn=1472279042
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Sally Rooney
 +
|title=Intermezzo
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Humour
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|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Dora and Luka meet and become firm friends. In normal situations one might add ''and a whole lot more'' to that sentence, but Dora and Luka are in Kindergarten, which makes their intense relationship hard to define. As they grow into adults, however, it becomes obvious that there is something between them and no matter how much they, or their circumstances, try to fight this it is there and is not going to fade away. Dora’s parents move her across the continent, careers develop and flourish, out of nowhere they are enveloped by family lives, but still there is an invisible bond that draws them back to one another.
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|summary=Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0701186941</amazonuk>
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|isbn=0571365469
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Fyodor Dostoyevsky
|author=Alissa Walser and Jamie Bulloch (translator)
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|title=White Nights
|title=Mesmerized
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|rating=5
|rating=4
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|genre=Short Stories
|genre=Historical Fiction
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|summary=As always in Dostoyevsky, the character work is sublime. One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity.
|summary=Celebrated scientist (at least in his own mind) Franz Anton Mesmer is called upon to cure the blindness of 18 year old piano virtuoso and courtier's daughter Marie Theresia Paradis. Despite the unease of her parents, Mesmer installs Marie into his 'magnetic hospital' where, alongside his other patients, she settles in to a regime of treatment, including free access to Mesmer's beloved piano.  Mesmer is the Paradis' last resort and so they're happy to pay for success but they come to realise that the final cost may not be entirely financial and he realises that the result may not be beneficial to all parties.
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|isbn=0241619785
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051008</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=James Baldwin
|author=Nikita Lalwani
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|title=Giovanni's Room
|title=The Village
 
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 +
|genre=Literary Fiction
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|summary=''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.
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|isbn=0141186356
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}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Alba de Cespedes
 +
|title=Forbidden Notebook
 +
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A BBC film crew is sent to India to make a documentary about an Indian prison with a difference.  There are no walls, the prisoners hold down jobs and their families live with them as a condition of acceptance.  In fact, to all intents and purposes, it seems like an ordinary village which is all the more unusual when you consider that they all share the same crime category; all the prisoners have been convicted of murder.  The programme makers (20-something British-born, Indian director Ray, ruthless producer Serena and ex-convict-turned-presenter, Nathan) are expecting an eventful shoot and, in return, the inhabitants are expecting a film unit exhibiting the standards for which the BBC has become world famous.  Both parties will be sorely disappointed.
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|summary=This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the moment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, purchases her forbidden notebook, and learns about herself in the most intimate and revealing ways.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670917087</amazonuk>
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|isbn=1782278222
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Ottessa Moshfegh
|author=Lionel Shriver
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|title=My Year of Rest and Relaxation
|title=The New Republic
 
 
|rating=3
 
|rating=3
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=
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|summary=At best, this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the fragility of human relationships; at worst, it is the cynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. This unlikely heroine, a slim, attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the world, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, her solution lies in her hibernation.
Lionel Shriver adds a beard-shaped appendage to Southern Portugal in The New Republic and immediately has it fighting for independence, taking a wry look at terrorism as well as the ethics of the international press corps. After a series of international terrorism acts, the Os Soldados Ousados De Barba, or the SOB for short, have gone quiet at the same time as charismatic journalist Barrington Sadler has vanished without a trace. Insecure former lawyer Edgar Kellogg steps into Barrington's post: Kellogg on the hunt for serial killers, as it were.  
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|isbn=1784707422
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007459807</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Matthew Tree
|author=Anne Sward
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|title=We'll Never Know
|title=Breathless
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|rating=4.5
|rating=3.5
 
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There are those who say that, on an individual level, books are like Marmite: you love it or you hate it.  Oh, if only it were so easy.
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|summary= Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, 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. So Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.
 
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|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8
''Breathless'' is one of those that I neither love nor hate, and yet am not totally uninspired by either.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857051032</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
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{{Frontpage
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|isbn=B0C47LV1PC
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|title=Fragility
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|author=Mosby Woods
 +
|rating=4
 +
|genre=Literary Fiction
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|summary= Can you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.
  
{{newreview
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''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic
|author=Hilary Mantel
 
|title=Bring up the Bodies
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Historical Fiction
 
|summary=Thomas Cromwell is now very far from his humble beginnings. He is Henry VIII's chief minister. Katherine of Aragorn is no longer Queen. The Princess Mary has been disinherited. Anne Boleyn wears the crown and has produced a daughter, Elizabeth. But there is no sign of a son and Henry is beginning to regret his secession from Rome. We pick up from Wolf Hall during the royal progress of 1535 and from there, we chart the destruction of the new Queen.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0007315090</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Mosby Woods
|author=Martin Kohan
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|title=A Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|title=School for Patriots
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=There's a fair chance that if you pick up a South American novel, it's going to score quite highly on the 'seriously odd' scale. Martín Kohan's School for Patriots, translated by Nick Caistor, doesn't disappoint in that regard. The main character, María Teresa, is an innocent, shy teaching assistant at a Buenos Aires school that is run on military academy style discipline. The running of the school is itself something of a surprise but that's not what makes this strange. What ramps up the 'odd' factor here is that she spends vast amounts of this short novel hiding in the boys' loo, ostensibly to catch young boys smoking despite there being no evidence that any student has contravened this rule in this location. One might say she has nothing to go on. Then again, best not in the circumstances.
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|summary= The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the 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 push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687438</amazonuk>
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|isbn=B0C9SNG8R1
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=0571379559
|author=Alonso Cueto and Frank Wynne (translator)
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|title=The House of Broken Bricks
|title=The Blue Hour
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|author=Fiona Williams
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Adrian Ormache, middle class Peruvian lawyer, has a beautiful wife, two daughters of the sort to make any parent proud and a comfortable lifestyleHis parents divorced when he was small so, as he lived with his mother, he has fragmented memories of a gruff, distant dadDespite his father's aloof, dictatorial manner, Adrian has always comforted himself with the fact he played a useful role as a land-bound naval officer, fighting Senderista terrorists for the good of PeruAfter the death of his mother everything changesAdrian finds documents that lead him away from his beliefs, towards a truth that will shatter more than his father's image.
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|summary=''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people.  Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricksInsubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and floodsHer husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money.  They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twinsSonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his fatherPeople don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434019410</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author=Claire North
 +
|title=House of Odysseus
 +
|rating=5
 +
|genre= Literary Fiction
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|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
  
{{newreview
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The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.
|author=Fannie Flagg
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|isbn=0356516075
|title=I Still Dream About You
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=
 
At the age of 60, Maggie Fortenbury's glory days seem to have passed her by. An ex-Miss Alabama, she headed for the fame she dreamt of in 'the Big Apple' and ended, instead, making disastrous life choices that took her along a different route. However she had made one good decision: to work for the diminutive Hazel Whisenkott, midget and founder of Red Mountain Realty.  Now, as Hazel is dead, and despite her friendship with her colleagues (obese, optimistic Brenda and moaning Ethel), suicide seems the next logical step.  It has to be done correctly as Maggie comes from an era when you wouldn't want to let anyone down or any commitment unfulfilled.  Therefore picking her final day becomes increasingly difficult when other things get in the way, including a troupe of Whirling Dervishes.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099555484</amazonuk>
 
 
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}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author= Kay Chronister
|author=Fiona McGregor
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|title= Desert Creatures
|title=Indelible Ink
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|rating= 4
|rating=4
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|genre= Dystopian Fiction
|genre=Literary Fiction
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|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.
|summary=Once wealthy, middle class Australian suburbanite Marie King never thought she'd be starting a new life at 59 but here she is, divorced and having to sell the marital home. Unfortunately, attached to the marital home is the marital garden into which Marie didn't only give life but also pour her own life.  However, Marie tries to be positive and decides that if she's going to be a new person, she may as well go the whole way. This means tattoos (much to her offsprings' horror) and an unlikely friendship with tattooist Rhys.  With that comes the realisation that the privileged suburb of Mossman isn't all there is to Sydney.  There's much more to the city, and indeed herself, than she first thought.
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|isbn=1803364998
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857894129</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1803363002
|author=Jude Morgan
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|author= Eric LaRocca
|title=The Secret Life of William Shakespeare
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|title= The Trees Grew Because I Bled There
|rating=4.5
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|rating= 5
|genre=Historical Fiction
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|genre= Horror
|summary=Books about Shakespeare vary hugely both in terms of approach and quality. Some focus on historical fact, while others play rather more loosely with the romance of his life. Fortunately for readers, Jude Morgan's books are rather more reliably excellent. What's more, he has a track record of fiction that concerns great writers, having previously tackled the Brontës (''The Taste of Sorrow'') and the romantic poets (''Passion''). So my expectations were already quite high coming into his ''The Secret Life of William Shakespeare'' - expectations that he has again surpassed.
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|summary= 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 story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0755358228</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Madelaine Lucas
|author=David Vann
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|title=Thirst for Salt
|title=Dirt
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|rating=5
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=We're back in the mid-nineteen-eighties in a suburb of Sacramento and Galen lives with his mother on the family walnut farm.  The farm's not what it was, largely having been left to its own devices since the death of Galen's abusive grandfather some years before.  Galen's ''father'' is something of an unknown quantity - his mother won't even discuss who he was or tell Galen anything about him, but then she's able to shut her mind to most things which she finds unpleasant.  ''Her'' mother has been moved from the farm to a nursing home - she's still quite active but her memory is going.  Suzie-Q's sister, Helen is determined to get her hands on the family money for the benefit of her seventeen-year-old daughter, Jennifer.
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|summary= ''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0434021962</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
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Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.
|author=Chuck Palahniuk
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|isbn=0861546490
|title=Invisible Monsters Remix
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=General Fiction
 
|summary='Don't expect this to be the kind of story that goes: and then, and then, and then.'  And yet... Once upon a time I collected a couple of Palahniuk books, upon his first, ''Fight Club''-inspired flush of British success, and never got round to reading them.  And then the book reviewing gods conspired to give me [[Pygmy by Chuck Palahniuk|Pygmy]], [[Tell-All by Chuck Palahniuk|Tell-All]] and [[Damned by Chuck Palahniuk|Damned]] to peruse.  And then I still didn't go back through his past works.  But then he revised Invisible Monsters, his second-written and third-published novel, and I got to look at it after all.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099575051</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
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{{Frontpage
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|author= Michael Grothaus
 +
|title=Beautiful Shining People
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|rating=4
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|genre= Literary Fiction
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|summary= ''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.''
  
{{newreview
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''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening.
|author=Marie N'Diaye and John Fletcher (translator)
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|isbn=191458564X
|title=Three Strong Women
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=As it says on the tin, this powerful novel revolves around three women, connected by their strength and two countries and diverse cultures (France and Africa) but also other, more subtle factors. (More of that later.)  First there's lawyer, Norah, returning to Africa at the behest of her estranged father. There has never been love lost between them, mainly because her father prefers to ignore his female offspring; therefore his reason for the summons is a mystery, until...  The second story is that of African teacher, Fanta, forced by an event beyond her control to leave Africa and settle in France with her husband Rudy.  Then the final section belongs to Khady, widowed after three years of marriage and sent to France by her Cinderella-esque mother-in-law.  As Khady's status as a childless widow is financially unattractive, it has been deemed that she would be of more use sending money back from Europe... once she has entered France as an illegal immigrant.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857050567</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Jennifer Saint
|author=Marcello Fois
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|title=Atalanta
|title=Memory of the Abyss
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|rating=5
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=We are on Sardinia, over a hundred years ago.  It is a land of legend, where storytellers can see a different nature to the moon each night and convey that in their earthly stories.  It's a world of wonder, where sheep can fall from the skies for more than one reason.  It's a poor land, where lads are expected to be responsible shepherds by the time they are ten.  As a result people look after each other - except, while returning from a Christening Samuele and his father are refused basic hospitality.  Later when the boy runs away one night the land falls away beneath him - yet he finds a girl to ground him to this earth.  Which is most relevant when he goes to war, and particularly when he comes back and finds himself a wronged man, and in need of vengeance...
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1906694001</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Kim Thuy and Sheila Fischman (translator)
 
|title=Ru
 
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Everyone of a certain age will remember the American withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975.  This was the answer to years of student protests and the prayers of many US parents who saw sons like theirs drafted to war only to return in body bags. As far as the west was concerned, the suffering was over.  However, for the Vietnamese people, the suffering continued as the Khmer Rouge and then the invading Cambodians killed, tortured and destroyed people who were just trying to survive. ''Ru'' is written by and about one such person.
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|summary=''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the name of the goddess. It was for the sake of my name, too. Atalanta''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846685486</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
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Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero.
|author=Belinda Seaward
 
|title=The Beautiful Truth
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=There are two parallel story lines in Belinda Seaward's ''The Beautiful Truth'': one set in the present day and one in wartime Poland. Both involve love stories and personal struggles, and there are repeating themes such as horses and the stars that effectively provide links between the two in this clearly well-researched and engrossing narrative.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0719521114</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
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Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing.
|author=Helen Noble
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|isbn=1472292154
|title=Tears of a Phoenix
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=It was almost inevitable that Jed Johnson would follow his brothers into crime. The slippery slope from care to young offenders' institute to an eventual life sentence was almost predictable despite his mother's attempts to raise him for responsibility. However, once serving the life sentence, Jed has time to think and, aided by Elisabeth, a prison service psychologist, he assesses his past and decides how he'd like his future to look. Decision doesn't guarantee fulfilment though, and Jed has a long way to go before he knows how his story will end.  
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846949882</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|author=Amanthi Harris
|author=Kathleen MacMahon
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|title=Beautiful Place
|title=This Is How It Ends
 
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=
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|summary= Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of 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'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel.  Padma'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 Villa.
This is an incredibly gentle (and gently funny) love story set in the winter of 2008 when the Irish economy was booming and the US were about to elect their first black president. Hugh (a deliciously grumpy surgeon) and his currently unemployed architect daughter Addie lived happily in an Irish seaside town. Ok, he'd broken both his wrists tripping over Addie's dog and Addie found it hard not to cry sometimes, but they were alright. Then one day, out of the blue, they receive a voicemail message from Bruno, a distant American relative who's just popped over the ocean to say 'Hi!' Remembering the last US relative who came to visit (it didn't go well), Addie and Hugh decide to ignore the phone... and the front door... and the occupant of the bench seat across the road... He's bound to go home eventually.  
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|isbn=1784631930
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847445462</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=178563335X
|author=Carolyn Jess-Cooke
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|title=Sea Defences
|title=The Boy Who Could See Demons
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|author=Hilary Taylor
 
|rating=5
 
|rating=5
|genre=Fantasy
 
|summary=Alex can see demons. He's been able to ever since his dad left when he was five years old. Some demons are hideous, some are frightening, and some just lurk in corners doing not much at all. One is called Ruen, and he's Alex's best friend.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0749953136</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Jess Richards
 
|title=Snake Ropes
 
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=It's the time for the tall mainland men to come to the island to trade, so 16 year old Mary preparesShe brings out her handmade 'broideries' and hides Barney, her little brother, in a cupboard.  This is a necessary preparation born of fear, for the island boys have been vanishing, taken by the tradersOn this particular day Mary's broideries go, but so does Barney.
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|summary=When 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 parishionerThelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson.  Holthorpe, on the 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 vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty yearsRachel and Christopher hoped that a walk 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>144473783X</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
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{{Frontpage
{{newreview
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|isbn=1398515388
|author=Ginny Baily
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|title=The Boy and the Dog
|title=Africa Junction
+
|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
+
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Adele has made a mess of her life and she knows it. Working with the stresses of being a teacher as well as a single mother and having shrugged off a disastrous relationship, her life seems to be set on self-destruct. Part of the problem is that the past won't leave her alone. Adele is haunted by the memory of Ellena, a friend from her childhood in Senegal, Africa. With one unthinking, childish action, Adele inadvertently devastated Ellena's family so, in order to go forward, Adele must go back to the continent where it all began.  
+
|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown.  The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread.  The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store.  He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099552728</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Laszlo Krasznahorkai
+
|isbn=0989715337
|title=Satantango
+
|title=Papa on the Moon
|rating=3
+
|author=Marco North
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=
 
A small community in rural Hungary is unsettled. One man has too much control over the place, with too much influence on the work done there, and over all the lives lived there. His effect is still felt, even though he has been dead for over a year. So whether you are the man itching to finish a swindle and leave with the proceedings, or the doctor, confined by will to a chair at his window, making the most personal, immaculate notes about the whole existence of the community, or the housewife whose loins still mourn the influence of said man, you are unsettled - especially when the dead man is said to be returning...
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848877641</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Peter Carey
 
|title=The Chemistry of Tears
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=As he has done before on several occasions, Peter Carey offers us two parallel stories in his intriguingly titled 'The Chemistry of Tears'. The two elements of the title reflect that this is a book about grief, but also about science. It's also a book about human's relationship with machines and dependence that we have grown to have on them, and the ugliness of life and the beauty of, at least some, machines. In one strand of the story, Catherine is a modern day horologist working in a London museum whose world is shattered by the death of a married colleague with whom she was having an affair. Put to work on restoring a mysterious clockwork bird, she discovers the journals of Henry Brandling, the nineteenth century wealthy man who commissioned the construction of the toy for his consumptive son.
+
|summary=''Some frogs had gotten into the well.''
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>057127997X</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
+
''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he filled them.''
|author=Laurent Binet
 
|title=HHhH
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=First, the title.  ''HHhH'' is short for ''Himmlers Hirn heisst Heydrich'' - Himmler's brain was called Heydrich. In other words, it's not a case of 'behind every great Nazi there's a greater woman', but behind Hitler's own deputy was a major strength to the party. Reinhard Heydrich was the ruler of what practically corresponds to the Czech Republic, led the SS and more, and bossed the workings of the Final Solution. Any good biography of this compelling character in those interesting times - given too the subplot of those who would assassinate him - is bound to be an excellent history book.  But, despite this getting a high rating, this isn't one.  Why not?  The author says so.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846554799</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
+
How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, who has the most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to go on.
|author=Anne Tyler
 
|title=Breathing Lessons
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=This Pulitzer Prize winning novel revolves around 24 hours in the lives of Maggie and Ira Moran as they attend a friend's funeral and make a detour on the way home. As the couple spend the day together they share events from their past that put their present in context.  I know this seems a somewhat sparse structure for a story but don't be put off.  Somewhere between [[:Category:Anne Tyler|Anne Tyler's]] idea and its execution, something very good happens.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099201410</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Daisy Hildyard
|author=Jacques Chessex
+
|title=Emergency
|title=The Tyrant
 
 
|rating=4
 
|rating=4
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Jean Calmet, teacher of Latin in a lycee of the 1960s in Switzerland, is confronting his father's death. He can hardly be said to be coming to terms with it, for Calmet pere was and remains a crushing force in Jean's life, and although the death would in many similar novels be a release, here his father's cremation serves to batter Jean into a beaten state. His relations with his work, his lover, his students are all suffused with not a sense of loss but a sense of continuing and growing dominance by the ghost of his father. The authoritian presence seems to grow as a spectre rather than diminish through his death.
+
|summary=
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>190473894X</amazonuk>
+
The summary of this book doesn't come close to explaining what is done with the premise.
}}
+
|isbn=1913097811
 +
}}  
  
{{newreview
+
{{Frontpage
|author=Kitty Aldridge
+
|author=Sally Oliver
|title=A Trick I Learned from Dead Men
+
|title=The Weight of Loss
|rating=4.5
+
|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 pain—but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself.
 +
|isbn= 086154112X
 +
}}
 +
{{Frontpage
 +
|author=Natalia Garcia Freire
 +
|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us
 +
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Kitty Aldridge's ''A Trick I Learned from Dead Men'' is a touchingly written, quirky story set in the world of funeral homes. The narrator is twenty-something Lee Hart. He's not the sharpest tool in the box, but his life has been tough. His father left when he was young and his mother has recently died of cancer leaving him, his step-father, a sofa-bound television make-over show addict and his deaf and wayward younger brother, Ned to fend for themselves. Lee lands a job as a trainee at the local funeral home helping Derek prepare the dead for burial or cremation. Far from being a dead end job though, it is here that he learns, ironically, about life and love, in the form of the delivery girl from the local florists.
+
|summary= Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight.  I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the expression in a way I'm not familiar with.  I have to confess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. From the little I have read (in translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.  
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224096435</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=0861541901
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|author=Jennifer Saint
|author=Roland Vernon
+
|title=Elektra
|title=The Good Wife's Castle
+
|rating=4
|rating=5
 
|genre=Crime
 
|summary=We start with a father's suicide, a child watching as he steps of the chair in the milking room with the noose around his neck.  A father who died for shame.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0552775533</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
 
 
{{newreview
 
|author=Charlotte Rogan
 
|title=The Lifeboat
 
|rating=4.5
 
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Charlotte Rogan's debut novel ''The Lifeboat'' takes an unexpected look at life on a lifeboat of a sunken liner, midway between the sinking of the ''Titanic'' and the ''Lusitania''. In many ways, a lifeboat presents an ideal situation for a novelist. You have a set number of characters and clear boundaries. But there's only so much interest in 'we were scared' and 'oh, look here comes another big wave'. Her solution is to take the story as one of moral and ethical choices rather than an out and out adventure. As her narrator, Grace Winter, concludes 'it was not the sea that was cruel, but the people'.
+
|summary='Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and the most extreme furies.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1844087522</amazonuk>
+
|isbn=1472273915
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=8409290103
|author=Zoya Pirzad
+
|title=If Only
|title=Things We Left Unsaid
+
|author=Matthew Tree
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Life in Iran is good for Armenian Clarice Ayvazian.  She lives comfortably in an oil company town, devoting her middle class life to her engineer husband, teenage son and young twin daughtersHer mother and sister, Alice, drop in from time to time during the course of the day, but are perfectly manageable for her (in small doses)However, when an elderly woman, her middle-aged son and his tween-age daughter move in across the road they bring turmoil in their wake and Clarice's perception of her happiness is torn apart.
+
|summary=Twenty-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 allowancePatrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - 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, it was that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and other childrenThe alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the young man on his way.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1851689257</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
 
+
{{Frontpage
{{newreview
+
|isbn=B098FFFBH9
|author=Mark Haddon
+
|title=Snowcub
|title=The Red House
+
|author=Graham Fulbright
 
|rating=4.5
 
|rating=4.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Richard and Angela - brother and sister - are reunited at their mother's funeral.  Richard is well-to-do and recently remarried with a teenage stepdaughterAngela is the main breadwinner in her family as her husband scrapes a wage by working in Waterstones and somehow they and their three children get byRichard is aware that he hasn't much left in the way of family and tries to build some bridges with Angela by way of offering that the eight of them should have a week's holiday in a cottage on the Welsh borders.  So, there's four adults, four children and a lot of emotional baggage.  Oh, and there's Karen - Angela's stillborn daughter who would have been eighteen that week.
+
|summary=Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal worldShe gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, NickKate runs the family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224096400</amazonuk>
 
 
}}
 
}}
  
{{newreview
 
|author=Knud Romer and John Mason (translator)
 
|title=Nothing But Fear
 
|rating=5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=The Danish writer/actor Knud Romer has a gallery of fascinating relatives which collectively feature in ''Nothing But Fear''.  This biographical novel is a collection of memories from his grandparents' era, moving forward, to that of his parents, including World War II and his own childhood in 1960s and 70s small town Denmark.  The vignettes aren't in chronological order but that's because memories normally aren't.  The stories are narrated almost as if they're fresh from the mind, ensuring a natural flow.  The interesting thing is that no matter how fascinating his other relatives are my mind's eye always seemed to return to one: his mother, Hildegard.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687144</amazonuk>
 
}}
 
  
{{newreview
+
Move on to [[Newest Paranormal Reviews]]
|author=Gwendoline Riley
 
|title=Opposed Positions
 
|rating=3.5
 
|genre=Literary Fiction
 
|summary=There is a reason why Gwendoline Riley has something of a cult following. She is technically innovative and very good at what she does, but the subject matter is invariably dark and downbeat which prevents mass market appeal. In that respect Opposed Positions is very much business as usual then. The subject matter most evident here is misogyny and the damaging impact it has both directly and indirectly on people. It's painful to read at times; it feels as if the narrator, an occasional novelist, Aislinn Kelly, is picking at the scab of her life and her family in a way that feels shocking and, for all the wry observations, remains uncomfortable to read.
 
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224094238</amazonuk>
 
}}
 

Latest revision as of 16:14, 21 November 2024

1472279042.jpg

Review of

Black Woods Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey

3.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Black Woods Blue Sky tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Described as a wild card, she feels stuck in her day-to-day life, and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man, who says he has a cabin over there, she feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever. Full Review

0571365469.jpg

Review of

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials. Full Review

0241619785.jpg

Review of

White Nights by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

5star.jpg Short Stories

As always in Dostoyevsky, the character work is sublime. One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity. Full Review

0141186356.jpg

Review of

Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Giovanni's Room follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni. Full Review

1782278222.jpg

Review of

Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Cespedes

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the moment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, purchases her forbidden notebook, and learns about herself in the most intimate and revealing ways. Full Review

1784707422.jpg

Review of

My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh

3star.jpg Literary Fiction

At best, this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the fragility of human relationships; at worst, it is the cynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. This unlikely heroine, a slim, attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the world, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: in fact, her solution lies in her hibernation. Full Review

B0CVFXPGP8.jpg

Review of

We'll Never Know by Matthew Tree

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, 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. So Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions. Full Review

B0C47LV1PC.jpg

Review of

Fragility by Mosby Woods

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

Can you make a Yo birthing person joke? And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.

Fragility is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic Full Review

B0C9SNG8R1.jpg

Review of

A Whirly Man Loses His Turn by Mosby Woods

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the 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 push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back? Full Review

0571379559.jpg

Review of

The House of Broken Bricks by Fiona Williams

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

The House of Broken Bricks is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny. Full Review

0356516075.jpg

Review of

House of Odysseus by Claire North

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

What could matter more than love?

The follow-up to the excellent Ithaca picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge. Full Review

1803364998.jpg

Review of

Desert Creatures by Kay Chronister

4star.jpg Dystopian Fiction

With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. Desert Creatures by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope. Full Review

1803363002.jpg

Review of

The Trees Grew Because I Bled There by Eric LaRocca

5star.jpg Horror

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 story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's The Trees Grew Because I Bled There is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any Big Bad. Full Review

0861546490.jpg

Review of

Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity

Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town Thirst for Salt details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably. Full Review

191458564X.jpg

Review of

Beautiful Shining People by Michael Grothaus

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.

Beautiful Shining People revolves around the question of identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be human. Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the development of technology is exciting or frightening. Full Review

1472292154.jpg

Review of

Atalanta by Jennifer Saint

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the name of the goddess. It was for the sake of my name, too. Atalanta

Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero.

Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing. Full Review

1784631930.jpg

Review of

Beautiful Place by Amanthi Harris

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of 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 for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma'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 Villa. Full Review

178563335X.jpg

Review of

Sea Defences by Hilary Taylor

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

When 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 daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the 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 vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing. Full Review

1398515388.jpg

Review of

The Boy and the Dog by Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)

4.5star.jpg General Fiction

First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in. Full Review

0989715337.jpg

Review of

Papa on the Moon by Marco North

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

Some frogs had gotten into the well.

Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he filled them.

How is that for an opening? The style of this novel in the form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and musing, turning on a sixpence. And author Marco North, who has the most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as he means to go on. Full Review

1913097811.jpg

Review of

Emergency by Daisy Hildyard

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

The summary of this book doesn't come close to explaining what is done with the premise. Full Review

086154112X.jpg

Review of

The Weight of Loss by Sally Oliver

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

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 pain—but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself. Full Review

0861541901.jpg

Review of

This World Does Not Belong To Us by Natalia Garcia Freire

5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the expression in a way I'm not familiar with. I have to confess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. From the little I have read (in translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism. Full Review

1472273915.jpg

Review of

Elektra by Jennifer Saint

4star.jpg Literary Fiction

'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and the most extreme furies. Full Review

8409290103.jpg

Review of

If Only by Matthew Tree

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Twenty-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. Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - 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, it was that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the young man on his way. Full Review

B098FFFBH9.jpg

Review of

Snowcub by Graham Fulbright

4.5star.jpg Literary Fiction

Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, Nick. Kate runs the family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys. Full Review


Move on to Newest Paranormal Reviews