Newest Literary Fiction Reviews

Literary fiction

Annabel by Kathleen Winter

Literary Fiction

The back cover blurb has praise for this debut novel from two of my favourite authors: Joseph O'Connor and A L Kennedy so things were definitely off to a good start. The front cover is rather unsettling (as it's meant to be) - some may say disturbing: it's of an adolescent, but neither male nor female but rather a fusion of the two sexes. And the question is right up there before I've even opened the book - how would such an individual (and family members and society as a whole) deal and interact with such a person. It's not an easy question to answer, if I'm honest. Full review...

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

Literary Fiction

Ava Bigtree is a teenage alligator wrestler. Her older sister Ossie is in love with a ghost. They have grown up on a Florida island theme park with their parents, their grandfather and their big brother Kiwi. Now though, all they have known is threatened. Their mother Hilola was the star attraction, but she died a few months before, not in the jaws of an alligator but of ovarian cancer. As well as being the glamorous figure on billboards who everyone came to see, she ran the show and did all the jobs that needed to be done, and the family is lost without her. Full review...

Howl: A Graphic Novel by Allen Ginsberg

Graphic Novels

I first came across Howl as a short film animating one of Ginsberg's own recordings of it. If memory serves, it was a scratchy, jazzy piece, full of spiky, spunky shapes and movements, and low on colour. Now for 2011 and for Penguin Modern Classics' first ever 'graphic novel' comes a very different animation. OK, the real moving animation is only to be seen in the movie Howl, but to call this merely an illustrated companion to the film is to be very unflattering. Full review...

Disputed Land by Tim Pears

Literary Fiction

In this engaging novel, Tim Pears tackles many challenging themes: sibling rivalry, time and change in the countryside, facing terminal illness, reflections on the isolation of academic life and undertaking risky financial investment. This is not a portrayal of a rural idyll although much of the most lyrical writing concerns the colours of the Shropshire countryside and this is strengthened by reference to the layers of the archaic past that underlies this disputed borderland territory. In attempting such a multi-layered narrative in a relatively short novel, it is not surprising that for instance, the traumatic shocks in the epic tale are diminished by random, experimental shifts in the tone of the narrative. Full review...

Walking on Dry Land by Denis Kehoe

Literary Fiction

Ana has grown up mostly in Portugal, but now lives in Dublin where she teaches film studies and is writing her PHD. However, she was born in Anglola (then a Portuguese colony), the result of an extra-marital relationship of her father, who then adopted her with his wife. When her adopted mother, Helena, dies, she decides to trace her birth mother in Angola, where her brother now lives, but has nothing much to go on but a photocopy of a photograph of two Angolan girls, one of which may, or may not, be her mother, and a name: Solange Mendes. We follow Ana as she attempts to trace her real mother while in alternating chapters exploring her parents' developing relationship and ultimately how her unusual past evolved. Full review...

The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb

Literary Fiction

The novel opens with an elderly man as he scrapes a meagre living in Vietnam. He is really dirt-poor but I could tell that he still had his pride. He's not afraid of hard work. In fact, gruelling days of labour and very early risings have been the norm for him since he was a young boy. His passion is cooking. Nothing is too much trouble in order to create his famous Vietnamese noodle soup. And there's a terrific line on the back cover which says 'They say that the history of Vietnam can be found in a bowl of pho and Old Man Hu'ng makes the best in all Hanoi'. We get some background on Hu'ng and discover that his life has been hard, very hard. But he doesn't complain, it's simply not in his nature. Such is the pull and the draw of Gibb's lovely, lyrical writing that I was drawn right into the life of this enchanting elderly man right from the start of the book. Gibb feeds us tiny morsels about Vietnam on a regular basis: the culture, the people, the troubled history for example, but it's written in such effortless prose that it's a joy to read. And her descriptions are so apt, so poetic and so original (but without being in your face) that it all shines on the page. I gobbled it all up. Full review...

Spring by David Szalay

Literary Fiction

Narrated from a variety of points of view, Spring relates the relationship of James and Katherine. He is an often failed entrepreneurial character who falls for the charms of Katherine, currently working in a London luxury hotel as an interim job, and separated from her photographer-husband. The problem for James is that Katherine is only interested in the pursuit of that perfect happiness scenario and so analyses her feelings constantly - much to the distress of James. But this is a lot more than a 'males don't understand females' tale. Full review...

Books Burn Badly by Manuel Rivas

Literary Fiction

I normally start with a brief summary of the novel I’m reviewing, but Rivas’ sprawling epic is close to impossible to do anything ‘brief’ with. While it starts in 1881, it’s the book burning witnessed by Hercules the boxer during the Spanish Civil War in 1936 which gives this novel its title and it floats through several other eras, eventually finishing more than a century after it started. Along the way, we meet a young washerwoman who sees souls in the river, Olinda the matchgirl, Gabriel the stammerer, and the Judge of Oklahoma, star of a series of Western novels Gabriel’s father reads. Full review...

The Hunger Trace by Edward Hogan

Literary Fiction

We're plunged into a crisis straight away. Some of the animals from the wildlife park have escaped and are now running amok. They are Maggie's responsibility and she has to try to round them up without danger to either human or themselves. It's a tough, physical duty so it's a good job she can rely on her neighbour Louisa as an extra pair of hands. Christopher is unreliable to say the least, he's never there when you need him. But is Louisa any better? Full review...

Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

Literary Fiction

Eleven-year-old Harri is the fastest boy in Year 7. It's true. He won the race and everything. Harri is quite new to London. He, his mother and his big sister Lydia have come from Ghana to make a new life and live on the ninth floor of a tower block on a sink estate. Harri's father and little sister Agnes are still in Ghana, saving up the air fare, which is taking quite a long time. Agnes is beginning to talk already. Full review...

The Bishop's Man by Linden MacIntyre

Literary Fiction

Duncan MacAskill (he eschews the title Father whenever he can get away with it) is ostensibly dean of a Catholic university in Nova Scotia. It's a job he enjoys. Approaching fifty years of age, he is, in general, happy with his life. But the Catholic Church is strong on history and MacAskill cannot escape his own. The son of a bastard father and a foreign mother, he was lucky even to be able to follow his vocation and enter the church at all. For most of his career he has been "The Bishop's Man". Full review...

The Cloud Messenger by Aamer Hussein

Literary Fiction

Mehran, growing up in Karachi, hears his father and sister speaking about London all the time, as if it were an exotic location. He ends up living there as an adult, but in the rainy, dreary climate he turns back to the poetry of his homeland, dreaming of other places. As he travels between Italy, India, Pakistan and London we watch his relationships grow and die and wonder if he will ever truly find a place where he'll feel that he belongs. Full review...

The Crime Wave at Blandings by P G Wodehouse

Literary Fiction

There's a crime wave at Blandings Castle and bumbling Lord Emsworth is right at its centre. This is somewhat surprising as Emsworth (or 'Clarence!' to his sister Constance) is really only happy when he's reading his favourite book, Whiffle's 'The Care of the Pig'. It frequently soothes where other restoratives fail. The problem began with an air rifle and an unwanted tutor, but before the afternoon was out most of the inhabitants of Blandings Castle seemed to have shot, been shot at or left. If it hadn't been written by P G Wodehouse it would all be most confusing. Full review...

Solar by Ian McEwan

Literary Fiction

Ian McEwan's Michael Beard is possibly the most ignoble Nobel prize winner there has ever been. He's gloriously obnoxious and hateful in almost every way. Since winning his Nobel prize he has rested on his Nobel laurels and has traded on his reputation rather than his achievements in his specialist area of physics. When this book starts, he's on his fifth wife having managed to wreck all previous marriages by his compulsive infidelity. He's short, balding, ageing, obese, bigoted, and something of an opportunist, particularly if it means he can be lazy and get away with something. In short, which he is, he's morally vacant. But what makes Beard an effective creation, and what carries us along with him despite his obnoxiousness, is that he knows all these things about himself. He's rather like Shakespeare's Richard III - he's honest with the reader and himself about what he is doing. Sure he would like to change, but talking about it isn't doing it, is it? Full review...

February by Lisa Moore

Literary Fiction

When the phone rings in the middle of the night, Helen thinks it must be bad news again. Nearly 27 years ago her oil rig worker husband died at sea on 14 February 1982 (Valentine's Day), leaving her with three children and a fourth on the way. This time, no one has died – her son John is travelling round the world but a woman he had a brief fling with is pregnant with his baby. He was phoning from Singapore. What should he do? Full review...

Faulks on Fiction by Sebastian Faulks

Literary Fiction

Faulks on Fiction is effectively the book of the TV show of the book. Even more confusingly, it's a book of reviews of works of British fiction so this is really a review of a book of reviews. The TV show has, at the time of writing, yet to air, but the concept is to talk, not so much about the books themselves, but of the characters within them, separated into four distinct character types; heros, lovers, snobs and villains. Even ignoring the fact that characters often don't fit wholly into these descriptions and that the concept might prove a use for those strange Venn diagrams you learnt about at school and have never found a use for, and the inevitable quibbles about which books and characters could also have been included that is the problem with lists, the result is strangely uneven. I was left wondering if this might indeed work better as a TV series, but as a stand alone book, it is more one to be dipped into than read cover to cover. Full review...

The Last Brother by Nathacha Appanah

Literary Fiction

Raj and his two beloved brothers live on a Mauritian sugar plantation. World War II rages far away and close too, but Raj is blissfully unaware of anything beyond his immediate surroundings. Life is poor and hard and Raj's father takes out the privations of his life on his sons and his wife - drunken beatings are a regular occurrence. But his mother is loving and kind, and skilled at healing, and his brothers are constant playmates. Full review...

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink and Carol Brown Janeway

Historical Fiction

It's West Germany, 1958. A 15-year-old schoolboy, Michael Berg, is suffering a long bout of hepatitis. When he recovers he returns to the flat of a tram conductor, 36-year-old Hanna Schmitz, to thank her for taking care of him the day he fell sick. The two of them begin a secret affair that becomes a routine for months: after school and work, Michael would read to her, and then they would make love and bathe each other. Both of them fall in love. Full review...

Half of the Human Race by Anthony Quinn

Literary Fiction

At heart, 'Half of the Human Race' is a 'will they, won't they' love story featuring an upper class, emerging county cricketer, Will Maitland, and a middle class strong, educated, cricket-loving woman, Constance Callaway. But this is so much more than a question of will the cricketer bowl a maiden over? It's a novel about friendship, love, fighting for what you believe in and, also, surprisingly, about celebrity. Full review...

The Suicide Run by William Styron

Short Stories

A WW2 naval soldier, guarding a prison island for those found guilty at courtmartials, is forced to wonder if he is winning his own battles against those arriving and leaving. A soldier remembers calming memories, and those causing tension, as he rests up before action. And for a highly-charged young man, there may be too much risk to be found in his high-octane downtime. Full review...

The House of Rajani by Alon Hilu

Literary Fiction

The House of Rajani is set in Jaffa, Palestine in 1895-96. The narrative alternates between the two main characters, both telling their stories in the first person. Luminsky and his wife travel from Europe to Jaffa to start a new life there. Luminsky has studied agronomy in preparation for his new life, and he and his wife have both been involved in the Zionist movement promoting an ideal of the Jewish people returning to their homeland. He is looking forward to putting his studies to good use, but is soon disappointed when he arrives by both the quality of the land occupied by Jewish colonists and their work ethic. Far from the ideal of self-sufficiency, they are buying fruit, grain and vegetables from the Palestinians. He is also frustrated by his wife’s lack of interest in having sex with him. Full review...

Even the Dogs by Jon McGregor

Literary Fiction

I loved Jon McGregor's previous two novels, 'If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things' and 'So Many Ways to Begin'. They're both lyrical, poetically observed works so I was really looking forward to reading his latest book. It is, unfortunately, quite a different sort of story... Full review...

Not Quite White by Simon Thirsk

Literary Fiction

The story alternates between the two main characters: Welsh Gwalia (that's a she, by the way) and English Jon Bull (and you get an idea of the fun Thirsk has with his names and also characters) as the two meet up for the first time. Lots of Welsh names such as Gwenfer and Gwenlais and also lots of (mainly) unpronounceable place names including the glorious - wait for it - Llanchwaraetegdanygelyn. Thirsk has also scattered Welsh vocabulary all over the place: but many of the words are easily understood (Anti for Auntie and Yncl for Uncle etc) so you don't really have to keep referring to the comprehensive Appendix, unless you want to. Full review...

The Blasphemer by Nigel Farndale

Literary Fiction

Daniel Kennedy is a soon-to-be professor of zoology and a militant atheist. With a beautiful and successful dentist for a partner, and an intelligent, precocious nine-year-old daughter, his life is what you might call gilded. Novels as they are, though, things soon begin to fall apart. On their way to a holiday in the Galapagos Islands, Daniel and Nancy's plane crashes into the sea. Daniel swims for miles to get help and, just as all seems lost and he's on the point of drowning, a mysterious figure appears and guides him to the shore and rescue. Full review...

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald

Literary Fiction

'No — Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.' Full review...

Bar Balto by Faiza Guene and Sarah Ardizzone

Literary Fiction

Joel, 'The Rink', is the owner of the local bar in town and has been found murdered, stabbed and naked in a pool of blood. He's an opinionated, racist, lecherous busy-body, so there's no shortage of suspects. Faiza Guene creates an intriguing, interesting murder-mystery as we hear from each suspect in their own voice and follow the story through to its conclusion to discover who really murdered 'The Rink'. Full review...

The End by Salvatore Scibona

Literary Fiction

Salvatore Scibona is one of a new breed of American authors who in his first book has decided to take on the great American literary novel. Has he succeeded?

The End is a novel that while being a part of a modern burgeoning literary movement very much looks back at the great American literature tradition of the last century. In Scibona's beautifully crafted prose we see glimpses of Saul Bellow, the vibrancy of Kerouac and the sensibilities of Updike, a heady mix to be sure. Full review...

Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo and Edith Grossman

Literary Fiction

The very first sentence concerns the sudden discovery of a body. Judging by its dreadful state, not only some form of foul play but also some form of torture has been used. No one locally knows anything at all. Looks like a tough investigation looms for local Prosecutor by the name of Chacaltana. He is the central character in the novel. He comes across as a bit of a plodder, a bit of a dullard, someone who is methodical to a ridiculous level in his line of work. His line of work is also low-level. But, even so, he is a man who takes pride in what he does. So when he becomes involved in this macabre body incident, he gives it his full concentration. It becomes obvious he will leave no stone unturned to try and solve this crime. Full review...

The Christmas Books by Charles Dickens

Literary Fiction

I'd just like to say at the outset that after reviewing mainly contemporary authors, it's a refreshing change to have the chance to review one of 'the classics'. (I hope I do the great man justice). Personally, I love the classics and I've read a number of Dickens' - including 'Bleak House' and 'Hard Times' but I haven't actually read 'A Christmas Carol.' I couldn't help but smile when Michael Morpurgo (who writes the short introduction to this book) says 'It is very difficult to sit and read Dickens' Christmas Books in a Devon garden on a sunny day ...' Well, would you believe my luck when I say that, as I'm writing this review, it's snowing hard outside? Everything is, well, Christmassy. Full review...

Beer in the Snooker Hall by Waguih Ghali

Literary Fiction

Waguih Ghali's only novel, first published in 1964, is set in 1950s Egypt where the English have just left and the country is in great social and political change, and is under Army rule. Ram is an English educated, Copt Egyptian of aristocratic background, but his side of the family are penniless and dependent on the good will of manipulative, rich aunts. Ram and his best friend Font (who works in the eponymous snooker club) struggle to come to terms with this emerging Egypt. These are the facts of the plot, such as it is, but in reality this book is as ambiguous as the situation in which Ram finds himself. The book is like a delicate soufflé; it appears light on the surface but is deeply measured and brings out a myriad of conflicting views. Full review...

If He Hollers Let Him Go by Chester Himes

Literary Fiction

If He Hollers Let Him Go, first published in 1945, is written from the perspective of Robert Jones, an African-American working in the defence shipyards in California. The book is full of anger about racial inequalities and Himes pulls no punches in his depiction of the life of a young black man in a white world. It must have been shocking at the time of publication, but how does it stand up in today's more racially integrated world? Full review...

Silent Night by Charles Ellingworth

Literary Fiction

The front cover describes this book as 'astonishing' and has 'the mark of a classic.' We're introduced to one of the two female characters, Mimi: a young, German woman. It's 1944 in Eastern Germany and if I say that things are grim, I'm sure you'll appreciate that it is an understatement. Mimi is obviously an intelligent and curious individual and she's certainly not happy to be living in the back-of-beyond. But then again, things could be ten times worse for her. She could be living in Berlin picking through the rubble. Out of the blue, she encounters a man - a French national, as it happens and things change dramatically. We learn that along with his fellow countrymen, Mimi's husband is absent, not at home. So when she acknowledges her attraction for another man - and someone who is not German at that, she seems exhilarated, shocked and perhaps just a little repelled, all at the same time. Full review...

The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek

Literary Fiction

Erika is a single woman in her thirties, who, despite the best efforts of her mother, did not succeed as a concert musician, but instead works as a teacher at the Vienna Conservatory. I say best efforts, I mean outright pressure. Erika and her mother make for an unusual relationship - the older relying on the glory, company and complete obedience of the younger, the daughter sharing a bed with her mother even at this stage of her life. All this is until a young student at the school decides he will be a younger lover for Erika, and forces his will into the household. But who, should such a relationship actually form, is going to be the power-maker? Full review...