Newest Literary Fiction Reviews
Literary fiction
Lionel Asbo by Martin Amis
Martin Amis can be relied upon to create some pretty nasty, self-centred central characters. Usually they are upper class cads and bounders but in Lionel Asbo his central character is at the polar opposite in terms of class. He's violent, uncouth and ignorant. He's a criminal whose usual sidekicks are a pair of vicious pit bulls. His 'manner' is a fictitious down trodden area of London called Diston Town where he lives in a tower block with his nephew, Des, who in fact is the central character in the book. Des, in contrast is far more sympathetic - intelligent and kind, that is if you overlook the fact that as a 15 year old he had an affair with his grandmother, Lionel's mother. Hey, no one's perfect. Full review...
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
In Ben Fountain's Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, Billy and what is left of his Bravo troop colleagues are back from the war in Iraq following a brave firefight caught on camera by embedded journalists. The US army, keen to gain PR from the event has brought them back on an optimistically titled 'Victory Tour' despite the fact that they are all to be re-deployed the next week. The majority of the book takes place on the last day of this tour when Billy is in his home-state of Texas, where the Bush link makes it even more pro-war, as the boys are invited to attend that most American of PR events, the Thanksgiving football game at the Dallas Cowboys stadium. Accompanying the troop is a veteran Hollywood producer who has promised the soldiers that he can sell their story to a movie studio for mega-bucks. If only it were that simple. Full review...
Farundell by L R Fredericks
American Paul Asher is damaged by memories and dreams originating from World War I, or at least he thinks that's where they're from. Once the war is over and, as he's estranged from his father in the US, Paul decides to remain in the UK to find work. Work comes to him as he's asked to assist Lord Percy Damory at Farundell, the Damory ancestral home. Paul's job is straightforward: Sir Percy needs someone to whom he can dictate memoirs of a well-travelled life among distant tribes. However Paul's life at Farundell will be anything but straightforward thanks to the Damorys' apparent eccentricities, an ancestor from the 18th century who refuses to be labelled as a ghost and, of course, there's Sylvie. Full review...
Fate by L R Fredericks
It's the 18th century and 11 year old Francis Damory is spoken to by great great grandfather, Tobias. Nothing odd except that Tobias is dead and speaks via a portrait in Farundell, the family's Oxfordshire home. Hence begins the obsession that will take the adult Sir Francis across the world and through a lifetime of adventures to track Tobias down. The longer Francis looks, the more he realises that Great Great Grandfather isn't dead and that, therefore, Francis wants whatever he's on. Full review...
Every Day, Every Hour by Natasa Dragnic and Liesl Schillinger (translator)
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. Full review...
Mesmerized by Alissa Walser and Jamie Bulloch (translator)
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. Full review...
The Village by Nikita Lalwani
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. Full review...
The New Republic by Lionel Shriver
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. Full review...
Breathless by Anne Sward
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.
Breathless is one of those that I neither love nor hate, and yet am not totally uninspired by either. Full review...
Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
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. Full review...
School for Patriots by Martin Kohan
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. Full review...
The Blue Hour by Alonso Cueto and Frank Wynne (translator)
Adrian Ormache, middle class Peruvian lawyer, has a beautiful wife, two daughters of the sort to make any parent proud and a comfortable lifestyle. His parents divorced when he was small so, as he lived with his mother, he has fragmented memories of a gruff, distant dad. Despite 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 Peru. After the death of his mother everything changes. Adrian finds documents that lead him away from his beliefs, towards a truth that will shatter more than his father's image. Full review...
I Still Dream About You by Fannie Flagg
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. Full review...
Indelible Ink by Fiona McGregor
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. Full review...
The Secret Life of William Shakespeare by Jude Morgan
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. Full review...
Dirt by David Vann
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. Full review...
Invisible Monsters Remix by Chuck Palahniuk
'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, Tell-All and 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. Full review...
Three Strong Women by Marie N'Diaye and John Fletcher (translator)
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. Full review...
Memory of the Abyss by Marcello Fois
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... Full review...
Ru by Kim Thuy and Sheila Fischman (translator)
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. Full review...
The Beautiful Truth by Belinda Seaward
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. Full review...
Tears of a Phoenix by Helen Noble
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. Full review...
This Is How It Ends by Kathleen MacMahon
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. Full review...
The Boy Who Could See Demons by Carolyn Jess-Cooke
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. Full review...
Snake Ropes by Jess Richards
It's the time for the tall mainland men to come to the island to trade, so 16 year old Mary prepares. She 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 traders. On this particular day Mary's broideries go, but so does Barney. Full review...
Africa Junction by Ginny Baily
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. Full review...
Satantango by Laszlo Krasznahorkai
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... Full review...
The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey
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. Full review...
HHhH by Laurent Binet
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. Full review...
Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
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 Anne Tyler's idea and its execution, something very good happens. Full review...
The Tyrant by Jacques Chessex
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. Full review...
A Trick I Learned from Dead Men by Kitty Aldridge
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. Full review...
The Good Wife's Castle by Roland Vernon
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. Full review...
The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan
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'. Full review...
Things We Left Unsaid by Zoya Pirzad
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 daughters. Her 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. Full review...
The Red House by Mark Haddon
Richard and Angela - brother and sister - are reunited at their mother's funeral. Richard is well-to-do and recently remarried with a teenage stepdaughter. Angela 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 by. Richard 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. Full review...
Nothing But Fear by Knud Romer and John Mason (translator)
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. Full review...
Opposed Positions by Gwendoline Riley
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. Full review...
