Newest General Fiction Reviews
General fiction
The Making of Us by Lisa Jewell
Lydia, Robyn and Dean are three completely different people with only one thing in common. According to an online donor registry, they were all fathered by the same sperm donor. Some have known of their heritage for a while, others are just finding out, but none of them knew the other two existed. Until now. At the same time, their donor father's life is slipping away. His last wish is to know of the impact his 'noble' act may have had, the legacy it is leaving on the world. And in this information age it's not that hard to trace your roots, unless, that is, you're searching for people who don't want to be found. Full review...
Cold Light by Jenn Ashworth
Cold Light is the story of three teenage girls who become involved in a predatory adult world. As the story opens we're looking back on what happened from a decade later and we know that one of the girls, Chloë, died in a Valentine's Day suicide pact. The town council has finally decided on a memorial to Chloë – it's to be a summerhouse at the side of the pond where she drowned, although it's difficult to understand quite why anyone would want to sit there. The ground-breaking ceremony is being televised when it becomes obvious that something has gone terribly wrong. But Lola, our narrator, knows that they've found a body. She also knows who it is. Full review...
Letters From Home by Kristina McMorris
Liz Stephens accompanies a couple of friends to a GI social occasion. She's content and already 'spoken for' so she wouldn't normally be here where essentially most people are foot-loose and fancy-free. But she's promised her good friend Betty to come along. As the evening progresses with lots of singing and dancing, things become both interesting and just a little dangerous. But for whom? Who are we talking about here? Liz bumps into one of the many GIs present. His name's Morgan. An instant spark is there - or so someone believes. But they both end the evening on a less-than-satisfactory note. Liz returns to her life with her soon-to-be-fiance and Morgan goes off to war. Full review...
How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely
With an uncompromising title like 'How I Became a Famous Novelist', this clearly isn't intended to be a subtle book. So I can hardly complain when a cynical look at the writing industry swings raw punches in every direction. It just isn't my sort of humour, but equally, if you rave about 'The Office' you will likely enjoy this book far more than I have done. Full review...
The Dysfunctional Family by Paul Bress
Societies are constantly changing and sociology students are presented with theories to help them to comprehend what's happening. Here we have a different approach: a family has been paid a small amount of money to write diaries which they would keep secret from other members of the family and which would be available for publication. This book is the result and we follow Phil and Sue Brown and their two sons, Jack and Theo though a traumatic period which lasts for just over two months. The entries in the diaries are made daily and we read what has happened to each member of the 'dysfunctional family'. Full review...
Every Last One by Anna Quindlen
Mary Beth Latham is contemplating her average, ordinary life where every day is more of less the same. Would things be better if life were more exciting, varied, newsworthy? Is that a legitimate thing to hope for? They say to be careful what you wish for, and Mary Beth never comes right out and says this is what she wants, but there are hints to this effect. Full review...
A Lily of the Field by John Lawton
The book opens in the early 1930s in Vienna where we meet one of the main characters; ten year old Meret. She's gifted musically and in particular in playing the cello. Even at this tender age, people are talking about her starry future on the world stage. She is the apple of her father's eye and soon she's being given extra musical tuition by a kind but much older man. He's old enough to be her grandfather but nevertheless they strike up a rather unusual friendship with music being the common denominator. But some of their conversations are serious and quite grown-up for a young girl, not yet into puberty. The tutor, Viktor Rosen is Jewish and has already suffered at the hands of the Germans. Meret progresses at such a pace that before you know it, she's performing in public. Her life appears to be wonderful and full of future promise. Full review...
Anno Dracula by Kim Newman
The story begins in London. It is 1888 and Queen Victoria is on the throne. She has recently remarried, taking as her husband the infamous vampire Count Dracula. Dracula's influence is all around London as more and more of its citizens turn willingly to vampirism, whilst others resist its temptations. A distinct sense of social and political unrest is in the air as factions speak out against the race of vampires, somehow spurred on by the serial killer at large. Known at first as the Silver Knife, but later as Jack the Ripper, this killer targets young vampire women in Whitechapel, prostitutes who have recently turned to vampirism, known as new-borns. Full review...
There's No Home by Alexander Baron
It's the year 1943 and Sicily has been invaded (along with other parts of Europe). The menfolk have gone (will they return?) and the women, children and old people left behind are a sorry sight. Impoverished, ragged and with barely enough food to eat. A British company of soldiers rolls into town ... and everything changes. The men are foot-sore, exhausted and dirty. They are also glassy-eyed with the horrors of war. And as if that were not enough, the Sicilian sun beats down on them mercilessly. But there's some good news - they're here to rest and recuperate for a while. Full review...
Sharaf by Raj Kumar
With its subtitle "Forbidden love in the kingdom of faith and honour", I expected something entirely different from Sharaf to what it delivered. For the second time in as many weeks I had misjudged a book by, if not its cover exactly, certainly by its setting and its blurb. Full review...
Eleven by Mark Watson
The book's title has been well thought out. Xavier Ireland, the main character has the number Eleven if you take his initials as Roman numbers (XI) and there are eleven individuals who are involved in this chain reaction of events. When I read the blurb on the back cover, what caught my eye above all else was the line 'whether the choices we don't make affect us just as powerfully as those we do.' And of course, when we take no action about something in our lives, it's a form of action in effect. Full review...
The Lovers of Pound Hill by Mavis Cheek
Archaeologist Molly Bonner had something about her. She definitely wasn't dressed for the country when she arrived in Lufferton Boney and she'd captured the heart of one young man before she'd even walked down the street. She captured another when she offered money to work on the Gnome of Pound Hill, but Miles Whittington was ruled by his wallet and he was keen to make money out of the Gnome. The Gnome, you see, was what might euphemistically be called 'well endowed' and Miles had visions of charging visitors to make use of the, er, fertility rites. One thing was certain – none of the villagers of Lufferton Boney would be the same by the time that Molly Bonner (not only an archaeologist but also the archaeologist's granddaughter) had finished her work. Full review...
The Stars in the Bright Sky by Alan Warner
In 1999, Alan Warner introduced us to a wonderful set of characters in 'The Sopranos' when a school choir from a backwater town in Scotland went on a trip to the big city. Much debauchery ensued. 'The Stars in the Bright Sky' once again reunites most of the original gang and there is no need to have read the first book to pick up on the diverse characters. Now though, they've grown up (or at least got older!) and are gathered at Gatwick Airport to set off on a girls' holiday. Full review...
Just Business by Geraint Anderson
The inside cover blurb tells us that the author himself has worked in the square mile in London, so presumably he'll have first-hand experience in the world of finance. The book is bang up-to-date, as it mentions the first whiff of the sub-prime disaster which seemed to start the whole collapse of the (up till then) safe and often extremely well-paid banking sector. Full review...
House of Silence by Linda Gillard
Gwen Rowland was a sensible, cautious kind of girl, but then the only family she'd ever known were all dead from a surfeit of unprotected sex, drink and the sort of drugs that don't come in a child-proof bottle. So – her relationship with an actor was a little out of the ordinary, but they seemed to be friends before they were lovers. The crunch came at Christmas when Alfie said that he was spending it with his family – which would have left Gwen on her own. She did slightly twist his arm to take her with him and he was obviously reluctant to comply. When they arrived at Creake Hall, home of author Rae Holbrook and her daughters, Gwen sensed a change in Alfie, a lack of warmth towards his family. Then there was the family photo which didn't fit the known facts and the complication of the gardener who said little but was a very good listener. Full review...
The Spoiler by Annalena McAfee
Several things about this novel intrigued me. It is about two female journalists of very different generations. Also, it is set in the recent past – 1997. While newspaper production had been computerised, it was just before internet access at home and work became affordable and accessible to far more people and so became mass media, and newspapers were almost entirely a print medium – newspaper websites were just around the corner. Annalena McAfee has an insider's knowledge of the newspaper world as she was a journalist for many years, and her career included founding the Guardian's review section in its current form. Full review...
The End of Everything by Megan Abbott
On the surface this book is about the disappearance of a thirteen-year-old girl. Her best friend and neighbour Lizzie relates how she searches for clues, how she discovers that a local man may be involved, and how Evie and Lizzie's families struggle to cope. But look again at the title. What really unfolds here is the story of the effect a single incident has on three families, not two, how that one event came about, and why nothing will ever be the same for everyone involved. It is a book which is complex, deep and very, very intense. Full review...
Back of Beyond by C J Box
Connolly and Harlan Coben, both of whom I've read. So, it was off to a pretty good start. The front cover graphics and large print scream out 'thriller'. We get the essence of Cody early on. He's a man who likes to do his own thing and doesn't take kindly to orders or red tape. All that red tape is shit, is probably how Cody would describe it in his own colourful and down-to-earth fashion. He looks older than his years. Maybe that's down to a messy domestic life and also to the hours he puts in on the job. He lives on his own and has a teenage son he doesn't see often enough. Oh, and he smokes like a chimney and drinks like a fish. In short, he's a mess. But somehow he stumbles through his police work - with a lot of help and support from a long-suffering colleague. Full review...
The Stronger Sex by Hans Werner Kettenbach and Anthea Bell (Translator)
After reading the various comments on the back cover, I was looking forward to reading this book as I love a story with a psychological element. Young Alex is driven to the home of his latest client; a man called Klofft. The reader soon finds out that Klofft has plenty of baggage, as well as plenty of money. He's elderly and very ill and mobility is also an issue for him. So, while he may have set out to impress others with his large home and beautiful things, sadly he seems no longer to be able to enjoy life. His illness confines him to just a couple of rooms. It's apparent that Alex is rather taken with his wife, Cilly Klofft, who is still rather beautiful - for her age. The reader assumes she's in her late sixties or early seventies. But what is it they say about age being only a number for some of us? And age plays a big part, a very big part, in this novel. Full review...
The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett
The Times says on the front cover that Bennett is 'clearly a writer to watch' so I had high hopes for this novel. We meet two of the central characters, American policeman Garvey and Englishman Hayes. Garvey's working cv is straightforward enough - he carries out police work, some of which is pretty grisly. But what about Hayes? He appears to be all things to all men but at the end of the day well, he's 'The Company Man' which gives the book its title. And so a complex scenario starts to unravel ... Full review...
Advice for Strays by Justine Kilkerr
If you have ever fancied a grown up version of The Tiger who came to Tea, the cover of this Vintage edition should hook you into reading Justine Kilkerr's first novel. Here sits a sad and patient-looking lion, and the female figure beside him, hidden by an umbrella, has that same vulnerable look of mother and child in Judith Kerr's classic children's picture book. At first this seems like a ridiculous connection, but thinking about it later I'm struck with the analogy, not to mention the similarity in authors' names. Full review...
These Things Hidden by Heather Gudenkauf
Golden girl Allison Glenn was living the perfect teenage life until she was imprisoned for a monstrous crime. Now she's twenty-one and has been released from prison to live in a halfway house. Allison is keen to put the past behind her, but when she returns to her home town of Linden Falls she soon discovers that no one has forgotten her crime, least of all her parents and her little sister, Brynn. Full review...
The Uncoupling by Meg Wolitzer
Dory and Robby Lang had one of those marriages that everyone envies. They're not just lovers, they're best friends too and they never seem to tire of each other. They're both popular teachers at Eleanor Roosevelt High School ('Elro' to those who know it well) where their daughter is a student. It's sometimes difficult to have your parent teaching at your school, but everything seems to rub along reasonably well and Dory was delighted when daughter Willa got a part in the school play. It's Lysistrata and whilst the drama teacher has to tone it down a little it still the play about the women who refuse to have sex with their men until they call a halt to the war they're fighting. Full review...
The Novel in the Viola by Natasha Solomons
Elise Landau arrived in England in 1938, a refugee from Vienna where she and her family had had a good lifestyle. In England she's destined for Tyneford in Dorset where she'll be a parlour maid at the big house. She's not exactly looking forward to it, but she's escaped Vienna with some of her mother's jewels sewn into the seams of her dresses and her father's latest novel, in manuscript, is hidden in the body of her viola. Her sister is leaving for the USA and her parents hope to follow. Surely Elise will be able to join them before too long? She knows that she won't like England. Full review...
The Bride That Time Forgot by Paul Magrs
Christmas is approaching in the seaside town of Whitby and Brenda is busy sprucing up her B&B. She hasn't seen her best friend, neighbour and investigating partner Effie for a few weeks, since Effie's strange gentleman friend Alucard has reappeared. Brenda and Effie are the guardians of the gateway to Hell which just happens to be right on their doorstep in Whitby, but since Effie has shut herself away, Brenda has turned to her friend Robert, the owner of the local hotel to help her with her investigations into the ever present strange goings on in the town, involving vampires, monsters and a rather strange car. Full review...
The Godless Boys by Naomi Wood
Britain. 1986.
The country became a theocracy during the 1950s and since then outbreaks of secular terrorism have been dealt with by exile. The atheists have been sent to the Island where they can burn churches as they please. Aside from a weekly boat bringing donated supplies, the exiled must shift as best they can on a remote snippet of land in the North Sea. Full review...
Toys by James Patterson and Neil McMahon
The novel has a very glamorous opening. We're at President Jacklin's inauguration party and the easy flow of narration gets me seamlessly and effortlessly into the story. There are plenty of comments and observations pertaining to the super-duper hi-tech times of the story, so as early as page 10 Hays and his beautiful wife Lizbeth, who are invitees, are attended to by a well-trained and well-programmed iJeeves butler. I loved that phrase. It made me smile. The Bakers are an impressive and influential couple. As part of the 'elite' society they expect a flawless, ordered life for themselves and their family. And Patterson then informs us that mere human beings have been relegated to menial work and most of them live pitiful lives and serves them right, apparently. They're despised but their labour is necessary to oil the wheels of the important daily lives of the elites. But the elites have extremely ambitious plans. Can they pull them off? Full review...
Naming the Bones by Louise Welsh
Murray Watson is a Doctor of English Literature embarking on a year-long sabbatical to pursue his long-held dream of writing the definitive biography of Archie Lunan and, as a specifically intended by-product, restore Lunan's poetry to its rightful place in the high canon of Scots creativity. Full review...
Rescue by Anita Shreve
When we meet Peter Webster he's a rookie paramedic who takes an emergency call to help a drunk driver who's been badly injured in a car crash. It was touch and go as to whether or not Sheila Arsenault made it, but she did and afterwards Webster can't get her out of his thoughts. Every instinct tells him that he shouldn't get involved with her – that it'll mean trouble – but perhaps it was the long, shining, dark hair that tipped the balance and Webster is involved in an intense love affair. He's also involved in Sheila's life – for better or for worse. Full review...
Serious Men by Manu Joseph
Ayyan Mani is a Dalit, an untouchable, stuck in a flat in Mumbai's slums but hoping, somehow, for a better future for his son. Working at the Insitute of Theory and Research he uses all his cunning and wiles to stay ahead of the game amongst the Brahmin scientists. Does he have the intelligence, and nerves, to convince everyone that his son, against all odds, is a genius? Full review...
Monsieur Linh and His Child by Philippe Claudel and Euan Cameron
From a war-ravaged country a bit like a Vietnam or a Cambodia an old man carries the fragile frame of his granddaughter aboard a refugee's ship, staring at the receding horizon all the weeks it takes to arrive at a city a bit like a Seattle or a New York. He and she are given the basics of a new life together but it's up to him, Monsieur Linh, to find friendship, which he does, accepting uncomprehendingly the chatty company of a fellow mourner called Bark. Full review...
Invisibles by Ed Siegle
The closest Brighton usually gets to Brazil is in the pages of a dictionary, but in Invisibles the two are drawn together in the life of Joel Burns, a thirty-five year old dentist who lives in Brighton as does his mother, Jackie, and partner Debbie from whom he is separated. When Joel sees a news clip of a bus hijack in Rio de Janeiro, where Joel and Jackie lived until Joel was ten, he is convinced that one of the bystanders is his Brazilian father. What makes this more unusual is that Jackie has always told Joel that his father is dead, although Joel has never quite bought into this story which is at least part of the cause of his problems with Debbie. The solution? Head off to Rio and see if he can track down this person. Full review...
The Cuckoo Parchment and the Dyke by Michael Dhillon
Tristan Jarry is the world's most famous artist but he's rather moved on from selling his work for millions and has just kidnapped Angelique Burr, the step-daughter of the President of the United States. She's not an innocent child but an abused and abusing woman, now a journalist and at times well able to hold her own with Jarry. He's got helpers though - and forward planning - and it's not long before Angelique finds herself involved in a trail of destruction and death as Jarry works towards his purpose. He intends to resurrect Dada, the iconic movement founded in 1916 in Zurich with the intention of protesting against the war. He'll tell Angelique so much – but not what he finally intends to do. Full review...
The Afterparty by Leo Benedictus
I opened the front cover and was confronted with the lines 'This book is different. You've really never read a book like this before.' Confident words, I thought but will the book live up to this lofty expectation I now had? And when I got round to reading the notes at the end of the novel, I was pleasantly surprised and also rather taken aback, I have to say. So, a refreshing take on the modern work of fiction, I thought, as I started on Chapter One. Full review...
The Death of Eli Gold by David Baddiel
Eli Gold is recognized as the 'the greatest living writer' - although his claim to this is slipping by by the day as he is on his death bed. He's not a nice character - his attitudes to his five wives and his children are deplorable and he has been bound up in his own 'genius'. He's a bit like the best and the worst of Saul Bellow, Philip Roth and Norman Mailer combined. Now dying in hospital in New York, the book explores this event from the perceptive of four people in his life; his eight year old, precocious daughter by his current wife; his first wife watching on the news from an old people's home in England; the angst-ridden son of his third marriage, himself a pale imitation of the author that his father is; and a mysterious fourth character who appears to have a very different motive for seeing Gold snr and who may be linked to Gold's fourth wife who died in a mutual suicide pact with her then-husband, from which Eli survived. (In fact his identity is revealed in the publisher's blurb on the jacket, but I'll let you decide if you want to know this or to let the story unfold as I did). Full review...
The Taker by Alma Katsu
When Dr Luke Findley begins his nightshift at Aroostook County Hospital in St Andrews, Maine, things are quiet until Lanny McIlvrae is brought in by the police. Lanny is covered in blood and claims she has killed a man and left him in the woods. Desperate to escape, Lanny quickly asks for Luke's help, but he is not sure at first, so Lanny decides to tell Luke her life story, a story that begins in the early Puritan settlement of St Andrews in 1809 and spans nearly two hundred years, taking Lanny from her home to Boston and beyond. A story that is rich, imaginative and entirely authentic, filling the majority of the novel, and there wasn't a moment when I questioned her reliability as she tells Luke everything, chapter by chapter, as he helps her to escape, slowly drawing him and the reader into her world. Full review...
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
The title of this novel first caught my eye. How can food feel emotions?
Actually, it is Rose who discovers that when she is eating she can taste the feelings of the person who cooked or prepared the food. I was a bit worried that this initial gimmick of the book from which the title is taken would become annoying, but really this is another very well-written and readable novel about growing up in a dysfunctional family. Rose is about to turn 9 at the beginning, and comes home to find her mother making her birthday cake. She can't resist tasting the cake, and at first it is delicious: 'Warm citrus-baked batter lightness enfolded by cool deep dark swirled sugar'. But then she has 'the sensation of shrinking, of upset, tasting a distance I somehow knew was connected to my mother'. Full review...
Where Would I Be Without You? by Guillaume Musso
I love the cover, which I think angles this book firmly towards women. With that old Beach Boys hit from the Sixties as the title, it encapsulates everything you need to know when choosing this book. It's not really crime fiction, in that it lacks a whodunnit aspect in favour of following the protagonists, a French cop and a Scottish master criminal, through a romantic entanglement and into the jaws of death. The interest is in which of the two men will gain command of the other – and who is really driving the action – when both their attentions are focused on the same girl. Full review...
Shake Off by Mischa Hiller
Shake Off is the latest from the pen of Mischa Heller, a student of the John Le Carre universe where the Spies had to Come In From The Cold. Set in the 80s against a backdrop of daggers and cloaks, wests and easts and defectors and double agents, Heller's protagonist, Michel Khoury, hooked on pain killers and posing as a student, has been tasked with the unlikely mission of scouting for a Cambridge location in which to host secret talks between those Palestinians and Israelis who seek a 'secular democratic state for Jews, Christians and Muslims'. Full review...
When God Was A Rabbit by Sarah Winman
When God Was a Rabbit is a book that tugs at the emotions in a sweet but uncompromising way. It's in no way a RomCom but if you are a fan of that genre of film, I would suggest that you might too enjoy this book as it shares many of the traits if not the storyline. The analogy to a movie is apposite too as first time author Sarah Winman's 'day job' is as an actor - she has appeared recently in Holby City, for example. Full review...
The Book of Crows by Sam Meekings
Having lived in China for a substantial period of time, Sam Meekings has clearly soaked up a great deal of the culture; something he has already put to great effect in his first book, Under Fishbone Clouds. In The Book of Crows, his third book, he continues to show his talent as a non-Chinese raconteur of Chinese culture, but goes one step further by telling a story that spans several periods of Chinese history, thereby giving the reader a glimpse into different people's lives. Full review...
