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[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]] __NOTOC__<!-- Remove -->{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Nicola Pugliese and Shaun Whiteside (translator)Eowyn Ivey|title=MalacquaBlack Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5

|summary=We're in Naples'Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, in recent historywho longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and it's rainingher accidental neglect of Emaleen. It will in fact rain for four days solid – and seeing Described as ita ''wild card's October everyone's dressed for all seasons , she feels stuck in her day-to-day life, and expecting a bit of grey, but this is taking yearns to cross the proverbial. It's also making Wolverine river and live on the city rather dangerous – when people report North Fork to fulfil her desires of a huge sink-hole appearing in one street it's soon found that simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a pair of cars went into itstrange, taciturn and two people have diedsolitary man, who says he has a cabin over there, she feels called to go - and more passed on bring Emaleen with a whole building collapsingher. WhatWithout realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen's more, some strange noises are coming from an abandoned civic palacelives forever. Is the city being told something by these strange events, or can a journalist find a logic behind the circumstances?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1911508067</amazonuk>1472279042

{{newreview|author= Iosi Havilio|title= Petite Fleur|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Every now and then you read a book that leaves you thinking “well I have no idea what just happened but I know I enjoyed it”. This is how I felt after reading Petite Fleur, the fifth novel (perhaps 'long paragraph' would be more appropriate) from cult Argentinian writer Iosi Havilio.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1911508040</amazonuk>}}{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tania HershmanSally Rooney|title=Some of Us Glow More Than OthersIntermezzo

|genre=Short Stories General Fiction |summary=I won't be alone in stating that reading short story collections can be slightly awkwardSally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Going through from A-ZHer dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, witnessing a bounty of ideas and as her characters in short order can be too muchnever quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, but do you have the right central one for readers to pick unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and choose according to what appealsPeter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, and what time you have to fill? The sequence has carefully been consideredcontrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, surelya successful lawyer living in Dublin. Such would appear to be the case here. The last time I read one of this authorFollowing their father's collections, passing after a long battle with [[The White Road by Tania Hershman|The White Road]]cancer, the only real difficulty was holding back and rationing them, but here you not only get a whopping forty pieces of writing, they are also spread into sectionsbrothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1910061484</amazonuk>0571365469

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=James KelmanFyodor Dostoyevsky|title=That Was a Shiver, and Other StoriesWhite Nights|rating=3.5|genre=Short Stories |summary=This is the ninth book of short stories by this author, which means he's presented just as many collections of the short form as he has novels. You will find it hard to think of another author that has been so noted for longer works (what with [[How Late It Was, How Late by James Kelman|How Late It Was, How Late]] winning the Booker) but who is so generous in presenting shorter pieces for the time-poor, or those like me who see the variety in a writer's short or less typical works to be the more interesting places to turn. Opening these pages, from the pen of such an esteemed pro, came with no small sense of anticipation.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786890909</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Kate Mildenhall|title= Skylarking|rating= 4|genre= General Fiction |summary= Kate and Harriet are best friends growing up together on an isolated Australian cape. As the daughters of the lighthouse keepers, the two girls share everything, until a fisherman, McPhail, arrives in their small community. When Kate witnesses the desire that flares between him and Harriet, she is torn by her feelings of envy and longing. An innocent moment in McPhail's hut then occurs that threatens to tear their peaceful community apart. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785079239</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author=Joanna Walsh|title=Worlds from the Word's End|rating=3.5

|summary=We here at The Bookbag liked this author's fairly recent collection of short storiesAs always in Dostoyevsky, [[Vertigo by Joanna Walsh|Vertigo]]the character work is sublime. I myself missed out, but that seemed to be vignettes from one One is never left wondering what a character's narration – here we get homosexual male narrators is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and a host more, as well as much less of the sadness prevalent before. Having had a brief encounter temperaments with this author courtesy of her entry into the [[Bookshelf (Object Lessons) by Lydia Pyne|Object Lessons]] series, I was intrigued by her name being stamped on a selection of shorts. Was it the ideal calling card? Let's face it, the very short story itself can be a postcard – let's say, from a specific hotel or two, as we see hereremarkable clarity. Perhaps I should have geared myself up, however, for such intricate writing on said postcards – and for the exotic locations from which they came…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1911508105</amazonuk>0241619785

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Raja Alem, Katharine Halls (translator) and Adam Talib (translator)James Baldwin|title= The DoveGiovanni's NecklaceRoom|rating= 34.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I always hated Lit-Crit at school''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, so it came as something as a surprise that I ended up reviewing bookshe navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, for fun. Now I understand. Finally, I see why literary critics get so up-an Italian bartender he meets in-arms about lowly book reviewers. There is a differencegay bar. This book explains it all. The author While David is ''the first woman engaged to win Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the International Prize for Arabic fiction'' for this book. The book also real tension in the LiBerator prize for ''novel arises not from his infidelity but from the best book translated into German'' in 2014deeper conflict within himself. I suspect itIt is David's not done yet. ''The Times'' tells us crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that it ''exemplifies everything that is currently shaking the foundations of Arab societyultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.'' I am sure that not only will more plaudits fall upon the author and the book, but also that it will become a classic, spoken of in the same breath as the international classics: Proust, Márquez, Joyce, Rushdie, Nabokov…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0715651757</amazonuk>0141186356

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Daniel Kehlmann and Ross Benjamin (translator)Alba de Cespedes |title=You Should Have LeftForbidden Notebook|rating=4.5|genre=General Literary Fiction |summary=Our narrator is a screenwriter, tasked with coming up with a sequel to his hit movie ''Besties'' – a film which helped pay for a house, but which his actress wife keeps letting him know, isn't ''art''. To concentrate, the family – he, the wife, This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and their four year old daughter – have rented a large, modern house at tension from the end of a horrid, hairpin bend-filled roadmoment our protagonist, in a charming alpine landscape. But things aren't right. The couple are at loggerheads too muchValeria Cossati, things keep unsettling our narratorpurchases her forbidden notebook, and learns about herself in the sole shopkeeper for miles around is ready with the Hammer Horror styled warnings of strange eventsmost intimate and revealing ways. Quickly we see the book's title in all its galling clarity – but it isn't too late to get out… is it? And out of what, exactly?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786484048</amazonuk>1782278222

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Tove JanssonOttessa Moshfegh|title= Letters From KlaraMy Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating= 53|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Famed in At best, this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the UK for her creation fragility of the Moomin familyhuman relationships; at worst, Jansson it is rather belatedly beginning to gather the richly deserved esteem for her adult writings. For that I offer my heart-felt thanks to publishers ''Sort of books'' cynical, predictable and Thomas Teal, who has been responsible for most slightly trite tale of the translationsan unlikeable protagonist. Receiving this oneThis unlikely heroine, a slim, two things strike: firstly I somehow seem to have missed one of attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the seriesworld, and secondly there'll come a time sooner rather than later when there'll be no more but resolves not to be had. The former will be rectifiedlose sleep over it: in fact, the latter is a sad thoughther solution lies in her hibernation.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1908745614</amazonuk>1784707422

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Tom Malmquist and Henning Koch (translator)Matthew Tree|title=In Every Moment We Are Still Alive'll Never Know

|summary=Tom Malmquist is a poet Timothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from Sweden. Originally published in Swedish in 2015his father, this is a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his first work artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of prose. While it's being marketed as a novel, it reads more like a stylized memoirself confidence. Similar So Tim applied himself to Karl Ove Knausgaard's books, it features the author as the central character and narratorhis studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and the story of grief it tells is a highly personal oneset himself high but achievable ambitions.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473640008</amazonuk>B0CVFXPGP8

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Michel DeonB0C47LV1PC|title= Your Father's RoomFragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= I don't feel altogether qualified to review Michel DéonCan you make a 's 2004 fictionalised memoir ''Your Father's RoomYo birthing person''joke? And if you could, translated here into English for is the first time. I hadn't heard of Déon before receiving my copy, let alone read any of his books, published over a 70 year period to much acclaim in his homeland. But question should you make it's part of ? Or is the pleasure of book reviewing to read with no prior knowledge or prejudice, all the more so question if you discover an absolute gem.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1910477346</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Naomi Alderman|title= did, would it land? The Power|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary=It started with catch is that the girls and spreadanswer for both could well be... From younger woman to older woman, it was awoken and everything changed. Womankind now has the power of electricity in their fingertips and, slowly at first, the balance of power in the world starts shiftingno. We follow  ''Fragility'' is set as the stories city of different peoplePortland, in different walks of lifeOregon, who see this cautiously begins to emerge from the very beginning and hurtle towards 'restrictions imposed during the event'. One thing in this startling new development is certain, patriarchal archetypes and chauvinist thinkers are in for the shock of their lives. Literally. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>0670919969</amazonuk>covid pandemic

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Anna PitoniakMosby Woods|title=The FuturesA Whirly Man Loses His Turn

|summary=When we first meet Evan Peck, he has just started at Yale College, where he plays ice hockeyThe West isn't the dominant force it once was. Like lots Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of the other playersaction. Governments are flailing. A war here, he a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is actually Canadianin actual charge. Imagine then, from small-town British Columbiathere was a man with precognition. One night after Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a party Evan meets Julia Edwards at their dorm and they go out for pizzaman who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. She technically has a boyfriend from her Boston boarding school daysThat man would be valuable, but they soon break up and before long Julia and Evan have become inseparableright? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, as they will remain for the rest of their college yearsthat this man loses this ability.What would governments do to get it back?|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0718184564</amazonuk>B0C9SNG8R1

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Stephan Collishaw0571379559|title= The Song House of the StorkBroken Bricks|author=Fiona Williams|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Stephan Collishaw has achieved a rare feat – a novel set amidst ''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the horrors story of Nazi tyranny that does not shy away from human sufferingfour people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but does not drown instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it eithermight 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. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1785079190</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Sabrina MahfouzClaire North|title= The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women WriteHouse of Odysseus|rating= 5|genre= AnthologiesLiterary Fiction |summary= ''What does it mean could matter more than love?'' The follow-up to be British and Muslim? This is the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a question these writers tackle few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with stunning claritydelicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. Modern day British society has a varied sense As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of cultural heritage; it is a society the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that is changing and moving forward as it adds more and more voices Clytemnestra brought to the populationIthaca's shores, but Queen Penelope is also one that has an undercurrent on the brink of anxiety and fear towards those that are minoritiesa fragile peace. So this collection displays how all One that fear is received; it comes in shatters however with the form return of stereotypical labels Orestes, King of Mycenae, and racial prejudicehis sister Elektra, which are themes eloquently reproduced hereseeking refuge.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0863561462</amazonuk>0356516075

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= David SzalayKay Chronister|title= All That Man IsDesert Creatures|rating= 54|genre= Literary Dystopian Fiction|summary= Two teenage boys on With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-apocalyptic fiction can become an Inter Rail trip around Europe find themselves staying with almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a frustrated housewife on the outskirts of Praguerobotic takeover, a driftless young Frenchman discovers sexual fulfilment on world devoid of water or a package holiday in Cyprusnuclear holocaust, a lovestruck Hungarian minder this genre is embroiled in a prostitution racket at an upmarket London hotel, a Belgian academic is forced way for humans to confront his egotism when his partner becomes pregnant, a Danish tabloid journalist exposes a high-ranking politiciancathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures''s love affair, a property developer inspects by Kay Chronister is a new project in work of post-apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the French alps, fears that exist for humanity today. It is a Scot living in Croatia fails in love and business, a Russian millionaire confronts divorce, an elderly English politician survives a road accident in Italyshocking novel that still manages to find hope. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0099593696</amazonuk>1803364998

{{newreviewfrontpage|isbn=1803363002|author= Elizabeth HayEric LaRocca|title= His Whole LifeThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There

|genre= Literary FictionHorror|summary= If you think that 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 ''un-put-down-ableBig Bad'' , whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by the greatest accolade for a bookend of the story, think againbeatable. Eric LaRocca's 'Put-down-able'' can be stronger praise: ''His Whole LifeThe Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is put-down-ablenot like that. It encourages you to put it down, to wrap yourself is a collection of short stories more interested in the slow-moving story, the exquisite writing, the subtleties horrors of the charactersillness, grief and just walk around for a while with them slowly sinking in; it encourages you to come back to it again humiliation. Horrors that linger and again; mostly it encourages you are harder to put it down, to read it slowly, because you dondefeat than any ''Big Bad''t want it to end.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857055445</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Phillip LewisMadelaine Lucas|title= The BarrowfieldsThirst for Salt|rating= 45|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Just before Henry Aster's birth'Love, his fatherI'd read, was supposed to be a frustrated novelist light and lawyerweightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity'' Told from a retrospective view, reluctantly returns to the remote North Carolina mountains in which he was improbably raised and installs his a young family in a gothic mansion - nicknamed 'woman unravels the vulture house' year- worthy of his hero Edgar Allan Poelong relationship that once defined her. ThereOverlaid with later wisdom, Henry grows up under the desk of this fierce and brilliant narrator relives the affair with a mantwenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after. But when a death in Set against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the family tips his father toward a fearsome unravelling, what was once a young son24-year-old narrator's reverence is poisoneddeepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and Henry flees, not to return until years later when he, too, must go home againfamilial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1473636825</amazonuk>0861546490

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Paula CocozzaMichael Grothaus|title= How to Be HumanBeautiful Shining People|rating= 4.5

|summary= When Mary arrives home from work one day to find a magnificent fox on her lawn - his ears spiked in attention ''But fearing something and every hair bristling with his power having it come to surprise - it is only the beginning. He brings gifts (at least, Mary imagines they pass are gifts), and gradually makes himself at hometwo different things. And as he listens I'm willing to Marybet most of what we fear will never happen, Mary listens back. She begins or we can take steps to hear herself for the first time in yearschange it. Her bullish ex-boyfriend, still lurking on '' ''Beautiful Shining People'' revolves around the fringes question of her life, would identity and acceptance. Of what it means to be appalledhuman. So would Of what is real and what is artificial, and whether the neighbours with a new baby. They only like wildlife that fits with the decor. But inside Mary a wildness development of technology is growing that will not be tamedexciting or frightening. |amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786330334</amazonuk>191458564X

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Helen DunmoreJennifer Saint|title=Birdcage WalkAtalanta

|genre=Historical Literary Fiction|summary=Bristol 1792: Lizzie married well''I was as worthy as any one of them. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. John Diner Tredevant is a property developer who has reached I would take my place, not just in the zenith of his life's work: building a terrace name of prestigious houses overlooking the Avon Gorgegoddess. In a time of turbulence as France reaches It was for the dawn sake of revolutionmy name, Britain, including Diner, fears it may spreadtoo. Atalanta'' Princess. Warrior. Lover. Hero. This puts Lizzie in  Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a difficult position since her mother and step-father both believe in propagating pamphlets and ideas son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of egalitarianism for the goddess Athemis and to allfashioned into a formidable huntress, including womenone who longs for adventure. In other wordsWhen the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, they think nothing of spreading ideas a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the sort that fanned Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the French flameschance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. However, that's not Lizzie's only problem… there What follows is a darkness in her husbandwhirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis's past of which fatal warning: that if she's unawaremarries, it will be her undoing.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0091959403</amazonuk>1472292154

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Emma HendersonAmanthi Harris|title= The Valentine HouseBeautiful Place|rating= 45|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= In June 1914, Sir Anthony ValentinePadma, a keen mountaineeryoung Sri Lankan, arrives with his family has returned to spend the summer in their chalet, high in Villa Hibiscus on the French Alpssouthern coast of her home country. There, for the first time, fourteen-year-old foundling Mathilde starts work as one of the 'uglies' - village girls employed as servants and picked, it This is believed, to ensure they don't catch Sir Anthony's roving eyea place she spent her formative years. For Mathilde it It is the start of not a life-long entanglement with les anglais - strange, exciting peopleplace she was born into, far removed from but the hard grind one she thinks of farmingas home. Except How she soon finds came to be at the Valentines are less carefree than they appearVilla, with a curiously absent daughter no one talks about. It will be decades - disrupted by warhow it became her home, accidents and a cruel betrayal - before Mathilde discovers the key to machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the mystery''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. And in 1976, the year Sir Anthony Padma's great-great grandson comes present fails to visitescape her past and much like the musical score of a film, she must decide whether to use itthat strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1444704028</amazonuk>1784631930

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Hannah Tinti178563335X|title=The Twelve Lives of Samuel HawleySea Defences|author=Hilary Taylor|rating=45

|summary=When we first meet Rachel Bird she turns twelve, Samuel Hawley teaches his daughter, Loo (short for Louise), how to use her grandfather's rifle. Shooting a gun trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and hotwiring a car prove wondering why they're held when you need to be useful skills for this daughter of pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a fugitivesobbing parishioner. Hawley is a lawless modern cowboy who Thelma's had many close shaves over his years daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the run for committing robberies and making dodgy deals. He and his young daughter form Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a cosy unit of their own; they live off of Chinese food real bond with the parish - and vending machine snacks she's in motel rooms and move on every six months or so to avoid awe of the consequences of his criminal activities. But when they get to Olympusvicar, MassachusettsGail, Hawley decides itbut then she's time to settle downbeen doing the job for more than thirty years. He buys Rachel and Christopher hoped that a house by walk on the water – with cash – and becomes a cleanbeach would do them some good -living fishermanit was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1472234367</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Nicole Dennis-Benn 1398515388|title= Here Comes The Boy and the Sun Dog|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)|rating= 4.5|genre= Literary General Fiction |summary= You have to assume 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 team behind list of priorities but - six months after the cover sleeve for Nicole Dennistsunami -BennKazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn's debut novel Here Comet a dog person but the convenience store owner's the Sun have a keen sense of irony. Either comment that or none of them read beyond he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the first pagedog jumped in.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>178607124X</amazonuk>

 {{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn= Polly Clark0989715337|title= LarchfieldPapa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating= 54|genre= Literary Fiction |summary=I It's early summer when a young poet'Some frogs had gotten into the well.'' ''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, Dora Fieldingnaked except for his beaten leather hat. Long strands of their eggs wove around him, moves to Helensburgh on sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them. Two of the dogs leaned over the west coast of Scotland opening and her hopes are first challenged. Newly married, pregnant, she's excited by barked down at the prospect strange noise of a life that combines family and creativitythe buckets as he filled them. She thinks she knows what being a person, a wife, a mother, means. She '' How is soon shown that she is wrong. As the battle begins for her very sense an opening? The style of self, Dora comes to find this novel in the realities form of small town life suffocating, interconnected short stories goes from succinct and, eventually, terrifying; until she finds a way laconic to escape reality altogether. Another poet, she discovers, lived in Helensburgh once. Wystan H. Auden, brilliant wistful and awkward at 24, with his first book of poetry publishedmusing, should be embarking turning on success and society in Londona sixpence. InsteadAnd author Marco North, in 1930, fleeing a broken engagement, he takes a teaching post at Larchfield School for boys where he is mocked for his Englishness and suspected - rightly - who has the most wonderful turn of homosexuality. Yet in this repressed limbo Wystan will fall in love for the first timephrase, even starts as he fights his deepest fearsmeans to go on.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1786481928</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|author=Otto de Kat and Laura Watkinson (translator)Daisy Hildyard|title=Emergency|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The summary of this book doesn't come close to explaining what is done with the premise.|isbn=1913097811}}  {{Frontpage |author=Sally Oliver |title=The Longest NightWeight of Loss |rating=34 |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

|summary=Emma has Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a philosophy delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight'let is perhaps using the dead rest, and love the living'expression in a way I'm not familiar with. The problem with that, as a 96-yearI have to confess my ignorance of the Spanish-old, is that there are too few living left, and language literary tradition so while the love remains she will go through her memories, taking a woozy, diaphanous path through all the major events of her lifeforgive my generalisation here. Starting From the little I have read (in wartime Berlin with one husbandtranslation, who gets snatched from her at work, fleeing I don't read Spanish) there does seem to another place to wait for peace, and wait for him in vain, moving to Holland and finding new love, and so on be a tendency towards the fantastical – this wispy journey will show all the impacts of war, from rationing right up to exile, death and survivalmystical realism. The memories are coming strongly here and now, as Emma is waiting for at least one of her two sons to visit, and then she will die…|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>0857056085</amazonuk>0861541901

{{newreviewFrontpage|author= Marisa SilverJennifer Saint|title= Little NothingElektra|rating= 54|genre= Literary Fiction |summary=In an unnamed country at 'Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the beginning story of three women who live in the last centuryheavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, a peasant couple longs for a child. In despair they turn to gypsy tonics and archaic prescriptionsClytemnestra, and one cold wintery night, Elektra are all bit players in the story of the couple's wish comes trueTrojan War. But Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silence that follows silent women have the birth forewarns of darker days to come. Strangers look on askance most compelling stories and fall speechless in the child's presence, and villagers protectively hush their children as they pass on narrow market lanes. Pavla is no ordinary child, but then this is no ordinary talemost extreme furies.|amazonukisbn=<amazonuk>1786071274</amazonuk>1472273915

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jeroen Blokhuis and Asja Novak (translator)8409290103|title=The Yellow HouseIf Only|author=Matthew Tree|rating=34.5

|summary=If you were the needy kindTwenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, would you really join in the drummingcotton-out of town of two people accused of murder purely because of their nationality? Would you get a feeling of belonging just because you were there when someone carried a dead dog down off a mountain? The main character in this novel does. But broker AO Lowry: he has something asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that will really get the young man got on board the boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him noted, well-thought-of, includeda monthly allowance. He has come to Patrick sent the south money regularly and a correspondence - of France sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to set up an artistssay than Patrick. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn' collectivet care for his son, it was that he didn't care to have him in this country where he can live and work alongside might be a danger to his counterparts, who can inspire each other wife and best each other to create wonderful artchildren. In fact a much-respected guest is The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the young man on his way now, so surely he can find kinship? The guest's name is, after all, Gauguin. The main character is, of course, Vincent van Gogh…|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1907320563</amazonuk>

{{newreviewFrontpage|authorisbn=Jennifer DownB098FFFBH9|title=Our Magic HourSnowcub|author=Graham Fulbright

|summary=There had always been Katy, Audrey and Adam. They've been friends since Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school and now, along with Audrey's partner Nick, they remain inseparable as young professionals. Then, one day, Katy kills herself. No warning, no reason just no Katy. The four animal rights project leader and she and her friend are suddenly three trying producing a competition entry to make sense of a moment that leaves so many questions highlight the way in a which human beings exploit the animal world that refuses to pause while they figure it out.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1925240835</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Ayobami Adebayo|title= Stay With Me|rating= 5|genre= General Fiction|summary= I have She gets a ''thing'' about blurbs which give away far too much great deal of the stories. Not this time. This time…''There are things even love can't do…if the burden is too much and stays too long even love bendssupport from her family: father Pip Harrison, cracksa lecturer at Imperial College, comes close to breakingLondon, mother Kate and sometimes does breakher twin, Nick.'' ''But even when it's in Kate runs the family business, a thousand pieces around your feet, that doesn't mean it's no longer love…'' That is the most heart-breakingly beautiful truth I've read toy shop called Cornucopia in a long time – and it sums up this story. This is a story about love not being enough…but still being love. I hope this becomes a classicPutney, not just in its native Nigeria but around the world. |amazonuk=<amazonuk>1782119469</amazonuk>}}{{newreview|author= Michael Farris Smith|title= Desperation Road|rating= 5|genre= Literary Fiction|summary= Maben which is on the run. For a long while it's not clear whether she's running from something or towards something, or simply back to where it all started. She's got her small daughter with her, and they've been walking for a very long time. Itwe's hard on the child, but itll meet Rachel's also clear that main (if it wasn't for the child Maben would stop running, and it's clear that that would not be a good thingunsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1843449870</amazonuk>