[[Category:Literary Fiction|*]]
[[Category:New Reviews|Literary Fiction]]__NOTOC__ {{Frontpage|author=Eowyn Ivey|title=Black Woods Blue Sky|rating=3.5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Black Woods Blue Sky'' tells the story of Birdie, the young mother of toddler Emaleen, who longs for a life beyond the Alaskan lodge where she works as a bar waitress, a setting which enables her bad habits and her accidental neglect of Emaleen. Described as a ''wild card'', she feels stuck in her day-to-day life, and yearns to cross the Wolverine river and live on the North Fork to fulfil her desires of a simple life surrounded by nature. When she meets Arthur Nielson, a strange, taciturn and solitary man, who says he has a cabin over there, she feels called to go - and bring Emaleen with her. Without realising it, this calling will transform hers and Emaleen's lives forever.|isbn=1472279042}}
{{Frontpage|author=Sally Rooney|title=Intermezzo|rating=4.5|genre=General Fiction |summary=Sally Rooney has studied the chessboard of life and is something of a grandmaster at putting it into words. Her dialogue is gripping and so brilliantly frustrating, as her characters never quite say exactly what they feel. Among the many relationships woven into this story, the central one for readers to unravel is the fraternal connection—or lack thereof—between Ivan and Peter Koubek. Ivan, a socially awkward chess prodigy, contrasts sharply with his older brother Peter, a successful lawyer living in Dublin. Following their father's passing after a long battle with cancer, the brothers' already strained relationship faces new trials.|isbn=0571365469}}{{Frontpage|author=Fyodor Dostoyevsky|title=White Nights|rating=5|genre=Short Stories|summary=As always in Dostoyevsky, the character work is sublime. One is never left wondering what a character is thinking or feeling because Dostoyevsky lays bare their innermost dispositions and temperaments with remarkable clarity.|isbn=0241619785}}{{Frontpage|class-"wikitable" cellpaddingauthor="15" <!-- INSERT NEW REVIEWS BELOW HERE-->James Baldwin<!-- Kennedy -->|title=Giovanni's Room|rating=4.5|-genre=Literary Fiction | stylesummary="width: 10%''Giovanni's Room'' follows the narrator David, an American man living in Paris, as he navigates his torturous affair with Giovanni, an Italian bartender he meets in a gay bar. While David is engaged to Hella, who is travelling in Spain, the real tension in the novel arises not from his infidelity but from the deeper conflict within himself. It is David's crippling shame and denial of his sexuality that ultimately dooms his relationship with Giovanni.|isbn=0141186356}}{{Frontpage|author=Alba de Cespedes |title=Forbidden Notebook|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=This Italian work of feminist fiction holds an air of suspense and tension from the moment our protagonist, Valeria Cossati, purchases her forbidden notebook, and learns about herself in the most intimate and revealing ways.|isbn=1782278222}}{{Frontpage|author=Ottessa Moshfegh|title=My Year of Rest and Relaxation|rating=3|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=At best, this novel is a scathing critique of modern society and reveals the fragility of human relationships; vertical-alignat worst, it is the cynical, predictable and slightly trite tale of an unlikeable protagonist. This unlikely heroine, a slim, attractive and newly orphaned girl in her twenties is disillusioned with the world, but resolves not to lose sleep over it: top; text-align: center;"in fact, her solution lies in her hibernation.|isbn=1784707422}}{{Frontpage|author=Matthew Tree|title=We'll Never Know[[image:1786331691|rating=4.jpg5|genre=Literary Fiction|linksummary=http://wwwTimothy Wyndham wants nothing more than to be different from his father, a drunk and chronic underachiever whose dreams of being exceptional at any of his artistic passions all failed miserably and who had endless crises of self confidence.amazonSo Tim applied himself to his studies, cultivated his abilities rather than his daydreams and set himself high but achievable ambitions.co.uk/dp/1786331691/ref|isbn= B0CVFXPGP8}}{{Frontpage|isbn=B0C47LV1PC|title=Fragility|author=Mosby Woods|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=nosimCan you make a ''Yo birthing person'' joke?tag=thebookbag-21]]And if you could, is the question should you make it? Or is the question if you did, would it land? The catch is that the answer for both could well be.... no.
''Fragility'' is set as the city of Portland, Oregon, cautiously begins to emerge from the restrictions imposed during the covid pandemic
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Mosby Woods
|title=A Whirly Man Loses His Turn
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= The West isn't the dominant force it once was. Nobody in the West is quite sure how to mend this or even if mending it is the best course of action. Governments are flailing. A war here, a push for climate action there. A feeling that nobody is in actual charge. Imagine then, there was a man with precognition. Imagine the strategic advantage in this asset; a man who can tell you what will happen given any set of circumstances. That man would be valuable, right? Perhaps the most valuable asset in history. Imagine then, that this man loses this ability. What would governments do to get it back?
|isbn=B0C9SNG8R1
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=0571379559
|title=The House of Broken Bricks
|author=Fiona Williams
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=''The House of Broken Bricks'' is the story of four people. Tess Hembry's roots are in Jamaica: temperamentally she might be happier there, but instead, she lives in the house on the riverbank, built of broken bricks. Insubstantial as it might look, it's stood the passage of time, storms and floods. Her husband, Richard, struggles to grow his vegetables, to complete the delivery rounds - and to bring in sufficient money. They have twin boys - Sonny and Max, the rainbow twins. Sonny's colouring reflects his mother's Jamaican heritage. Max takes after his father. People don't believe that they're related, much less twins and there's an assumption when Max is out with his mother that she's his nanny.
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Claire North
|title=House of Odysseus
|rating=5
|genre= Literary Fiction
|summary= ''What could matter more than love?''
The follow-up to the excellent ''Ithaca'' picks up a few months after where we left off. In the palace of Odysseus, with delicate care Queen Penelope continues to rule without her husband, who sailed to war at Troy and then by divine intervention never returned home. As ever she remains surrounded by suitors vying for the throne of the Western Isles. Having survived – politically and physical – the chaotic storm that Clytemnestra brought to Ithaca's shores, Queen Penelope is on the brink of a fragile peace. One that shatters however with the return of Orestes, King of Mycenae, and his sister Elektra, seeking refuge.| styleisbn="vertical0356516075}}{{Frontpage|author= Kay Chronister|title= Desert Creatures|rating= 4|genre= Dystopian Fiction|summary= With a world that is becoming increasingly inhospitable for humanity, post-align: top; textapocalyptic fiction can become an almost masochistic thrill. Whether it is a robotic takeover, a world devoid of water or a nuclear holocaust, this genre is a way for humans to cathartically experience their most existential fears. ''Desert Creatures'' by Kay Chronister is a new work of post-align: left;"apocalyptic fiction that aligns many of the fears that exist for humanity today. It is a shocking novel that still manages to find hope.|isbn=1803364998}}{{frontpage|isbn=1803363002|author=Eric LaRocca|title=[[The Great Wide Open Trees Grew Because I Bled There|rating= 5|genre= Horror|summary= Horror taps into something primeval within us. It is used as a way to reflect our darkest emotions and how we as humans react and process them. Most horror fiction feature a ''Big Bad'', whether that is a home invader, a monster or a ghost, it usually something tangible and, by Douglas Kennedy]]the end of the story, beatable. Eric LaRocca's ''The Trees Grew Because I Bled There'' is not like that. It is a collection of short stories more interested in the horrors of illness, grief and humiliation. Horrors that linger and are harder to defeat than any ''Big Bad''.}}{{Frontpage|author=Madelaine Lucas|title=Thirst for Salt|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''Love, I'd read, was supposed to be a light and weightless feeling, but I had always longed for gravity''
[[image:4Told from a retrospective view, a young woman unravels the year-long relationship that once defined her. Overlaid with later wisdom, the narrator relives the affair with a man twenty years her senior from its inception – the summer after finishing university – to its sorrowful end the summer after.5starSet against the backdrop of an isolated Australian coastal town ''Thirst for Salt'' details the 24-year-old narrator's deepening relationship with her older lover, depicting its all-consuming nature, how it changed her perspective on both romantic and familial relationships and how it altered her irrevocably.jpg|linkisbn=Category:{0861546490}}{{Frontpage|author= Michael Grothaus|title=Beautiful Shining People|rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:=4|genre= Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]]summary= ''But fearing something and having it come to pass are two different things. And I'm willing to bet most of what we fear will never happen, or we can take steps to change it.''
Douglas Kennedy's 'Beautiful Shining People'The Great Wide Open'' has been described as epic by just about everyone, and it often feels as though that was the intention. Though revolves around the novel often feels like a pastiche of the great American novel – epic in scope, preoccupied with matters question of money identity and literature, fixated with New York – acceptance. Of what it often feels more like Kennedy is trying means to reverse-engineer the concept altogetherbe human. InitiallyOf what is real and what is artificial, and whether the novel presents itself development of technology is exciting or frightening.|isbn=191458564X}}{{Frontpage|author=Jennifer Saint|title=Atalanta|rating=5|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=''I was as an intimate study worthy as any one of family dramathem. I would get on board that ship, I vowed. I would take my place, not just in the latter half of the novel it smoothly turns to examining the turn of American society since the 70s, and the rapid rise name of the hyper-capitalist neoliberal values that have dominated the west since the election of Ronald Reagangoddess. Though it takes place over a twenty-year period between the 70s and the 90s, it notably always keeps one an eye on It was for the present day (Trump, sake of coursemy name, makes an inevitable and slightly incongruous cameo) such that what happens links subtly into current affairs without ever explicitly referencing themtoo. [[The Great Wide Open by Douglas Kennedy|Full Review]]Atalanta''
<!-- d'Eramo -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1782273883Princess.jpg|link=http://wwwWarrior.amazonLover.coHero.uk/dp/1782273883/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]
Abandoned at birth for being born a daughter rather than a son, Atalanta is raised under the protective eye of the goddess Athemis and fashioned into a formidable huntress, one who longs for adventure. When the opportunity comes – to join the Argonauts, a fierce band of warriors, descendent from the Gods themselves – Atalanta seizes the chance to fight in Artemis' name and carve out her own legendary place in history. What follows is a whirlwind of challenges and discovery and through it, Atalanta must remember Artemis' fatal warning: that if she marries, it will be her undoing.
|isbn=1472292154
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Amanthi Harris
|title=Beautiful Place
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Padma, a young Sri Lankan, has returned to the Villa Hibiscus on the southern coast of her home country. This is a place she spent her formative years. It is not a place she was born into, but the one she thinks of as home. How she came to be at the Villa, how it became her home, and the machinations that have flowed through her life ever since she first arrived there provide the ''score'' for this gentle and yet subtly violent novel. Padma's present fails to escape her past and much like the musical score of a film, that strand weaves its way through everything that happens at the Villa.
|isbn=1784631930
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=178563335X
|title=Sea Defences
|author=Hilary Taylor
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=When we first meet Rachel Bird she's a trainee vicar, sitting in on a PCC meeting and wondering why they're held when you need to pick the children up. Her husband, Christopher, collects six-year-old Hannah and her elder brother, Jamie, whilst Rachel holds a sobbing parishioner. Thelma's daughter-in-law won't let her see her grandson. Holthorpe, on the Norfolk coast, is a lovely place, but Rachel is struggling to develop a real bond with the parish - and she's in awe of the vicar, Gail, but then she's been doing the job for more than thirty years. Rachel and Christopher hoped that a walk on the beach would do them some good - it was stormy but it was probably what they needed. And then Hannah went missing.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=1398515388
|title=The Boy and the Dog
|author=Seishu Hase and Alison Watts (translator)
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=First of all, it was the earthquake, deep in the ocean floor, which created the tsunami and this, in turn, caused the nuclear meltdown. The result was complete and utter devastation. The deaths were uncountable, and the loss of livelihoods was widespread. The fact that many pets were separated from their owners came far down the list of priorities but - six months after the tsunami - Kazumasa Nakagaki discovered a dog outside a convenience store. He wasn't a dog person but the convenience store owner's comment that he would call Public Health prompted Kazumasa to open his car door and Tamon the dog jumped in.
}}
{{Frontpage| styleisbn="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"0989715337|title=Papa on the Moon|author=Marco North|rating=4|genre=[[Deviation by Luce dLiterary Fiction|summary=''Some frogs had gotten into the well.''Eramo and Anne Milano Appel (translator)]]===
[[image:3''Walter stood waist-deep in the fragrant water, naked except for his beaten leather hat.5starLong strands of their eggs wove around him, sticky gray pearls with tadpoles inside them.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Autobiography|Autobiography]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]]Two of the dogs leaned over the opening and barked down at the strange noise of the buckets as he filled them.''
For those How is that for an opening? The style of you who have read books of life this novel in the Nazi camps – form of interconnected short stories goes from succinct and laconic to wistful and of coursemusing, for those of you who have not – this can be considered turning on a next stepsixpence. It beginsAnd author Marco North, after all, with someone escaping Dachau and fleeing her work assignment during a bombing raid, and you'd not blame her one minutewho has the most wonderful turn of phrase, starts as her career was deemed he means to be cess-tank cleaner and sewage unblocker by the Germansgo on. In Munich, she stumbles on help to get her }}{{Frontpage|author=Daisy Hildyard|title=Emergency|rating=4|genre=Literary Fiction|summary=The summary of this book doesn't come close to explaining what seems to be a camp for non-native civilians to look for work, or company, or transport elsewhere, either official or otherwise. But then is done with the next chapter sees her going back into the camp next to Dachau once more, and by then eyebrows are being raisedpremise. [[Deviation by Luce d'Eramo and Anne Milano Appel (translator)|Full Review]]isbn=1913097811}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Sally Oliver
|title=The Weight of Loss
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Marianne is grieving. Traumatised after the death of her sister, she awakes to find strange, thick black hairs sprouting from the bones of her spine which steadily increase in size and volume. Her GP, diagnosing the odd phenomenon as a physical reaction to her grief, recommends she go to stay at Nede, an experimental new treatment centre in Wales. Yet something strange is happening to Marianne and the other patients at Nede: a metamorphosis of a kind. As Marianne's memories threaten to overwhelm her, Nede offers her release from this cycle of memory and pain—but only at a terrible price: that of identity itself.
|isbn= 086154112X
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Natalia Garcia Freire
|title=This World Does Not Belong To Us
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary= Early comments on this debut novel from Ecuadorian writer Natalia García Freire include Tremendous, a delight. I will agree with the first – tremendous is no understatement – but 'a delight' is perhaps using the expression in a way I'm not familiar with. I have to confess my ignorance of the Spanish-language literary tradition so forgive my generalisation here. From the little I have read (in translation, I don't read Spanish) there does seem to be a tendency towards the fantastical – the mystical realism.
|isbn=0861541901
}}
{{Frontpage
|author=Jennifer Saint
|title=Elektra
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='Elektra' by Jennifer Saint tells the story of three women who live in the heavily male dominated world of Ancient Greece. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, and Elektra are all bit players in the story of the Trojan War. Yet Jennifer Saint shows us that often the silent women have the most compelling stories and the most extreme furies.
|isbn=1472273915
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=8409290103
|title=If Only
|author=Matthew Tree
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Twenty-one-year-old Malcolm Lowry had been sent abroad by his father, cotton-broker AO Lowry: he asked his accountant, Mr Patrick, to ensure that the young man got on board the boat and thereafter Patrick was to send him a monthly allowance. Patrick sent the money regularly and a correspondence - of sorts - sprang up between the two although we hear more about what Lowry has to say than Patrick. It wasn't that Lowry senior didn't care for his son, it was that he didn't care to have him in this country where he might be a danger to his wife and other children. The alcohol problem was obvious even before Patrick managed to get the young man on his way.
}}
{{Frontpage
|isbn=B098FFFBH9
|title=Snowcub
|author=Graham Fulbright
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Fourteen-year-old Rachel is her school's animal rights project leader and she and her friend are producing a competition entry to highlight the way in which human beings exploit the animal world. She gets a great deal of support from her family: father Pip Harrison, a lecturer at Imperial College, London, mother Kate and her twin, Nick. Kate runs the family business, a toy shop called Cornucopia in Putney, which is where we'll meet Rachel's main (if unsuspected) source of information: five soft toys.
}}
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[[image:1786076446.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1786076446/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]]
| style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Hidden by Mary Chamberlain]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]] When Barbara Hummel arrives, determined to identify the mysterious woman whose photograph she has found among her mother's possessions, Dora and Joe find their worlds upended – and are swiftly forced to confront their pasts. Revisiting their time Move on the Channel Islands during World War II, Dora remembers a time when she concealed her Jewish identity, and Joe, a Catholic Priest, remembers a time when he hid something very different. In this story of love, loss and betrayal, it remains to be seen whether a speck of light can diffuse the darkest shadows of war… [[The Hidden by Mary Chamberlain|Full Review]] <!-- Clár Ní Chonghaile -->|-| style=''width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;''|[[image:1787198146.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1787198146/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style=''vertical-align: top; text-align: left;''|===[[The Reckoning by Clar Ni Chonghaile]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Newest Paranormal Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] As the blurb says, ''In a cottage in Normandy, Lina Rose is writing to the daughter she abandoned as a baby''…the whole of Chonghaile's second novel is a series of letters addressed to Diane. Lina is now in her seventies and Diane is a mother herself. They have met just once since Lina gave her up for adoption. It was not a good meeting. [[The Reckoning by Clar Ni Chonghaile|Full Review]]<!-- Abbs -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1473691206.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1473691206/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Frieda by Annabel Abbs]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Married to English Professor Ernest Weekley, aristocrat Frieda Von Richtofen finds herself stifled by the confines of married life. Visiting family in Munich, she becomes captivated by the ideas of revolution and free love. Meeting the penniless writer D.H. Lawrence, she finds herself drawn into a passionate affair and a tempestuous relationship, changing the course of both their lives, and unleashing a creative outpouring that will change the course of literature forever. [[Frieda by Annabel Abbs|Full Review]] <!-- Susan Fletcher -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:0349007640.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0349007640/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[House of Glass by Susan Fletcher]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:Historical Fiction|Historical Fiction]] Clara suffered from ''Osteogenesis imperfecta'': these days it would probably be called brittle bone disease and whilst there is still no cure, treatments have advanced. At the beginning of the twentieth century it meant that Clara was confined to her home, living life through a window and the tales her mother, Charlotte, brought home. Both became far too knowledgeable about bones and the sounds they made on breaking. Charlotte would ''list bones like continents''. Clara would only escape the house after her mother's death - of a tumour at the age of thirty nine - and in her wanderings discovered Kew Gardens. Her growing knowledge of tropical plants led to the offer of a job stocking a newly-built glass house at Shadowbrook in Gloucestershire. [[House of Glass by Susan Fletcher|Full Review]] <!-- Hajaj -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1786073943.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1786073943/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Water Thief by Claire Hajaj]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Nick is in the middle of wedding preparations when he decides to leave his fiancée behind in London and take up a post in some un-named west African country providing engineering support for the building of a children's hospital. He has no idea what he is getting himself into. [[The Water Thief by Claire Hajaj|Full Review]] <!-- Wilson -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1786496038.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1786496038/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Aftershocks by A N Wilson]]=== [[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]], [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]] In a country very much like New Zealand, but at the same time most avowedly not, two women will find love. Strong love too, for our narrator will say that her first attraction for her partner was the only thing to make sense of all those exaggerated songs she'd heard, and books and poems she'd read, and plays she'd acted in – works of art that had until then seemed sheer hyperbole. It was entirely unrequited love for quite some time, but it does burgeon, or so we're promised from the off, because of something quite drastic – a major earthquake very much like the one that hit Christchurch, but at the same time most avowedly not. This book then is the combined exploration of the lovers and the story of the quake. [[Aftershocks by A N Wilson|Full Review]] <!-- Davies -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1786074443.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1786074443/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Tirzah and the Prince of Crows by Deborah Kay Davies]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] This is a quiet but remarkable story, written in a style reminiscent of E. M. Forster, ''[Tirzah and the Prince of Crows'' has no great and stirring action but rather small ripples that make a huge impact. Tirzah is a young girl of sixteen raised in a small Welsh town in the 1970s by highly religious parents as part of a strict religious community. The book follows Tirzah though a tumultuous year as she tries to decide who she wants to be, and what she wants to do with her life. [[Tirzah and the Prince of Crows by Deborah Kay Davies|Full Review]] <!-- Brooke Fieldhouse -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1789013992.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1789013992/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Gilded Ones by Brooke Fieldhouse]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Crime|Crime]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] It was a hot day in 1984 and Pulse had two job interviews for the day, but the heat wasn't the only reason why he wasn't feeling on top form. He'd had a disturbing dream the night before. He'd been following a Porsche on a difficult route, probably somewhere in the Alps when the Porsche went off the road. The passenger, a man, was dead, but the woman was still alive. ''I'm Freia...'', she said. ''It's spelled the German way.'' Of the two job interviews, the first was with an up-and-coming design studio in Brighton and it would almost certainly be good for Pulse's career. The second was with a run-down practice based in an old London house and headed by Patrick Lloyd-Lewis, whose wife, Freia, had recently died in unexplained circumstances. The link with the dream of the night before was too much for Pulse to refuse the offer of a job. He couldn't resist the lure of the mystery. [[The Gilded Ones by Brooke Fieldhouse|Full Review]] <!-- Cullen -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:0718189140.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0718189140/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Lost Letters of William Woolf by Helen Cullen]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] William Woolf is a letter detective, working in the Dead Letters Depot in East London. He spends his days deciphering smudged addresses, tracking down mysterious people and reading endless letters of love, guilt, death, hope, and everyday life. [[The Lost Letters of William Woolf by Helen Cullen|Full Review]] <!-- Dehnel -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1786073579.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1786073579/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Lala by Jacek Dehnel and Antonia Lloyd-Jones (translator)]]=== [[image:5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] ''This is the mysterious nature of storytelling: the same start can also mean different endings, and different starts can lead to the same finale. It's all subordinate to the greater narrative, which starts somewhere in Kiev''. This beautiful book is exactly that, the mysterious art of storytelling. The wayward meanderings of memory, of tangents and digressions, of side notes and elaborations, but above all that of affection; for both the story and the storyteller. What makes us who we are if not our culture and heritage and in this book our narrator re-lives and re-tells the story of his heritage told to him by his grandmother. [[Lala by Jacek Dehnel and Antonia Lloyd-Jones (translator)|Full Review]] <!-- Wise -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:0857302183.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0857302183/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Emperor of Shoes by Spencer Wise]]=== [[image:3star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] ''The Emperor of Shoes'' is the story of Alex Cohen, the heir to a lucrative shoe factory based in southern China. More idealistic than his profit-obsessed father, and less motivated solely by the bottom line, he's unsure of himself: unsure whether he can continue his father's success. But complications arise when he starts to question how morally sound the business really is, and whether the workers are being given a fair deal. [[The Emperor of Shoes by Spencer Wise|Full Review]] <!-- Vodolazkin -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1786072718.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1786072718/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin and Lisa Hayden (Translator)]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Innokenty Petrovich Platonov wakes up in a hospital bed with no recollection of who he is or how he got there. He is tended by a single doctor, Doctor Geiger, who gives him a pencil and notebook and encourages him to write down his observations and memories. The notebook is thick, like a novel. How can Innokenty fill it if he cannot remember anything? But slowly the memories start to return, memories of childhood holidays at the beach, of life in the dacha, of the airfield and the aviators...and the island...it seems like some memories may be better left buried. He remembers that he is the same age as the century, born in 1900. But if that is the case, how is he still a young man when the pills by his bedside are dated 1999? [[The Aviator by Eugene Vodolazkin and Lisa Hayden (Translator)|Full Review]] <!-- Houm -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1782273778.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1782273778/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator)]]=== [[image:4.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:General Fiction|General Fiction]], [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Jane Ashland is dying. That's a description of a very early scene here – but also, of course, a platitude that can apply to all of us. Jane's life, if anything, is going up and down in levels of pleasure, energy – sobriety – in these pages, but we soon learn that it recently found a very deeply dark down place. Here then, scattered through a timeline-bending narrative, we have her days finding a Lincolnesque lover as a student in New York, glimpses of therapy, a drive to find her ancestors that takes her from rural America to Norway – and a trip there with a new-found friend to watch the musk oxen, of all things. And nowhere in sight is anything like a platitude… [[The Gradual Disappearance of Jane Ashland by Nicolai Houm and Anna Paterson (translator)|Full Review]] <!-- Bonnefoy -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1910477524.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1910477524/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Black Sugar by Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Miguel Bonnefoy's ''Black Sugar'' is a sensual epic chronicling three generations of the Otero family. The tale begins with the disappearance of Captain Henry Morgan's treasure and then illustrates the power this treasure holds over people. Multiple people become obsessed with finding this fabled treasure that has become an urban legend in the town in which the story is set. [[Black Sugar by Miguel Bonnefoy and Emily Boyce (translator)|Full Review]] <!-- Ruby -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:1455565180.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1455565180/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[The Zero and the One by Ryan Ruby]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] ''The Zero and the One'' is an incredibly well written and well crafted book. We meet our narrator, Owen, on the plane to New York for the funeral of his best friend. He is still reeling after recent events, a suicide pact in which his friend died but he lived, and he is going through the motions of the funeral and consoling family whilst still trying to get to grips with his own feelings of grief and guilt. So far, so simple. But this is where the talent of Ryan Ruby steps in and slowly, so slowly, he reveals little tantalising clues that all is not what it seems, a throw-away comment here, a mis-step there, and it becomes clear that Owen is not a reliable narrator. [[The Zero and the One by Ryan Ruby|Full Review]] <!-- Miles -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:0553447580.jpg|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0553447580/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Anatomy of a Miracle by Jonathan Miles]]=== [[image:3.5star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] Look closely at the cover of Jonathan Miles's third novel and you'll see the central drama depicted: white wheelchair tracks snake up from the bottom and stop three-quarters of the way from the top, where they are replaced by footprints. On 23 August 2014, wheelchair-bound veteran Cameron Harris stands up and walks outside the Biz-E-Bee convenience store in Biloxi, Mississippi. In the rest of the novel we find out how he got to this point and what others – ranging from his doctor to representatives of the Roman Catholic Church – will make of his recovery. Was it a miracle, or an explainable medical phenomenon? [[Anatomy of a Miracle by Jonathan Miles|Full Review]] <!-- Mcneil -->|-| style="width: 10%; vertical-align: top; text-align: center;"|[[image:Mcneil Fire.jpg|left|link=http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1785078992/ref=nosim?tag=thebookbag-21]] | style="vertical-align: top; text-align: left;"|===[[Fire on the Mountain by Jean McNeil]]=== [[image:4star.jpg|link=Category:{{{rating}}} Star Reviews]] [[:Category:Literary Fiction|Literary Fiction]] This is an unusual book, in style it feels like a novel by E M Forster; with a deep study at the minutiae of life and thought, yet the plot and content is thoroughly modern. The bulk of the story is told through the perspective of Nick, and we see his point of view on life around him. The main characters of the book, however, are Pieter and Riaan, as it is these characters who fascinate Nick and are the focus of his contemplation and crisis. [[Fire on the Mountain by Jean McNeil|Full Review]] <!-- DO NOT REMOVE ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE -->|}
