==Literary fiction==
__NOTOC__
{{newreview
|author=Damon Galgut
|title=In a Strange Room
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary='In A Strange Room' follows the actions of one man as he travels across three different countries, with three sets of companions, playing three separate roles. Never settled in one place, narrator Damon continually hops from one country to another collecting more stamps in his passport than he does friends.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1848873220</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Nicholson Baker
|summary=''The Seas'' follows the story of a nameless nineteen-year old girl who is lonely and adrift in a cruel coastal town so far to the north of the USA that the roads only run south. She misses her father, an absent alcoholic sailor, while her silence-loving mother, who grew up on an isolated island with deaf parents, worries deeply about her. Early on in the story we get the distinct impression that our narrator is not deemed 'normal' by her peers, who call her all sorts of unflattering things. With nothing to do in her small town, and no one to do it with, she spends her time pining for a local alcoholic called Jude who is fifteen years her senior, and who refuses her amorous advances on the grounds that it would be wrong. As the story unfolds, Jude and the girl's relationship grows and changes, sometimes in unexpected ways.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849013934</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Lionel Shriver
|title=We Need To Talk About Kevin
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Politicians continue to argue that the solution to social issues lies with the family, so it is timely that at the heart of Lionel Shriver's 2005 Orange Prize winning novel is the issue of nature vs nurture - what makes a person like he or she is? Is the eponymous Kevin born evil or is he influenced by his mother's coldness towards him. There are no clear answers and that's what gives this brave book, which tackles the taboos that some mothers don't bond with their children, such power.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687349</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ben Okri
|title=Tales of Freedom
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Tales of Freedom is a book of two halves, with a short story entitled Comic Destiny taking up the majority of the book. Comic Destiny is made up of a series of short pieces that follow on from each other and are probably best described as being closer to prose poetry than anything else.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846041597</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Fernando Pessoa
|title=The Book of Disquiet
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=If you try to read 'The Book of Disquiet' from cover to cover, it is almost oppressively melancholic. Nothing much happens, and what we have is a collection of reveries and thoughts - almost a diary, but not quite - of existential musings about life, loneliness and the human condition. It's so introspective that after a while the monotony of the writer's mundane existence starts to wear on the reader. '''But''' I would urge you not to read this book like that. Rather, dip into it at random and you will find a work of undeniable genius. It's quite simply a masterpiece of modernist writing.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687357</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Jeanne Peterson
|title=Falling to Heaven
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Emma and Gerald Kittredge are either very brave or very naive. They've made the long journey from America to Tibet. Hardly on the tourist trail and they're not missionaries, so why are they there? This novel is a serious and sweeping narrative trying to answer that very question - and many more.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>185168736X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Carsten Jensen
|title=We, the Drowned
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=In 1848, Laurids Madsen and other men of the small
town of Marstal go to war to fight the Germans, and an explosion
flings him up to heaven, as far as anyone can tell. But Laurids
returns, claiming his sea boots were too heavy for him to stay up
there – only to be lost to Marstal anyway, as he abandons his family
to sail the high seas.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846550963</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Matthew Hooton
|title=Deloume Road
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=A tiny, rural community with a handful of characters is at the heart of this novel. And the thing that binds them all together is Deloume Road. Hooton gives over every chapter (and some are very short) to one of his characters - Irene, Andy, the butcher. Each is very different from the other.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0224087657</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Trevor Byrne
|title=Ghosts and Lightning
|rating=4
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Denny comes home to Dublin from Wales after his mum dies suddenly, and hangs around drinking and taking drugs with his sister, her girlfriend and some of their mates, while he wonders what to do with himself. There are some practical matters to sort out too, such as the nasty older brother who owns their house and wants his siblings out.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847673309</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Helen Dunmore
|title=The Betrayal
|rating=5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=Andrei is a perceptive and deeply conscientious doctor, a young rheumatologist and paediatrician working in a Leningrad hospital just after the terrible siege, during the last days of Stalin’s dictatorship. He is as quick to notice symptoms in his colleagues as in his young patients. When he is approached by Russov, a fellow physician, he registers his confrere’s pervading smell of fear. This is all part of the pathology of the times; life as it is lived under a tyrannical dictatorship. A dictatorship determined to pursue a purge – a vendetta directed against doctors, particularly Jewish doctors. The sweating Russov manages to inveigle Andrei Aleksayev into treating a very sick child, Gorya, the son of Volkhov, who is a tyrannical and high ranking secret police officer. Therapeutic failure, in all probability, could result in vengeance, arrest and devastating effects on Andrei’s loving wife Anna and her young adolescent brother, Kolya.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1905490593</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Mari Strachan
|title=The Earth Hums in B Flat
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Choosing a child as the viewpoint character of a novel requires confidence and imagination. To succeed is to convince the reader of events at two levels – the child's world within the adult world surrounding her. The very best novels about childhood, like say Harper Lee's classic, 'To Kill a Mockingbird', also reflect a wider cultural truth. In 'The Earth Hums in B Flat', a claustrophobic Welsh village is both protection and straitjacket as the characters struggle to cope with their family secrets. If that sounds a bit tacky, fear not, because the viewpoint character, Gwenni, is all whippet and sharp corners.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1847673058</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Philip Sington
|title=The Einstein Girl
|rating=4.5
|genre=Literary Fiction
|summary=The two central characters are (and we've come across it many times before) a psychiatrist (in this case Kirsch) and his patient (known as the Einstein Girl) and hence the novel's title. The case of this girl is intriguing, not least because both doctor and patient had accidentally met prior to her admission to hospital. Kirsch appears immediately smitten - which may be a problem. He's already spoken for. In a nutshell, the Einstein Girl has lost her memory. Kirsch finds more and more of his professional time given over to her recovery, back to mental well-being. It becomes a long and complicated journey, for both of them.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099535793</amazonuk>
}}
