==General fiction==
__NOTOC__
{{newreview
|author=Kevin Wilson
|title=The Family Fang
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=
Annie Fang and her brother Buster are back living at home with their parents - where they never thought they'd ever be again. But it has come to this - her film actress career is on the rocks with the kind of self-destruction so much enjoyed by tabloid writers, and he - well, he's here because of a jumbo spud gun. Neither want life back at home, as throughout their childhood they were used by their parents - without much planning, without any consideration of feelings, or consent - in a whole career of performance art pieces, designed to enact a point of life or just cause havoc.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1447202384</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Philip Roth
{{newreview
|author=Thierry Jonquet
|title=Tarantula: The Skin I Live In
|rating=5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=In a large French country house, an expert in facial reconstruction surgery keeps a beautiful woman locked up in her bedroom. He placates her with opium, but barks orders through hugely powerful speakers and an intercom. She tantalises him with her sexuality, which he tries to ignore, except for when he seems to abuse it in a sort of S/M way when he does let her into society, as he forces her to prostitute herself. Elsewhere, a young, inept bank robber holes himself up in a sunny house, waiting for the heat to die. And finally, a young man is held chained up in a cellar at the hands of an unknown possessor.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687942</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ira Levin
|title=The Boys From Brazil
|rating=4
|genre=Crime
|summary=A small group of powerful Nazis gather for a convivial post-prandial meeting, and collect identities and orders from their leader, who is sending them to different corners of the world in order that many innocent people may be killed. But this isn't when you might expect - it's the mid-1970s. It isn't where you might expect, for these Nazis are remnants of Hitler's regime that fled to south America for safety. And the deaths are being ordered for reasons you will never foretell. In that regard, then, you are as well-informed as chief Nazi hunter Yakov Lieberman, who hears tantalising hints of the plot, but cannot fathom it - nor indeed find proof it has indeed started.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849015902</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Joe Dunthorne
|title=Wild Abandon
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=When your first novel has been successful, it adds pressure onto the second. This is the situation facing Joe Dunthorne, as his debut [[Submarine by Joe Dunthorne|Submarine]] won several awards, was adapted into a film and came highly praised by The Bookbag. This means ''Wild Abandon'' has to be rather good to keep his reputation intact.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>024114406X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Stella Gibbons
|title=Westwood
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=I was instantly attracted to this novel as it's set largely in Hampstead and Highgate, which is territory I'm fortunate enough to be familiar with. I was also instantly attracted to Margaret – a young woman with the worries of the world on her shoulders. Continually concerned with politics and the impact of war on those far away as well as close by, Margaret has genuine warmth and concern for her fellow human beings, and this pulls the reader into her story straight away.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>009952872X</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Esi Edugyan
|title=Half-Blood Blues
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Sid and his friend Chip are revisiting their youth, more than 50 years ago. They were jazz musicians, living and working in Berlin and Paris, until they had to escape Nazi occupied Paris in 1940 to return to Baltimore. Now it is 1992, and all the others they worked with are long since dead. They have just been involved in a documentary about their experiences, and are about to return to Germany (soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall) for a jazz festival in memory of the great Hiero Falk. Hieronymus Falk was a young black German musician with an exceptional musical talent, the star of their band, the Hot-Time Swingers. He was picked up by 'the Boots' as Sid refers to the Germans, in Paris in 1940, and disappeared into a concentration camp, then they heard he was released but died in 1948.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1846687756</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ira Levin
|title=Rosemary's Baby
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=A young couple find the beginnings of a dream life together in a new apartment in a New York building that a friend says is a hotbed of death and misfortune. But it seems perfect. His job prospects as an actor have never been better, and they're quickly accepted into the elderly community of their neighbours. What's more, she - Rosemary - gets pregnant. Nothing can go wrong, can it? None of this happiness and hope can come at a dreadful cost - can it?
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849015880</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Luke Williams
|title=The Echo Chamber
|rating=4
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=Born in Lagos, Nigeria in 1946, in the last days of the British Empire, Evie Steppman had exceptional hearing. She remembers what it was like in the womb, the pumping of her mother's blood, the different tones of her father's voice telling her stories, and the clatter of outside noise, yet to be recognized as the falling of rain or the whining of the wind. As she grew up she learnt to listen to the sounds around her, for even in silence there is still the echo of one's own heartbeat. Now, many years later, her hearing is going, and with it her memories. Confined to an attic space in Scotland she needs to write her story down before it is too late. To do this she turns to objects – a pocket watch, maps, photos and diaries, to help re-form her past, to take us on a journey – not through sights, but through sounds.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0241143004</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ben Brooks
|title=Grow Up
|rating=4
|genre=Teens
|summary=Jasper is seventeen. He spends his time pretending to revise for his AS levels, fantasising about sex with Georgia Treely, hanging out with self-harming best friend Tenaya watching cheesy TV shows, and taking ketamine and mephedrone with his friends. When he's at a loose end, he goes to sex chatrooms in a quest to see how far he can get without going private (paying). He's also convinced that his step-father, Keith, is a homicidal maniac whose next victim is likely to be Jasper's mother...
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0857861875</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Michael Richmond
|title=Sisyphusa
|rating=3.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary=The back cover blurb tells us that the mentally ill (for whatever reason or reasons) are still stigmatised by various sectors of society. I would agree. I then flip the book over to the front cover which has the words 'the mental health publisher' and straight away some of us may already be making a judgement (perhaps unfairly too) before they even open the book. Perhaps this up-front honesty by the publisher negates somewhat the terrific title and terrific graphics of the cover. Just my own personal opinion here. The publishing company is being supported by the Arts Council, England.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849915261</amazonuk>
}}
{{newreview
|author=Ira Levin
|title=The Stepford Wives
|rating=4.5
|genre=General Fiction
|summary='It can't be a coincidence that Stepford women are all the way they are' says Bobbie, Joanna Eberhart's only friend in Stepford. Joanna has recently come to live in the idyllic suburban town of Stepford with her husband and two children. She is an independent woman with her own part-time career as a photographer, is intelligent, liberated and has a keen interest in feminism.
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>1849015899</amazonuk>
}}
