Tag: contemporary fiction

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Life Ceremony by Sayaka Murata

Firstly, a huge thank you to Granta and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Publisher: Granta
Publication Date: 14/07/2022
Length: 266 pages
Genre: Japanese Fiction | Translated Fiction | Short Stories | Horror | Contemporary Fiction

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

An engaged couple falls out over the husband’s dislike of clothes and objects made from human materials; a young girl finds herself deeply enamoured with the curtain in her childhood bedroom; people honour their dead by eating them and then procreating. Published in English for the first time, this exclusive edition also includes the story that first brought Sayaka Murata international acclaim: ‘A Clean Marriage’, which tells the story of a happily asexual couple who must submit to some radical medical procedures if they are to conceive a longed-for child.

Mixing taboo-breaking body horror with feminist revenge fables, old ladies who love each other and young women finding empathy and transformation in unlikely places, Life Ceremony is a wild ride to the outer edges of one of the most original minds in contemporary fiction.

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Violets by Kyung-Sook Shin

Firstly, a huge thank you to W&N for sending me a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Publisher: W&N
Publication Date: 14/04/2022
Length: 218 pages
Genre: Translated Fiction | Korean Fiction | Contemporary Fiction

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

We join San in 1970s rural South Korea, a young girl ostracised from her community. She meets a girl called Namae, and they become friends until one afternoon changes everything. Following a moment of physical intimacy in a minari field, Namae violently rejects San, setting her on a troubling path of quashed desire and isolation.

We next meet San, aged twenty-two, as she starts a job in a flower shop. There, we are introduced to a colourful cast of characters, including the shop’s mute owner, the other florist Su-ae, and the customers that include a sexually aggressive businessman and a photographer, who San develops an obsession for. Throughout, San’s moment with Namae lingers in the back of her mind.

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Blog Tour – The Green Indian Problem by Jade Leaf Willetts

Welcome to my stop on the The Green Indian Problem blog tour! Huge thanks to Renard Press for giving me the opportunity to take part in this! I was provided a copy of the novel in exchange for an honest review.

Publisher: Renard Press
Publication Date: 30/03/2022
Length: 208 pages
Genre: Fiction | Contemporary Fiction

CW: domestic abuse, drug abuse, child abuse, sexualt assault, death

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Set in the valleys of South Wales at the tail end of Thatcher’s Britain, The Green Indian Problem is the story of Green, a seven year-old with intelligence beyond his years – an ordinary boy with an extraordinary problem: everyone thinks he’s a girl.

Green sets out to try and solve the mystery of his identity, but other issues keep cropping up – God, Father Christmas, cancer – and one day his best friend goes missing, leaving a rift in the community and even more unanswered questions. Dealing with deep themes of friendship, identity, child abuse and grief, The Green Indian Problem is, at heart, an all-too-real story of a young boy trying to find out why he’s not like the other boys in his class.

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The Listeners by Jordan Tanahill

Firstly, a huge thank you to Fourth Estate for providing me with a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Publisher: Fourth Estate
Publication Date: 08/07/2021
Length: 272 pages
Genre: Contemporary Fiction | Speculative Fiction

CW: references to sexual assault

Blackwells.co.uk

One night, while lying in bed next to her husband, Claire Devon suddenly hears a low hum. This innocuous sound, which no one else in the house can hear, has no obvious source or medical cause, but it begins to upset the balance of Claire’s life. When she discovers that one of her students can also hear the hum, the two strike up an unlikely and intimate friendship. Finding themselves increasingly isolated from their families and colleagues, they fall in with a disparate group of people who also perceive the sound. What starts out as a kind of neighbourhood self-help group gradually transforms into something much more extreme, with far-reaching, devastating consequences. 

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Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Publisher: Granta Books
Publication Date: 02/05/2019
Length: 163 pages
Genre: Translated Fiction | Japanese Fiction | Contemporary Fiction

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

Meet Keiko.

Keiko is 36 years old.

She’s never had a boyfriend, and she’s been working in the same supermarket for eighteen years.

Keiko’s family wishes she’d get a proper job. Her friends wonder why she won’t get married.

But Keiko knows what makes her happy, and she’s not going to let anyone come between her and her convenience store…

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Godspeed by Nickolas Butler

Firstly, a huge thank you to Faber & Faber for sending me a copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Publisher: Faber & Faber
Publication Date: 27/07/2021
Length: 352 pages
Genre: Contemporary Fiction

CW: drug use

Blackwells.co.uk

‘My daddy always told me, if it looks too good to be true – then it probably is.’

Bart, Teddy and Cole have been best friends since childhood. Having founded their own small-town construction company, they yearn to build a legacy, something to leave behind to their families. So when Gretchen Connors, a mysterious millionaire lawyer from California, approaches them with a stunning, almost formidable project in the mountains above their town, the three friends convince themselves it’s the job which will secure their future.

But what is Gretchen hiding from them? And why does the build have to be complete by Christmas, a near-impossible deadline? With the lines between ambition and greed more slippery and dangerous than the three friends ever imagined, how far will they push themselves and what will be the cost of their dream?

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