Reviews of fiction

Universal Languages
HANNAH ADCOCK explores the facts and fictions of the quest for a perfect language in her review of books by Andrew Drummond and Umberto Eco.
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Things to Make and Mend
In this tightly written debut RUTH THOMAS writes about lost friendship and nostalgia with quick wit and quiet emotion.
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Small Wonder
Reviews of The Last Book You Read and Other Stories by Ewan Morrison and Furthermore by Susie Maguire.
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Fiction Roundup
Reviews of The Endings Man by Frederic Lindsay, A Window in Thrums by J. M. Barrie, Encarnita's Journey by Joan Lingard, and Espresso Tales by Alexander McCall Smith.
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Light
In this story about women on the edge, MARGARET ELPHINSTONE creates an unforgettable landscape of wild seas, crumbling cliffs and fragile humanity.
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Wild Ducks
Review of Wild Ducks Flying Backward, a new prose and poetry collection by author Tom Robbins.
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The Bullet Trick
Returning to her twin themes of illusion and showmanship, LOUISE WELSH has produced a third novel brimming with despair, dark glamour and, of course, brutal murder.
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Boy in the Bucket
In this quest-tale by Maurice Dijon aka MIKE DILLON, a boy in a bucket does battle with an evil Baron. Jokes, asides and invented language abound.
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Liar's Landscape
Review of Malcolm Bradbury's Liar's Landscape: collected writing from a storyteller's life, edited by Dominic Bradbury.
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Beyond Black
Review of Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel.
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Letters from the Great Wall
MICHAEL LISTER reviews Letters from the Great Wall, the first novel from renowned historian and biographer Jenni Daiches, which sees a young woman travel to China in an attempt to escape her confining life in Scotland.
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Seasonal Offerings
A new edition of A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Books by Charles Dickens stimulates MICHAEL LISTER to reconsider the Christmas classic.
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Will
In this audacious novel, CHRISTOPHER RUSH dares to take on the voice of the world's most famous playwright. Shakespeare is on his deathbed and decides to put his affairs into order and draw up his will. So begins his valediction to the world.
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In Darkest Peeblesdale
An entertainment from ANDREW GREIG inspired by and transgressing the ground rules of John Buchan's thrillers, Romanno Bridge has Michael Lister contemplating dime novels and bad sex.
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Good Women
Review of Jane Stevenson's Good Women, a trio of highly entertaining devious revenge tales.
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An Eye on Our Future
Review of The Story of General Dann by Doris Lessing, a dystopic tale of the not too distant future at the dawn of a new Ice Age.
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Baggage
In Baggage: My Childhood, Janet Street-Porter remembers her youth in London and her fury when her parents move from Fulham to the anonymous suburbia of Perivale.
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Buddha Da
Review of Anne Donovon's first novel, Buddha Da, about the arrival of Buddhism in a Glasgow family.
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Shining Bright
Reviews of Clara by Janice Galloway, Pharos by Alice Thompson, Hy Brasil by Margaret Elphinstone and The Beauty Room by Regi Claire.
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Resonant Short Stories
Reviews of Heligoland by Shena Mackay and Not the End of the World by Kate Atkinson.
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Fathers and Genius
Reviews of Ascension Day by Chris Dolan, Our Fathers by Andrew O'Hagan, Deep Probing, the Autobiography of a Genius by Ian MacPherson and Pest Maiden by Dilys Rose.
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A Sinister Cabaret
Reviews of Sinister Cabaret by John Herdman, Blue Poppies by Jonathan Falla, White Male Heart by Ruaridh Nicoll, The Machine Doctor by Peter Burnett, and Dead Letter House by Drew Campbell.
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Seas, Trees, and so on
Reviews of Margaret Elphinstone's The Sea Road, The Blood Tree by Paul Johnston, The Short Hello by Susie Maguire, and Nigel Tranter's Envoy Extraordinary.
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