Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Review by Annabel Sometimes the hype is true, and a publisher’s lead-title for the season really is worth the advance praise heaped on it. This is the case with Lessons…
Review by Annabel Sometimes the hype is true, and a publisher’s lead-title for the season really is worth the advance praise heaped on it. This is the case with Lessons…
Reviewed by Harriet This is a body-swap novel – one of the first ever to be published. It’s very entertaining but also quite thought provoking. The swappers here are Polly…
Review by Liz Dexter This is a collection of writing by women about music, mainly about women in music, put together by visual artist, musician and writer Kim Gordon and…
Review by Elaine Simpson-Long There have been so many books written about ‘Her Maj’ and, I daresay, there will be more in the future, and striking the right note is…
Review by Basil Ransome-Davies Back when I aspired to write crime fiction but realised I was a lousy plotter, I used to buy used true-crime magazines on Preston market to…
Translated from the Finnish by David Hackston Review by Annabel I’m always interested in adding new Nordic authors to my reading list, which is increasingly expanding beyond the traditional home…
Reviewed by Harriet Anyone who knows me or reads my reviews will know that I’m a great admirer of Sebastian Barry. I’ve reviewed three of his novels on Shiny (here,…
Review by Annabel The TV news came on and a lugubrious looking chap in a light-coloured suit with a deep, plummy voice said something about the balance of payments. ‘That’s…
Reviewed by Annabel Dr Andrew Lees is a neurology professor at the National Hospital in London the first English hospital dedicated exclusively to treating the diseases of the nervous system….
Review by Elaine Simpson-Long The second volume of these diaries was delivered by my postman, who was visibly having difficulty handing it over as he had a huge pile of…
Translated by Michael Favala Goldman Review by Karen Langley The last few years have seen Danish author Tove Ditlevsen’s star in the ascendant following the translation of her autofictional Copenhagen…
Reviewed by Harriet ‘Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier and the Romance of the Century’ is the subtitle of this joint biography by Stephen Galloway. The author, previously executive editor of the…
Review by Liz Dexter In this extraordinary book, Richard King takes the voices of a hundred Welsh people who were active in various forms of culture and politics over the…
Reviewed by Harriet ‘That’s how families work. You think you’re free of them, but you’re never really free; the ripples are crimped in forever’. Here, not many pages before the…
Review by Annabel Back in the 1990s, Higson wrote four thrillers for adults, they were dark, nasty and funny. But after them he got sidetracked onto writing for Harry Enfield…
Reviewed by Harriet These girls, buffeting with the world as they did war-work, or any work that would support them, were apt to have moments when independence seemed the most…
Review by Annabel You may know Annie Macmanus as ‘Annie Mac’, the fomer Radio 1 DJ. She left the station last year to pursue other avenues, which have included publishing…
Review by Terence Jagger This is a lively and compelling biography of one of the intellectual giants of the twentieth century, who has somehow escaped the notice of the general…
Reviewed by Harriet Peter Swanson is a prolific author, averaging one book a year since his debut, The Girl with a Clock for a Heart in 2014. I’ve reviewed two…
Review by Rob Spence Pete Duffy is having a mid-life crisis. His fiftieth birthday is on the horizon, and his career as a freelance rock music journalist is in freefall….
Review by Terence Hallett This is an intriguing but also frustrating book. I did wonder if the Shiny editors would allow me to write two alternative reviews. The first would…
Review by Karen Langley We readers have never been able to get enough of crime fiction, it seems, and in the 21st century the genre is as popular as it…
Review by Annabel Gaskell Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, her novel conceived during that momentous trip to Geneva in 1816 during ‘the year without a summer’, is supremely concerned with the subject…
By Rebecca Foster Short novels can convey much truth in a low page count, ramping up the psychological intensity through pared-back scenes and a focus on one character or a…