Mrs. Hemingway by Naomi Wood
Written by Victoria Best Gertrude Stein said rather pithily of Hemingway, ‘Anyone who marries three girls from St Louis hasn’t learned much.’ In Naomi Wood’s brilliant account of all four of…
Q&A with Naomi Wood, author of Mrs. Hemingway
Questions by Shiny Editor, Victoria 1. What drew you towards Hemingway and his wives as a topic for fiction? I’ve always been interested in Hemingway as a writer, and a…
The Runaways by Elizabeth Goudge
Reviewed by Rachel Fenn Hesperus Press, known for their very attractive reprints of minor works by major authors, has recently launched a new arm of their business called Hesperus Minor,…
Mad Girl’s Love Song by Andrew Wilson
Reviewed by Victoria Best In Andrew Wilson’s fascinating account of Sylvia Plath before she met Ted Hughes, she comes across as the Britney Spears of the poetry world. There’s the…
Queen’s Gambit by Elizabeth Fremantle
Written by Victoria Best It’s a brave woman who steps into Hilary Mantel’s territory these days. Comparisons are bound to be rife, but Queen’s Gambit can stand up to them. The one…
The Cornish Coast Murder and The Lake District Murder by John Bude
Reviewed by Harriet Devine ‘That’s just where I must part company with you, Inspector’, said the Vicar with a gentle smile. ‘I’m rather a voracious reader of mystery stories, and…
The Quarry by Iain Banks
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell When Iain Banks’ last novel The Quarry was published posthumously, a couple of weeks after his death from gall bladder cancer last year, as a fan of his…
Territorial Rights by Muriel Spark
Reviewed by Simon Thomas The vagaries of reputation are curious. If you ask a hundred people to name a novel by Muriel Spark, then most – well, most might cross…
Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls by David Sedaris
Reviewed by Simon Thomas It’s a shame, in some respects, that our divisions on Shiny New Books don’t allow for subcategories within non-ficton, because you might be assuming (if the name…
In Search of Gielgud: A Biographer’s Tale by Jonathan Croall
Reviewed by Harriet Devine Writing a biography is easy, right? You just have to find out lots of facts about the person, and string them together to make them readable….
The Adjacent by Christopher Priest
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Though it was shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke Award this year (but didn’t win the prize), it has taken me a while after reading The Adjacent by…
Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter
Reviewed by Jodie One of the children’s classics I didn’t read when I was a child was Pollyanna. It had been described to me as a story about a pious little girl who…
How to be a Heroine by Samantha Ellis
Reviewed by Jane Carter I was smitten as soon as I saw the title, but when I saw the cover—a pile of books is always a good thing and this…
An Officer and A Spy by Robert Harris
Reviewed by Falaise Robert Harris’ An Officer and A Spy is a tour de force of historical fiction, an account of what Harris himself has described as, “perhaps the greatest political scandal…
A Long Walk Home by Judith Tebbutt
Reviewed by Victoria Best Of all the truly terrifying experiences that life can hold, I would imagine that being kidnapped and held hostage must be up there with the worst…
Why you should read The Runaways, by Adrienne Byrne
Winner of the Hesperus ‘Uncover a Children’s Classic Competition’, 2013 I was about ten when I discovered this book in my local library. It was the original title Linnets and Valerians that…
Five Fascinating Facts about… Nathanael West
Compiled by Oliver Tearle To accompany our review of Daunt Books’ new reprint of Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts, reviewed here, we’ve asked Oliver Tearle to give us Five Fascinating Facts about…
Miss Lonelyhearts by Nathanael West
Review by Simon Thomas I toyed with trying to write this entire review of Miss Lonelyhearts (originally published in 1933, now reissued in a beautiful edition by Daunt Books) without giving the…
Give Me Everything You Have: On Being Stalked by James Lasdun
Reviewed by Victoria Best In the autumn of 2003, James Lasdun ran a fiction workshop at an American college where he met a talented Iranian-American student whom he calls ‘Nasreen’….
Harvest by Jim Crace
Reviewed by Karen Heenan-Davies …. rain or shine, the earth abides, the land endures, the soil will persevere for ever and a day. Taken in isolation that quote from Harvest might lull…
The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales by Kirsty Logan
Reviewed by David Hebblethwaite Open Kirsty Logan’s debut collection, and you’ll be met first with the title story, which broadly sets the tone for what is to come. The Rental Heart takes…
Q&A with Keir Alexander, author of The Ruby Slippers
Questions by Harriet 1. With such an unusual and imaginative plot, the first question has to be – where did the idea for The Ruby Slippers first come from? It started with…
You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Reviewed by Harriet Devine I don’t have much time for endorsements on book covers, and generally they tend to irritate me, especially when they say, ‘if you like x you’ll…
I Was A Stranger by John Hackett
Reviewed by Simon Thomas In a year where we almost certainly going to be inundated with books about World War One, it seems a little perverse to be publishing a…