The Ruby Slippers by Keir Alexander
Reviewed by Harriet Devine She stinks. It has to be said. Stinks to high heaven. No, worse, stinks like death. This is not just a smell, an unpleasant odour to…
Four Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses by Helen Rappaport
Reviewed by Harriet Devine On 17 July 1918, four young women walked down twenty-three steps into the cellar of a house in Ekaterinburg. The eldest was twenty-two, the youngest only…
History of the Rain by Niall Williams
Reviewed by Karen Howlett Plain Ruth Swain is bed-bound in her attic room beneath the skylight and the ever-present rain, for this is the west of Ireland, Faha, County Clare,…
Spotlight on Publishers: Slightly Foxed
Independent to the core: the story of Slightly Foxed, by Hazel Wood The idea for Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly took shape round a north London kitchen table in the spring…
The Outcast Dead by Elly Griffiths
Reviewed by Harriet Devine I’ve been a fan of Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway series since the first novel, Crossing Places, appeared in 2009. The Outcast Dead is the sixth in the series, and…
The Madness by Alison Rattle (YA)
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Set in a seaside village in Victorian Somerset, The Madness is the story of fourteen-year-old Marnie, who is biding her time until she becomes a ‘dipper’, one of…
Jawbone Lake by Ray Robinson
Reviewed by David Hebblethwaite The North Yorkshire writer Ray Robinson is not one to stand still. His first novel, 2006’s Electricity (which has been adapted into a forthcoming film starring Agness Deyn), concerned a…
Hangsaman, The Bird’s Nest, and The Sundial by Shirley Jackson
Reviewed by Simon Thomas You can more or less divide readers’ familiarity with Shirley Jackson’s works into separate levels. Of course, the broadest (particularly here in the UK) are those…
Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon
Reviewed by Jackie Bailey Five words from the blurb: parents, exceptional, children, difference, acceptance. Far From the Tree is the most important book I’ve ever read. It is a masterpiece of…
Zola – An Introduction To His Books
By Victoria Best The OUP’s decision to publish some of the novels of Émile Zola that have not been in translation for more than a hundred years begs an introduction…
The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell New York is a melting pot, nearly everyone has come from somewhere else to be there, and Hoffman’s new novel is the tale of two young…
American Sycamore by Karen Fielding
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell It is lovely to be able to heartily recommend a début novel published by a smaller independent publisher – American Sycamore is exactly that and it deserves a…
Money by Émile Zola
Translated by Valerie Minogue Reviewed by Harriet Devine ‘It’s very difficult to write a novel about money. It’s cold, icy, lacking in interest’. So said Zola in an interview in…
Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell When I read that Val McDermid, writer of many a gory crime novel, was penning the second book in ‘The Austen Project’, publisher Harper Collins’s series…
Picture Me Gone by Meg Rosoff
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell I have always fiercely maintained that good writing transcends genre; it also transcends age. Meg Rosoff’s latest novel for young adults, recently out in paperback, is…
Combining Fact and Fiction in the Writing of ‘The Dance of Love’ by Angela Young
The Dance of Love is my second novel, so I’m a novice. I’ve written since I was a child but it’s one thing to write in a notebook you keep under…
Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
Translated by Joanne Turnbull Reviewed by Karen Langley Soviet Russia’s Best-Kept Literary Secret Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky could accurately be described as the lost writer of Russia’s Soviet era. Born in the…
Bedsit Disco Queen by Tracey Thorn
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell I wish Tracey Thorn was my cousin, sister even. I can say that – for we share not only a maiden name, but a love of…
The Road to Reckoning by Robert Lautner
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Having grown up loving all those cowboy TV series from the 1960s and ‘70s like The Virginian and Alias Smith and Jones, maybe it’s not surprising that I’ve turned…
Into the Trees by Robert Williams
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Imagine a house in the middle of the forest, somewhere you feel safe, at home; somewhere to hide away perhaps? What springs to mind? One such…
Q&A with Helen Oyeyemi, author of Boy, Snow, Bird
Questions by Simon 1) Firstly, congrats on Boy, Snow, Bird, it’s fantastic! Could you say a bit about the genesis of the novel and how it developed? Thank you! This…
Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
Reviewed by Simon Thomas At some point, Helen Oyeyemi will stop being notable for her youth – but, at 29 and with five novels under her belt, that day has…
Still Life with Breadcrumbs by Anna Quindlen
Reviewed by Adèle Geras Every so often, you come across a novel whose qualities appeal to you in a way that you can’t quite explain. Still Life with Breadcrumbs came to me as…
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
Reviewed by Rachel Fenn The Lowland is the story of two brothers, Udayan and Subhash, and the woman they both marry, Gauri. The novel opens in the heat drenched suburbs of…