Preparations for the Next Life by Atticus Lish
Reviewed by Max Dunbar Lish’s novel is mostly about institutions. He writes about armies, prisons, service-level workplaces – his characters sleep in hostels and on the benches of bus terminals. Most…
Reviewed by Max Dunbar Lish’s novel is mostly about institutions. He writes about armies, prisons, service-level workplaces – his characters sleep in hostels and on the benches of bus terminals. Most…
Reviewed by Rob Spence Josephine Tey was a writer of unusual detective fiction in the so-called Golden Age of the genre. Her best-known, and most unusual novel was The Daughter of…
Interview by Harriet It’s seven years since your first ‘Josephine Tey’ novel, An Expert in Murder, was published by Faber, and this year sees London Rain, the sixth in this highly successful series…
Reviewed by Victoria The narration of Elizabeth Day’s third novel is woven together from four different perspectives that, when we are first introduced to them, seem utterly disparate. What do…
Reviewed by Harriet He had made a vow, a private promise to the world in the long dark watches of the night, that if he did survive then in the…
Reviewed by Simon I already knew that I loved Shirley Jackson – I did from the time I was about a chapter into We Have Always Lived in the Castle back in…
Reviewed by Gill Davies Pleasantville is the third novel by Attica Locke. I remember that the reviews for her first novel, Black Water Rising, were very good but regrettably I didn’t get round…
Article by Anne Goodwin We all have secrets, things we’ve done or aspects of ourselves that we can reveal only to our nearest and dearest, and sometimes not even to…
Translated by Adriana Hunter Reviewed by Simon Peirene are well-known across the blogsphere for their programme of publishing translated novellas, and grouping them into trios under different series titles. Reader For…
Reviewed by Harriet Vintage crime fiction is enjoying a tremendous renaissance at the moment, and the British Library Crime Classics series certainly has a good deal to do with it….
Questions by Harriet Harriet: Martin, although you have been a solicitor all your working life, it’s probably true to say that until recently you have been best known for your crime…
Reviewed by Victoria Diana Dodsworth is an enigma to the reader, a complicated, prickly person in her 40s who seems imperfectly stitched together over a festering mass of secrets and…
Reviewed by Lyn Baines The Golden Age of crime fiction spanned the period between the World Wars. There are many stereotypes about the books written during this period, most of them…
Interview with Ingrid Wassenaar (Wednesday 3 June 2015) The other day, my son donned a backpack and wobbled off down our garden path on his small two-wheeler, all by himself,…
Reviewed by Victoria The term ‘psychogeography’ may sound unwieldy but it’s actually rather an intriguing and lovely notion. It ties together the ideas that inform the concept of genius loci, or…
We all have secrets, things we’ve done or aspects of ourselves that we can reveal only to our nearest and dearest, and sometimes not even to them. We all have…
Reviewed by Simon Sarah Knights claims that she wrote her biography of David Garnett partly to restore his reputation – not as a writer, but as a person. His wife’s…
Reviewed by Shoshi Ish Horowicz Outline is about a woman teaching on a creative writing course in Greece. That sentence doesn’t do any justice to the novel, but I feel a…
Reviewed by Linda Boa Margaret Benson is 57 years old. She lives alone, bar her dog Buster, in her own house in a comfortable, middle class area of London. She…
Reviewed by Victoria There’s a strong tradition of episodic narrative in the books that clamour for the title of Great American Novel – Faulkner, Kerouac, Salinger, Twain, Henry Miller and…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton Waverley has been on my ‘ought to read’ list for longer than I care to remember, so when Shiny New Books asked me to read a new…
Reviewed by Karen Langley The blurring of the lines between fiction and fact is an artistic trope which is very much in vogue in current writing. Novels abound featuring real…
Reviewed by Harriet How much can be said about the life and work of Shakespeare in just 135 pages? A surprising amount, in fact. Clearly these OUP Very Short Introductions…
Reviewed by Annabel To many, Sheers is primarily known as a Welsh poet. His 2005 collection Skirrid Hill was acclaimed, and he has presented some poetry programmes on the television, and wrote…