Mr Fox by Barbara Comyns
Reviewed by Harriet It’s exactly ten years since I discovered Barbara Comyns for the first time. Born in 1909, she had an unusual upbringing and a somewhat chequered career, both…
Reviewed by Harriet It’s exactly ten years since I discovered Barbara Comyns for the first time. Born in 1909, she had an unusual upbringing and a somewhat chequered career, both…
Reviewed by Peter Hobson This is a very long, extensively referenced account of the life and music of Michael Tippett, a composer who is often regarded as someone who never…
Paperback review by Liz Dexter Tom Mole, as Professor of English Literature and Book History at the University of Edinburgh, is certainly qualified to write this Christmas-present-worthy joy of a…
Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth How do you feel about the prospect of someone having sex with their grandfather? And them justifying it by the fact…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton I thought I’d learnt to check how long a book is before I agreed or offered to review it, but I’m in this case I had…
Reviewed by Harriet Professor John Mullan’s name will be familiar to many readers: he writes regularly in the Guardian and the London Review of Books, is the author of several…
Reviewed by Liz Dexter Stephen Rutt and his partner move to Dumfries, to a flat near the Solway Firth, just as he’s finishing writing his first (wonderful) book The Seafarers…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton Women’s Weird: Strange Stories by Women 1890 -1940 was a standout book from last year – it’s still genuinely one of the most unsettling anthologies I’ve…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton I spent some time looking up the definition of Weird as opposed to Horror in preparation for writing this, and now have the perfect opportunity to…
Please excuse the plug post, but now we’re going back into lockdown it is more important than ever to support our indie bookshops online. From today, there’s a new way…
Reviewed by Annabel Megan Hunter’s beautiful and poetic debut novella, The End We Started From (reviewed here for Shiny by Lucy Unwin), the story of a woman about to give…
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long Francesca Bassington sat in the drawing room of her house in Blue Street regaling herself and her estimable brother Henry with China tea and small cress…
Review by Simon Thomas You might be familiar with the beautiful little hardbacks from Notting Hill Editions, where they select essays and other writings from across the range of an…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton I’m a proper fan of Kate Young and her Little Library books – they’re a delightful mix of recipes, reflection, and book recommendations, but even so…
Translated by Anne Goldstein Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Adolescence can be brutal, and in The Lying Life of Adults Elena Ferrante brings it out in all its ugly passions, grievances…
Translated by Antonina W. Bouis Reviewed by Karen Langley Science fiction writing often gets a bad press; dismissed as lightweight genre writing, mocked for some of the horrendous cover art…
Reviewed by Harriet This, obviously, is a book for those who like a good theatrical anecdote. I certainly do, and have been privy to many of them since I was…
Reviewed by Annabel I’ve always loved books about space and I still have my beloved Hamlyn guides on Astronomy and Exploring the Planets by Iain Nicholson from 1970 that got…
Reviewed by Harriet I’m rather ashamed to say that the only one of ‘multi-award-winning’ John Banville’s books I’ve read before is The Black-Eyed Blonde, which he published in 2014 under…
Reviewed by Liz Dexter This extremely well-researched and authoritative book takes us through the Second World War, in the UK, the US, the Far and Middle East and Europe, through…
Reviewed by Annabel Kings College Hospital-based Professor Tim Spector’s name is, I hope, becoming more widely known in the UK since the pandemic began. He’s been involved in the development…
While Shiny New Books concentrates on the new, we enjoyed giving some of our reviewers room to share previously published – ie: ‘not Shiny New Books’ they were reading this…
‘They tried to hide the truth. But the camera never lies…’ Review by Basil Ransome-Davies So runs the publisher’s tagline on the front cover of S. J. Watson’s third novel. …
Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth In one of the marketing quotes on its cover, The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida is described as “an elegantly cryptic, poetically plotted Murakami-esque whydunit.” Thematically…