The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante
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…
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Shiny New Books
One Billion Years to the End of the World by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
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…
The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes, edited by Gyles Brandreth
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…
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Universe: And Our place within it by Andrew Newsam
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…
Snow by John Banville
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…
Kitted Out: Style and Youth Culture in the Second World War by Caroline Young
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…
Spoon-Fed by Tim Spector
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…
Reviewer’s Choice: A Day to Remember to Forget by Rosalind Brackenbury
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…
Final Cut by S. J.Watson
‘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. …
The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida by Clarissa Goenawan
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…
Daughters by Lucy Fricke
Translated from the German by Sinéad Crowe Reviewed by Eleanor Updegraff In the Translator’s Note at the end of Daughters, Sinéad Crowe writes of her concern about successfully translating the…
Knitting From Fair Isle by Mati Ventrillon
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton There are a few new knitting books, annuals, or journals in the offing that deal with Fair Isle or Shetland lace, but this is the first…
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Review by Annabel Of all the books that were published a couple of weeks ago in this September’s post-lockdown publishing splurge, Susanna Clarke’s second novel, Piranesi, was the one I…
Jack by Marilynne Robinson
Reviewed by Harriet He was walking behind her, two steps behind. She did not look back. She said, “I’m not talking to you”. “I completely understand”. “If you did completely…
The Madness by Narcís Oller
Translated from the Catalan by Douglas Suttle Reviewed by Eleanor Updegraff Joining the ranks of small presses dedicated to one particular region or language, Fum d’Estampa is a Barcelona–London go-between…
Unofficial Britain: Journeys Through Unexpected Places by Gareth E. Rees
Reviewed by Liz Dexter Opening notably and powerfully with a description of travelling through a traditional countryside location, innocent dry stone walls at first, then Civil War memories, a burning…
Treasure Islands by Alec Crawford
Review by Hayley Anderton The cover of this book is attractive, and the tag line ‘True Tales of a Shipwreck Hunter’ might always have made me pick it up to…
Breasts and Eggs by Meiko Kawakami
Translated by Sam Bett & David Boyd Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth When Breasts and Eggs appeared in bookshops alongside all the Murakamis, Convenience Store Woman and Stranger Weather in Tokyo…
Playing Nice by JP Delaney
Reviewed by Harriet Back in 2017 I reviewed JP Delaney’s brilliant psychological thriller The Girl Before on Shiny (here). All I know about the author is that he’s a man…
Journey through a Tragicomic Century: The Absurd Life of Hasso Grabner by Francis Nenik
Translated by Katy Derbyshire Reviewed by Eleanor Updegraff This September sees the launch of V&Q Books, a brand-new publishing imprint with the mission of translating ‘remarkable writing from Germany’ for…
Horse Crazy: The Story of a Woman and a World in Love with an Animal by Sarah Maslin Nir
Review by Liz Dexter Sarah Maslin Nir is a staff reporter for the New York Times who, by her own admission, has sought out horses wherever she’s travelled to write…
People From My Neighbourhood by Hiromi Kawakami
Translated by Ted Goossen Review by Anna Hollingsworth With Hiromi Kawakami, you don’t know what to expect other than that her writing will be wonderfully odd. Her gentle quirkiness and…
The Lies you Told by Harriet Tyce
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long Last year I read Blood Orange, which was Harriet Tyce’s debut novel. One of the reasons I read it was that the cover caught my eye,…
Riders on the Storm: The climate crisis and the survival of being by Alastair McIntosh
Review by Peter Reason Alastair McIntosh is a Scottish Quaker, peace, community and environmental writer and campaigner, maybe best described as a spiritual activist. He is a fellow and former…