Orbital by Samantha Harvey
Review by Annabel One thing I know: this sublime novella will be featuring in my books of the year for 2024. Samantha Harvey’s Orbital is a beautifully written love letter,…
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Shiny New Books
Shiny Prize Season – Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan – Dylan Thomas Prize shortlist & Jhalak Prize longlist
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster I knew from the Costa Award-winning debut collection Flèche (2019) that Mary Jean Chan writes exquisite poems of love and longing. Their follow-up, Bright Fear, has…
Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence, by Avril Horner
Reviewed by Harriet In the back of my mind I was always sure that wonderful things were waiting for me, but I’d got to get through a lot of horrors…
A Bookshop of One’s Own by Jane Cholmeley
Review by Karen Langley Back in the 20th century, the world was a very different place to live in if you were female and/or gay. Equal pay was a pipe…
How to Be Multiple: The Philosophy of Twins, by Helena de Bres, illustrated by Julia de Bres
Reviewed by Simon Thomas When I discovered there was a new collection of essays out about the philosophy of twins, and that it was written by an identical twin, I…
Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s hidden histories, by Amitav Ghosh
Review by Peter Reason The term ‘narco state’ usually refers to those countries whose economy has been taken over by the cultivation of the opium poppy and the criminal gangs…
Shiny Prize Season – A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare – International Booker Prize
Translated by John Hodgson Review by Karen Langley The International Booker Prize is one of the more high profile literary awards, and its stated aim is to introduce readers to…
Shiny Prize Season – The Details by Ia Genberg – International Booker Prize
Translated by Kira Josefsson Review by Susan Osborne While enduring a light fever, the unnamed narrator of Ia Genberg’s The Details is seized with the urge to read the novel…
Shiny Prize Season – Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang, & I Have Some Questions For You by Rebecca Makkai – Carol Shields Prize
Reviews by Laura Tisdall Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang Land of Milk and Honey, C Pam Zhang’s second and so far, strongest, novel, is set in a near-future…
What Do I Know? by Michel de Montaigne
Translated by David Coward Review by Karen Langley The essay as a form of writing has existed for centuries, and one of its pre-eminent practitioners was the French author Michel…
Shiny Prize Season – Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck – International Booker Prize
Translated by Michael Hofmann Review by Susan Osborne Jenny Erpenbeck’s novels offer much food for thought on the events that have shaped modern Germany. Opening in 1986, Kairos charts an…
Shiny Prize Season – A Flat Place by Noreen Masud – Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction
Reviewed by Simon Thomas The world is probably divided into two people: those who find the idea of a book about flat landscapes appealing and those who don’t. I suspect…
Shiny Prize Season – Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson – Dylan Thomas Prize
Review by Susan Osborne Beginning in 2010, Caleb Azumah Nelson’s Small Worlds is a beautiful, eloquent exploration of love, loss and finding a place of safety for a person of…
Shiny Prize Season – The Coiled Serpent by Camilla Grudova – Dylan Thomas Prize
Review by Annabel The longlist for this year’s Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize is truly eclectic, including poetry and short stories from all over the world alongside novels. After being…
Shiny Prize Season – Penance by Eliza Clark – Dylan Thomas Prize
Review by Laura Tisdall In her debut, Boy Parts, Eliza Clark brilliantly demolished the ‘disaster woman’ trope with her portrait of Irina, a deliciously callous young woman who’s on the prowl for…
Selected Letters of Wilfred Owen, edited by Jane Potter
Review by Rob Spence If you attended a British secondary school at any time from the late nineteen sixties until the present day, at some point you will have encountered…
To the Dogs by Louise Welsh
Review by Annabel For Welsh’s ninth novel, she stays in Glasgow and it is a thriller, but this is not a third outing for her reluctant crime-solving auctioneer Rilke (cf:…
The Future of Trust by Ros Taylor – blogtour
The Futures Series from indie publisher Melville House UK recently launched with four titles that couldn’t be more different from each other: going from Songwriting, to Trust, to War Crimes…
Marcel Proust by Michael Wood
Review by Rob Spence It’s not often that one gets the chance to begin a review with a boast, so I’ll get it over with now: I have read À…
Human Origins: A Short History, by Sarah Wild
Review by Liz Dexter I have […] tried to highlight how much our understanding of human origins has changed – and continues to change – and how, in some ways,…
Fear Stalks the Village by Ethel Lina White
Reviewed by Harriet The village was beautiful. It was enfolded in a hollow of the Downs, and wrapped up snugly – first, in a floral shawl of gardens, and then,…
Charles III: New King, New Court: The Inside Story, by Robert Hardman
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long There is a plethora of journalists who are labelled Royal Experts and I sometimes wonder how you reach these giddy heights, if that is how you…
In Italy, by Cynthia Zarin
Review by Rob Spence This is a curious little book, which shouldn’t really work, but does, offering the reader a delightful series of fresh impressions gleaned from the writer’s engagement…
Dublin Tales, edited by Paul Delaney and Eve Patton
Reviewed by Harriet If you gave me a choice between a collection of short stories and a novel, I’d choose the novel every time. I suppose it’s something to do…