Some Questions for Lucy Caldwell
Asked by HarrietLucy, people always like to know how a writer got started. So can you tell us about your beginnings, and when you realised you were going to be…
Asked by HarrietLucy, people always like to know how a writer got started. So can you tell us about your beginnings, and when you realised you were going to be…
Reviewed by Harriet Here at Shiny we love our reprints, and are always delighted to include reviews of one or more of the British Library’s Crime Classics series. So when…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster This is the second gem I’ve read from Head of Zeus’s new imprint, Apollo. Like Josephine Johnson’s Now in November, which won the 1935 Pulitzer Prize, this…
Translated by Robert Vilain Reviewed by Karen Langley Back in 2013, I read a really lovely book called Rilke in Paris, which focused on the life of the great German poet…
Reviewed by Annabel Debut novelist P.K. Lynch trained as an actor before having a family and turning to writing plays. Her first professional acting job was playing Lizzy in Trainspotting, (in…
I recently met up with a bunch of friends from university for the afternoon. ‘You’re very successful now, aren’t you?’ one guy boomed at me before even saying ‘hello’. I…
Questions by Rebecca Foster 1. Readers learn so few facts about Tess – even her name and where she’s from are not revealed until a long way into the book,…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Twenty-two-year-old Tess arrives in New York City by car in June 2006. Feeling like a Midwestern bumpkin, she has no money for tolls and has to…
Translated by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies Reviewed by Gill Davies What an odd novel! It is Yokoyama’s sixth, his first to be translated into English, and was an immediate best-seller in Japan….
Translated by Alison Anderson Reviewed by Annabel If like me, you read and loved Muriel Barbery’s bestselling novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which blended romance, philosophy and a teenaged genius…
Reviewed by Simon Bloomsbury Reader has done an excellent job in bringing back many neglected authors (including some of my favourites, such as E.M. Delafield and Ivy Compton-Burnett), but these…
Reviewed by Terence Jagger This is a tough book, about Nigerian politics, Islam, and a young boy growing up without guidance – and his journey from nothing to nothing by…
Reviewed by Chelsea McGill Dr. Morayo Da Silva is a retired English professor living in San Francisco. As she goes about her daily life, she comes into contact with other…
Reviewed by Victoria To add to a long list of lines I wish I’d written, I read somewhere that Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann was ‘Harlequin romance meets…
Reviewed by Harriet Nobody who’s a fan of Sophie Hannah’s crime fiction will be surprised to learn that The Narrow Bed features an inexplicable set of crimes, enough twists to make you…
Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth There was going to be a novel about Portugal much earlier. In Life of Pi, the author within the story tells the reader how he had gone…
Reviewed by Liz Dexter This ambitious book aims to provide a history of what it calls ‘literary life’ in the 20th century, encompassing an examination of writers, reviewers, the editors and…
Reviewed by Karen Langley Despite there being fewer outlets for the format nowadays, the short story just keeps on going as a valid art form; and luckily we’re blessed with…
Reviewed by Marina Sofia Julian Barnes is an avowed Francophile, as we have learnt from previous works such as Flaubert’s Parrot, Cross Channel and his book of essays Something to Declare. In fact, his…
1. The Forgetting Time is your first novel, and we understand that previously your career has been in the film world. Have you always wanted to write? Pretty much. I first started…
Reviewed by Ann How well does one human being ever really know another? This is the question that criminal defence lawyer Olivia Randall is forced to ask as she attempts…
Reviewed by Annabel Ambler was one of the great British thriller writers and his works are ripe for reappraisal. They had gradually become out of print until Penguin brought out…
Written by Anna Hollingsworth Finite, enclosed spaces, power relationships, the discovery of independence, and the pursuit of knowledge: university as a backdrop offers perhaps more grand themes for novels than…
Reviewed by Simon There are few children’s literary characters who are as well known as Alice et al. From Alice bands to Mad Hatters, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Cheshire Cat,…