An Interview with Joanna Rakoff
By Victoria Best My Salinger Year was unquestionably one of the best books I’ve read this year – poignant, funny, real, warm – you can read my review here. The author, Joanna…
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Shiny New Books
Meeting the English by Kate Clanchy
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Kate Clanchy’s first novel is a perfect summer read: it’s laugh-out-loud funny, has pathos in all the right places, a sweet young hero and an inbuilt…
Gossip by Beth Gutcheon
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell When this novel was published, I couldn’t resist the allure of the cover in an oversized paperback format with French flaps. Luckily the novel inside is…
A trio of Maigret novels by Georges Simenon
Reviewed by Lizzy Siddal Let me start this article with a confession. In my pre-blog years, I once read a Maigret novel. I didn’t like it much. I found it…
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) – A Biographical Note
Written by Harriet Devine. She will love deeply – suffer terribly – she will have glorious moments to compensate. Emily Byrd Starr, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s most autobiographical heroine, remembered these…
My Crazy Century: A Memoir by Ivan Klima
Reviewed by Max Dunbar Dictatorship of the Average This place’ll be a paradise tomorrow. And in every department there’ll be a supervisor with a sub-machine gun. – from ‘Mao Tse…
Mistress Masham’s Repose by T. H. White
Reviewed by Jodie Robson “It was a glorious day in June – for that matter it was the Glorious First of June – and the sun was resounding on the…
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart (YA)
Reviewed by Bookgazing E. Lockhart’s We Were Liars is a small book crammed to the brim with narrative experiment and investigation. Its story begins with sharp lines arranged in a whip crack…
And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
Reviewed by Karen Heenan-Davies Expectations ran high in the run-up to the publication of Khaled Hosseini’s latest novel And the Mountains Echoed. Could he emulate the success of The Kite Runner and A Thousand…
The Trip to Echo Spring by Olivia Laing
By Max Dunbar A decade or so into his career as a bestselling novelist, horror writer Stephen King ran into problems. He was drinking constantly and taking cocaine, banging out…
Music Night at the Apollo: A Memoir of Drifting by Lilian Pizzichini
Reviewed by Denise Kong In 2007 Lilian Pizzichini “had it all”. She’d worked at The Times Literary Supplement and The Literary Review, won the Crime Writers’ Association Golden Dagger for non-fiction with her first…
Beatrice and Benedick by Marina Fiorato
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell In tackling on one of Shakespeare’s most popular pairings in her latest novel, Marina Fiorato is taking a big risk. The sparring partners who…
During the Reign of the Queen of Persia by Joan Chase
Reviewed by Danielle Simpson Quite often the best reading experiences I have, or at least the most memorable ones, are stories that are in some way challenging or difficult. This…
Domestic Manners of the Americans by Frances Trollope
Reviewed by Harriet Devine No author of the present day has been at once so much read, so much admired and so much abused. So wrote the New Monthly Review…
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler
Reviewed by Simon Thomas When we did a piece on the Booker longlist recently, I cheerfully said that I hadn’t read any of them – as always seems to be the case,…
Hotel Florida: Truth, Love and Death in the Spanish Civil War by Amanda Vaill
Reviewed by Harriet Devine The Spanish Civil War (1936-39), a messy, bloody conflict in which Spanish Republicans fought to save their country from the forces of Fascism, foreshadowed the Second…
The Conquest of Plassans by Émile Zola
Translated by Helen Constantine Reviewed by Harriet Devine In issue 1 of SNB, I reviewed Zola’s Money, and Victoria wrote a fascinating article about his “racy, sordid books” for the BookBuzz section. Money was the…
A.A. Milne: His Life by Ann Thwaite
Review by Simon Thomas What do you know about A. A. Milne? Your answer might be a little different if you’ve read our Five Fascinating Facts – or, indeed, if you’ve followed…
The Valley by Richard Benson
Reviewed by Victoria Best The best kind of non-fiction, I think, shows us how supposedly ‘average’ ordinary lives are really quite extraordinary. In the author’s foreward to his outstanding book…
After Me Comes the Flood by Sarah Perry
Reviewed by Victoria Best John Cole is an antiquarian bookseller who has grown tired of his life and tired of his self. One long, hot summer, towards the end of…
An Encyclopaedia of Myself by Jonathan Meades
Reviewed by Eric Karl Anderson For several decades, Jonathan Meades has been a well-established writer, cultural critic of primarily food & architecture and broadcaster in Britain. He has such a…
Women of the World by Helen McCarthy
Reviewed by Victoria Best When I was sitting my A levels back in 1987, my school thought itself very advanced because it gave us all a careers questionnaire to fill…
The Dance of Love by Angela Young
Reviewed by Simon Thomas In the first issue of Shiny New Books we had a lovely piece by Angela Young about the genesis of her novel The Dance of Love. We were thus…
All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld
Reviewed by David Hebblethwaite She may only be on her second novel, but Evie Wyld is already gathering considerable acclaim. Her debut, 2009’s After the Fire, a Still Small Voice,…