Reviewed by Harriet Devine On 17 July 1918, four young women walked down twenty-three steps into the cellar of a house in Ekaterinburg. The eldest was twenty-two, the youngest only…
Reviewed by Karen Howlett Plain Ruth Swain is bed-bound in her attic room beneath the skylight and the ever-present rain, for this is the west of Ireland, Faha, County Clare,…
Independent to the core: the story of Slightly Foxed, by Hazel Wood The idea for Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly took shape round a north London kitchen table in the spring…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine I’ve been a fan of Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway series since the first novel, Crossing Places, appeared in 2009. The Outcast Dead is the sixth in the series, and…
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Set in a seaside village in Victorian Somerset, The Madness is the story of fourteen-year-old Marnie, who is biding her time until she becomes a ‘dipper’, one of…
Reviewed by David Hebblethwaite The North Yorkshire writer Ray Robinson is not one to stand still. His first novel, 2006’s Electricity (which has been adapted into a forthcoming film starring Agness Deyn), concerned a…
Reviewed by Simon Thomas You can more or less divide readers’ familiarity with Shirley Jackson’s works into separate levels. Of course, the broadest (particularly here in the UK) are those…
Reviewed by Jackie Bailey Five words from the blurb: parents, exceptional, children, difference, acceptance. Far From the Tree is the most important book I’ve ever read. It is a masterpiece of…
By Victoria Best The OUP’s decision to publish some of the novels of Émile Zola that have not been in translation for more than a hundred years begs an introduction…
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell New York is a melting pot, nearly everyone has come from somewhere else to be there, and Hoffman’s new novel is the tale of two young…
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell It is lovely to be able to heartily recommend a début novel published by a smaller independent publisher – American Sycamore is exactly that and it deserves a…
Translated by Valerie Minogue Reviewed by Harriet Devine ‘It’s very difficult to write a novel about money. It’s cold, icy, lacking in interest’. So said Zola in an interview in…
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell When I read that Val McDermid, writer of many a gory crime novel, was penning the second book in ‘The Austen Project’, publisher Harper Collins’s series…
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell I have always fiercely maintained that good writing transcends genre; it also transcends age. Meg Rosoff’s latest novel for young adults, recently out in paperback, is…
The Dance of Love is my second novel, so I’m a novice. I’ve written since I was a child but it’s one thing to write in a notebook you keep under…
Translated by Joanne Turnbull Reviewed by Karen Langley Soviet Russia’s Best-Kept Literary Secret Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky could accurately be described as the lost writer of Russia’s Soviet era. Born in the…
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell I wish Tracey Thorn was my cousin, sister even. I can say that – for we share not only a maiden name, but a love of…
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Having grown up loving all those cowboy TV series from the 1960s and ‘70s like The Virginian and Alias Smith and Jones, maybe it’s not surprising that I’ve turned…
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Imagine a house in the middle of the forest, somewhere you feel safe, at home; somewhere to hide away perhaps? What springs to mind? One such…
Questions by Simon 1) Firstly, congrats on Boy, Snow, Bird, it’s fantastic! Could you say a bit about the genesis of the novel and how it developed? Thank you! This…
Reviewed by Simon Thomas At some point, Helen Oyeyemi will stop being notable for her youth – but, at 29 and with five novels under her belt, that day has…
Reviewed by Adèle Geras Every so often, you come across a novel whose qualities appeal to you in a way that you can’t quite explain. Still Life with Breadcrumbs came to me as…
Reviewed by Rachel Fenn The Lowland is the story of two brothers, Udayan and Subhash, and the woman they both marry, Gauri. The novel opens in the heat drenched suburbs of…
Reviewed by Victoria Hoyle Cynan Jones’ third novel The Dig was high on my list of anticipated releases in early 2014, bought as soon as it came out in January. It was a…
