The Inseparables by Simone de Beauvoir
Translated by Lauren Elkin Review by Karen Langley Simone de Beauvoir is probably best recognised nowadays for her ground-breaking feminist work The Second Sex, as well as her connections with…
Madgermanes by Birgit Weyhe
Translated by Katy Derbyshire Review by Annabel It’s been exciting to see the variety of German books in translation coming from V&Q Books who launched in the UK last autumn….
The Lifeline by Hugo Charteris
By Rob Spence If you are, as I am, a child of the fifties, then one of your first televisual memories will be of the ITV series The Adventures of…
A Single Rose by Muriel Barbery
Translated by Alison Anderson Review by Annabel We’re delighted to be featured in the blog tour for Muriel Barbery’s new novel today – do see the other stops on the…
The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer
Review by Hayley Anderton I’ve been reading The Black Moth along with the Georgette Heyer Readalong on Twitter, where we have very mixed feelings about it. I’m in the enjoying…
The Country of Others by Leïla Slimani
Translated by Sam Taylor Reviewed by Harriet Back in 2018 I read and reviewed Leïla Slimani’s best-selling, Goncourt-Prize-winning novel Lullaby [here]. Soon afterwards I also read her 2014 Adèle, which…
Bewilderment by Richard Powers
Reviewed by Gill Davies Although he has published twelve novels since 1985, I only discovered Richard Powers through his stunning 2018 novel The Overstory that was short-listed for the Booker…
Paradise by Kae Tempest
Review by Anna Hollingsworth Remember, this man is not our friend, he is our weapon. OK? So, we treat him like we treat any other weapon. Clean him, store him,…
The Goddess Chronicle by Natsuo Kirino
Translated by Rebecca Copeland Review by Annabel Japanese author Natsuo Kirino is primarily known for her crime novels, of which Out is the most widely known. However, she also contributed…
Frontline by Dr Hilary Jones
Review by Julie Barham Medical knowledge and techniques were vastly increased during and immediately after the First World War, as the loss of so many fighting men was dwarfed by…
Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki
Translated by Karen Van Dyck Review by Karen Langley Coming of age stories are a perennial favourite in both classic and modern literature; and although much past writing has focused…
No Touching by Ketty Rouf
Translated by Tina Kover Review by Annabel Italian-born novelist Ketty Rouf won France’s Prix du Premier Roman 2020 (First Novel award) for her debut No Touching, written in French and…
The Promise by Damon Galgut
Review by Anna Hollingsworth Damon Galgut has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize twice. The Good Doctor delved into a young doctor’s angry melancholy in a remote rural hospital in…
An Evening with Claire by Gaito Gazdanov
Translated by Bryan Karetnyk Review by Karen Langley Recent years have seen an upturn of interest in Russian émigré authors from the 20th century; there were, of course, famous names…
The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth In The Bastard of Istanbul, a mysterious curse kills one family’s men before their time; 10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in This Strange World tells the story…
Daughters of the Labyrinth by Ruth Padel
Reviewed by Lory Widmer-Hess When we went to Crete last October (during a brief window when travel was possible), I knew little of the island’s history beyond the myth of…
Line by Niall Bourke
Reviewed by Annabel If I searched, I could probably fill a small shelf full of novels that have a sub-niche of their own that is the ‘queue’. Within that we…
The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Reviewed by Harriet Jean Hanff Korelitz has appeared twice on Shiny before, both times reviewed by me. The first novel was You Should Have Known (reviewed here); you may not…
Three Rooms by Jo Hamya
Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth At one point in Jo Hamya’s Three Rooms, the narrator discovers the communal kitchen in her Oxford house in a desperately filthy state, with surfaces covered…
Heaven by Meiko Kawakami
Translated by Sam Bett & David Boyd Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth My first encounter with Mieko Kawakami — as for most of us relying on English translations — was her…
The Snow Line by Tessa McWatt
Reviewed by Harriet A disparate group of four total strangers meet at a wedding in the Punjab, India. Three of them are young and of Indian heritage; the fourth is…
The Woman in the Purple Skirt by Natsuko Imamura
Translated by Lucy North Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth There’s a particular skill to pulling off a character who is objectively reprehensible but nevertheless wins over the sympathies of the reader….
Everyone Is Still Alive by Cathy Rentzenbrink
Reviewed by Annabel You may know Cathy Rentzenbrink through her heart-breaking memoir published a few years ago. In The Last Act of Love, she tells the story of her family…
Dream Girl by Laura Lippman
Reviewed by Harriet Here on Shiny we’ve reviewed three of Laura Lippman’s novels, here, here and here. Two were standalones, and the third was part of a series featuring Baltimore…