The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
Paperback review by Anna Hollingsworth At one point in The Vanishing Half, Kennedy, an overprivileged struggling actress, remembers a childhood shopping trip with her mother: ”I love shopping,” she’d said,…
The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper
Review by Lory Widmer-Hess Ancient Greece and Rome, which formed the foundation of so much in our Western civilization, have been getting a revisionist look lately. A number of novels…
The Feast by Margaret Kennedy
Reviewed by Harriet Margaret Kennedy has appeared a few times before on Shiny: two of her novels in 2014 [here] and [here] and more recently my own review of her…
Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld
Paperback review by Rebecca Foster Curtis Sittenfeld’s sixth novel, a work of alternative history narrated entirely by Hillary Rodham and covering the years between 1970 and the recent past, is…
Barcelona Dreaming, by Rupert Thomson
Review by Basil Ramsome-Davies Rupert Thomson has been around for quite a while, a prolific and much respected author; this is the first book of his I have read. So…
Miss Browne’s Friend by F M Mayor
Reviewed by Harriet Born in 1872, Flora Macdonald Mayor was the daughter of an Anglican clergyman and classics professor. Perhaps surprisingly, given her background, she became an actress, but abandoned…
Things Remembered and Things Forgotten by Kyoko Nakajima
Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori and Ian MacDonald Review by Anna Hollingsworth In the short story The Last Obon, Satsuki is mistaken for the ghost of her aunt’s daughter by…
Rabbits by Terry Miles
Review by Annabel As I sat down to start reading this book, a tweet pinged on my phone and I glanced over – someone had commented on a post of…
Our Lady of the Nile by Scholastique Mukasonga
Translated by Melanie Mauthner Review by Dorian Stuber The title of Scholastique Mukasonga’s Our Lady of the Nile refers to both a statue of a Black Virgin Mary poised precariously…
At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop
Translated by Anna Moschovakis Review by Tony Malone David Diop’s At Night All Blood Is Black takes the reader back to the battlefields of the First World War, but anyone…
Painting Time by Maylis de Kerangal
Translated by Jessica Moore Reviewed by Annabel Maylis de Kerangal is a novelist whose primary focus is not the characters that people her books, but the subject they’re involved with….
Civilisations by Laurent Binet
Translated by Sam Taylor Review by Max Dunbar Reviewers of fiction, trying to make sense of Laurent Binet’s Civilisations, have reached for video game metaphors. In the Literary Review, James Womack…
The Octopus Man by Jasper Gibson
Review by Anne Goodwin Tom doesn’t expect life to be easy; it’s more important to follow a true path. Single, jobless and reliant on benefits, he prioritises abstinence, spreading kindness,…
Summertime, All the Cats are Bored by Philippe Georget
Translated by Steven Rendall Review by Terence Jagger He moved cautiously forward through the tall grass, following a trail of broken stems. And it was there, in a miniscule clearing…
Mamma by Diana Tutton
Reviewed by Harriet Published in 1956, Mamma was the first novel Tutton wrote, though her second and now better known Guard Your Daughters was published first, in 1953. I don’t…
Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner
Review by Max Dunbar How the Other Half Lie There is a fabulous new genre in commercial fiction. I call it ‘Posh People Getting In Trouble’. The best at this…
Mr Fortune’s Maggot by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Reviewed by Harriet It can only be good news that Penguin have been reissuing Sylvia Townsend Warner’s admirable novels. I only discovered her writing about three years ago when I…
The Assistant by Kjell Ola Dahl
Translated by Don Bartlett Reviewed by Annabel Kjell Ola Dahl is one of Norway’s foremost crime writers, especially known for his ‘Oslo detectives’ series, several of which are available in…
Come Join Our Disease by Sam Byers
Reviewed by Dan Lipscombe Sam Byers is a wonderfully talented author. His imagination and wordplay seemingly know no bounds. However, when you want to talk about excrement, particularly in detail,…
King Arthur’s Death by Michael Smith
Reviewed by Rob Spence Last year, I reviewed Michael Smith’s excellent new version of the Middle English Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. He has now turned his attention to…
Featherweight by Mick Kitson
Reviewed by Lory Widmer Hess “A woman has to fight sometimes. It’s as well ya know how.” Annie Loveridge is a fighting woman, and no mistake. Helpless to protest as…
Sistersong by Lucy Holland
Reviewed by Annabel Lucy Holland’s impeccably researched novel combines the story of a 19th Century murder ballad, ‘The Two Sisters’ with Dark Ages post-Arthurian history, mixing in a good dose…
The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox
Reviewed by Max Dunbar In Lords and Ladies, his Faerie novel, Terry Pratchett quotes an old folk rhyme: My mother said I never shouldPlay with the fairies in the wood…
A Rage in Harlem and The Real Cool Killers by Chester Himes
Reviewed by Annabel I first discovered the mad world of Chester Himes’s Harlem in an old Allison & Busby paperback of The Crazy Kill, the third novel of his Harlem…