Crisis by Karin Boye
Translated by Amanda Doxtater Reviewed by Karen Langley When we think of Nordic fiction nowadays, we’re probably inevitably aware of the preponderance of Scandi-crime; it not only seems to have…
Translated by Amanda Doxtater Reviewed by Karen Langley When we think of Nordic fiction nowadays, we’re probably inevitably aware of the preponderance of Scandi-crime; it not only seems to have…
Reviewed by Harriet It’s been many years since I read anything by Scott Fitzgerald, but he used to be a favourite of mine. So when I saw that OUP was…
Paperback review by Rob Spence It comes as a bit of a shock to realise that Ian Rankin has now published well over thirty novels since his début in 1986,…
Reviewed by Annabel Hayes, who was born in London but emigrated to the US as a child, first came to attention as a poet before WWII. He then served in…
Translated by Yumiko Yamazaki Review by Terence Jagger This Japanese detective thriller is set in the 1940s and so is relatively ‘modern’, but only in that calendar sense: in style…
Review by Annabel Gerald Jacobs is literary editor of the Jewish Chronicle. He grew up in and around Brixton in the 1950s and 1960s, and Pomeranski, his second novel, is…
Translated by Jamie Lee Searle Review by Eleanor Updegraff Ever since Han Kang and translator Deborah Smith won the 2016 Man Booker International Prize for The Vegetarian, there has been…
Translated by Sam Taylor Reviewed by Harriet Back in 1977, Marilyn French’s The Women’s Room was published. On the cover was the bold (and possibly correct) statement that ‘This novel…
Review by Annabel If you enjoy a contemporary horror novel laced with style and humour, you need look no further than the work of Grady Hendrix. I discovered him with…
Reviewed by Harriet When the British Library announced the first three titles in their new Women Writers series, I was delighted see that one of them was Chatterton Square. I…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Evie Wyld’s third novel has the most stunning opening I’ve encountered in a long time. In under a page and a half, it describes a six-year-old…
Paperback review by Annabel I had been reading and loving the late Clive James’ last book, an anthology of his writing on Philip Larkin (reviewed here by Karen), when up…
Translated by Deborah Dawkin Review by Harriet Lars Mytting, a Norwegian author, has had great acclaim for his two previous books – the non-fiction Norwegian Wood, a surprise bestseller about…
Review by Annabel Natasha Pulley’s 2015 debut novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, which I reviewed for Shiny here, is still one of the best first novels I’ve read. Set…
Review by Anna Hollingsworth The most exhilarating reviews to write are those where you can bring a book down, even if it’s just a tiny bit for an odd stylistic…
Reviewed by Harriet Why have I never read Anne Enright before? I’m always interested in Booker prize winners (she won for The Gathering in 2007) and I’m a great admirer…
Translated by Emily Boyce Reviewed by Annabel For the past eight years, Gallic Books have been translating and publishing the gloriously black-humored noir novellas of Pascal Garnier. Garnier, who died…
Reviewed by Harriet, 14 April 2020 In early times I was Ojinjintka, which means rose. Thomas McNulty tried very hard to say this name, but he failed, and so he…
Reviewed by Susan Osborne, 2 April 2020 I’m a fan of Jill Dawson’s writing. Her last novel, The Crime Writer, was a wonderful piece of literary fan fiction, a perverse…
Reviewed by Laura Marriott We start at a dinner party. If you groan inwardly at the very thought of a family dinner party then you are on the same page…
Reviewed by Harriet I’ve reviewed two of Peter Swanson’s excellent psychological thrillers on Shiny before. There have been a couple of others since then, reviewed on my blog rather than…
Translated by Bryan Karetnyk Reviewed by Karen Langley Recent years have seen a wave of wonderful new translations of ‘lost’ Russian authors of the 19th and 20th century. Some have…
Reviewed by Annabel I am an absolute sucker for any novel with a bit of rock’n’roll in it, and two of my favourite reads from 2019 fitted that bill. Taylor…
Translated by Aneesa Abbas Higgins Review by David Hebblethwaite Winter in Sokcho is a first in several senses: the debut novel by French-Korean writer Elisa Shua Dusapin, and the first…