Reviewed by Hayley Anderton Women’s Weird: Strange Stories by Women 1890 -1940 was a standout book from last year – it’s still genuinely one of the most unsettling anthologies I’ve…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton I spent some time looking up the definition of Weird as opposed to Horror in preparation for writing this, and now have the perfect opportunity to…
Reviewed by Annabel Megan Hunter’s beautiful and poetic debut novella, The End We Started From (reviewed here for Shiny by Lucy Unwin), the story of a woman about to give…
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long Francesca Bassington sat in the drawing room of her house in Blue Street regaling herself and her estimable brother Henry with China tea and small cress…
Translated by Anne Goldstein Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Adolescence can be brutal, and in The Lying Life of Adults Elena Ferrante brings it out in all its ugly passions, grievances…
Translated by Antonina W. Bouis Reviewed by Karen Langley Science fiction writing often gets a bad press; dismissed as lightweight genre writing, mocked for some of the horrendous cover art…
Reviewed by Harriet I’m rather ashamed to say that the only one of ‘multi-award-winning’ John Banville’s books I’ve read before is The Black-Eyed Blonde, which he published in 2014 under…
While Shiny New Books concentrates on the new, we enjoyed giving some of our reviewers room to share previously published – ie: ‘not Shiny New Books’ they were reading this…
Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth In one of the marketing quotes on its cover, The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida is described as “an elegantly cryptic, poetically plotted Murakami-esque whydunit.” Thematically…
‘They tried to hide the truth. But the camera never lies…’ Review by Basil Ransome-Davies So runs the publisher’s tagline on the front cover of S. J. Watson’s third novel. …
Translated from the German by Sinéad Crowe Reviewed by Eleanor Updegraff In the Translator’s Note at the end of Daughters, Sinéad Crowe writes of her concern about successfully translating the…
Review by Annabel Of all the books that were published a couple of weeks ago in this September’s post-lockdown publishing splurge, Susanna Clarke’s second novel, Piranesi, was the one I…
Reviewed by Harriet He was walking behind her, two steps behind. She did not look back. She said, “I’m not talking to you”. “I completely understand”. “If you did completely…
Translated from the Catalan by Douglas Suttle Reviewed by Eleanor Updegraff Joining the ranks of small presses dedicated to one particular region or language, Fum d’Estampa is a Barcelona–London go-between…
Translated by Sam Bett & David Boyd Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth When Breasts and Eggs appeared in bookshops alongside all the Murakamis, Convenience Store Woman and Stranger Weather in Tokyo…
Reviewed by Harriet Back in 2017 I reviewed JP Delaney’s brilliant psychological thriller The Girl Before on Shiny (here). All I know about the author is that he’s a man…
Translated by Ted Goossen Review by Anna Hollingsworth With Hiromi Kawakami, you don’t know what to expect other than that her writing will be wonderfully odd. Her gentle quirkiness and…
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long Last year I read Blood Orange, which was Harriet Tyce’s debut novel. One of the reasons I read it was that the cover caught my eye,…
Reviewed by Annabel I’ve been a fan of Kunzru’s writing since his first novel was published. He is one of those authors that always makes me think! His previous book,…
Reviewed by Karen Langley Rose Macaulay is mainly known for her 1956 novel The Towers of Trebizond; yet she was an astonishingly prolific writer, publishing her first novel in 1906…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton Handheld Press are fast becoming my favourite independent press. Their book choices are consistently interesting, their editions well produced with particularly good introductions. I’m also going to…
Reviewed by Harriet Another very welcome addition to the new British Library Women Writers series, Dangerous Ages was published in 1921. It’s a fascinating novel because it is both a…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton Ever since I read Findings sometime around a decade ago I’ve viewed anything with Kathleen Jamie’s name attached to it with interest and it’s probably fair…
Reviewed by Gill Davies Kate Grenville’s latest novel is a wonderful continuation of her investigation of Australian history and the people who made it. In her best known novel, The…
