Fame is the Spur by Howard Spring
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Fame Is the Spur (originally published in 1940) is the second out-of-print Howard Spring novel reissued by Head of Zeus’s Apollo imprint, following last year’s release…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Fame Is the Spur (originally published in 1940) is the second out-of-print Howard Spring novel reissued by Head of Zeus’s Apollo imprint, following last year’s release…
Reviewed by Max Dunbar Altered States of America Joan Didion’s recently released notebooks capture the feeling of the American South as it must have been as she drove through it…
Reviewed by Rob Spence I read most of this novel on a plane, and it struck me that it was appropriate to consume it in the transient, somehow timeless and…
Reviewed by Helen Parry First of all, is it as good as everyone says it is? Yes, it really is. The plot is compelling and perfectly paced, the characters have…
Reviewed by Julie Barham I received a review copy of this book from Honno Press, the Welsh Women’s Press, as I was intrigued by the idea of a book which…
Reviewed by Lucy Unwin We That Are Young is ambitious. So very ambitious, and so very good. Most strikingly it’s a thorough and impressive academic exercise, but it’s also a great…
Translated by Neil Caistor Reviewed by Terence Jagger I enjoyed this book, set amongst the French police in Paris and in Abidjan, but that’s not to say I really followed…
Paperback review by Annabel Amor Towles’ debut novel Rules of Civility was one of the best books I read in 2011. Although Towles graduated in English back in the late…
Reviewed by Lucy Unwin This is the most grittily realistic book I’ve read in a while — it just happens to be a ghost story. Somehow, despite its fantastical content, Sing,…
Reviewed by David Harris This has been a hard book to review. I find this is surprisingly often of true the very best books, say the ones you’d give six…
Reviewed by Annabel Those who read Weir’s debut novel, The Martian (which Dan reviewed for us here), tended to fall into two camps. As SF novels go, it was funny,…
Reviewed by Harriet Nine Lessons is the seventh of Nicola Upson’s crime novels featuring the mystery writer Josephine Tey (1896-1952). I normally have a few reservations about the seemingly fashionable…
Reviewed by Alice Farrant “We can get the Times to write something. Or that nut from the Observer.”“Wait, what… what nut from the Observer?”“Frank something? The one who’s so in…
Reviewed by Annabel Earlier this year, I reviewed the novel An English Guide to Birdwatching by an author named Nicholas Royle, and I interviewed its author. Ornithology is not by…
Review by Annabel I love reading medical memoirs, we’ve featured neurosurgeon Henry Marsh’s two volumes here at Shiny (see my review of Do No Harm here), and heart surgeon Stephen…
Review by Basil Ransome-Davies However deeply the irony may have entered his soul, John le Carré has no reputation as a jester. An element of satire typifies his work, always….
Reviewed by Harriet A couple of years ago on Shiny I reviewed Laura Wilson’s The Wrong Girl. That was a tense psychological thriller centring on family relationships, and so, in…
Reviewed by Alice Farrant Maria and Khalil are the perfect couple, “King and Queen of the Racially Nebulous Prom”. Maria is a successful scholar, writing her dissertation on the Jonestown…
Reviewed by Gill Davies This is Attica Locke’s fourth novel and a stunning follow-up. Black Water Rising was set in 1981; Pleasantville in 1996 and both used the crime genre with deep political insight…
Paperback review by Lucy Unwin There is no question, this book is stunning: in its scope, its ambition, in what it can teach us and in the skill on display….
Reviewed by Harriet Jane Harris is not exactly a prolific novelist. Five years passed beween the publication of her debut novel The Observations (2006) and her second outing Gillespie and…
Translated by Howard Curtis Reviewed by Basil Ransome-Davies I found a molten quality in this novel (if it is a novel). It burns off the page, as they say. It…
Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Admitted, to say that the world has shrunk into a village has shrunk into a cliché itself. But the cliché is painfully accurate, and Lesley Glaister’s The…
Paperback Review by Eric Karl Anderson It’s deeply frightening and upsetting how politically divided society is at the moment. When different factions are so convinced about the certitude of their…