Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
Reviewed by Harriet And if such a gift could come to him at such a time… — he opened his eyes, and yes, there it was, the perfect knowledge: Anything…
Goblin by Ever Dundas
Review by Isobel Blackthorn I wonder sometimes if we’ll ever tire of stories set in World War II. From Ian McEwan’s Atonement to Julie Summer’s Jambusters! and everything in between…
The End We Start From by Megan Hunter
Reviewed by Lucy Unwin The first thing to say about The End We Start From is it’s not a standard book of fictional prose. The story is told through beautifully-crafted sentences, isolated…
Abigail’s Party by Mike Leigh
Review by Annabel ‘Little top-up?’ Ever since Alison Steadman playing Beverly uttered those words when Abigail’s Party aired on TV in 1977, they entered into the vernacular of my family….
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
Review by Annabel There is something about stories based upon Russian fairy tales that so appeals. Some authors, as Eowyn Ivey did with her divine debut, The Snow Child, translated…
Murder on the Pilgrims Way by Julie Wassmer
Reviewed by Victoria If you are like me and enjoy the format of traditional cosy crime – an atmospheric setting, a great cast of possible suspects, a second body that…
Belladonna by Daša Drndić
Translated by Celia Hawkesworth Reviewed by Basil Ransome Davies There can be no quick digest of this book, marketed as a novel though in fact much more, and no doubt…
The Devil and Webster by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Reviewed by Harriet I’d never heard of Jean Hanff Korelitz when her 2014 novel, You Should Have Known, landed unsolicited in my mailbox. I read it with huge admiration and…
Q&A with Emma Henderson about ‘The Valentine House’
Questions by Annabel Annabel: Taking the cog railway up the mountain and then a hike from the station brings back happy memories for me of summer holidays at Caux on the…
The Valentine House by Emma Henderson
Reviewed by Annabel Here they come. Here they are. Les anglais, the English, les rosbifs. After a rather attention-grabbling opening, in which the ageing Sir Anthony Valentine writes some extremely…
Birdcage Walk by Helen Dunmore
Reviewed by Harriet I wanted to write about people whose voices have not echoed through time and whose struggles and passions have been hidden from history So writes Helen Dunmore…
How to Be Human by Paula Cocozza
Reviewed by Alice Farrant At 35, Mary is single and living in the house she once shared with her partner. She goes to work only to be berated by her…
Mikhail and Margarita by Julie Lekstrom Himes
Review by Karen Langley In this centenary year of the Russian Revolution, much attention is being focused on Soviet Russia and its culture. One author who exerts an eternal fascination…
A Separation by Katie Kitamura
Reviewed by Marina Sofia It is easier to tell you what A Separation is not, rather than what it is. It is not a mystery, although a disappearance features quite…
My Name is Leon by Kit de Waal
Paperback review by Alice Farrant My Name is Leon by Kit de Waal is a powerful story that discusses race, mental illness, and family, through the abandonment of a child. It’s…
All the Places I’ve Ever Lived by David Gaffney
Reviewed by Basil Ransome Davies David Gaffney has earned himself a distinctive reputation as a writer of ‘flash fictions’ – micro-stories, variable in tone and topic but springing from a…
Above the Waterfall by Ron Rash
Paperback review by Susan Osborne Ron Rash hails from the Appalachians and it’s there that he sets his award-winning novels with their smalltown mountain backdrop similar to Kent Haruf’s Holt,…
The Nix by Nathan Hill
Reviewed by Lucy Unwin No book could be simultaneously more timely and more timeless than this future classic. The Nix is fun, joyous, exciting and tender; full of both the…
Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller
Review by Annabel I reviewed Claire Fuller’s debut novel, Our Endless Numbered Days, for Shiny upon its publication – I loved it and was delighted when she won the 2015…
The Longest Night by Otto de Kat
Translated by Laura Watkinson Reviewed by Gill Davies Otto de Kat is the pseudonym of a Dutch writer (journalist, poet, translator and editor) whose novels are set in Holland and…
Auntie Poldi and the Sicilian Lions by Mario Giordano
Translated by John Brownjohn Reviewed by Annabel I’m very glad to have met the irrepressible Auntie Poldi! Our narrator, her beloved nephew, tells us what she is like: a glamorous…
Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster From the title and the Montego Bay, Jamaica setting, you might be expecting a story line light enough to match the Beatles’ pop song. But Nicole…
She Died Young by Elizabeth Wilson
Paperback review by Gill Davies She Died Young was published in hardback last year and is now available in paperback. It is the fourth novel by Elizabeth Wilson, better known (to…
Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada
Translated by Susan Bernofsky Reviewed by Terence Jagger This is a rather engaging book, which on the surface is not entirely innocent of the grave crime of being cute, but…