Hystopia by David Means
Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth In an interview with The Guardian, short story writer turned novelist David Means said: ‘History is delusional. Not just an illusion, it’s a delusion.’ Means’s debut novel, Hystopia,…
My Name is Leon by Kit de Waal
Reviewed 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 the…
Hope Farm by Peggy Frew
Reviewed by Annabel Peggy Frew is an up and coming Australian author, and Hope Farm is her second novel. Alongside her writing, Peggy plays bass and sings in indie band Art of…
A Way Through the Wood by Nigel Balchin
Reviewed by Victoria Clive James called Nigel Balchin ‘the missing writer of the Forties’, a remark that notes the period in which he was highly acclaimed as a brilliant popular…
The Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor
Reviewed by Harriet The noise was the worst. Not the crackling of the flames, not the explosions and the clatter of falling buildings, not the shouting and the endless beating…
Sudden Death by Álvaro Enrigue
Translated by Natasha Wimmer Reviewed by David Hebblethwaite There’s some remarkable literature from Mexico being published in English translation at the moment. Writers such as Valeria Luiselli, Yuri Herrera, Paulette Jonguitud,…
The Sellout by Paul Beatty
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster The Sellout, Paul Beatty’s fourth novel, is such an outrageous racial satire that I kept asking myself how he got away with it. Not only did…
Himmler’s Cook by Franz-Olivier Giesbert
Translated by Anthea Bell Reviewed by Susan Osborne Perhaps it’s because many of us in the privileged developed world are living longer these days but there seems to be a…
Tremarnock: The Love, Lives and Secrets of a Cornish Village by Emma Burstall
Reviewed by Laura Marriott Tremarnock is a picture perfect Cornish fishing village, largely untouched by gentrification, poverty or seasonal tourism. It is here that we find our protagonists, for whom…
Before Lunch & Northbridge Rectory by Angela Thirkell
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton My first brush with Thirkell was at least a decade ago, courtesy of an old Penguin edition of The Brandons picked up in a second hand bookshop because…
Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain by Barney Norris
Reviewed by Harriet One quiet evening in Salisbury, the peace is shattered by a serious car crash. At that moment, the lives of five people collide – a flower-seller, a…
Girl in Profile by Zillah Bethel
Reviewed by Victoria There are some novels that are all about the language, and Girl in Profile is one of them. How much you enjoy it will depend to a certain extent…
The Loving Husband by Christobel Kent
Reviewed by Harriet He was in the room. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, but she’d been dreaming. In the dark someone padded between the furniture, and loose…
Golden Hill by Francis Spufford
Reviewed by Annabel Francis Spufford is known for his five non-fiction books, the subjects of which are varied in the extreme, notably his delightful memoir of childhood reading The Child…
Death in Profile by Guy Fraser-Sampson
Reviewed by Simon Full disclosure from the off: I am longstanding blogging friends with the author of this book, and also an admirer of his earlier fiction (sequels to E.F….
Multitudes by Lucy Caldwell
Reviewed by Harriet I’ve read and enjoyed all three of the prizewinning Belfast writer Lucy Caldwell’s full-length novels, so, though short stories are not usually my genre of choice, I…
Murder in the Museum & Calamity in Kent by John Rowland
Reviewed by Harriet Here at Shiny we love our reprints, and are always delighted to include reviews of one or more of the British Library’s Crime Classics series. So when…
My Son, My Son by Howard Spring
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster This is the second gem I’ve read from Head of Zeus’s new imprint, Apollo. Like Josephine Johnson’s Now in November, which won the 1935 Pulitzer Prize, this…
Armadillos by P.K. Lynch
Reviewed by Annabel Debut novelist P.K. Lynch trained as an actor before having a family and turning to writing plays. Her first professional acting job was playing Lizzy in Trainspotting, (in…
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Twenty-two-year-old Tess arrives in New York City by car in June 2006. Feeling like a Midwestern bumpkin, she has no money for tolls and has to…
Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama
Translated by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies Reviewed by Gill Davies What an odd novel! It is Yokoyama’s sixth, his first to be translated into English, and was an immediate best-seller in Japan….
The Life of Elves by Muriel Barbery
Translated by Alison Anderson Reviewed by Annabel If like me, you read and loved Muriel Barbery’s bestselling novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which blended romance, philosophy and a teenaged genius…
Born on a Tuesday by Elnathan John
Reviewed by Terence Jagger This is a tough book, about Nigerian politics, Islam, and a young boy growing up without guidance – and his journey from nothing to nothing by…
Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun by Sarah Ladipo Manyika
Reviewed by Chelsea McGill Dr. Morayo Da Silva is a retired English professor living in San Francisco. As she goes about her daily life, she comes into contact with other…