Review by Basil Ransome Davies In Young Stalin the author studied his subject’s early career under the microscope. In this epic volume he expands his approach, while still paying attention…
By Rob Spence If you are, as I am, a child of the fifties, then one of your first televisual memories will be of the ITV series The Adventures of…
Review by Hayley Anderton I’ve been reading The Black Moth along with the Georgette Heyer Readalong on Twitter, where we have very mixed feelings about it. I’m in the enjoying…
Translated by Rebecca Copeland Review by Annabel Japanese author Natsuo Kirino is primarily known for her crime novels, of which Out is the most widely known. However, she also contributed…
Review by Basil Ransome-Davies No one expects an approving biography of Joseph Stalin any more than they do the Spanish Inquisition. He is a murderous monster, a devil from a…
Translated by Karen Van Dyck Review by Karen Langley Coming of age stories are a perennial favourite in both classic and modern literature; and although much past writing has focused…
Translated by Donald Keene Review by Terence Jagger This is a slightly misleading title for a new book, as the “modern” Noh plays were written in the 1950s (and translated…
Translated by Bryan Karetnyk Review by Karen Langley Recent years have seen an upturn of interest in Russian émigré authors from the 20th century; there were, of course, famous names…
Reviewed by Rob Spence Years ago, I was teaching an undergraduate class on the topic of the poetry of the bard of Orkney, George Mackay Brown. I made a passing…
Reviewed by Harriet Leslie Poles Hartley was forty-nine when he published his first novel, The Shrimp and the Anemone (1944). It was followed by The Sixth Heaven (1946) and Eustace…
Reviewed by Harriet Margaret Kennedy has appeared a few times before on Shiny: two of her novels in 2014 [here] and [here] and more recently my own review of her…
Reviewed by Harriet Born in 1872, Flora Macdonald Mayor was the daughter of an Anglican clergyman and classics professor. Perhaps surprisingly, given her background, she became an actress, but abandoned…
Translated by Steven Rendall Review by Terence Jagger He moved cautiously forward through the tall grass, following a trail of broken stems. And it was there, in a miniscule clearing…
Reviewed by Harriet Published in 1956, Mamma was the first novel Tutton wrote, though her second and now better known Guard Your Daughters was published first, in 1953. I don’t…
Reviewed by Harriet It can only be good news that Penguin have been reissuing Sylvia Townsend Warner’s admirable novels. I only discovered her writing about three years ago when I…
Reviewed by Annabel I first discovered the mad world of Chester Himes’s Harlem in an old Allison & Busby paperback of The Crazy Kill, the third novel of his Harlem…
Reviewed by Helen Parry Until Michael Walmer reissued her first novel, A Day to Remember to Forget, I had never heard of Rosalind Brackenbury. She seems to be scandalously obscure…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton This is one of two recent releases from Handheld Press that cover aspects of wartime experience – in this case life in a huge munitions factory…
Reviewed by Harriet If you’ve heard of, or read, Margaret Kennedy at all, it’s likely to be her 1924 novel The Constant Nymph. Written when she was 28, it made…
Translated by Ho-Ling Wong Reviewed by Terence Jagger This is a very unusual book, and I initially disliked its artificiality – extreme, even by the standards of sealed room murder…
Translated by Philip Boehm Reviewed by Gill Davies This is an important republication of a novel which first appeared eighty years ago under a pen name and in translation as…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton Northus is a new project from Michael Walmer (who’s own reprint series will be familiar to many readers here) and the Shetland born, currently Edinburgh based,…
Reviewed by Harriet Barbara Comyns seems to be enjoying a well-deserved renaissance at the moment. In addition to this one, just published by Daunt Books (with more to come later…
Reviewed by Harriet At fifty-five, Isobel Brocken was still a nice-looking woman. She dated, of course, all her female friends said so – poor Isobel certainly dated; she was plump,…
