The Invisible Host by Gwen Bristow & Bruce Manning
Review by Elaine Simpson-Long When this book arrived and I saw the names of the two authors, Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning, my first thought was “that’s a familiar name”….
Review by Elaine Simpson-Long When this book arrived and I saw the names of the two authors, Gwen Bristow and Bruce Manning, my first thought was “that’s a familiar name”….
From Annabel and Harriet After a tumultuous 2020, what with lockdown, accidentally deleting Shiny New Books and having to rebuild it totally from scratch (read more about that disaster here!), Shiny…
Review by Max Dunbar The Arrow of Hope Dorothy Parker’s ‘Unfortunate Coincidence’ goes like this: By the time you swear you’re his,Shivering and sighing,And he vows his passion isInfinite, undying…
Reviewed by Harriet This delightful novel is part of the latest batch of the British Library Women Writers series. I’ve reviewed a few of these on here, most recently the…
Review by Liz Dexter Nightingale was the first female DJ on Radio One, having been a journalist and live TV presenter before then and ready for the tough time she…
Review by Karen Langley The bicentenary of the birth of Fyodor Dostoevsky has seen a flurry of books about the man and his work. I covered Alex Christofi’s Dostoevsky in…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Olivia Laing has established herself as a group biographer par excellence, taking as her subjects alcoholic writers for the superb The Trip to Echo Spring (2013,…
Review by Basil Ransome-Davies What a prodigious event this book is. Highsmith was an assiduous note-keeper and diarist. The calendar spread is 1941-1995. The editor has condensed ‘an estimated eight…
Reviewed by Harriet From the first moment that we meet Lily Mortimer, we know her secret. We know it because she dreams of her own death – not a peaceful…
Review by Anna Hollingsworth Imagine if a book began to narrate your story to you. What kind of voice would that be? Would it have the kind of softness suited…
Review by Annabel Those of you who’ve read journalist and author Lucy Mangan’s ‘memoir of childhood reading’, Bookworm, (which Liz reviewed here) will rejoice that she has now written a…
Reviewed by Harriet I’m a great admirer of Ann Patchett’s novels. I read Bel Canto when it first came out and have loved her writing ever since – here’s my…
Review by Hayley Anderton The first book I met when I started working in the wine trade was Jancis Robinson’s The Oxford Companion to Wine. Every shop I worked in…
Reviewed by Julie Barham This is an historical novel with much to recommend it, and as it is created by a world famous crime writer there is also the probability…
Chicago born author Nella Larsen is the daughter of a Dutch mother and a father of mixed race Afro-Caribbean from Danish West Indies. With that multiplicity in racial background and…
Review by Simon Thomas As a place to be trapped, a train has a good precedent. Whether Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, or…
Translated by Frances Riddle Reviewed by David Hebblethwaite Claudia Piñeiro is an author from Argentina who, so far, has mostly been published in English as a crime writer. As the…
Interview by Harriet As an already successful poet and short-story writer, what made you turn to the novel? Was it a sudden decision or a long-term ambition? It was a…
Reviewed by Harriet Unlike some of my fellow reviewers, I tend not to seize upon debut novels. Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I usually prefer to read someone who already…
Reviewed by Harriet Published in 1931 and newly reissued in the British Library Women Writers Series, this is a fascinating book in a number of ways. If you’ve read anything…
Review by Liz Dexter “If I had any moral principles to declare, I came to realize, they were extremely simplistic. First, there was the supreme importance of kindness as a…
Reviewed by Basil Ransome-Davies John le Carré, eh? Can’t do credible working-class dialogue, draws sympathetic female characters but rather abstractly, plots convoluted and full of holes, rather colourless writing style…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Bristol friends and BBC colleagues Ben Macdonald and Nick Gates set out to chronicle a year in the life of a traditional Herefordshire orchard that has…
Translated by Charlotte Whittle Review by Anna Hollingsworth When I pick up a book with a child narrator, it’s always with trepidation. I won’t name any culprits, but I’ve learned…