Breasts and Eggs by Meiko Kawakami
Translated by Sam Bett & David Boyd Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth When Breasts and Eggs appeared in bookshops alongside all the Murakamis, Convenience Store Woman and Stranger Weather in Tokyo…
Translated by Sam Bett & David Boyd Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth When Breasts and Eggs appeared in bookshops alongside all the Murakamis, Convenience Store Woman and Stranger Weather in Tokyo…
Reviewed by Harriet Back in 2017 I reviewed JP Delaney’s brilliant psychological thriller The Girl Before on Shiny (here). All I know about the author is that he’s a man…
Translated by Katy Derbyshire Reviewed by Eleanor Updegraff This September sees the launch of V&Q Books, a brand-new publishing imprint with the mission of translating ‘remarkable writing from Germany’ for…
Review by Liz Dexter Sarah Maslin Nir is a staff reporter for the New York Times who, by her own admission, has sought out horses wherever she’s travelled to write…
Translated by Ted Goossen Review by Anna Hollingsworth With Hiromi Kawakami, you don’t know what to expect other than that her writing will be wonderfully odd. Her gentle quirkiness and…
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long Last year I read Blood Orange, which was Harriet Tyce’s debut novel. One of the reasons I read it was that the cover caught my eye,…
Review by Peter Reason Alastair McIntosh is a Scottish Quaker, peace, community and environmental writer and campaigner, maybe best described as a spiritual activist. He is a fellow and former…
Reviewed by Annabel I’ve been a fan of Kunzru’s writing since his first novel was published. He is one of those authors that always makes me think! His previous book,…
Reviewed by Karen Langley Rose Macaulay is mainly known for her 1956 novel The Towers of Trebizond; yet she was an astonishingly prolific writer, publishing her first novel in 1906…
Reviewed by Liz Dexter A book that is in turns entertaining, lyrical and shocking, you won’t think about the countryside – or the rivers – of England in quite the…
Translated by Frank Wynne Reviewed by Annabel I write from the realms of the ugly, for the ugly, the old, the bull dykes, the frigid, the unfucked, the unfuckable, the…
Review by Peter Reason Entangled Lives by Merlin Sheldrake has been greeted with much enthusiasm, not least by Robert Macfarlane in the New Yorker. I am sure I am not…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton Handheld Press are fast becoming my favourite independent press. Their book choices are consistently interesting, their editions well produced with particularly good introductions. I’m also going to…
Reviewed by Harriet Another very welcome addition to the new British Library Women Writers series, Dangerous Ages was published in 1921. It’s a fascinating novel because it is both a…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton Ever since I read Findings sometime around a decade ago I’ve viewed anything with Kathleen Jamie’s name attached to it with interest and it’s probably fair…
Reviewed by Terence Jagger This is a wonderful book, and the real title is the sub-title: A Neuroscientist’s Guide to Ageing Well. It is not in any sense a self…
Reviewed by Gill Davies Kate Grenville’s latest novel is a wonderful continuation of her investigation of Australian history and the people who made it. In her best known novel, The…
Reviewed by Harriet I was very late in the day in discovering the novels of Tana French. I’d tried her first novel, In the Woods, some years ago and for some…
Translated by Frank Wynne Reviewed by Annabel Members of the Shiny reviewing team share previously published books from their shelves that they’re reading this summer… This book is subtitled ‘A…
Reviewed by Liz Dexter As you would expect from an Oxford Illustrated History of … this is a sumptuous production, world-wide in scope and bringing in chapters from experts from…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton At the risk of speaking too soon, lockdown finally seems to be lifting in Leicester just in time to catch the dregs of summer (our John…
Reviewed by Harriet This funny, moving, absorbing, thought-provoking novel is about marriage, lust, friendship, ageing, memory, philosophy, and quantum mechanics. The film had been about a serial killer, to Gerald’s…
Reviewed by Gill Davies London in 1963, despite some remaining scars of wartime, is busy re-inventing itself with skyscrapers rising over bomb sites, American music and movies, trendy coffee bars,…
Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch Reviewed by Eleanor Updegraff By day, Paulus Hochgatterer is a child psychiatrist – something that absolutely shows in his writing. The Austrian author’s…