You Let Me In by Camilla Bruce
Review by Hayley Anderton You Let Me In is Camilla Bruce’s debut novel, and it marks her out as an author to watch. It is impressively assured with a very…
Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights by Helen Lewis
Review by Liz Dexter First of all a caveat, in case any keen-eyed reader finds my name in the acknowledgements: I did work on this book in my professional capacity,…
Puzzles, constraints and cryptograms: An Oulipo beginner’s primer
By Karen Langley Although you may never have heard the name of the literary group Oulipo, there’s a good chance you might actually have read one of the members’ books….
Apeirogon by Colum McCann
Review by Anna Hollingsworth The most exhilarating reviews to write are those where you can bring a book down, even if it’s just a tiny bit for an odd stylistic…
Actress by Anne Enright
Reviewed by Harriet Why have I never read Anne Enright before? I’m always interested in Booker prize winners (she won for The Gathering in 2007) and I’m a great admirer…
‘Not’ the Wellcome Prize Blog Tour 2020 #2 – Galileo’s Error by Philip Goff
The Wellcome Book Prize is on hiatus this year – we really hope it’ll return in 2021 as this unique prize, which celebrates literature with health, illness and medicine themes,…
‘Not’ the Wellcome Prize Blog Tour 2020 #1 – Vagina A Re-Education by Lynn Enright
The Wellcome Book Prize is on hiatus this year – we really hope it’ll return in 2021 as this unique prize, which celebrates literature with health, illness and medicine themes,…
Let’s Talk: How English Conversation Works by David Crystal
Review by Liz Dexter “What makes a successful conversation?” is a question David Crystal considers asking people in his new book – and, well, how would you answer that question?…
My Husband Simon by Mollie Panter-Downes
Reviewed by Harriet I’m sure I’m not alone in having rejoiced when the British Library announced a new series of reprints of 20th century women writers: ‘a curated collection of…
A Long Way Off by Pascal Garnier
Translated by Emily Boyce Reviewed by Annabel For the past eight years, Gallic Books have been translating and publishing the gloriously black-humored noir novellas of Pascal Garnier. Garnier, who died…
Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild by Lucy Jones
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Back in early March, just before literary events started being cancelled due to coronavirus, I had the good fortune to see Lucy Jones at Hungerford Town…
The Birds They Sang: Birds and People in Life and Art by Stanisław Łubieński
Translated from Polish by Bill Johnston Review by Peter Reason Stanisław Łubieński first began observing birds in childhood through Soviet binoculars. Later, he took his hobby to a more serious…
A Thousand Moons by Sebastian Barry
Reviewed by Harriet, 14 April 2020 In early times I was Ojinjintka, which means rose. Thomas McNulty tried very hard to say this name, but he failed, and so he…
A Bite of the Apple by Lennie Goodings
Review by Simon There’s a certain variety of person who can always spot a bottle-green spine at a hundred paces, and has faced the agonising decision about whether to shelve…
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Review by Peter Reason There has been a lot of interest recently in the idea of ‘rewilding’, expressed for example in Isabella Tree’s Wilding: The return of nature to a…
She-Merchants, Buccaneers and Gentlewomen: British Women in India by Katie Hickman
Reviewed by Harriet What an enticing title! Made even more so by the sub-title, ‘British Women in India’. Katie Hickman, who herself led a peripatetic life as the daughter of…
A History of Pictures: From the Cave to the Computer Screen by Martin Gayford and David Hockney
Reviewed by Liz Dexter This is a new ‘compact’ edition of this book, with a revised final chapter bringing it all up to date, and reproductions of three new David…
The Language of Birds by Jill Dawson
Reviewed by Susan Osborne, 2 April 2020 I’m a fan of Jill Dawson’s writing. Her last novel, The Crime Writer, was a wonderful piece of literary fan fiction, a perverse…
Drinking French by David Lebovitz
Review by Hayley Anderton Before everything started to close down the books I had been particularly anticipating, ordering, and reading, were mostly food and drink titles. Looking at them stacked…
Grown Ups by Marian Keyes
Reviewed by Laura Marriott We start at a dinner party. If you groan inwardly at the very thought of a family dinner party then you are on the same page…
Rules for Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson
Reviewed by Harriet I’ve reviewed two of Peter Swanson’s excellent psychological thrillers on Shiny before. There have been a couple of others since then, reviewed on my blog rather than…
A Little History of Poetry by John Carey
Review by Rob Spence In 1935, the doyen of art critics, Ernst Gombrich, was a young, unemployed former student with a PhD in art history. He was commissioned by an…
Fandango and Other Stories by Alexander Grin
Translated by Bryan Karetnyk Reviewed by Karen Langley Recent years have seen a wave of wonderful new translations of ‘lost’ Russian authors of the 19th and 20th century. Some have…
The Ruins by Mat Osman
Reviewed by Annabel I am an absolute sucker for any novel with a bit of rock’n’roll in it, and two of my favourite reads from 2019 fitted that bill. Taylor…