Fashionopolis by Dana Thomas
Review by Anna Hollingsworth My immediate reaction was a desperately deep sigh when, pre-launch, Dana Thomas’s Fashionopolis was trumpeted as a must-read revelatory work on the fashion industry. Surely anyone…
Akin by Emma Donoghue
Reviewed by Harriet Back in 2010 I read Emma Donoghue’s best selling, prize winning Room. I admired it but I can’t say I enjoyed it. Not only because the story…
Galileo’s Error: A New Science of Consciousness by Philip Goff
Review by Peter Reason This is a book about the philosophical perspective of panpsychism, written by a leading academic advocate. Panpsychism is an awkward word, not part of everyday vocabulary….
The Memoir of an Anti-Hero by Kornel Filipowicz
Translated by Anna Zaranko Review by Harriet It could be argued that Anglophone readers are living in a golden age of translated literature; all manner of smaller publishers are bringing…
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Review by Liz Dexter Amma is a playwright and director who’s moved from the fringes to the mainstream (or has it moved to her?). Yazz is a millennial student, sure…
Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout
Reviewed by Harriet I’ve reviewed two of Elizabeth Strout’s novels on Shiny [here] and [here] and both were brilliant. But possibly my favourite up to now has been her 2009…
Find Me by André Aciman
Review by Anna Hollingsworth There are two kinds of novels to which I don’t want to see a sequel. There are, of course, the literary nightmares that I pray I…
Home Work by Julie Andrews
with Emma Walton Hamilton Review by Annabel Julie Andrews’s first volume of memoir, Home, told us of her childhood, growing up during the war, and her early career on stage in…
Violencia – A New History of Spain: Past, Present and the Future of the West, by Jason Webster
Review by Michael Eaude. Jason Webster takes a long, long view of Spanish history. Most history books concentrate on small chunks of time: this or that war; or a defined…
How to Read a Photograph: Understanding, Interpreting and Enjoying the Great Photographers by Ian Jeffrey
Review by Liz Dexter Of course, reading a photograph is subjective – there are not really any rules for what makes a photograph great or why a particular person will…
The Summer Isles by Philip Marsden
Reviewed by Peter Reason The Summer Isles is an account of a single-handed voyage from the south coast of England round the west of Ireland and on to the northwest…
Inheritance by Jenny Eclair
Review by Laura Marriott “Beginnings, middles and ends; Peggy, Serena, Natasha and Bel. This is the room that binds them, this is how consequences work . . . In deepest…
Gloucester Crescent by William Miller
Review by Annabel Nestled between Primrose Hill and Camden Town in NW1, it’s hard to believe that Gloucester Crescent (and Regents Park Terrace which joins its ends) was ever considered…
Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke
Review by Gill Davies This powerful and engrossing novel continues a series of crime novels in which Attica Locke uses plot and suspense to investigate inequality and American racism in…
Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie
Review by Peter Reason Kathleen Jamie is primarily known as a poet, but her prose writing is eagerly anticipated and widely acclaimed. Surfacing is the third in a loose trilogy…
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Reviewed by Harriet Ann Patchett believes in goodness, arguably a most unfashionable belief in today’s world. In the bookstore she runs, there’s a sign: ‘What good shall I do this…
Art Essentials: Street Art by Simon Armstrong
Review by Liz Dexter The Art Essentials series aims to be engaging, accessible, authoritative, richly illustrated and expertly written and conceived, and with a bookseller and book collector who has…
The Second Sleep by Robert Harris
Review by Basil Ransome-Davies In his indispensable primer What Is History? E. H. Carr underlines the point that ‘History’ has a double meaning: both the events, or facts, of the past, and…
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
Reviewed by Ali Hope Although I have pre-ordered new releases a few times before it’s not something I do very often – and never have I felt swept along by…
Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
Review by Simon As the cover of Confessions of a Bookseller tells us, Bythell is an international bestseller. A couple of years ago, The Diary of a Bookseller was a…
The Pursuit of Art: Travels, Encounters and Revelations by Martin Gayford
Review by Liz Dexter “The pursuit of art is a journey that never stops: the more you see, the more you want to see.” First of all much kudos to…
The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy
Review by Annabel Levy came to the forefront of our attention when her 2011 novel Swimming Home was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, something she’d repeat with her 2016…
The Confession by Jessie Burton
Review by Anna Hollingsworth Capturing an era with impeccable accuracy is a challenge that anyone writing about the past must face; there will always be that critic who enjoys combing…
The Caravaners by Elizabeth von Arnim
Introduced by Juliane Römhild, with notes by Kate Macdonald Review by Karen Langley Elizabeth von Arnim is probably best known nowadays for her novel The Enchanted April, a warm and delightful story…