How Shostakovich Changed My Mind by Stephen Johnson
Review by Karen Langley Readers of Shiny New Books will know of my love for Notting Hill Editions books; I’ve reviewed their “Beautiful and Impossible Things” and “The Russian Soul”…
The Golovlevs by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin
Translated by I.P. Foote Review by Karen Langley Back in SNB #13 I reviewed “The History of a Town” by Saltykov-Shchedrin, one of the great Russian satirists of the 19th…
To Be a Machine by Mark O’Connell
Review by Annabel I loved this book from the front cover to the back, starting with its title – that capital ‘B’ is crucial to the book’s premise. Subtitled ‘Adventures…
The Ropewalker and A People Without a Past by Jaan Kross
Translated by Merike Lepasaar Beecher Reviewed by Gill Davies Thanks to the wonderful Maclehose Press I have discovered another writer in translation who deserves to be much better known. Up…
What She Ate by Laura Shapiro
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton What She Ate looks at ‘six remarkable women and the food that tells their stories’. It comes at a time when food centred biographies, or food…
Moonrise & Lost Mars, ed. Mike Ashley
Reviewed by Karen Langley There can’t be many readers of Shiny New Books who aren’t aware of the lovely British Library Crime Classics series: long out-of-print and forgotten novels and…
Diary of a Bipolar Explorer by Lucy Newlyn
Reviewed by Jean Morris This is both useful and beautiful. Lucy Newlyn, recently retired Oxford professor of English literature, author of a lovely book, among others, about Dorothy and William…
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
Reviewed by Harriet I forget everything between footsteps. ‘Anna!’ I finish shouting, snapping my mouth shut in surprise. My mind has gone blank. I don’t know who Anna is or…
Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
Review by Terence Jagger This is a tricky book to read, though I enjoyed much of it. It is funny and observant, but painful too. Kitani has a strong view…
Almost Love by Louise O’Neill
Reviewed by Annabel After the searing, taboo-breaking storyline of O’Neil’s second novel, Asking For It (reviewed here), a young adult story about consent, teenage sex-shaming and the fallout from it,…
Ghosts of the Tsunami Richard Lloyd Parry
Review by Terence Jagger Japan suffers multitudes of earthquakes every year and is among the best prepared countries in the world. Tsunami, too, are common, and both are planned for…
The Earlie King & the Kid in Yellow by Danny Denton
Reviewed by Basil Ransome-Davies At the close of James Joyce’s moving and magisterial story ‘The Dead’ the reader learns that ‘snow was general all over Ireland… falling faintly through the…
Rise Up, Women! The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes by Diane Atkinson
Review by Liz Dexter This is a huge book in many senses of the word. It’s physically impressive enough to have arrived in a slightly alarmingly large box (thank you…
Sunburn by Laura Lippman
Reviewed by Harriet We’ve reviewed two of Laura Lippman’s novels in Shiny, here and here. One was a police procedural and the other a standalone – Lippman’s output is fairly…
Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading by Lucy Mangan
Review by Liz Dexter This is a truly delightful book which is a MUST if you’re a 35-55 year old British person and a great read for everyone else, too….
The Good Mothers by Alex Perry
Review by Max Dunbar Operation Shame Nowadays, when we think of the mafia, it’s with a sense of nostalgia. David Chase captured the feel in classic mob drama The Sopranos….
The Extremist by Nadia Dalbuono
Review by Marina Sofia You might be forgiven for expecting this book set in Italy to be translated from Italian, given the Italian sounding name of the author. In fact,…
Daphne by Will Boast
Reviewed by Annabel The vogue for using ancient myth to inspire contemporary novels continues unabated. Last year, Kamila Shamsie updated the story of Antigone in Home Fire, in which a…
Elisabeth’s Lists: A Family Story by Lulah Ellender
Reviewed by Gill Davies Lulah Ellender’s book – subtitled “A Family Story” – is part biography, part family history, and it includes reflections on her own family which gradually emerge from the…
Owl Sense by Miriam Darlington
Review by Peter Reason Miriam Darlington’s first book, Otter Country, recounted her search and study of otters in Britain. I reviewed this book with enthusiasm in Resurgence & Ecologist, noting…
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar
Reviewed by Max Dunbar Command the Mermaid Speak Last year a monster emerged from London’s sewers. The ‘fatberg’ – as the city’s waste disposal experts called it – was a…
From Here to Eternity: Travelling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster If you’ve read thirtysomething California funeral director Caitlin Doughty’s previous book, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, you’ll remember her account of training at a traditional San…
Felix Culpa by Jeremy Gavron
Review by Rob Spence The German artist Kurt Schwitters developed a method , which he called “Merz” by which his canvases would be constructed using hundreds of fragments of material…
Savages: The Wedding by Sabri Louatah
Translated by Gavin Bowd Reviewed by Annabel This debut novel is the first volume of Louatah’s planned Saint-Étienne quartet named after the French city in which its protagonists reside. Saint-Étienne…