Fallout by Sadie Jones
Reviewed by Victoria Best I love novels about life on the stage, though they are a relatively rare genre. Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes was one of the key books of my childhood,…
Reviewed by Victoria Best I love novels about life on the stage, though they are a relatively rare genre. Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes was one of the key books of my childhood,…
Translated by Thomas Teal Reviewed by Simon Thomas It’s always interesting to see the genesis of a favourite writer. In Issue 1 of Shiny New Books, I was able to…
Reviewed by Claire Boyle The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham is like a snow scene uninterrupted by footprints, beautiful to look at and perfect in its composition. It opens on a…
Reviewed by Jodie Robson I was not happy as a child, although from time to time I was content. I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else. It’s…
Reviewed by Victoria Best I do love a book with a really good jaw-dropping twist, and goodness me does The Headmaster’s Wife have one of those. But a device that’s great to…
Translated by Stephen Rendall Reviewed by Falaise The Cemetery of Swallows is a recent addition to Europa Editions’ excellent World Noir imprint, which, as you may guess from its name, features…
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell My first encounter with Alan Lightman was through his 1992 novel Einstein’s Dreams, a fictional account of the scientist during the period he was working on the…
Translated by Soren A. Gauger and Guy Torr Reviewed by Karen Langley The boundaries and allegiances in Europe moved and blurred continually during the early 20th century, and many writers…
Reviewed by Simon Thomas A few years ago, I very much enjoyed A Truth Universally Acknowledged, an anthology of writers and readers celebrating Jane Austen, which was also edited by Susannah…
Reviewed by Terence Jagger This is a famous and fascinating book, and I think anyone interested in the Great War, or the wider question of how wars begin, would find…
Reviewed by Victoria Best It is November 1963 and Nell Benjamin is annoyed with her husband, Charlie. The previous evening, they had guests round, and the boorish drunk, Frank Tucker,…
Questions by Harriet Devine Harriet: I really enjoyed reading Mr Campion’s Farewell, and, as a lifetime fan of Allingham, I wasn’t sure if I would. But I’m full of curiosity as…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine I think I was about eleven when my mother, responding to my cry that I had nothing to read, gave me a copy of Margery Allingham’s Sweet…
Translated by Andrew Brown Reviewed by Jean Morris The media were full of the D-Day commemorations as I read this book – stories of wartime fear and bravery that I’d…
Reviewed by Victoria Best Many years ago, when I was teaching literature at Cambridge University, my good friend Kathryn and I used to laugh together about a certain category of…
Reviewed by Claire When you are the inspiration for one of the most famous and best-loved children’s books of all time, how do you grow up? How do you set…
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell The Festival of Britain back in 1951 and subsequent World Expos were before my time but I am finding that the 1950s are an attractive era…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine If I were to make a list of things I probably wouldn’t want to read a book about, aeroplanes, cars, baseball and finance would be somewhere near…
Reviewed by Simon Thomas Are you ready to be transported back to postwar Europe? Although this collection of essays was first published as Pleasures and Landscapes as recently as 2003, they are…
Written by Jonathan Smith Wilfred and Eileen was well received in the literary pages in 1976. The novel was dramatized on Radio 4 in 1983 and then serialized on BBC TV…
Reviewed by Rachel Fenn Wilfred and Eileen, one of Persephone’s new books for the Spring, is also one of their most modern, having been first published in the 1970s. It…
Written by Ben Fergusson Berlin is full of holes. Literally. The moment you notice them, you begin to see them everywhere. Deep starbursts in stonework, plaster and brick. They are…
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Harry Christmas strode out of Caracas airport with little more than a wallet full of stolen money and the dried-up brain of a long-haul drinker. Beyond…
Back when Shiny New Books was a quarterly, in early editions we had a competition to win ‘The Editors’ Picks’ – four books that caught the four editors’ attention that…