An Interview with Tim Winton
Tim Winton is arguably Australia’s greatest living writer. Born in Perth in 1960, he has written novels, short story collections, non-fiction, books for children, plays and television scripts. He has…
Q&A with Ned Beauman
Questions by Simon Thomas Simon: How did you get the idea for Glow? Ned: There were two subjects I had been wanting to write about for a long time. One was…
The Death of the Poet by N. Quentin Woolf
Reviewed by Harriet Devine How can I best describe to you this wonderful, powerful book? If I tell you that it’s about a man who falls desperately in love with…
The Way Inn by Will Wiles
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell “You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.” Never has a quotation been as appropriate to a book as that above…
The Skeleton Cupboard by Tanya Byron
Reviewed by Victoria Best When my son was still a child, he used to be transfixed by The House of Tiny Tearaways, a BBC programme in which families experiencing some nightmare…
Return to Mandalay by Rosanna Ley
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long Round about this time of year publishers, publicists and bookshops turn their attention to Holiday Reading or Beach Reads. Both these terms are somewhat pejorative and…
The True & Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters by Michelle Lovric
Reviewed by Helen Parry We Swineys were the hairiest girls in Harristown, Kildare, and the hairiest you’d find anywhere in Ireland from Priesthaggard to Sluggery. That is, our limbs were…
Five Fascinating Facts About… Robert Aickman
Winkled out by Annabel Gaskell 1. Although we’ve come to know Aickman as an author, he was a prominent conservationist. In 1946, he was a co-founder of the Inland Waterways Association….
The New Sylva, A Discourse of Forest and Orchard Trees for the Twenty-First Century, by Gabriel Hemery and Sarah Simblet
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton When Shiny New Books asked me if I’d like to review The New Sylva I thought it sounded interesting. When it arrived I thought it looked interesting and…
Sidney Chambers and the Problem of Evil by James Runcie
Reviewed by Victoria Best Readers of this delightful series are probably aware that the ITV adaptation will soon be on our screens, with James Norton playing the priest-turned-detective, Sidney Chambers…
The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith
Reviewed by Harriet Devine Strike hated paddling on the periphery of a case, forced to watch as others dived for clues, leads and information. He sat up late with the…
‘The Night Watchman’ and the Dilemma of Living in Portugal by Richard Zimler
Imagine a country with the lowest salaries in Western Europe, where about 40 percent of young people are unemployed, and where 50,000 shops went out of business in 2011 and…
To War With Whitaker by Hermione Ranfurly
Reviewed by Claire If I were knowingly heading into an active theatre of war, I like to think I would go armed with the necessary information, wardrobe, and exit plan…
The Night Watchman by Richard Zimler
Reviewed by T.V. LoCicero The Mysterious Worlds of Henrique Monroe This is the ninth novel by Richard Zimler, an American-born writer who spent his first thirty-four years in the U.S.,…
The Most Dangerous Book; The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses by Kevin Birmingham
Reviewed by Max Dunbar This study of how James Joyce’s Ulysses came to be published and set in type is almost as essential as the book itself. The odds were against it,…
Decompression by Juli Zeh
Translated by John Cullen Reviewed by David Hebblethwaite In diving, decompression is the gradual reduction of ambient pressure as a diver returns to the surface, which allows the inert gases…
Death in Pont-Aven by Jean-Luc Bannalec
Translated by Sorcha McDonagh Reviewed by Harriet Devine Hooray for Hesperus, who sent me this book for review back in the early spring. I picked it up straight away and…
The Strange Stories of Robert Aickman
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell 2014 marks the centenary of the birth of Robert Aickman, an author who once encountered demands that you read more of his output – particularly his…
The Eds discuss… the Man Booker longlist and literary prizes in general
By the Shiny New Books Editors The four SNB Editors had a round robin e-mail discussion about our reactions to the announcement of the Man Booker Prize longlist going around…
The Disinherited by Robert Sackville-West
Reviewed by Victoria Best When Jerry Seinfeld remarked that ‘There is no such thing as fun for all the family’, he could have had the Sackville-Wests in mind. In the…
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,…
The Listener by Tove Jansson
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…
The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham
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…
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
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…