The Unwitting by Ellen Feldman
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,…
Q&A with Mike Ripley
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…
Mr Campion’s Farewell by Mike Ripley
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…
Over the Ocean by Erica Fischer
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…
In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman
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…
The Path Through The Trees by Christopher Milne
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…
Expo 58 by Jonathan Coe
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…
One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson
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…
Pleasures and Landscapes by Sybille Bedford
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…
Jonathan Smith on his book Wilfred and Eileen
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…
Wilfred and Eileen by Jonathan Smith
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…
The Broken Landscape of Berlin by Ben Fergusson
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…
A Bright Moon for Fools by Jasper Gibson
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…
Our Readers’ Ideal Libraries
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…
The Lie by Helen Dunmore
Reviewed by Susan Osborne. If you spend any time at all perusing reviews, on the internet or otherwise, you can’t have failed to notice the plethora of novels about the…
My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff
Reviewed by Victoria Best When this memoir begins, Joanna Rakoff is 23 and has just dropped out of her graduate literary program in London and returned to New York, declaring…
Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy
Reviewed by Victoria Best Several years ago, I read a short story collection by an author whose name was buzzing around the blogosphere as a talent to watch. The book…
Murder Underground and Death on the Cherwell by Mavis Doriel Hay
Reviewed by Harriet Devine Mavis Doriel Hay (1894-1979) wrote only three crime novels, all published in the 1930s. They slipped completely under the radar until the British Library decided to…
The Quick by Lauren Owen
Reviewed by Sakura Gooneratne The Quick by Lauren Owen burst into the literary scene earlier this year with fantastic reviews in major broadsheets and literary blogs, no mean feat for a…
An Interview with Joanna Rakoff
By Victoria Best My Salinger Year was unquestionably one of the best books I’ve read this year – poignant, funny, real, warm – you can read my review here. The author, Joanna…
Meeting the English by Kate Clanchy
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Kate Clanchy’s first novel is a perfect summer read: it’s laugh-out-loud funny, has pathos in all the right places, a sweet young hero and an inbuilt…
Gossip by Beth Gutcheon
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell When this novel was published, I couldn’t resist the allure of the cover in an oversized paperback format with French flaps. Luckily the novel inside is…
A trio of Maigret novels by Georges Simenon
Reviewed by Lizzy Siddal Let me start this article with a confession. In my pre-blog years, I once read a Maigret novel. I didn’t like it much. I found it…
Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) – A Biographical Note
Written by Harriet Devine. She will love deeply – suffer terribly – she will have glorious moments to compensate. Emily Byrd Starr, Lucy Maud Montgomery’s most autobiographical heroine, remembered these…