April 13, 2021 King of Rabbits by Karla Neblett Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Imagine a teenager who skips school, smokes, drinks and disappears from his girlfriend on a regular basis; a young man…
March 23, 2021 Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth After a year of daily Covid death reports, death really wasn’t something I wanted to hear any more of, let…
March 18, 2021 Bestiary by K-Ming Chang Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth “At a loss for words”, “in awe” and “confused but thrilled” are all phrases that I could use to describe…
February 23, 2021 Chauvo-Feminism: On Sex, Power and #MeToo by Sam Mills Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Remember the 1990s? It was a decade where lads’ mags decorated magazine shelves in supermarkets and where Men Are from…
February 18, 2021 How We Are Translated by Jessica Gaitán Johannesson Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth When an author is described as having a ”fresh voice”, I usually dismiss the description with a shrug; the attribute…
February 11, 2021 The Prophets by Robert Jones, Jr. Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Robert Jones, Jr. had doubts about writing The Prophets: “Not only was the subject matter too uncharted but the psychic…
December 8, 2020 On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong Paperback review by Anna Hollingsworth One way for a book to land a blow is to describe dark, brutal matters but to dress them…
November 24, 2020 Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Imagine a mining town and everything covered in shades of coal, from the people to the buildings to the sky…
November 10, 2020 Earthlings by Sayaka Murata Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth How do you feel about the prospect of someone having sex with their grandfather? And…
October 22, 2020 The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante Translated by Anne Goldstein Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Adolescence can be brutal, and in The Lying Life of Adults Elena Ferrante brings it out…
October 8, 2020 The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida by Clarissa Goenawan Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth In one of the marketing quotes on its cover, The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida is described as “an elegantly…
September 22, 2020 Breasts and Eggs by Meiko Kawakami Translated by Sam Bett & David Boyd Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth When Breasts and Eggs appeared in bookshops alongside all the Murakamis, Convenience Store…
September 17, 2020 People From My Neighbourhood by Hiromi Kawakami Translated by Ted Goossen Review by Anna Hollingsworth With Hiromi Kawakami, you don’t know what to expect other than that her writing will be…
May 21, 2020 Rendang by Will Harris Review by Anna Hollingsworth Will Harris has been described as one of the most important young poets in the UK, and his debut collection…
April 28, 2020 Apeirogon by Colum McCann Review by Anna Hollingsworth The most exhilarating reviews to write are those where you can bring a book down, even if it’s just a…
March 3, 2020 Miss Austen by Gill Hornby Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth There’s a point in Miss Austen where I felt that my sins had been found out. Cassandra, Jane Austen’s now…
January 21, 2020 American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins Review by Anna Hollingsworth Let’s face it: anything involving human tragedies, poverty, despair, abuse and crime offers a wealth of material for a novelist…
November 12, 2019 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…
October 31, 2019 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…
September 19, 2019 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…
August 15, 2019 One Part Woman by Perumal Murugan Translated from the Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan Review by Anna Hollingsworth An author hardly tops any lists of most hazardous jobs, but looking at…
August 6, 2019 Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson Review by Anna Hollingsworth If Dr Frankenstein’s creation took the form of a book, Frankissstein is what I imagine it would look like. There’s a transgender…
July 2, 2019 The Quarter by Najib Mahfouz Translated by Roger Allen Review by Anna Hollingsworth On the rare occasions that someone uncovers unpublished work by a deceased writer, publishing takes an…
June 20, 2019 Machines Like Me by Ian McEwan Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth My first reaction was a desperately deep sigh when I heard that Ian McEwan would be taking on human-like artificial…
May 21, 2019 The Parisian by Isabella Hammad Review by Anna Hollingsworth In the run-up to its publication, Isabella Hammad’s The Parisian was trumpeted as one of the most significant debuts of…
