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by Najib Mahfouz Translated by Roger Allen Review by Anna Hollingsworth On the rare occasions that someone uncovers unpublished work by a deceased writer, publishing takes an…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…
May 2, 2019 Crossing by Pajtim Statovci Translated by David Hackston Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Crossing is perhaps one of the vaguest book titles I have come across recently, especially given the…
April 9, 2019 Liar by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen Translated by Sondra Silverston Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth If you asked me about the time I first discovered Ayelet Gundar-Goshen, I could tell you…
March 19, 2019 Music Love Drugs War by Geraldine Quigley Review by Anna Hollingsworth The Troubles are exploding – in the best possible sense – onto the literary scene: two decades after the Good…
March 14, 2019 Picnic in the Storm by Yukiko Motoya Translated by Asa Yoneda Review by Anna Hollingsworth The title of Yukiko Motoya’s short story collection Picnic in the Storm could easily be a…
January 17, 2019 Berta Isla by Javier Marías Translated by Margaret Jull Costa Review by Anna Hollingsworth I’m not one for classic spy stories: I don’t care if the martinis come shaken…
November 22, 2018 If Cats Disappeared From the World by Genki Kawamura Translated by Eric Selland Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Who doesn’t deal with the devil every now and again? Or perhaps a god from your…
November 8, 2018 Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth What happens when the walls around someone collapse – in this case, both literally and metaphorically? One take is that…
October 16, 2018 Hippie by Paulo Coelho Review by Anna Hollingsworth Hippie is the newest addition to Coelho’s bibliography, but to say that it is something new from Coelho would be…
September 18, 2018 On Rape by Germaine Greer Review by Anna Hollingsworth To say that the statistics are grim is a blatant understatement. One woman in five will experience sexual violence, but…
August 23, 2018 Learning to Die by Thomas Maloney Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Three decades of life promise a quarter-life crisis: your 20s are on their way into your 30s, you’re forced to…
August 16, 2018 The Idiot by Elif Batuman Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth In his The Idiot – the original – Dostoyevsky set out on a mission to depict “the positively good and…
September 26, 2017 The Squeeze by Lesley Glaister Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Admitted, to say that the world has shrunk into a village has shrunk into a cliché itself. But the cliché…
June 13, 2017 The Accusation by Bandi Translated by Deborah Smith Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Look at all these people, sobbing over a death that happened three months ago, starving because…
