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…
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…
