Reviewed by Gill Davies In the summer of 1917 Virginia Woolf was living at Asheham, a house near Lewes in Sussex. She was 35 and hadn’t written anything for two…
Review by Gill Davies This is a first novel by a practising barrister and is billed as “a legal thriller with a psychological twist”. It comes with plaudits from –…
Review by Gill Davies Pushkin Press first published this selection of stories in 2013, after its 2011 publication in the US. Since then, every critic and reviewer I’ve read comments…
Reviewed by Gill Davies I was intrigued by the title of this book, which didn’t announce itself as a traditional industrial history, and by its format – it looks rather…
Translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Thomas Bunstead Reviewed by Gill Davies In his witty alphabetical epilogue to this novel, Bernardo Atxaga states that there are “two kinds of literature,…
Review by Gill Davies Louise Welsh has published eight novels. The only one I had read prior to this was The Cutting Room (2002), to which her latest novel is…
Reviewed by Gill Davies Although he has published twelve novels since 1985, I only discovered Richard Powers through his stunning 2018 novel The Overstory that was short-listed for the Booker…
Reviewed by Gill Davies Just a few days ago my partner and fellow Shiny reviewer Basil Ransome Davies found a new walk to do in these times of Covid-inspired local…
Reviewed by Gill Davies This is a remarkable book about a remarkable woman. Valentine Ackland (1906-1969) was “transgressive” in so many ways. She was a cross-dressing lesbian; a communist from…
Translated by Philip Boehm Reviewed by Gill Davies This is an important republication of a novel which first appeared eighty years ago under a pen name and in translation as…
Translated by Adam King Reviewed by Gill Davies John Kåre Rake is a successful Norwegian screen writer and this is his first novel. It’s a mysterious thriller that uses its…
Translated by Nick Caistor Reviewed by Gill Davies This is the first novel by Olivier Norek to be translated into English. It was first published in France in 2013 and…
Reviewed by Gill Davies Kate Grenville’s latest novel is a wonderful continuation of her investigation of Australian history and the people who made it. In her best known novel, The…
Reviewed by Gill Davies London in 1963, despite some remaining scars of wartime, is busy re-inventing itself with skyscrapers rising over bomb sites, American music and movies, trendy coffee bars,…
Review by Gill Davies Women read a lot more fiction than men; they also buy more books, attend writers’ events, blog, exchange ideas, and form reading groups. Helen Taylor’s research…
Review by Gill Davies This powerful and engrossing novel continues a series of crime novels in which Attica Locke uses plot and suspense to investigate inequality and American racism in…
Translated by Antony Shugaar Reviewed by Gill Davies This is the third book in a series of police procedural novels by the successful Italian crime writer Maurizio de Giovanni (also…
Review by Gill Davies The cover illustration for the book is an aerial view of a suburban street. A pattern of identical houses with green lawns and tidy spaces symbolises…
Translated by Stephen Sartarelli Reviewed by Gill Davies In addition to the Inspector Montalbano novels, best known to English readers from the TV adaptations in the BBC4 Saturday night crime…
Reviewed by Gill Davies Here is a real treat for readers interested in the sometimes hidden side of Victorian society and its relationship with literary culture. The book relates the…
Translated by Tim Mohr Review by Gill Davies The Second Rider is the first novel in a projected new series by the Austrian writer, Alex Beer. It is set in…
Translated by Sam Taylor Review by Gill Davies Having become rather jaded with the predictability of the crime fiction genre and wearied by the sheer number published, I’ve been interested…
Translated by Margaret Bettauer Dembo Reviewed by Gill Davies The novel is set in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and was first published in German in 1942. Seghers was a…
Translated by Merike Lepasaar Beecher Reviewed by Gill Davies Thanks to the wonderful Maclehose Press I have discovered another writer in translation who deserves to be much better known. Up…
