Table for Two by Amor Towles
Review by Annabel Until this year Towles has delighted his readers with novels of increasing thickness including A Gentleman in Moscow and The Lincoln Highway, both of which I adored,…
Tatting and Mandolinata by Faith Compton Mackenzie
Reviewed by Harriet This intriguing title indicates the presence of two separate works by Faith Compton Mackenzie, of whom you’ve probably never heard. The name will ring a bell though,…
The House of Silence by Edith Nesbit
Reviewed by Harriet Here at Shiny, I’m proud to say, we have now covered every aspect of Edith Nesbit’s wonderful fiction writing. Best known to most people as a writer…
Dublin Tales, edited by Paul Delaney and Eve Patton
Reviewed by Harriet If you gave me a choice between a collection of short stories and a novel, I’d choose the novel every time. I suppose it’s something to do…
Encounters With Everyday Madness by Charlie Hill
The growth of social media seems to have generated a huge increase in madness. Not real madness, of course. Rather, it’s the condition affected by so many TikTokers and Instagrammers,…
Stories for Winter: and Nights by the Fire
Introduction by Simon Thomas Reviewed by Harriet Devine When I saw the title and the snowflakey cover of this winter offering from the British Library Women Writers series, I thought…
The Siren’s Lament: Essential Stories by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki
Translated by Bryan Karetnyk Review by Karen Langley Jun’ichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965) was a Japanese author known for his erotically charged stories, and is considered one of his country’s best-known modern…
Binocular Vision by Edith Pearlman
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…
Furies: Stories of the wicked, wild and untamed
Introduced by Sandi Toksvig Review by Karen Langley Fifty years ago, in the heat of the second wave of women’s liberation, a revolutionary feminist publishing house was formed by Carmen…
Stories for Christmas and the Festive Season, ed. Simon Thomas
Reviewed by Harriet ‘These stories are to fortify you over the Christmas period’, says the blurb on the back of this new collection from the British Library Women Writers Series….
The Trouble with Happiness and Other Stories by Tove Ditlevsen
Translated by Michael Favala Goldman Review by Karen Langley The last few years have seen Danish author Tove Ditlevsen’s star in the ascendant following the translation of her autofictional Copenhagen…
Longing and Other Stories by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki
Translated by Anthony H Chambers and Paul McCarthy Review by Anna Hollingsworth In the UK, readers know their Murakamis and convenience store women. Jun’ichiro Tanizaki is much less known to…
Things Remembered and Things Forgotten by Kyoko Nakajima
Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori and Ian MacDonald Review by Anna Hollingsworth In the short story The Last Obon, Satsuki is mistaken for the ghost of her aunt’s daughter by…
That Old Country Music by Kevin Barry
Reviewed by David Hebblethwaite Kevin Barry is known for his short stories, and with good reason. It has been eight years since his last collection, Dark Lies the Island, so…
Women’s Weird 2: More Strange Stories by Women, 1891-1937, edited by Melissa Edmundson
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton Women’s Weird: Strange Stories by Women 1890 -1940 was a standout book from last year – it’s still genuinely one of the most unsettling anthologies I’ve…
British Weird, Selected Shorter Fiction 1893-1937 edited by James Machin
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton I spent some time looking up the definition of Weird as opposed to Horror in preparation for writing this, and now have the perfect opportunity to…
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 wonderfully odd. Her gentle quirkiness and…
Fandango and Other Stories by Alexander Grin
Translated by Bryan Karetnyk Reviewed by Karen Langley Recent years have seen a wave of wonderful new translations of ‘lost’ Russian authors of the 19th and 20th century. Some have…
Of Cats and Elfins by Sylvia Townsend Warner
Reviewed by Harriet Just over a year ago I reviewed the newly published Handheld Press edition of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Kingdoms of Elfin, a collection of strange, glittering, fascinating stories,…
Lake Like a Mirror by Ho Sok Fong
Translated by Natascha Bruce Review by David Hebblethwaite Ho Sok Fong is a Malaysian writer whose short stories have won a number of awards. Lake Like a Mirror is her second collection,…
Your Duck is My Duck by Deborah Eisenberg
Review by Terence Jagger This, in spite of its slightly silly sounding title, is an interesting and slightly mysterious collection of six short stories. They are all very different, but…
Belfast Stories, edited by Paul McVeigh & Laura Frank
Review by Laura Marriott In Donegall Square, in the centre of Belfast, Lisa is working in the Welcome Centre. Tourists flock in searching for Game of Thrones sites and she…
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 archeological turn. An unpublished manuscript, like…
The Cracks in our Armour by Anna Gavalda
Translated by Alison Anderson Reviewed by Harriet Way back in the early days of Shiny (issue 5 to be exact) I reviewed Anna Gavalda’s slender novel Billie. As I said…