Translated by Natascha Bruce Review by David Hebblethwaite, 21 November 2019 Ho Sok Fong is a Malaysian writer whose short stories have won a number of awards. Lake Like a Mirror is her second collection, originally published in Chinese in 2014. The women at the heart of these nine stories are not in full control…
Review by Terence Jagger, 14 November 2019 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 share a common characteristic, that the author lets the reader into the narrative secrets only gradually, and then not completely. Some of…
Review by Laura Marriott, 27 August 2019 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 spends her days dolling out information about the city and giving tours to VIPs. In a job that involves greeting visitors to…
Translated by Roger Allen Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth On the rare occasions that someone uncovers unpublished work by a deceased writer, publishing takes an archeological turn. An unpublished manuscript, like a mummified pharaoh or a Stone Age tool, can prove to be a gift from beyond the grave – for literature lovers and no doubt…
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 in that review, I was first introduced to Gavalda in a French class, where we were reading and translating her celebrated novel Ensemble, C’est Tout,…
Reviewed by Laura Marriott Ireland is going through a golden age of writing: that has never been more apparent. I wanted to capture something of the energy of this explosion, in all its variousness… [Lucy Caldwell] When picking up a collection of short stories, many will choose to do the same as I did and…
Translated by Asa Yoneda Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth The title of Yukiko Motoya’s short story collection Picnic in the Storm could easily be a description of the author’s literary life. In her native Japan, Motoya is reaping prize after prize, yet the young writer writes about the ordinary and everyday with an ease and a…
Reviewed by Harriet It was a great loss to the world of fiction when Helen Dunmore sadly died in 2017. Fortunately for her admirers, of which I am happy to be one, she left a legacy of short stories, some never before published, which have now appeared in one volume. Her son, who edited this…
Reviewed by Julie Barham It is never easy to review a collection of short stories, especially one by such a diverse selection of authors as this one. It contains stories by well known mystery writers, gentle writers of comfortable fiction and writers only known in translation. It is possible only because these sixteen stories have…
Reviewed by Helen Parry I have been a fan of Lucy Wood’s writing since reading her début collection of short stories, Diving Belles, and so I was thrilled to see that she was publishing a new book. The Sing of the Shore, like Diving Belles, is a collection of stories all rooted very firmly in…
One of a series of reviews republished from the Shiny Archive of Issue 1 to celebrate our 4th birthday Reviewed by David Hebblethwaite Open Kirsty Logan’s debut collection, and you’ll be met first with the title story, which broadly sets the tone for what is to come. The Rental Heart takes us to a version…
Moonrise: The Golden Age of Lunar Adventures Lost Mars: The Golden Age of the Red Planet Reviewed by Karen Langley There can’t be many readers of Shiny New Books who aren’t aware of the lovely British Library Crime Classics series: long out-of-print and forgotten novels and short stories from the golden age of crime…
Translated by James J. Conway Reviewed by Lizzy Siddal Countess Franziska zu Reventlow was born into the German nobility, and lived in the castle at Husum in Schleswig-Holstein, where none other than Theodor Storm, writer of the beloved but ghostly Schimmelreiter (Rider of the White Horse/Dykemaster, depending on which English translation you read) , used to…
Reviewed by Julie Barham This is a splendid book for all those who revel in the scary, the heroic and the unusual. Anyone familiar with John Buchan’s best known novel, The 39 Steps, will know that it contains a lot of chasing around Scotland and unusual events, combining humour and the fear that capture and…
Reviewed by Alice Farrant “We can get the Times to write something. Or that nut from the Observer.” “Wait, what… what nut from the Observer?” “Frank something? The one who’s so in love with his typewriter. This is just the sort of thing that would outrage him!” You’ve Got Mail [1998] It is no…
Reviewed by Annabel Earlier this year, I reviewed the novel An English Guide to Birdwatching by an author named Nicholas Royle, and I interviewed its author too here. Ornithology is not by the same Nicholas Royle – you need to know that. In fact, as the other Nicholas Royle told me, the two authors have…
Reviewed by Karen Langley In the anniversary year of the 1917 Russian Revolution a number of books have been issued which look at that tumultuous event and its effect on Russia, as well as the aftermath in that country. However, Penguin Classics have recently published a fascinating anthology which approaches the conflict from a somewhat…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Born in the UK, raised largely in Nigeria, and now resident in Minneapolis, USA – Africa and the West are blended in debut author Lesley Nneka Arimah’s heritage just as they are in her vibrant short fiction. “Light,” one of the stories in What It Means when a Man Falls from…
Review by Laura Marriott Listening In is a collection of 24 short stories from comedian and writer Jenny Eclair. Her last literary outing was the well-received novel Moving, reviewed on Shiny New Books here. Running at around 10 pages per story it is perfect bed time reading. Black and white illustrations by the author are…
Reviewed by Karen Langley American author Joyce Carol Oates is an astonishingly prolific writer: since the publication of her first book in 1963, she’s produced over 40 novels as well as short stories, poetry and non-fiction works. Born in New York in 1938, Oates’ long and illustrious career has seen her producing works known for…
Translated by Thomas Teal Reviewed by Kate Gardner This penultimate collection of Finnish literary giant Jansson’s short stories has taken 26 years to be published in an English translation, but that is a reflection of our literary landscape, not of the quality of the stories. Jansson was in her 70s when she wrote these, and…
Translated by Deborah Smith Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Look at all these people, sobbing over a death that happened three months ago, starving because they haven’t been able to draw their rations all the while. What about the mother of the child bitten by a snake while he was out gathering flowers for Kim Il-sung’s…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton Locked room murders and other similarly impossible crimes are one of the sub genres I particularly enjoy in golden age, and older, mysteries so I was particularly pleased to get my hands on a whole collection of them. Sixteen to be specific, including contributions from Dorothy L. Sayers, Arthur Conan Doyle,…
Reviewed by Karen Langley The title story of this collection of short pieces by James Thurber is probably his best-known work, thanks to the popular film adaptation starring Danny Kaye. Thurber has a reputation as a humourist and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty brings together a selection of his pieces from a previous collection called…
Translated by Michael Kandel Reviewed by Karen Langley Polish author Stanislaw Lem is probably best known for his novel Solaris, a book that’s been filmed twice – once by the renowned Russian director Tarkovsky, and once for Hollywood starring George Clooney. However, he’s produced numerous works ranging from short stories to longer fictions and philosophical…