Some Questions for Lucy Caldwell
Asked by HarrietLucy, people always like to know how a writer got started. So can you tell us about your beginnings, and when you realised you were going to be…
Asked by HarrietLucy, people always like to know how a writer got started. So can you tell us about your beginnings, and when you realised you were going to be…
Reviewed by Linda Boa This slim collection of a dozen stories by American novelist and short story writer Helen Ellis is something of a wee gem. With stories ranging from…
Reviewed by Harriet Christmas is a mysterious, as well as magical, time of year. Strange things can happen, and this helps to explain the hallowed tradition of telling ghost stories…
Translated by Maria Bloshteyn Reviewed by Karen Langley The art of the short story is a difficult one, and many authors never attain the dizzy heights of a tale told…
Reviewed by Simon This is the third Shiny New Books issue in which I’ve had the privilege of writing about Shirley Jackson’s works – and, indeed, I’ve bolstered out those…
Reviewed by David Hebblethwaite Janice Galloway’s new short story collection takes as its starting point an observation by David Lodge: “Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about…
Reviewed by Harriet Vintage crime fiction is enjoying a tremendous renaissance at the moment, and the British Library Crime Classics series certainly has a good deal to do with it….
Reviewed by Harriet The relation between Douglas Stone and the notorious Lady Sannox was very well known both among the fashionable circles of which she was a brilliant member, and…
Reviewed by Gill Davies This collection of stories, in the Virago Modern Classics series, was first published in German in 1975 (in English in 1977). The stories thus emanate from…
Written by Victoria Rose Tremain is one of those talented writers in whose hands you instantly feel safe. Here, the reader understands, there will be acts of storytelling that take…
Translated by Hugh Aplin Reviewed by Karen Langley Russian author Anton Chekhov, although possibly best known for his plays like The Cherry Orchard, is also the acknowledged master of the short…
Translated by Roger Cockrell Reviewed by Karen Langley When Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov’s magnum opus The Master and Margarita was finally published, decades after his death, it took the literary world by…
By David Hebblethwaite Short stories are in our bones. They are often the first fiction we read or hear: fairy tales, bedtime stories – and at school (for example), they…
Reviewed by Alice Farrant Stay Up With Me by Tom Barbash is a collection of short stories set in New York City. Each explores a disconnection between parents and children, lovers or…
Tell us about your apprenticeship in art – what experiences have made you the writer you are today? My first real job after college was as a reporter in a…
Reviewed by Denise Kong If, as I do, you use Yahoo Mail, it’s impossible to log in without being enticed into clicking on some lurid headline about an outrageous wrong…
Reviewed by Victoria Best Oh Margaret Atwood, you are so funny and so clever and so full of novelistic wiles! She may be 74 but no author could be less…
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell 2014 marks the centenary of the birth of Robert Aickman, an author who once encountered demands that you read more of his output – particularly his…
Translated by Thomas Teal Reviewed by Simon Thomas It’s always interesting to see the genesis of a favourite writer. In Issue 1 of Shiny New Books, I was able to…
Translated by Soren A. Gauger and Guy Torr Reviewed by Karen Langley The boundaries and allegiances in Europe moved and blurred continually during the early 20th century, and many writers…
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…