Review by Karen Stevens of "The Collected Stories" by Katherine Mansfield

I’ve been unable to read fiction for a few months now due to burnout. When that happens, I eventually re-energise by returning to The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield (Penguin, 1981 – my very battered copy). Every time I revisit her work, I’m staggered by her ability to capture the inner lives of people and the revelations that arise from the most trivial or seemingly ordinary moments. One such moment occurs in her perfectly crafted short story "At the Bay" - my favourite story of all time.

Linda Burnell, one of Mansfield’s most beautifully drawn characters, is alone with her baby boy in the garden of their seaside holiday home. It’s a rare moment of solitude; her life is almost entirely given over to her family. Here, she reflects on her real grudge against life: "She was broken, made weak, her courage was gone, through child-bearing … she did not love her children. It was useless pretending."

But then the baby turns over and beams at Linda, instantly testing and eroding her resolve: "'Why do you keep on smiling?' she said severely. 'If you knew what I was thinking about, you wouldn’t.' But he only squeezed up his eyes slyly and rolled his head on the pillow. He didn’t believe a word she said. 'We know all about that!' smiled the boy. Linda was so astonished at the confidence of this little creature … Ah no, be sincere. That was not what she felt; it was something far different, something so new, so … The tears danced in her eyes; she breathed in a small whisper to the boy, 'Hallo, my funny!'" 

In that exchange, Mansfield enables us to experience the sweetness and anguish that shape the pattern of all our lives – the essence of good - no, great fiction. 

About the reviewer
Karen Stevens is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Chichester and lives in West Sussex. She is an editor, critic and writes short fiction. Her debut collection of short stories Brilliant Blue was published by Barbican press in 2025. 

You can read more about Brilliant Blue on Creative Writing at Leicester here.

Review by Paul Taylor-McCartney of "The Subtle Art of Short Fiction" ed. Isabelle Kenyon

 

This is a concise, well-focused companion for creative writers who already understand the fundamentals of crafting short fiction and now want to work at the level of nuance, treating it as a form defined by compression and consequence. The emphasis is not on shortcuts or formula, but on the deliberate choices that allow a story to suggest a larger world while remaining tightly controlled.

One of the anthology’s strengths is the authority and range of its contributors. Essays and writing exercises from Daisy Johnson, Matt Wesolowski, Kerry Hadley-Pryce, Sarah Schofield, Jonathan Taylor, S. J. Bradley, Mahsuda Snaith, David Hartley and Farhana Shaikh offer a multi-perspectival account of craft (including an illuminating introduction by Paul March-Russell). The variety of approaches prevents the collection from becoming prescriptive. Instead, it reads as a series of intelligent, practice-based reflections on what short stories can achieve and how they generate their distinctive force.

The technical focus is consistently strong. Several chapters attend to subtext and micro-tension, showing how emotional pressure often gathers not through explanation, but through what remains withheld and unresolved. The discussion of sensory minimalism is equally effective, returning to the difficult question of when to render detail vividly and when to imply, allowing the reader to complete the image. Structure is treated as an area for experimentation rather than compliance, with contributors encouraging alternative narrative frameworks and more considered thinking about pacing, revelation and the placement of the final turn. 

Crucially, each chapter includes helpful writing prompts and exercises that bridge literary theory and creative practice. These are not incidental add-ons, but carefully designed invitations to test ideas on the page, and to translate conceptual discussion into specific decisions about language, scene and shape. I have recently returned to the short story form myself, so engaging with this book has been both timely and beneficial in deepening my own understanding of the genre, while also offering practical stimulus for new work.

Isabelle Kenyon’s editorial hand keeps the collection coherent while allowing each voice its own texture, and it is the gravitas and insight of those voices that gives the anthology its remarkable depth. The result is an anthology that sharpens attention, both to the craft of short fiction and to the pleasures of reading it closely. This is a thoughtful, highly engaging and genuinely useful book, and one that rewards return, particularly for writers intent on refining control, precision and resonance.

About the reviewer
Dr Paul Taylor-McCartney is a writer, post-doctoral researcher and lecturer. His academic and creative interests include dystopian literature, Queer studies, children’s fiction and initial teacher education. His poetry, short fiction and scholarly articles have appeared in a wide range of print and electronic media, and recent fiction titles he worked on as commissioning editor have won regional readers’ and publishers’ awards. His debut children’s novel, Sisters of the Pentacle, was published by Hermitage Press (2022), and his first non-fiction title, Cornwall Uncharted: Mapping Cornwall’s Queer History of Concealment, Culture and Creativity, is shortly to be published by The History Press (June 2026).

You can read more about The Subtle Art of Short Fiction on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Review by Sarah Gresham of "The Final Women" by Pardeep Aujla

 

This is a great read. It’s compelling, thrilling and unpredictable. I love the way that the main characters are a group of women survivors out to get bloody revenge on a serial killer. The author cleverly and intelligently explores the characters’ different reactions to historic trauma as well as their motivations to get even.

Throughout, the action sequences are expertly done and badass, and the dialogue is cracking and witty. As for the horror content … if it’d been a film I was watching, there were lots of moments I’d have been reaching for a cushion to cover my eyes. Descriptions are inventive, novel and full of dark humour. The Silas Crowe character is menacing, creepy, chilling. 

I saw that the author, Pardeep Aujla, is an "award-winning screenwriter and narrative designer for video games." This skill shines through so well, as evidenced in the rolling climaxes that explode across that movie-screen of the mind. Think: slasher horror. Think: oodles of gory homicide. Don’t read at bedtime!

About the reviewer
Sarah Gresham’s coffee shop, Clarendon Perk, is at 249 Clarendon Park Road, Leicester, where you will find very nice coffee and homemade cakes and food. It also has a micro bookshop, and occasional literary events featuring local writers.

Review by Tracey Foster of "Muse" by Ruth Millington

What came first, the artist or the muse?

Exploring this question is the very heart of this book, looking at artists who had complex relationships with their chosen muse. They were often supported, inspired and encouraged in their art by figures whose roles have fallen into obscurity, leaving us with only an image to construct a legend about: "The perception of the muse is that of a passive, powerless model at the mercy of an influential and older artist. But is this trope a romanticised myth?"

Rather than breaking the history of the myth into chronological sections, Millington explores the role of the muse in different guises. We delve into the muse as a message, performing muses, family albums and self-portraits which give delightful juxtapositions, framing Picasso’s Dora Maar alongside Awol Erizku's photograph of a pregnant Beyonce. Millington's background in TV and radio has helped to develop her direct conversational tone that keeps the content accessible to all and avoids the navel-gazing tendency of some art tomes. 

As easily evidenced on any gallery wall, females make up the bulk of the line-up, but Millington includes a few other examples such as George Dyer, the controversial muse and lover of Francis Bacon who, the story goes, fell through his skylight to the retort from Bacon: "You're not much of a burglar are you? Take off your clothes. Come to bed and you can take what you want."

Dyer's story is one often repeated throughout history; the legend is told by the victor to the spoil. Successful artists concoct a favourable narrative to add to their allure, but if we delve below the surface, we find the truth is often far more nuanced Bacon was able to create his own version about the forty-plus paintings he made of Dyer because his muse, unable to cope with Bacon's infidelity, committed suicide on the eve of a major retrospective. Bacon took many photographs of his muse and continued to use these to create some of his most famous works after he died, only admitting much later in his career that Dyer's tortured demise was his inspiration and the story behind the images. Working through his emotions on canvas he said, "I feel profoundly guilty about his death. If I hadn't gone out, if I'd simply stayed in and made sure he was alright, he might have been alive now."

Vermeer’s "Girl with a Pearl Earring" has long been the subject of speculation and led to the writer Tracy Chevalier's novel that attempted to fictionalise the gap. Recent research, however, has exposed Vermeer’s real intention. Religious allegories reimagined by the family who commissioned the paintings have been attributed to most of the works he painted in one household. The girl sitter could then be simply a young member of the family who fills in for a sequence of biblical representations.

Challenging our expectations of the role of artist and muse is Gentileschi - a talented painter who raised up to the highest levels of painting circles but who had been born a female in a time when her abilities were discouraged and frowned upon. Raped by her tutor at the age of 17 and banned from entering the art establishment, she used her own image to stare out at us and confront our ideals of the female narrative. Reimagining the classics, she retells the tales from the woman's stance in contrast to the male gaze. Her muse is never passive; her beauty is active. "I will show Your Illustrious Lordship what a woman can do," she wrote to a patron, defiant and proud of her work. Taking her former tutor to court at a time when women were disbelieved, she swore through torture in the court: "It is true, It is true." She won her case and her tutor was subsequently banished from Rome, but a cloud followed her for rape was considered the shame of the family and she was quickly married off. The work that followed depicted women wronged, such as Salome, and allowed her to exact revenge on the canvas and leave a legacy for us to interpret: "As long as I live, I will have control over my being."

Dora Maar, Picasso’s lover and sitter for over 60 paintings, was an artist in her own right when they met. A successful photographer with her own studio, she deliberately set out to attract this older man by using a knife to stab between her fingers, whilst sat at table in a cafe frequented by Picasso. This daring game worked and he moved her in with his current lover and their child. The ensuing battle that erupted was immaterial to Picasso. He walked out telling them to sort it out between themselves. Picasso's most famous portrait of Maar, entitled "The Weeping Woman," was in response to Dora's gradual deterioration into depression: "Dora for me, was always a weeping woman," he famously exclaimed. 

But Dora had a much heavier influence on his work. Deeply political and active in the left-wing struggle against fascism, she opened his eyes to the cause. Just a few weeks before he had painted "Guernica," his anti-war masterpiece. Posing for a figure of a mother holding her grieving child, photographing the whole production and helping him to mix paints, she was a huge part of its creation. Picasso was still inspired by the experience to go on to make "Weeping Woman" as a further response to the event. To dismiss it later and to attribute it to the emotional whims of a woman is to vastly diminish the part she played and add to his allure as a lover and leaver of women: "For years I gave her a tortured appearance, not out of Sadism, and without any pleasure on my part, but in obedience to a vision that had imposed itself on me." Maar was later to reply: "All Picasso portraits of me are lies. Not one is Dora Maar."

Millington happily gives the muse the last word. These sitters often play a large part in any artistic creation but often never get any credit. Their part is frozen to a moment and their voices muted. To get a fuller picture, we need to listen to their story. Here at last is that perspective: "This book will demonstrate the true power that muses have held. Without doubt, it's time that we reconsidered muses, reclaiming them from reductive stereotypes, to illuminate their real, involved and diverse roles throughout art history." 

About the reviewer
After a long career as an Art and Design teacher, Tracey Foster wanted to refocus her creative energies into writing poetry and prose. After helping others find inspiration in the world around us, she took an MA course in Creative Writing at Leicester University and has not looked back. She finds inspiration in the past and the events that shape us. Previous work has been published by Comma Press, Ayaskala, Alternateroute, Fish Barrel Review, The Haiku Foundation, Mausoleum Press, Bus Poetry Magazine, Wayward Literature, Cold Moon Journal, Madswirl, Five Fleas, The Arts Council and she writes on her own blog site The Small Sublime found here.

Review by Karen Powell-Curtis of "Have they marked you with arrows?" by Jayne Stanton

Jayne Stanton’s beautifully crafted poems chart the stages in her journey beginning with her cancer diagnosis, through treatment, and beyond. 

In "Recall," there is a sense of both fear of the outcome, and of the stress of waiting. The repetition of "a woman" controls the pace of the poem, and the detail of each step of the appointment forces the reader to pause and consider each action. In the following poem, "After the appointment," Stanton writes of the shock and disorientation immediately after diagnosis with the lines "You try to recall what you’ve just been told" and "You both agree – the cafeteria / seems farther away than usual." 

There are hints of Emily Dickinson’s poem "Hope is the thing with feathers" in "Many-feathered." In Stanton’s poem hope is "a scalpel in a steady hand" and "an evicted ductal carcinoma." In sharp contrast to the medical terminology is the image of a "rose that grows / in a pathologist’s petri dish."

"Platitudes" begins with the line "It’s a good thing they caught it early" and continues to list the cliches often offered to someone diagnosed with cancer. The layout of the poem, with space between each line, suggests how empty and unhelpful these words might feel to the recipient. 

The short lines in the poem "Radiology of the left breast" create a clinical effect. The use of the passive voice, particularly in the lines "Careful measurements are taken / and your skin marked up" and "You are moved into the correct position," emphasises the impersonal nature of the procedure.

Strength and hope are evident throughout Stanton’s pamphlet. Her poems are both unsentimental and powerful, and whilst deeply personal, they are also relevant to many women undergoing the same experience.

About the reviewer
Karen Powell-Curtis has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Leicester. Her poetry has been published in various anthologies and magazines. 

You can read more about Have they marked you with arrows? on Creative Writing at Leicester here. 

Favourite Reads of 2025

At the end of every year, we ask readers to submit a micro-review of a favourite book they've read in the last twelve months. The book can be from any time or genre - the only qualification is that it has to be a book the reader found particularly memorable, striking or enjoyable. Here are the responses for 2025. Everybody's Reviewing wishes all its readers a happy 2026 - the National Year of Reading!

Kirsten Arcadio

The God of the Woods, by Liz Moore: In a "Psychological Thrillers" group on Facebook, people aren’t too sure. More a mystery than a thriller, says one member. Literary fiction, says another. A flat statement. For me, The God of the Woods by Liz Moore, was all of those things and much more: a perfect literary thriller complete with several different points of view and timelines, it tells the story of the disappearances of two siblings more than a decade apart. Beautifully written, the pace is perfect and the end does not disappoint. 

Kathleen Bell
My favourite reads this year are a tribute to public libraries that lent me the books, free of charge. And I’ve chosen three, in different categories.

Non-fiction: The Restless Republic: Britain Without a Crown, by Anna Keays, borrowed from Richmond-on Thames library service, was exciting enough for me to read in bed, even when recovering from the after-effects of my shingles jab. Covering British political history in the years 1649 to 1660, it tells the story of key individuals (including John Bradshaw, Charlotte Stanley, Anna Trapnel and William Petty) to illuminate both the political-religious struggles and the way individuals responded to the turmoils of the time. I was caught up in the history and fascinated by the people.

Fiction: Alive in the Merciful Country, by A. L. Kennedy, borrowed through Notts libraries, was hard to get hold of, though I wanted to read it ever since seeing a copy in Five Leaves Bookshop. I requested it from my local library but first listened to the audio book, which meant I heard it in sections on coach journeys, which was good but not ideal. Now I am half-way through the physical copy which is better – and it’s still engaging, disturbing and funny (sometimes all three at once). It’s set in lockdown and the period leading up to it and is concerned with the practice of kindness and the discovery of joy, even though people cause immense harm. This is a book I expect to re-read regularly, now that the library has acquired a copy.

Poetry: The Paths of  Survival, by Josephine Balmer, borrowed from The Poetry Library in London, is a terrific discovery. I’m always attracted by something that uses classical literature but these poems are different from most. They’re based on fragments from Aeschylus’ lost play The Myrmidons (about Achilles and Patroclus) and focus on different moments in which various lines or phrases are quoted, translated or possibly misunderstood. Themes include love, grief and the uncertainty of knowledge:

          letters from a lost world, seeping back

          to black, etched in breath-blown dust:
          …speak out… …dissent… …enough 

Kristy Diaz

The Trading Game, by Gary Stevenson: A propulsive, whip-smart memoir that follows Stevenson from his working-class East London roots to the trading floor at one of the world’s biggest banks. As bleakly funny as it is insightful, his story illustrates the rot at the heart of global finance and makes a compelling argument for economic equality.

Rohan Fitzpatrick

Jesus Christ Kinski, by Benjamin Myers: Jesus Christ Kinski is a mind-bendingly unique novel focusing on the infamous actor Klaus Kinski’s memorable 1971 performance, Jesus Christ Erlöser, interspliced with a semi-autobiographic tale of obsession from a Yorkshire author. I found Kinski’s perspective both loathsome and fascinating, and the speculative nature of his thoughts, which are at times hilarious and bleak, to be immensely creative and wonderful to read. Mostly, I found the specificity of this book to be inspiring – never relinquish your niche interests!

Mellissa Flowerdew-Clarke 

Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, by Caroline Fraser: Aside from the horror of their crimes, what links Ted Bundy, the Green River Killer, the I-5 Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, and Charles Manson? Caroline Fraser has a theory, and it’s a compelling one. In her exceptional nonfiction thriller Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers, she looks past psychology and into the landscape itself. Fraser takes readers deep into the industrial heartland of the Pacific Northwest, where lead, copper, and arsenic smelters shaped entire communities—and poisoned them. What follows is a riveting exploration of nature versus nurture, unearthing the toxic forces that spawned America’s most notorious killers.

Beth Gaylard 

Miss Benson's Beetle, by Rachel Joyce: Earlier in the year l was looking for an audiobook that was a bit different - l'd just listened to Jilly Cooper's Rivals - great fun, lusty romp, very much of its time (1980s). For my next listen, I discovered Miss Benson's Beetle, by Rachel Joyce, an unusual tale about a woman explorer and her totally unsuitable companion, also a woman. In search of a fabled beetle, rumoured to live only on one mountain in New Zealand, these two travel to the other side of the world determined to find the little beast if it exists. As they travel, their friendship develops - against all the odds, they are so mismatched. Not a romance, it's very dark in places, but it's also a very funny adventure story, pacy, well-written and moving. I defy you not to cry at the ending.

Karen Powell-Curtis

Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, by Lisa See is inspired by the true story of Tan Yunxian who was one of the few female doctors in fifteenth century China. The novel immerses the reader in Tan Yunxian’s world as a doctor practising Chinese medicine in a society with complex traditions and expectations. As the title suggests, the novel also explores the strength of female friendships, including the close bonds formed in spite of class differences.

Mithila Dutta Roy

Perfection, by Vincenzo Latronico: The aesthetic mask of consumerism mixed with the show-off circus of social media makes a cocktail so hollow for the millennials - that’s what this book is exactly about. If you find yourself adjusting the dishes in a restaurant just at the right angle to take the perfect photo for the gram, I’m afraid, dear friend, this book is for you. Seeking what seems perfect on the screen, the protagonists, Anna and Tom, run after a curated euphoria only to find they have lost themselves along the way. This book is a cry for help. 

Karen Rust

Prophet Song, by Paul Lynch: Unflinching and brutal - this 2023 Booker Prize winner is not for the faint hearted. Detailing modern-day Eire's spiral into totalitarianism from the point of view of educated, middle class working mum of four, Eilish Stack, we see how society morphs from normality to horror in such tiny increments that each seems too small to act on alone, but together they bring the point of no return ever nearer. If you can get past the lack of standard dialogue punctuation and unconventional formatting, this is a novel that will inhabit your thoughts for a very long time. By the end, I can only use the word traumatised to describe how I felt (probably as much as from my first read of Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale aged 20), but it's a must read given the times we live in. Read it, but have something light and uplifting lined up for straight after!

Jonathan Taylor

Dark Academia: How Universities Die, by Peter Fleming: Brilliant and devastating. What a relief that this book is a work of fiction, a fantastic jeu d'esprit, which bears no resemblance to reality at all. Whatsoever.

Maria Taylor

My last read of 2025 was Madonna in a Fur Coat, by Sabahattin Ali (1943). This was the story of Raif, a young Turkish man in 1920s Berlin and his relationship with a painter, Maria. It was a moving story of connection and loneliness. 

Miranda Taylor

The Secret History, by Donna Tartt follows an idiosyncratic, cult-like group of eccentric students who are slowly corrupted by hedonism and the media they consume obsessively. I found the book and its characters very engaging.

Rosalind Taylor

Detective Conan, by Gosho Aoyama: this follows the story of Kudo Shinichi who is a detective. He's forced to take a drug by a mysterious organisation which turns him into a child and has to solve cases as a child as well as try and return to his original body. I really like this series as I find the mysteries really interesting, and it's fun to try and solve the cases before Conan does. 

Paul Taylor-McCartney

What We Can Know, by Ian McEwan stands out as another high point in a long and distinguished career, merging rich literary elements with intriguing speculative themes. It contemplates the tenuous nature of knowledge itself and highlights the timeless influence of poetry and a nostalgic longing for the past, amidst a disappearing world. Astounding in every way - my book of the year. 

Harry Whitehead

The Trees, by Percival Everett: A serious novel about lynching, racism and US history that is also hilariously funny? Everett's revenge fantasy transcends simple description, but enough to say I found it unputdownably gripping, profound, as wildly funny as it was horrifying, and entirely unique.

Lee Wright
Here are my two favourite reads, non-fiction and fiction, of this year:

Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life, by Jonathan Bate: The life of Hughes read like a toxic romance. He was perhaps the nearest real-life embodiment of Heathcliff we are ever likely to see, and unlikely to see again.

The Eleventh Hour, by Salman Rushdie: In these five short stories, Rushdie delights in midnight oblivion and shows that the language of prose need not fall short of poetry.