#RivetingReviews December 2025 – Introduction by Max Easterman

Welcome to what I hope you will agree is another Christmas feast of #RivetingReviews!

This is the time of year when reading something new and original can be the antidote to overindulgence in the festive fare … a chance to sit down and enjoy a few well-written page-turners to take your mind off the dyspepsia! Or perhaps more prosaically, to distract you from the nth Christmas Special of whichever TV offering is your personal bugbear. I always like a good whodunnit, and we have some of those for you, but histories – personal, animal, national – are a theme this time around, as well as love, the sea, Tarot Cards and darkness: all of them excellent. So, arm yourselves with whatever tipple is your fancy and read on…

If tales of love are your thing, then Elisa Shua Dusapin’s The Old Fire, reviewed by West Camel, will both grip and intrigue you: it is, he says, a major work that will need several readings to unpack its mythic quality. Then there’s Brightly Shining by Ingvild Rishøi, a story of love, hope and despair, set in the Norwegian capital, Oslo, as Christmas approaches – a story that leaves you hoping for a miracle, says our reviewer, Caroline Wyatt. The run-up to Christmas is also the setting for my review: the third from the Italian duo of Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini, An Enigma By The Sea. The enigma in question is shrouded in the darkness of both the forest in which it takes place, of two old ladies obsessed with Tarot cards and of the overnight storm, which precedes the mysterious death of an impoverished nobleman. As always with these writers, the crime is offset by disquisition, in this case about the early Cynic Philosophers of Rome – you’ll love it!

The sea provides the background and in several cases the action of three more of our offerings this time, all of them fascinating reads. First up is Enrica Ferrara’s review of The Old Man by the Sea by Domenico Starnone, a reflection on aging, memory and desire, as the old man in the title relives his past as he experiences lifelike hallucinations, which Starnone uses as a means to lift the veil on how storytelling works. Slanting Towards the Sea – reviewed by Ewa Sherman – is a remarkable book, as the author, the Croatian writer Lidija Hilje, has chosen to write it in English. It’s set in the coastal town of Zadar, but the sea here is only the backdrop to a story of lost and frustrated love, and the troubled relationships between parents and children. Finally, there’s an intriguing story from Finnish writer Iida Turpeinen, Beasts of the Sea, reviewed by Jennifer Sarha. This is about Steller’s Sea Cow, a beast driven to extinction within a few years of its discovery in the 18th century. It weaves together human experience, science and historical re-construction in an important story with lessons for the present day.

The translation of Nino Haratischwili’s latest novel The Lack of Light has been eagerly awaited and is reviewed for us by Alexandra Roesch. It is, she says, a book that questions how we look at the world it depicts – the history of Georgia from the crumbling Soviet Union of the 1980s to the present day, as experienced by four women, one of whom is a photographer: from shortages and power cuts to the desire to live a life without such interruptions. This novel of Georgia is a must-read. History, darkness, the sea – again – and troubled and abusive parents are all combined in The Night Trembles by Sicilian writer Nadia Terranova, reviewed by Rosie Goldsmith. It’s set on both sides of the Strait of Messina on the evening before and the aftermath of Europe’s worst earthquake in 1908. Motherhood is a central theme in this novel with a strong feminist message: how it can corrupt as well as inspire.

There is much else to enjoy in our Christmas feast: amongst them Nelio Biedermann’s Lázár, the chronicle of the decline and fall of a noble Hungarian family in the 20^th century and Anne Weber’s Sanderling, which researches four generations of her family’s past, a journal of a trip of exploration in an attempt to find an explanation to the continuing conundrum of how Germany collapsed into Nazism. And we have a fascinating reflection on the perils, pressures and pleasures of the translator from Ursula Phillips, who first read Jacek Dukaj’s novel Ice in 2007 and finally saw her translation published in last month! 

All in all, we have 15 reviews for your delectation this month and we hope you will enjoy them all. If you’d like to buy any of the books, please do so via our dedicated Bookshop.org page, as the small commission this pays us helps to continue publishing these reviews. Our next reviews will be published in March 2026 and will be edited by Sheridan Marshall. The deadline will be March 23^rd for publication on the 27^th: please get in touch at reviews@eurolitnetwork.com if you’d like to write for us. 

Happy Christmas and happy reading …!!

By Max Easterman