book reviews and features
Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of the Imagination, Science Museum review - travel to a galaxy not so far away
Wednesday, 26 October 2022
Scenes that stay in the mind: Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator peeling back the skin on his forearm to reveal the gleaming machinery within; a beady-eyed, new-born Alien bursting from John... Read more... |
Annie Proulx: Fen, Bog & Swamp review - defending the wetlands' bounty
Wednesday, 26 October 2022
Annie Proulx’s Fen, Bog & Swamp sees the Pulitzer-winning novelist join a number of authors decrying the ecological devastation we’re wreaking on the planet. James Rebanks’ ... Read more... |
Cormac McCarthy: The Passenger review - abstruse, descriptive, digressive
Tuesday, 25 October 2022
Cormac McCarthy’s first books in over a decade are coming out this year, a month apart from one another. The Passenger tells the story of deep-sea diver Bobby Western, desperately in love... Read more... |
Mariana Enriquez: Our Share of Night review - delving into a violent, erotic world
Monday, 24 October 2022
Tense with horror and the sticky darkness of the Argentinian night, Mariana Enriquez’s writing is rich and occult. Her epic novel, Our Share of Night, vividly translated from the Spanish... Read more... |
William Boyd: The Romantic review - historical soap opera, anyone?
Saturday, 22 October 2022
Writing in the Edinburgh Review in 1814, Francis Jeffrey began his review of Wordsworth’s The Excursion with a provocative denunciation of romanticism: “This will never do,” he... Read more... |
Andrew Murray: Is Socialism Possible in Britain? review - what went wrong and why Corbynism failed
Tuesday, 04 October 2022
The title of Andrew Murray’s new book poses a question that also vexed Friedrich Engels over 130 years ago. The German co-... Read more... |
Savala Nolan: Don't Let It Get You Down review - finding voice in the liminal
Thursday, 29 September 2022
Liminal: a word that conjures thresholds and between states. Caught between three languages – the adjective is a borrowing from the Latin that enters English by way of German – ... Read more... |
Yiyun Li: The Book of Goose - fame, reality and two teenage French girls
Wednesday, 28 September 2022
The Book of Goose, Yiyun Li’s fifth novel, is the gripping story of two teenage French girls and their... Read more... |
Bronwyn Adcock: Currowan review - a fire foretold, a warning delivered
Tuesday, 27 September 2022
In 2019 Australia endured the hottest, driest year since records began and their bushfire season escalated with unprecedented intensity. The fires and pyro-connective storms that swept the country... Read more... |
'The first thing I do when I wake up is write.' Hilary Mantel, 1952-2022
Friday, 23 September 2022
Hilary Mantel, who has died at the age of 70, was a maker of literary history. Wolf Hall, an action-packed 650-page brick of a book about the rise and rise of Thomas Cromwell, won... Read more... |
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London Tide, National Theatre review - haunting moody river...
“He do the police in different voices.” If ever one phrase summed up a work of fiction, and the art of its writer, then surely it is this...
The Songs of Joni Mitchell, The Roundhouse review - fans (ol...
For most people’s 40th birthday celebrations, they might get a few...
Jonathan Pie, Duke of York's Theatre review - spoof pol...
If you don't like sweary comics – Jonathan Pie uses the c-word liberally – then this may not be the show for you. In fact if you're a Tory, ditto...
Baby Reindeer, Netflix review - a misery memoir disturbingly...
Richard Gadd won an Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2016 with...
Machinal, The Old Vic review - note-perfect pity and terror
Virtuosity and a wildly beating heart are compatible in Richard Jones’s finely calibrated production of Renaissance woman Sophie Treadwell’s ...
Fantastic Machine review - photography's story from one...
The first photograph was taken nearly 200 years ago in France by Joseph Niépce, and the first picture of a person was taken in Paris by Louis...
Simon Boccanegra, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester...
If ever more evidence were needed of Sir Mark Elder’s untiring zest for exploration and love of the thrill of live opera performance, it was this...
All You Need Is Death review - a future folk horror classic
Music, when the singer’s voice dies away, vibrates in the memory. In the hypnotic new Irish horror film All You Need Is Death, those who...
Album: Jonny Drop • Andrew Ashong - The Puzzle Dust
As I sat down to write this review, the sun came out. It was a salutory reminder of the importance of context: where I’d previously thought “mmm,...
theartsdesk on Vinyl: Record Store Day Special 2024
Record Store Day is tomorrow! At theartsdesk on Vinyl...