mon 17/02/2025

book reviews and features

Alan Hollinghurst: Our Evenings review - a gift that keeps on giving

Hugh Barnes

In Alan Hollinghurst’s first novel, The Swimming Pool Library (1988), set during the summer of 1983, the young gay narrator, William Beckwith, lives in Holland Park. That same year and...

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Jonathan Coe: The Proof of My Innocence review - a whodunnit with a difference

Bernard Hughes

Anyone who has been on a British train in the last ten years will have been irritated to distraction by the inane and ubiquitous “See it, say it, sorted” announcement that punctuates every journey...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Anna Bogutskaya on her new book about the past decade of horror cinema

Harry Thorfinn-

You may have heard the phrase “elevated horror” being used to describe horror films that lean more toward arthouse cinema, favouring tension and psychological turmoil over jump-...

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Olga Tokarczuk: The Empusium review - paranoid prose

Issy Brooks-Ward

In his first of a series of meditations on the sickness that was consuming him, John Donne reflected...

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Stevie Smith: Not Waving But Drowning review - riding the wave

Jack Barron

Last year, Wendy Cope’s poem, "The Orange", went viral on TikTok. I’m not totally certain how a poem goes viral, but it did – and there’s nothing we can do about it.

In fact, Faber &...

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Ellen McWilliams: Resting Places - On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution review - finding art in the inarticulable

Issy Brooks-Ward

How do you give voice to a history that is intimate to your own in one sense, whilst being the story of others whom you never knew? This is a...

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Claire Messud: This Strange Eventful History review - home is where the heart was

India Lewis

Claire Messud’s This Strange Eventful History is personal: a novel, that is, strangely inflected by autobiography, a history that is...

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Paul Alexander: Bitter Crop - The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year review - setting the record straight

John Carvill

It’s often said that nobody mythologised Billie Holiday like Billie Holiday. I’m not so sure.

In this fine, clear-eyed...

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Kelly Clancy: Playing with Reality - How Games Shape Our World review - how far games go back

Jon Turney

For a couple of decades, the free video game America’s Army was a powerful recruitment aid for the US military. More than a shoot-em-up, players might find themselves dressing virtual...

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Hugo Rifkind: Rabbits review - 31 wild parties and a funeral

Bernard Hughes

In some ways I’m an appropriate person to review Hugo Rifkind’s new novel Rabbits, a coming-of-age comedy set in the early...

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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

Mary, Queen of Scots, English National Opera review - heroic...

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Since when has new writing become so passionless? Mike Bartlett is one of the country’s premiere playwrights and his new play, Unicorn,...

Josienne Clarke, Across The Evening Sky, Kings Place review...

On the first date of a 17-concert tour that had its preview at Celtic Connections in January, Across the Evening Sky begins with the...

Vollmond, Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch + Terrain Boris...

Imagine: you take your seat at the best restaurant in town, the waiter arrives with a flourish to fill your water glass, you hold it out and he...

Patrick Duff, The Mount Without, Bristol review - sacred mus...

There is an atmosphere of otherworldly stillness within the stony womb of a large dilapidated church in...

Album: Tim Hecker - Shards

The question of personality in abstract and ambient music has always been a fascinating one. Without conventional signifiers of expressiveness,...

Music Reissues Weekly: Sharks - Car Crash Supergroup

Sharks were formed in 1972 by bassist Andy Fraser after he left Free. There were two albums, line-up changes and ripples which resonated after the...

Fat Dog, Chalk, Brighton review - a frenetic techno-rock jug...

Ro first saw Fat Dog, before anyone had heard of them, at the Windmill in Brixton in front of a crowd of about 25 people. Their manic energy blew...

Sidorova, Philharmonia, Alsop, Royal Festival Hall review -...

George Gershwin called one of his early classic songs, first created by Fred and Adele Astaire, “Fascinating Rhythm”. It was that mesmeric pull...

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