book reviews and features
Jesse Darling: Virgins review - going straightThursday, 16 November 2023
Self-described ‘intermittent poet’ and 2023 Turner Prize-nominee Jesse Darling said this in a recent interview for Art Review: ‘I... Read more... |
Justin Lewis: Don't Stop the Music - A History of Pop Music, One Day at a Time review - deft and delightful pop almanacTuesday, 07 November 2023
This splendid book proves that trivia need not be trivial, and that a miscellany of apparently disconnected facts can cohere, if done well. It is in the proud lineage of the “toilet book”, a form... Read more... |
Adam Biles: The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews review - the old curiosity bookshopTuesday, 31 October 2023
Over 10 years in the making, The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews reflects its namesake in more ways than one. To those familiar, it is paean and tribute to one of the... Read more... |
Charlie Porter: Bring No Clothes - Bloomsbury and the Philosophy of Fashion review - dress to impressThursday, 26 October 2023
It’s not hard to miss the fact that Bloomsbury is back in fashion at the moment. This summer, it felt like everyone’s Instagram story showed a... Read more... |
Adam Sisman: The Secret Life of John le Carré review - tinker, tailor, soldier, cheatThursday, 12 October 2023
This book is quite a sad read. I had been looking forward to it, as a posthumous supplement to Adam Sisman’s 2015 biography of John le Carré/David Cornwell, which, at the time, quite clearly drew... Read more... |
Caspar Henderson: A Book of Noises - Notes on the Auraculous review - a call to earsThursday, 05 October 2023
Have you ever considered the sheer range of sounds? You may think of deliberate human efforts to move the air: music and song, poetry or... Read more... |
'The people behind the postcards': an interview with Priya Hein, author of 'Riambel'Tuesday, 03 October 2023
Priya Hein’s debut novel, Riambel, is an excoriating examination of Mauritius’ socio-political structures and the colonial past from which they have sprung. Centred around Noemi, a young... Read more... |
Michael Peppiatt: Giacometti in Paris review - approaching the impossibleThursday, 28 September 2023
We begin with a dead-end. In 1966, Michael Peppiatt – at the time “an obscure young man” – travelled to Paris to... Read more... |
Annie Ernaux: Shame review - the translation of painTuesday, 26 September 2023
The latest translation of Annie Ernaux’s Shame – a text most closely akin to a long-form essay – is an... Read more... |
Warhol, Velázquez, and leaving things out: an interview with Lynne TillmanFriday, 22 September 2023
Motion Sickness (1991) is the second novel published by the writer, art collector and cultural critic Lynne Tillman. It is difficult,... Read more... |
Pages
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
latest in today
Claire Denis’ 1988 debut is a sensual madeleine to her Cameroonian childhood, with its taste of termites on butter, sound of birdsong and insect...
Programme notes for Mahler’s monumental symphonies will often...
If there’s a feeling of déjà vu, it isn’t detectable. Conchúr White played St Pancras Old Church in April 2016 with County Armagh’s Silences, the...
Director Cesar Diaz’s debut feature film was...
Rhod Gilbert is disarmingly honest about his thought process when he received his diagnosis of head and neck cancer in 2022. Following quickly...
It’s been a long while since Beth Gibbons released an album. Portishead’s Third was out in 2008. She has lived through so many...
By midway, things are cooking. “Can U Dig It?”, a post-modern list-song from another age (Ok,...
Gesualdo was, in the words of New Yorker critic Alex Ross – “irrefutably badass”, a double murderer, sado-masochist and black magic enthusiast who...
The name, Caron and Michelle Maso explained to Los Angeles radio DJ Rodney Bingenheimer, was a literal description. “We’re both like five feet. We...