book reviews and features
Stephen Walsh's Debussy - A Painter in Sound - extract
Monday, 05 March 2018
All this time La Mer had been brewing. It was almost a year since Debussy had written to Colonne... Read more... |
Lisa Halliday: Asymmetry review - unconventional and brilliant
Sunday, 04 March 2018
Lisa Halliday’s striking debut novel consists of three parts. The first follows the blooming relationship between Alice and Ezra (... Read more... |
Rhidian Brook on The Killing of Butterfly Joe
Thursday, 01 March 2018
When I was 23 I had a job selling butterflies in glass cases in America. I worked for a guy who, as well as... Read more... |
Ursula K Le Guin - Dreams Must Explain Themselves review - enraging and enlightening
Sunday, 25 February 2018
Essay collections are happily mainstream now, from Zadie Smith to Oliver Sacks, with more and more bits and bobs coming from unexpected quarters. These patchwork quilts from remarkable writers can... Read more... |
John Tusa: 'the arts must make a noise' - interview
Thursday, 22 February 2018
In our era of 24/7 news, downloadable from anywhere in the world at the touch of an app, it's hard to... Read more... |
Mick Herron: London Rules review - hypnotically fascinating, absolutely contemporary
Sunday, 18 February 2018
London Rules – explicitly cover your arse – is the fifth in the most remarkable and mesmerising series of ... Read more... |
Roma Agrawal: Built review - solid love
Sunday, 11 February 2018
"I've been known to stroke concrete," writes self-professed geek Roma Agrawal – and from the very beginning of her memoir-cum-introduction... Read more... |
Joe Dunthorne: The Adulterants review - a richly illuminating comedy of disappointment
Sunday, 04 February 2018
Joe Dunthorne's debut novel Submarine (2008) burrowed plausibly inside the head of a teenager... Read more... |
Afua Hirsch: Brit(ish) review - essential reading on identity
Sunday, 04 February 2018
Usually extracts in newspapers should stimulate the appetite of the reader to get with it; this is a rare moment when the glimpses afforded to Afua Hirsch’s Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and... Read more... |
Julian Barnes: The Only Story review - passion, pain and sorrow in Surrey
Sunday, 28 January 2018
From his debut Metroland, right up to the Man Booker-winning The Sense of an Ending, the prospect of a road not taken has haunted the mild and mediocre narrators of Julian Barnes... Read more... |
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latest in today
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...
Watts, BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Bignamini, Barbica...
Anyone who’d booked to hear soprano Sally Matthews or to witness the rapid progress of conductor Daniele Rustioni – the initial draw for me –...
The Songs of Joni Mitchell, Roundhouse review - fans (old an...
For most people’s 40th birthday celebrations, they might get a few...
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...
Album: Taylor Swift - The Tortured Poets Department: The Ant...
Taylor Swift’s unfathomable ability to articulate human emotion shines as brightly as ever in her latest double album The Tortured Poets...
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 ...
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...