book reviews and features
Celia Dale: Sheep's Clothing review - unsettling, mundane, and right on-trend
Tuesday, 19 September 2023
Celia Dale published 13 novels between 1944 and her death in 2011. A majority of her these are often categorised – albeit loosely – as... Read more... |
Lutz Seiler: Pitch & Glint review - real verse power
Monday, 04 September 2023
Reading the torrent of press-releases and blurbs on the many – and ever-growing – contemporary poetry collections over time, one starts to notice a distinct recurrence of certain buzzwords: ... Read more... |
Zadie Smith: The Fraud review - the trials we inherit
Friday, 01 September 2023
Zadie Smith’s latest novel, The Fraud, is her first venture into historical fiction – a fiction based... Read more... |
Caitlin Merrett King: Always Open Always Closed review - looking for an approach while trying to do the approach
Tuesday, 22 August 2023
Always Open Always Closed is Caitlin Merrett King’s first published work of fiction, and it begins... Read more... |
Marie Darrieussecq: Sleepless review - in search of lost sleep
Thursday, 17 August 2023
“I lost sleep.” So begins Marie Darrieussecq’s elegantly fitful book, Sleepless, now perceptively translated into... Read more... |
Tony Williams: Cole the Magnificent - fantastical tale blends myth, poetry and comedy
Tuesday, 15 August 2023
Cole the Magnificent is a picaresque, fantastical tale of the life (or lives) of a man, Cole, following... Read more... |
Masha Karp: George Orwell and Russia review - dystopia's reality
Thursday, 10 August 2023
The war in Ukraine, which Russia’s President Vladimir Putin insists on calling a “special military operation”, may have given fresh urgency to... Read more... |
Henry Hoke: Open Throat review - if a lion could speak
Wednesday, 09 August 2023
I approached Henry Hoke’s fifth book, Open Throat, with some trepidation. A slim novel (156 pages), it... Read more... |
First Person: Marc Burrows on getting to know Sir Terry Pratchett
Tuesday, 01 August 2023
In a very real sense, Terry Pratchett taught me how to write. I first came across his work when I was 12 years old, in the early 90s. My parents had been given copies of two of the earliest... Read more... |
Lorrie Moore: I am Homeless If This is Not My Home review - between this world and the next
Thursday, 27 July 2023
Lorrie Moore’s brief but haunting I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home is a bizarre, unsettling read. At times it’s a road trip, at others a romance, then supernatural horror, Greek... Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Peter Grimes, English National Opera review - not quite the...
Britten’s biggest cornucopia of invention seems unsinkable, and no-one seeing his breakthrough 1945 opera for the first time in this revival will...
Expend4bles review - last ride for the over-the-hill gang?
Thanks to numerous arguments and disagreements over script, casting etc, nine years have elapsed since Expendables 3 hit the multiplexes...
Mahler 9, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review...
For someone who said when he first took the helm at the Hallé that he “didn’t do much Mahler”, Sir Mark Elder has a pretty good track record. He’s...
Album: Kylie Minogue - Tension
Two years after the release of her rather flaccid Disco album and five since her somewhat inadvisable foray into country-ish music, 2023...
First Person: 'America's sweetheart organist'...
I have always had a fascination with concert programmes. I did my Doctorate thesis on this subject. I remember vividly as a youngster attending...
R.M.N. review - ethnic cleansing in rural Romania
If you think we’ve got culture wars, then welcome to Transylvania. This rugged...
Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, The Lexington review - forceful...
Can there be too much repetition? Is there a limit to the level of rhythmic insistence which can be tolerated? Judging by the enthused reaction to...
The White Factory, Marylebone Theatre review - what price di...
This powerful play’s immediate backstory, with Moscow sentencing its author to eight years’ jail and its director going into forced exile, is not...
Album: Devendra Banhart - Flying Wig
Had Devendra Banhart been born between 1940 and 1950, he’d likely be a household name. His output– very loosely – sits between Cat Stevens, Syd...
A Year in a Field review - exemplary eco-doc
A shot of a dead field mouse sets the tone for this sobering “slow cinema” documentary, narrator-director Christopher Morris’s response...