book reviews and features
Rosie Wilby: The Breakup Monologues review - do breakups make us stronger, better people?Tuesday, 01 June 2021
According to Rosie Wilby, “breaking up and staying together are simply two sides of the same coin. They are a flick of a switch apart, separated only by one fleeting moment of madness, or perhaps... Read more... |
Natasha Brown: Assembly review - turning personal crisis into perfect criticismMonday, 31 May 2021
School assembly: one of the many great traditions to be upended by the pandemic. According to this... Read more... |
Esther Freud: I Couldn't Love You More review - the alternative history of a pregnancyFriday, 28 May 2021
The glamorous unreliability of Esther Freud’s father, Lucian Freud, is an inescapable force in her... Read more... |
Music books to end lockdown: Sam Lee, Hawkwind, Dylan, Richard Thompson, and the Electric MusesFriday, 14 May 2021
It won’t be long now before concert halls and back rooms, arts centres and festival grounds fill with people again, and... Read more... |
Sam Riviere: Dead Souls review – whip-smart literary satire with a techno tingeThursday, 13 May 2021
In 1992 Martin Amis published a story, “Career Move”, in which the writers of sensational screenplays with titles like Decimator and Offensive from Qasar 13 read their work to... Read more... |
Lucy Caldwell: Intimacies review - exploring the empty spacesWednesday, 12 May 2021
In the first short story of Lucy Caldwell’s collection Intimacies, “Like This”, one of the worst possible things that could ever happen to a parent occurs. On the spur of a stressful... Read more... |
Maylis de Kerangal: Painting Time review - safer in simulationTuesday, 11 May 2021
"Trompe-l’œil," explains the director of the Institut de Peinture in Brussels, “is the meeting of a painting and a gaze, conceived for a particular point of view, and defined by the effect it is... Read more... |
The Pursuit of Love, BBC One review - extravagantly entertainingMonday, 10 May 2021
Nancy Mitford's 1945 literary sensation looks poised to be the TV talking point of the season, assuming the first episode of The Pursuit of Love sustains its utterly infectious... Read more... |
Sunjeev Sahota: China Room review - separate, related livesMonday, 10 May 2021
China Room, Sunjeev Sahota’s third novel, is a familiar, ancestral tale: the... Read more... |
Extract: Blackface by Ayanna ThompsonThursday, 06 May 2021
Nearly a year has passed since George Floyd was killed by... Read more... |
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I first read Anne Gunter’s story about five years ago, when I was in my first year of university at Oxford, little knowing it would over time lead...
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“The name of this group is Mayan Space Station.” In spite of the billing as The William Parker Trio, their bassist – coolly introducing himself as...
I’m writing this in the lobby of the...
Sum 41 honour their 27-year career with Heaven :x: Hell, a 20-track double album, due to be their final, without a single skip. Harking...
From Game of Thrones producers David Benioff and DB Weiss, in cahoots with Alexander Woo, 3 Body Problem is Netflix’s daring...