book reviews and features
Sam Riviere: Dead Souls review – whip-smart literary satire with a techno tinge
Thursday, 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 spaces
Wednesday, 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 simulation
Tuesday, 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 entertaining
Monday, 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 lives
Monday, 10 May 2021
China Room, Sunjeev Sahota’s third novel, is a familiar, ancestral tale: the... Read more... |
Extract: Blackface by Ayanna Thompson
Thursday, 06 May 2021
Nearly a year has passed since George Floyd was killed by... Read more... |
Kate Lebo: The Book of Difficult Fruit review - a rich, juicy delight
Tuesday, 27 April 2021
Two years ago, I became preoccupied with beetroot. I didn’t want to eat it, particularly, or learn new ways to cook this crimson-purple veg. Instead I hunted down stories of the “beet-rave”, as it... Read more... |
Michael Spitzer: The Musical Human review - charting our age-old relationship with music
Wednesday, 21 April 2021
Music and time each dwell inside the other. And the more you attend to musical sounds, the more complex their temporal entanglements become.... Read more... |
Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott: Failures of State review - a devastating exposé, slightly mistimed
Wednesday, 14 April 2021
Almost a year ago, in the midst of the first national lockdown, The Sunday Times broke the news that Boris Johnson had failed to attend five consecutive Cobra meetings in the lead up to... Read more... |
Polly Barton: Fifty Sounds review - what is lost in translation
Tuesday, 13 April 2021
Fifty Sounds is translator Polly Barton’s first novel, conceived as part of Fitzcarraldo’s annual... Read more... |
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The first season of Blue Nights was so close to ...
Sabine Devieilhe, Mathieu Pordoy, Wigmore Hall review - ench...
Sabine Devieilhe, as with many other great sopranos, elicits much fan worship, with no less than three encores at her recent Wigmore Hall recital...
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In A History of the World in 47 Borders, Jonn Elledge takes an ostensibly dry subject – how maps and boundaries have shaped our world –...
DVD/Blu-Ray: Priscilla
There’s a scene in Priscilla where Elvis stands above his wife, who is scrambling to put her clothes in a suitcase. Priscilla has just...
Špaček, BBC Philharmonic, Bihlmaier, Bridgewater Hall, Manch...
Billed as a “Viennese Whirl”, this programme showed that there are different kinds of music that may be known to the orchestral canon as coming...
Banging Denmark, Finborough Theatre review - lively but conf...
What would happen if a notorious misogynist actually fell in love? With a glacial Danish librarian? And decided his best means of...
Album: Fred Hersch - Silent, Listening
The previous solo piano solo album from Fred Hersch, one of the world’s great...