book reviews and features
Andrea Bajani: If You Kept a Record of Sins review - where blame, grief and discovery meetWednesday, 07 April 2021
“I think it happened to you, too, the first time you arrived.” So begins Andrea Bajani’s second novel (... Read more... |
Will Page: Tarzan Economics - a 'rockonomist' writesWednesday, 31 March 2021
The idea behind Tarzan Economics is, in its essence, that “if the vine we are holding onto is withering, we can have confidence to reach out for a new one.” This thesis expounded in Will... Read more... |
Extract: TV by Susan BordoTuesday, 30 March 2021
"Television and I grew up together." As a baby boomer born in 1947, Susan Bordo is roughly the same age as our beloved gogglebox, which began life as a broad box with a ten-inch screen, chunky and... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Author Sam Mills on the phenomenon of the 'chauvo-feminist'Monday, 29 March 2021
Sam Mills’s writing includes the wondrously weird novel The Quiddity of Will Self, the semi-memoir Fragments of My Father, and Chauvo-Feminism (The Indigo Press), which... Read more... |
Charles Saumarez Smith: The Art Museum In Modern Times review – the story of modern architectureThursday, 25 March 2021
“This book is a journey of historical discovery, set out sequentially in order to convey a sense of what has changed over time.” Add to this sentence, the title of the work from which it is taken... Read more... |
Craig Taylor: New Yorkers - A City and Its People in Our Time reviewMonday, 22 March 2021
For the last couple of years, until we were so rudely interrupted, I’d been spending chunks of the year in New York, a city I’ve come to know... Read more... |
Prix Pictet: Confinement review - a year in photographsThursday, 18 March 2021
Sustainability and the environment are watchwords for the Prix Pictet, the international... Read more... |
Alan Warner: Kitchenly 434 review – dreams and delusions in the backwaters of fameWednesday, 17 March 2021
“They think it’s all drugs and sex up here, Mrs H.” “Bless me.” The reality, at Kitchenly Mill Race, runs more to a nice pot of Tetley’s and a plate of Gypsy Creams. But “people are funny around... Read more... |
Edward St Aubyn: Double Blind review - constructing 'cognition literature'Tuesday, 16 March 2021
If it weren’t for the warning on the blurb, the first chapter of Double Blind would have you wondering whether you’d ordered something from the... Read more... |
Agustín Fernández Mallo: The Things We've Seen review - degrees of separationTuesday, 16 March 2021
Trilogies (it is noted, in the term’s Wikipedia entry) “are common in speculative fiction”. They are found in... Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Advice to young musicians, as given at several “how to market your career” seminars: don’t begin a biography with “one of the finest xxxs of his/...
Stephen is the first feature film by multi-media artist Melanie Manchot and it’s the best debut film I’ve seen since Steve McQueen’s ...
Despite its title, Mdou Moctar’s new album is no slow-paced mournful dirge. In fact, it is louder, faster and more overtly political than any of...
The first season of Blue Nights was so close to ...
Sabine Devieilhe, as with many other great sopranos, elicits much fan worship, with no less than three encores at her recent Wigmore Hall recital...
In A History of the World in 47 Borders, Jonn Elledge takes an ostensibly dry subject – how maps and boundaries have shaped our world –...
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...
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...
What would happen if a notorious misogynist actually fell in love? With a glacial Danish librarian? And decided his best means of...
The previous solo piano solo album from Fred Hersch, one of the world’s great...