book reviews and features
Agustín Fernández Mallo: The Things We've Seen review - degrees of separation
Tuesday, 16 March 2021
Trilogies (it is noted, in the term’s Wikipedia entry) “are common in speculative fiction”. They are found in... Read more... |
Extract from Sauntering: Writers Walk Europe, introduced and edited by Duncan Minshull
Monday, 15 March 2021
Wandering, ambling, sauntering. The last, least heard of the three, captures a sense of leisurely aimlessness: a jolly meander unbound by destination, admitting none of the qualms of... Read more... |
Nina-Sophia Miralles: Glossy - debut author takes on Vogue and the Condé Nasties
Monday, 15 March 2021
“Bringing out a luxury magazine in a blitzkrieg is rather like dressing for dinner in the jungle,” wrote Audrey Withers, editor of British Vogue, in December... Read more... |
Brenda Navarro: Empty Houses review - the pains and pressures of motherhood
Thursday, 11 March 2021
The horror novelist Sarah Langan recently compared motherhood to being treated like a game of Operation. “The point of the game is to correct us... Read more... |
Kazuo Ishiguro: Klara and the Sun review - what makes us human?
Tuesday, 09 March 2021
Unsettling, unremitting and psychologically stark, Klara and the Sun has all the hallmarks of a... Read more... |
Katherine Angel: Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again review – the complexities of consent
Monday, 08 March 2021
Katherine Angel borrows the title of her latest book, Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again, from an essay by Foucault. The phrase parodies the supposed... Read more... |
Frances Larson: Undreamed Shores review - journeys without maps
Tuesday, 02 March 2021
Beatrice Blackwood had lived in a clifftop village between surf and jungle on Bougainville Island, part of the Solomon archipelago in the South Pacific. She hunted, fished and grew crops with... Read more... |
Joseph Andras: Tomorrow They Won't Dare to Murder Us review - injustice and tenderness in the Algerian War
Thursday, 25 February 2021
Joseph Andras wastes no time. “Not a proud and forthright rain, no. A stingy rain. Mean. Playing dirty.” This is how his debut novel kicks off, and it’s a fitting start for his retelling of the... Read more... |
Karla Suárez: Havana Year Zero review - maths, phones and mysteries in down-at-heel Cuba
Tuesday, 23 February 2021
Havana, 1993. Far away, the fall of the Soviet empire has suddenly stripped Fidel Castro’s Cuba of subsidy and... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Amina Cain on her first novel and her eternal fascination with suggestion
Monday, 22 February 2021
Amina Cain is a writer of near-naked spaces and roomy characters. Her debut collection of short fiction, I... Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Album: Park Jiha - All Living Things
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More Life, Royal Court review – posthuman tragedy fails to c...
I always advocate in favour of more sci-fi plays, and over the past decade there have been a gratifying number of them. But one essential element...
Captain America: Brave New World review - talking loud, sayi...
In his first weeks in office, Harrison Ford’s US president survives an assassination attempt inside the White House, goes to war with Japan and...
Three Sisters, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse review - Chekhov...
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It’s impossible to be ambivalent towards that word, that country, indeed that idea, one so very similar to...
MacMillan's Ordo Virtutum, BBC Singers, Jeannin, Milton...
Does any living composer write better for choirs, or more demandingly when circumstances allow, than James MacMillan? Admirable as it is to have...
Surviving Black Hawk Down, Netflix review - the real story b...
Ridley Scott’s 2001 film Black Hawk Down was a technically superb blockbuster bristling with thunderous action sequences and famous...
Memoir of a Snail review - deliciously offbeat Australian an...
Having recently watched the charming animation Marcelle The Shell With Shoes On with my nine-year-old son, I was going to suggest for our...
To a Land Unknown review - the migrant hustle
The Refugee Movie is rapidly becoming a genre unto itself, with elements of suspense and humanism woven together into something that’s...
Album: Rizzle Kicks - Competition Is For Losers
After more than 10 years away, Rizzle Kicks are finally back, and it feels long overdue. Their music was a huge part of my childhood ...