book reviews and features
theartsdesk Q&A: poet laureate Simon Armitage on landscapes, libraries, home and edgelands
Thursday, 10 December 2020
Simon Armitage is a poet at the top of his game: in his second year as poet laureate, he has given voice to the... Read more... |
Don DeLillo: The Silence review - when the lights of technology go out
Tuesday, 08 December 2020
Don DeLillo’s latest novella, The Silence, has been marketed with an emphasis on its prescience, describing the... Read more... |
Annie Ernaux: A Man's Place review - an intimate portrait, necessarily incomplete
Tuesday, 01 December 2020
As much as we would like it to, writing can never fully recapture someone who is gone. This we learn all too effectively in A Man’s Place by Annie Ernaux, arguably one of... Read more... |
Zaina Arafat: You Exist Too Much review - second-generation love addiction
Monday, 30 November 2020
Zaina Arafat’s debut details the trials and tribulations of its first generation American-... Read more... |
Patrick Barwise and Peter York: The War Against the BBC review - we won't know what we've got until it's gone
Monday, 30 November 2020
When in June 2019 the BBC announced plans to restrict free TV licences to households with at least one person aged over... Read more... |
Extract: 'On Loneliness' by Fatimah Asghar, from 'The Good Immigrant USA'
Tuesday, 24 November 2020
The infamous border wall. Prolonged detention. Children in cages. Even as Biden's election promises a sea change in... Read more... |
Nicole Krauss: To Be a Man review - first short-story collection from the award-winning novelist
Thursday, 19 November 2020
Tamar, a character in “The Husband”, one of the most appealing, joyful stories in Nicole Krauss’s new collection... Read more... |
Andrey Kurkov: Grey Bees review - light Ukrainian odyssey, with bite
Wednesday, 18 November 2020
This time, the Ukrainian author of Death and the Penguin, known for his brilliantly dark humour,... Read more... |
Book extract: Nativity by Jean Frémon, with drawings by Louise BourgeoisMonday, 16 November 2020
How should one paint the baby Jesus? This deceptively innocent question runs the length of Jean Frémon's Nativity, a fictional work that takes as its subject the first painter to... Read more... |
Ben Wilson: Metropolis - A History of Humankind's Greatest Invention review - urban resilience throughout the ages
Tuesday, 10 November 2020
Like the novel, painting and God, the city has long been pronounced dead – along with a few other things, like civil politics, society and the art of conversation that were said to have thrived... 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.
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Uproar, Rafferty, Royal Welsh College, Cardiff review - colo...
There’s a lot to be said for the planning that clearly went into this concert by the Cardiff-based new music ensemble, Uproar....
Attacca Quartet, Kings Place review - bridging the centuries...
Memorably described by Gramophone magazine as the “new kids on the classical block…with lavish pocket money”, Apple’s London-based label...
Music Reissues Weekly: Norma Tanega - I Don't Think It...
After scoring a hit in 1966 with the distinctive folk-pop of her jazz-inclined debut single "Walkin' my Cat Named Dog," US singer-songwriter Norma...
Manchester Collective, RNCM review - exploring new territory
Manchester Collective, now very much a part of the establishment world of new music, are still enlarging their territory. For this set, performed...
Henry Gee: The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Why Ou...
Henry Gee’s previous book, A Brief History of Life on Earth, made an interestingly downbeat read for a title that won the UK...
All Happy Families review - unhappy in their own way
Director Haroula Rose’s gentle, good-hearted new comedy-drama All Happy Families takes its title from the famous first sentence...
Album: The Loft - Everything Changes, Everything Stays The S...
“Sitting on a sofa, cigarettes and beer, ten years disappear…agreeing to agree, just to get along.” By going into the difficulties of...
Black Bag review - lies, spies and unpleasant surprises
Michael Fassbender recently starred in Paramount+’s rather laborious spy drama The Agency, but here he finds himself at the centre of a...
Weather Girl, Soho Theatre review - the apocalypse as surrea...
Can Francesca Moody do it again? Fleabag’s producer has brought Weather Girl to London, after a successful run at...