book reviews and features
Wayne Holloway-Smith: Love Minus Love review – powerfully excavating the tormented poet's psyche
Sunday, 06 September 2020
Roughly two years since “... Read more... |
Selva Almada: Dead Girls review – the stark proximity of women to violence
Sunday, 06 September 2020
Selva Almada’s newly translated work has a stark title in both English and the original Spanish: Dead Girls, or Chicas Muertas. That apparent bluntness belies the hybrid... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: author Katharina Volckmer
Sunday, 30 August 2020
Katharina Volckmer’s début novel The Appointment follows one woman as she vents her frustrations, confusions and regrets to her doctor during a lengthy appointment in London. Ranging... Read more... |
A. Naji Bakti: Between Beirut and the Moon review - a seriously comical coming of age
Sunday, 30 August 2020
What stands between Beirut and the moon? Between Lebanon’s capital and the limitless possibility beyond? It is a question as complex and immense as the nation itself. In the wake of the... Read more... |
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai: The Mountains Sing review - a lyrical account of Việt Nam’s brutal past
Sunday, 30 August 2020
“The challenges of the Vietnamese people throughout history are as tall as the tallest mountains. If you stand too close, you won’t be able to see their peaks. Once you step away from the currents... Read more... |
CD: Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith - Peradam
Saturday, 29 August 2020
"The gateway to the invisible must be visible." So intones Patti Smith on the third and final journey in sound with Stephan Crasneanscki and Simone Merli, AKA Soundwalk Collective, musical... Read more... |
Elena Ferrante: The Lying Life of Adults review - a universal Neapolitan adolescence
Sunday, 23 August 2020
The protagonist is a Neapolitan teenage girl; the settings move between the upper and lower parts, from the Vomero... Read more... |
Helen Macdonald: Vesper Flights review - nature lovingly described, nearly lost
Sunday, 23 August 2020
Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald’s first book following her incredibly successful memoir H is for Hawk in 2014, is an excellent collection of short pieces focused on the... Read more... |
Zalika Reid-Benta: Frying Plantain review - tales of growing up young, black and female in Toronto
Sunday, 16 August 2020
It is as unsurprising as it is vital that a spotlight has been thrown on writing by people of colour this year. It is unsurprising, too – looking at bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic... Read more... |
Nick Hayes: The Book of Trespass review – a leap over England's walls
Sunday, 16 August 2020
Since snobbery and deference have a big part to play in Nick Hayes’s exhilarating book, let’s start with the obligatory name-drop. I have lunched – twice, in different country piles, and most... Read more... |
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Ridout, Włoszczowska, Crawford, Lai, Posner, Wigmore Hall re...
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 review - a breathtakingly good first feature by a mu...
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 ...
Album: Mdou Moctar - Funeral for Justice
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...
Blue Lights Series 2, BBC One review - still our best cop sh...
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...
Jonn Elledge: A History of the World in 47 Borders review -...
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...