book reviews and features
Michael Hughes: Country review - epic troubles
Sunday, 02 September 2018
Michael Hughes’ second novel, superimposing the post-96 Troubles on the story of The Iliad, rides a wave of Homeric re-tellings, with Pat Barker and Colm Tóibín having recently... Read more... |
Yuval Noah Harari: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century review - a sceptic's optimism?
Sunday, 26 August 2018
The bestseller Sapiens (2011, first published in English in 2014) by the hitherto little-known Israeli academic Yuval Noah Harari has sold enormously well, and justly so: recommended by... Read more... |
P.E.Caquet: The Bell of Treason review - the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia
Sunday, 26 August 2018
It was 80 years ago next month that Neville Chamberlain returned with the good news of peace in our time... Read more... |
h 100 Awards: Publishing and Writing - other stories, other voices
Monday, 20 August 2018
If history repeats itself, better hope that it corrects its mistakes as well. This year’s nominations for the... Read more... |
Roger Scruton: Music as an Art review - how to listen?
Sunday, 19 August 2018
Hegel, Kant, David Hume, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Leibniz are all adduced, referred to, and paraphrased, and that’s just for starters. Add Rameau, Schubert, Beethoven, Benjamin Britten and the... Read more... |
Annie Ernaux: The Years, review - time’s flow
Sunday, 05 August 2018
“When you were our age, how did you imagine your life? What did you hope for?” It is a video of a classroom south-east of the Périphérique separating Paris from the working-class suburbs. The... Read more... |
Rachel Heng: Suicide Club review - skin-deep dystopia
Sunday, 29 July 2018
When Lea is nervous she picks at the skin near the nail of her thumb. When she draws blood the wound repairs instantly because she is a member of the Second Wave endowed with SmartBlood™ and... Read more... |
Stella Tillyard: The Great Level review – reason and passion in the Fens and Virginia
Sunday, 22 July 2018
The Fens of East Anglia, and the lonely coasts that skirt them, usually sit well below the horizon of mainstream culture. Yet when England’s flatlands and their maritime margins do find a literary... Read more... |
Guy Stagg, The Crossway review – a gripping pilgrimage through faith and doubt
Sunday, 15 July 2018
On new year’s day in 2013, Guy Stagg set out to walk alone from Canterbury to Jerusalem. He planned this journey, which would take ten months, cross 11 countries and cover 5500km, in the wake of... Read more... |
Georges Simenon: The Krull House review – timely revival for a noir masterwork
Sunday, 08 July 2018
Georges Simenon began to write his Inspector Maigret mysteries in the early 1930s. Not long after after, the famously productive Belgian-born novelist – who could polish off a Maigret inside a... Read more... |
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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...