book reviews and features
Joanna Walsh: Girl Online - A User Manual review - how 'beatifoul' it is to be online
Wednesday, 11 May 2022
Scrolling to the top of my Twitter DMs, most of which are from close friends or acquaintances, I notice the message request section flash “1”. It’s a signal I usually ignore, having learnt from... Read more... |
Laura Beatty: Looking for Theophrastus review - adventures in psychobiography
Friday, 06 May 2022
Laura Beatty is a kind of Shirley Valentine figure in contemporary English literature. A decade and a half ago she published an astonishing debut novel entitled Pollard about female... Read more... |
Emily St John Mandel: Sea of Tranquility review - time travel, pandemics and the simulation hypothesis
Tuesday, 26 April 2022
Emily St John Mandel’s wonderful novel of 2020, The Glass Hotel, featured people and places from her... Read more... |
Scholastique Mukasonga: The Barefoot Woman review - remembering Rwanda before 1994
Thursday, 14 April 2022
To read Scholastique Mukasonga’s memoir, The Barefoot Woman, beautifully translated from the French by... Read more... |
Extract: Catching Fire by Daniel Hahn
Tuesday, 12 April 2022
Daniel Hahn began his translation of Jamás el fuego nunca, a novel by experimental Chilean artist Diamela Eltit, in January 2021. Considering the careful, difficult but not impossible “... Read more... |
Alejandro Zambra: Chilean Poet review - from here to paternity
Tuesday, 05 April 2022
Time-honoured advice warns actors never to work with children or animals. Perhaps the literary equivalent should tell novelists not to invent other writers in their books. Especially poets. Unless... Read more... |
Extract: Where My Feet Fall - Going For A Walk in Twenty Stories
Tuesday, 29 March 2022
I began work on Where My Feet Fall a few months into the pandemic of 2020. After lockdown was announced we all became better walkers, and the collection took on greater resonance. ... Read more... |
Marianne Eloise: Obsessive, Intrusive, Magical Thinking review - bargaining with the devil
Wednesday, 23 March 2022
No mental health condition has become quite as kitsch as obsessive-compulsive disorder. Its tacky shorthands – the hand washing,... Read more... |
María Gainza: Portrait of an Unknown Lady review – queens of the unreal
Tuesday, 01 March 2022
It’s no surprise that the theme of fakes and forgery appeals so much to writers, who traffic in plausible illusions and often believe (in María Gainza’s words) that truth is “just another well-... Read more... |
Salley Vickers: The Gardener review - nature has other ideas
Tuesday, 01 March 2022
A garden is a space defined by its limits. Whatever its contents in terms of style and species, and however manicured or apparently wild its appearance, what distinguishes a garden from its... Read more... |
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MØ, Heaven, London review - snappy, sexy and energized
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Top Gun: Maverick review - Tom Cruise defies age and gravity
Only 36 years later, Tom Cruise is back with his eagerly-awaited Top Gun sequel (it was delayed a couple of years by Covid), and there...
The Father and the Assassin, National Theatre review - Gandh...
The young Indian man stepping towards us on the vast Olivier stage is unremarkable enough, slight and boyish in manner. When he speaks he is...
Album: Nitty Gritty Dirt Band - Dirt Does Dylan
I have to confess, it’s a long time since I’ve thought about the Nitty Gritty Dirty Band and a new...
I Get Knocked Down, Brighton Festival review - Chumbawamba s...
One effect of the film I Get Knocked Down, a playfully constructed journey around the life of Chumbawamba vocalist Dunstan Bruce, is to...
Berrut, ECO, Guzzo, Cadogan Hall review - Schubert with a sm...
I came for the Schubert and it didn’t disappoint. Which was...
The Innocents review - they're just playing
The Innocents made a splash at Cannes in 2021 and it’s easy to see why. The ...
Blu-ray: I Am a Camera
The first film rendering of Christopher Isherwood’s experiences in early 1930s Berlin, I Am a Camera has been restored and released on...
The House of Shades, Almeida Theatre review - Anne-Marie Duf...
Anne-Marie Duff blazes across the stage like a meteorite in Beth Steel’s excoriating drama about the changes sweeping through a Northern mining...