sat 11/10/2025

book reviews and features

Naomi Klein: On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal review - an unapologetic manifesto

James Dowsett

On Fire brings together a decade’s worth of dispatches from the frontline of the...

Read more...

James Rebanks: English Pastoral, An Inheritance review - a manifesto for a radical agricultural rethink

India Lewis

Coming from a family of farmers, with periods of time spent working on a farm in the past ten years, I found James Rebanks’ English Pastoral: An Inheritance to be a highly...

Read more...

William Feaver: The Lives of Lucian Freud: Fame 1968-2011 review - mesmerising, exhaustive and obsessively detailed

Marina Vaizey

This is a biography like no other, more or less dictated by...

Read more...

Nick Hornby: Just Like You review - funny but inauthentic Brexit novel

Sarah Collins

Nick Hornby’s protagonists are worlds apart. Joseph is a Black 22-year-old with a “portfolio career", which includes shift work at a butcher’s and a leisure centre and the distant dream of...

Read more...

Susanna Clarke: Piranesi review - the mysteries of the House

Boyd Tonkin

The man called Piranesi lives in a House (he likes Capital Letters, and he tells the story). This House consists of an endless labyrinth, like “an infinite series of classical buildings knitted...

Read more...

Matthew Sperling: Viral review - whip-smart satire about the void at the heart of tech

Daniel Lewis

Strange, that novels like this, which seem to have their finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist, already...

Read more...

Naomi Booth: Exit Management review - unwrapping life's unpleasantness

Lydia Bunt

When you try to get rid of something, it comes back to bite you – so says Naomi Booth in her new novel Exit Management. It’s one of...

Read more...

Gabriel Pogrund & Patrick Maguire: Left Out review - story of Corbynism from 'Glastonbury to catastrophe'

James Dowsett

Readers of Left Out may be surprised to find out how much of party politics is conducted over WhatsApp. The Labour Party under Jeremy...

Read more...

Wayne Holloway-Smith: Love Minus Love review – powerfully excavating the tormented poet's psyche

Daniel Baksi

Roughly two years since ...

Read more...

Selva Almada: Dead Girls review – the stark proximity of women to violence

Katie Da Cunha Lewin

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...

Pages

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

The future of Arts Journalism

 

You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!

We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £49,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d

And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.

 

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Album: Mobb Deep - Infinite

8 years after Prodigy’s untimely passing, Mobb Deep are gracing our sound systems once again with unreleased vocals and brand new music. With...

Troilus and Cressida, Globe Theatre review - a 'problem...

The Globe’s authenticity is its USP, so don’t expect the air-conditioning, the plush seats and the expectant hush of the National...

London Film Festival 2025 - crime, punishment, pop stars and...

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

The third of Rian Johnson’s Knives Out...

I Swear review - taking stock of Tourette's

People sometimes go to the movies for the violence and maybe even for the sex. Until recently they didn’t particularly buy a ticket for...

Clarkston, Trafalgar Theatre review - two lads on a road to...

If you’re a Gen Zer, you’ve probably heard of Heartstopper’s Joe Locke. I’m pretty sure ATG’s Gen Xers in...

Album: Boz Scaggs - Detour

Boz Scaggs rarely does a less than wonderful album. His latest is an exemplary collection of smooth and soulful standard and a few other choice...

Carmen, English National Opera review - not quite dangerous

“Safe” is a word used far too often in ENO’s bizarre new version of a programme, full of uncredited articles, at least two of which look as if...

Ghost Stories, Peacock Theatre review - spirited staging but...

In the framing device, a professor (Jonathan Guy Lewis) stands at a lectern and asks if anyone has had a supernatural experience....

Emily A. Sprague realises a Japanese dream on 'Cloud Ti...

The history of experimental musicians from Europe and North America adopting Japanese aesthetics is … patchy. It got especially dodgy in the 1990s...

newsletter

Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday!

Simply enter your email address in the box below

View previous newsletters