book reviews and features
Karla Suárez: Havana Year Zero review - maths, phones and mysteries in down-at-heel Cuba
Tuesday, 23 February 2021
Havana, 1993. Far away, the fall of the Soviet empire has suddenly stripped Fidel Castro’s Cuba of subsidy and... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Amina Cain on her first novel and her eternal fascination with suggestion
Monday, 22 February 2021
Amina Cain is a writer of near-naked spaces and roomy characters. Her debut collection of short fiction, I... Read more... |
Jackie Kay: Bessie Smith review – vivid writing about the Empress of the Blues
Thursday, 18 February 2021
Blues singer Bessie Smith (1894-... Read more... |
Patricia Lockwood: No One is Talking About This review - first novel goes beyond the internet
Tuesday, 16 February 2021
This is a novel, says Patricia Lockwood in her Twitter feed, about being very inside the... Read more... |
CLR James: Minty Alley review - love and betrayal in the barrack-yard
Monday, 08 February 2021
CLR James came to London from Trinidad in 1932, clutching the manuscript of his first and only novel. He soon found work, writing about cricket for the Manchester Guardian, as well as a... Read more... |
Tabitha Lasley: Sea State review - a one-woman odyssey through UK oil
Thursday, 04 February 2021
Straight off the bat, Tabitha Lasley’s soon-to-be ex-boss points out the fatal flaw in her life-changing project. Jettisoning her job at a women’s magazine, a long-term boyfriend, a cramped London... Read more... |
Francis Spufford: Light Perpetual review - time regained
Tuesday, 02 February 2021
On 25 November 1944, a German V2 rocket struck the Woolworths store in New Cross at Saturday lunchtime. It killed 168 people. Francis Spufford’s second... Read more... |
Alice Ash: Paradise Block review - a matrix-like collection that reinvents the short story genre
Monday, 01 February 2021
“Burglar alarms jangled through the empty hallways of Paradise Block.” In this ramshackle, lonely tenement, such alarms might be one’s only company. Yet, in this intricate collection of... Read more... |
Eddie S Glaude Jr: Begin Again - James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Today review - can America avoid the fire this time?
Tuesday, 26 January 2021
I suspect that the work of James Baldwin is not all that familiar to readers in Britain, perhaps not even to... Read more... |
Olivia Sudjic: Asylum Road review - trauma, barely suppressed
Wednesday, 20 January 2021
In Asylum Road, Olivia Sudjic's third book, everything is purposeful, each loaded gun introduced... 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?
latest in today
Taylor Swift, Wembley Stadium review - the Eras Tour lights...
Unless you were around when The Beatles toured America in the mid-1960s, it’s doubtful you've heard anything like this. In 40 years of extensive...
Bartlett, Fantasia Orchestra, Fetherstonhaugh, Proms at St J...
Any programme featuring Gershwin’s top large-scale works might tend to the “pops” side. Bernstein’s West Side Story Overture and even the...
My Father's Fable, Bush Theatre review - hilarious and...
Following the huge success of Benedict Lombe’s Shifters, which transfers soon to the West End, the...
Blu-ray: Army of Shadows
One of those rare films that leaves you speechless after the closing credits, Jean-Pierre Melville’s Army of Shadows (L'Armée des...
Giulio Cesare, Glyndebourne review - every number a winner f...
How much better can a classic get? Sebastian Scotney more or less asked the same question on theartsdesk the last time Giulio...
Kelly Clancy: Playing with Reality - How Games Shape Our Wor...
For a couple of decades, the free video game America’s Army was a powerful recruitment aid for the US military. More than a shoot-em-up,...
Album: Madeleine Peyroux - Let's Walk
Madeleine Peyroux made her name with her second album, 2004’s Careless Love. It consists almost completely of cover versions, delivered...
Music Reissues Weekly: The Cryin’ Shames - Please Stay, Do T...
Liverpool’s The Cryin’ Shames were responsible for two of mid-Sixties Britain’s most striking single’s tracks. The February 1966 top side “Please...
theartsdesk at Smetanova Litomyšl - three fascinating operas...
What did they put in the water of Czechia’s central Bohemia/Moravia borderlands? From south to north there's Mahler’s birthplace in Kali...
