book reviews and features
Emma Dibdin: 'Being scared of something is a sign you should write about it'
Saturday, 05 August 2017
When I began writing my first novel four years ago, there were a few ideas that had coalesced in my mind. I... Read more... |
Teju Cole: Blind Spot review - haunting hybrid of words and images
Sunday, 30 July 2017
As a photographer, Teju Cole has a penchant for the scuffed and distressed surfaces, materials and tools that form rectilinear patterns on construction sites. Opposite a shot of scaffolding,... Read more... |
Lisa Jewell: 'I’d never killed anyone before'
Sunday, 30 July 2017
I started writing my first novel in 1995. I was 27 and I’d just come out of a dark, dark marriage to a... Read more... |
h.Club 100 Awards: Publishing and Writing - it's not all about the mainstream
Tuesday, 25 July 2017
For more than three decades I reported on the publishing industry as a business journalist. The books, the deals, the authors and the publishers, plus the bookshops that sold then. When I started... Read more... |
Peter Høeg: The Susan Effect review - Nordic noir turns surreal
Sunday, 23 July 2017
Peter Høeg is still overwhelmingly known for a novel published a quarter of a century ago. Miss Smilla’s... Read more... |
Sarah Hall: Madame Zero review – eerie tales of calamity and change
Sunday, 16 July 2017
Five thousand miles away from her native Lake District, I first understood the eerie magnetism of Sarah Hall’s fiction. As a regional judge for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, I’d travelled to... Read more... |
Enter theartsdesk's Young Reviewer of the Year Award
Saturday, 15 July 2017
The Hospital Club’s annual h.Club100 awards celebrate the most influential and innovative people working in the UK’s creative industries, with nominations from the worlds of film and fashion, art... Read more... |
Michael Connelly: The Late Show review - mesmerising and believable characters
Sunday, 09 July 2017
Readers have been committed fans since 1992, when the sometime crime reporter... Read more... |
Danny Goldberg: In Search of the Lost Chord review - 1967 well remembered
Sunday, 09 July 2017
I was 10 in 1967 though I remember much about the year, indeed about the era, not least the release of Sgt Pepper and the first live global satellite broadcast, when the... Read more... |
Eureka: novelist Anthony Quinn on completing his acclaimed trilogy
Sunday, 02 July 2017
I am intrigued by those writers who plan their novels with the bristling rigour of a military strategist,... Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Hamlet Hail to the Thief, RSC, Stratford review - Radiohead...
The safe transfer of power in post-war Western democracies was once a given. The homely Pickfords Removals van outside Number Ten...
Rachel Jones: Gated Canyons, Dulwich Picture Gallery review...
I first came across Rachel Jones in 2021 at the Hayward Gallery’s painting show Mixing it Up: Painting Today. I was blown away by the...
Album: The Young Gods - Appear Disappear
Swiss electro-rockers, Young Gods have been around for 40 years, but this in no way should suggest that they’ve gone soft in their old age. These...
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life review - persuading us that the...
Do the French do irony? Well, was Astérix a Gaul? Obviously they do, and do it pretty well to judge by many of their movies down the...
The King of Pangea, King's Head Theatre review - grief...
There’s an old theatre joke. “The electric chair is too good for a monster like that. They should send him out of town with a new...
Album: Sam Binga - Sam Binga Presents Club Orthodontics
When I was writing the introduction to my book, Bass, Mids, Tops: An Oral History of Soundsystem Culture, I came up with a phrase, which...
Yoshitomo Nara, Hayward Gallery review - sickeningly cute ki...
It’s been a long time since an exhibition made me feel physically sick. The Hayward Gallery is currently hosting a retrospective of the...
Hespèrion XXI, Savall, QEH review - an evening filled with l...
For the first encore of the evening, it was not just the audience but the whole ensemble of Hespèrion XXI that was mesmerised as its leader,...
Album: Neil Young & the Chrome Hearts - Talkin' to...
When Neil Young releases a new album, you can be reasonably sure that you’ll get either a disc of melancholy singer-songwriter fare or a set of...