book reviews and features
Caleb Azumah Nelson: Small Worlds review - Ghana and London dance togetherWednesday, 14 June 2023
Small Worlds, the second novel from Caleb Azumah Nelson, is a delight: a book with a real feeling for sound and dance, and a sense of place from London to Ghana and back again. It’s a... Read more... |
Andrey Kurkov: Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv review - a city speaks its multitudesSaturday, 10 June 2023
Rock music helped to subvert the Soviet Union by glamorising youthful rebellion and the West. In the opening scene of Andrey Kurkov’s... Read more... |
Helen Czerski: Blue Machine review - how the ocean worksTuesday, 06 June 2023
If you cannot even step into the same river twice, how to take the measure of the ocean? Dipping your toes at the beach is irresistible, but uninformative. Sampling stuff out at sea helps more,... Read more... |
Polly Toynbee: An Uneasy Inheritance - My Family and Other Radicals review - looking backMonday, 05 June 2023
There are few contemporary journalists whose names are instantly familiar – and usually it’s for the wrong... Read more... |
Sophia Giovannitti: Working Girl - On Selling Art and Selling Sex review - portrait of the artist as sex workerWednesday, 31 May 2023
Sophia Giovannitti begins selling sex because it promises to make her the most amount of money in the shortest amount of time. She also has a “near categorical hatred of work.” I nearly –... Read more... |
Kieran Yates: All the Houses I've Ever Lived In, Brighton Festival 2023 review - home as comfort, and crueltySunday, 28 May 2023
The audience questions are when Kieran Yates’ talk boils over. Her book All the Houses I’ve Ever Lived In considers housing policy through autobiography and imaginative research, and the preceding... Read more... |
Matthew Shindell: For the Love of Mars: A Human History of the Red Planet review - a world of possibilityFriday, 19 May 2023
Humans are unsettled by incomplete data, unanswered questions. Show us dots on paper, and we’ll join them to make a picture. Show us objects in the night sky, and we create worlds. So it has... Read more... |
Susan Finlay: The Lives of the Artists review - the knotted threads of memoir and artWednesday, 17 May 2023
Benvenuto Cellini’s My Life (1728) is not the artist-biography to which Susan Finlay’s The Lives of the Artists pays its most obvious homage, but it appears to have followed its... Read more... |
Glory to Sound: Linton Kwesi Johnson, Brighton Festival 2023 review - a reggae rebel's life in musicMonday, 15 May 2023
Straight-backed at 70, Linton Kwesi Johnson wears the smart garb of a British Caribbean elder – trilby, cream jacket, West Indies maroon jumper and tie, grey trousers, blue socks and grey shoes.... Read more... |
Keggie Carew: Beastly review - the history of animals and usMonday, 15 May 2023
There’s been an avalanche of books about animals and trees. The more species disappear and forests are felled, the more titles are published: laments, celebrations, extinction alarms and rhapsodic... 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 £33,000 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
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
From placing first in the Sarah Vaughan International Vocal Jazz Competition in 2019 to being a triple Grammy winner, Samara Joy’s rise has been...
No new production of a beloved old ballet can please everyone, and there is none more beloved, or more frequently produced, than ...
This feels like the theatrical equivalent of being in a centrifuge – a wild, spinning ride...
Shakespeare must have relished the opportunities brought by the indoor...
Born Horses remains as inscrutable as it was when it was issued in the summer. While it is about the search for enlightenment through...
The man whose name sounds like a major aviation accident, private...
My Spotify Wrapped this year is somewhat at odds with my Album of 2024. My ‘Van Life Folie Americana’ phase of Spring (presumably due to the...
Broadway shows sometimes hit the West End like...