book reviews and features
Marie Darrieussecq: Sleepless review - in search of lost sleep
Thursday, 17 August 2023
“I lost sleep.” So begins Marie Darrieussecq’s elegantly fitful book, Sleepless, now perceptively translated into... Read more... |
Tony Williams: Cole the Magnificent - fantastical tale blends myth, poetry and comedy
Tuesday, 15 August 2023
Cole the Magnificent is a picaresque, fantastical tale of the life (or lives) of a man, Cole, following... Read more... |
Masha Karp: George Orwell and Russia review - dystopia's reality
Thursday, 10 August 2023
The war in Ukraine, which Russia’s President Vladimir Putin insists on calling a “special military operation”, may have given fresh urgency to... Read more... |
Henry Hoke: Open Throat review - if a lion could speak
Wednesday, 09 August 2023
I approached Henry Hoke’s fifth book, Open Throat, with some trepidation. A slim novel (156 pages), it... Read more... |
First Person: Marc Burrows on getting to know Sir Terry Pratchett
Tuesday, 01 August 2023
In a very real sense, Terry Pratchett taught me how to write. I first came across his work when I was 12 years old, in the early 90s. My parents had been given copies of two of the earliest... Read more... |
Lorrie Moore: I am Homeless If This is Not My Home review - between this world and the next
Thursday, 27 July 2023
Lorrie Moore’s brief but haunting I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home is a bizarre, unsettling read. At times it’s a road trip, at others a romance, then supernatural horror, Greek... Read more... |
Nick Laird: Up Late review - attention lapses
Tuesday, 18 July 2023
A few pages before the titular poem of Up Late, Nick Laird describes a haircut in a bathroom mirror, and finds a possible art form reflected back: "something like a poem / glances back /... Read more... |
Extract: Bacon in Moscow by James Birch
Friday, 07 July 2023
In 1988, James Birch – curator, art dealer, and gallery owner – took Francis Bacon to Moscow. It was, as he writes, "an unimaginable intrusion of Western Culture into the heart of the Soviet... Read more... |
Fiona Maddocks: Goodbye Russia - Rachmaninoff in Exile review - an affectionate biographical portrait
Wednesday, 28 June 2023
In 1917, in the face of the Bolshevik revolution closing in on his country estate, Rachmaninoff fled Russia, never to return. He was 44, at his peak as composer, pianist and conductor, but spent... Read more... |
Jacqueline Rose: The Plague review - tracing our response to tragedy
Saturday, 17 June 2023
In The Plague: Living Death in Our Times, Jacqueline Rose makes a surprising pivot from her usual topics – Sylvia Plath, children’s fiction, Zionism, to name a few – to throw a spotlight... 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...
Mahler 8, LPO, Gardner, RFH review - lights on high
Transcendence is everywhere in Mahler’s most ambitious symphony, from the flaming opening hymn to the upper reaches in the epic setting of Goethe’...
Music Reissues Weekly: The Hamburg Repertoire
The blurb on the front of the double-CD set The Hamburg Repertoire says it collects “The original recordings of songs...
Philharmonia, Alsop, RFH / Levit, Abramović, QEH review - mi...
“Let the music guide your imagination” was never going to be the slogan of the Southbank Centre’s Multitudes festival. Its 13 events...
Ben and Imo, Orange Tree Theatre review - vibrant, strongly...
Back in 2009, there were Ben and Wystan on stage (Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art). Last year came Ben and Master David Hemmings (Kevin...
The Great Gatsby, London Coliseum review - lavish and lively...
In 2012, an eight-hour long version of F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby...
Stelios review - Athenian rhapsody in blues
The English title of a new film about the legendary singer-guitarist Stelios Kazantzidis, who popularised rebetiko, which is often called “the...
Album: Dr Robert & Matt Deighton - The Instant Garden
There’s this mod milieu, harking back to the Eighties. Weller at the forefront; Dr Robert and his Blow Monkeys; all righteously hate Thatcher;...
The Accountant 2 review - belated return of Ben Affleck...
It’s been nine years since Ben Affleck’s original portrayal of Christian Wolff in The Accountant, who’s not only an accountant but also a...
The Inseparables, Finborough Theatre review - uneven portrai...
The Finborough has once again performed the miracle of creating a whole world in its intimate space: this time, inter-war France, where...