book reviews and features
Patti Smith: A Book of Days review - adding to Insta's debris
Wednesday, 23 November 2022
On April Fool’s Day, in 1978, the godmother of American punk, Patti Smith, jumped offstage at the Rainbow Theatre in... Read more... |
Derek Owusu: Losing the Plot review - the finest perfume
Thursday, 10 November 2022
Derek Owusu’s debut That Reminds Me won the Desmond Elliot Prize in 2020. When asked what it was that she loved most about Owusu’s semi-autobiographical 117-page book, Preti Taneja, chair... Read more... |
Science Fiction: Voyage to the Edge of the Imagination, Science Museum review - travel to a galaxy not so far away
Wednesday, 26 October 2022
Scenes that stay in the mind: Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator peeling back the skin on his forearm to reveal the gleaming machinery within; a beady-eyed, new-born Alien bursting from John... Read more... |
Annie Proulx: Fen, Bog & Swamp review - defending the wetlands' bounty
Wednesday, 26 October 2022
Annie Proulx’s Fen, Bog & Swamp sees the Pulitzer-winning novelist join a number of authors decrying the ecological devastation we’re wreaking on the planet. James Rebanks’ ... Read more... |
Cormac McCarthy: The Passenger review - abstruse, descriptive, digressive
Tuesday, 25 October 2022
Cormac McCarthy’s first books in over a decade are coming out this year, a month apart from one another. The Passenger tells the story of deep-sea diver Bobby Western, desperately in love... Read more... |
Mariana Enriquez: Our Share of Night review - delving into a violent, erotic world
Monday, 24 October 2022
Tense with horror and the sticky darkness of the Argentinian night, Mariana Enriquez’s writing is rich and occult. Her epic novel, Our Share of Night, vividly translated from the Spanish... Read more... |
William Boyd: The Romantic review - historical soap opera, anyone?
Saturday, 22 October 2022
Writing in the Edinburgh Review in 1814, Francis Jeffrey began his review of Wordsworth’s The Excursion with a provocative denunciation of romanticism: “This will never do,” he... Read more... |
Andrew Murray: Is Socialism Possible in Britain? review - what went wrong and why Corbynism failed
Tuesday, 04 October 2022
The title of Andrew Murray’s new book poses a question that also vexed Friedrich Engels over 130 years ago. The German co-... Read more... |
Savala Nolan: Don't Let It Get You Down review - finding voice in the liminal
Thursday, 29 September 2022
Liminal: a word that conjures thresholds and between states. Caught between three languages – the adjective is a borrowing from the Latin that enters English by way of German – ... Read more... |
Yiyun Li: The Book of Goose - fame, reality and two teenage French girls
Wednesday, 28 September 2022
The Book of Goose, Yiyun Li’s fifth novel, is the gripping story of two teenage French girls and their... Read more... |
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Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review - a perfo...
This greatest of symphonies starts with what’s plausibly described as arrhythmia of the heart, so it shouldn’t have been surprising to find my own...
Blu-ray: The Cat and the Canary (1939) / The Ghost Breakers...
Paramount added a late “old dark house” mystery comedy to Hollywood’s annus mirabilis of 1939 by teaming Bob Hope with Paulette...
Album: We Were Promised Jetpacks - A Complete One-Eighty
We Were Promised Jetpacks is a band name that seems off the cuff at first glance. This could be said for the Scottish...
Three Minutes: A Lengthening review - superb portrait of a v...
We hear the projector whirr as the mute 16mm film flows through the sprockets and on to the screen. For three minutes and a little longer we watch...
Music Reissues Weekly: Trevor Beales - Fireside Stories
When Trevor Beales’s band Havana Lake released their only album in 1977, it was on a label which also issued records by The Ryman Country Band,...
Directors the Dardenne brothers: 'To be living means to...
Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne have made their home region of Liège the site of excruciating moral crises and crushing injustice....
Manchester Collective String Orchestra, RNCM, Manchester rev...
Manchester Collective’s string orchestra programme, opening last night at the Royal Northern College of Music and touring to the South Bank, Leeds...
Best of Enemies, Noel Coward Theatre review - opposites attr...
Opposition (and history) are the apparent mainstays of the ceaselessly busy...
Album: Camilla Pisani - Phant[as]
Want an antidote so forced seasonal cheer and the catchiness of Christmas pop? How about some almost entirely atonal...