book reviews and features
Claire-Louise Bennett: Checkout 19 review - coming to life
Monday, 06 September 2021
Like any good writer, Claire-Louise Bennett loves lists. Lists are, after all, those moments when words, freed from grammar’s grip, can simply be themselves – do their own thing, show off,... Read more... |
Christopher Clark: Prisoners of Time review - from Kaiser Bill to Dominic Cummings
Friday, 13 August 2021
Historians seldom make the news themselves. However, Christopher Clark – the Australian-born Regius Professor of History at Cambridge University – hogged headlines and filled op-ed pages in... Read more... |
Thora Hjörleifsdóttir: Magma review - love burns in debut novel from Iceland
Tuesday, 03 August 2021
Thora Hjörleifsdóttir’s Magma is certainly not an easy read. It describes, in short chapters... Read more... |
10 Questions for novelist Mieko Kawakami
Tuesday, 27 July 2021
Mieko Kawakami sits firmly amongst the Japanese literati for her sharp and pensive depictions of life in... Read more... |
Samantha Walton: Everybody Needs Beauty review - the well of the world
Tuesday, 20 July 2021
In the opening poem of Samantha Walton's 2018 collection, Self Heal, the speaker is on the tube, that evergreen metaphor of capital's specific barrelling momentum. The tube "will... Read more... |
Test Signal: Northern Anthology of New Writing review – core writing from England's regions
Friday, 16 July 2021
“On the Ordinance Survey map, it has no name”, writes Andrew Michael Hurley, of the wood that nevertheless gives its name to his essay. “Clavicle Wood” provides the first chapter in the ... Read more... |
Adam Mars-Jones: Batlava Lake review - pride and prejudice in the Kosovo War
Friday, 16 July 2021
For a slim book of some 100 pages, Batlava Lake by Adam Mars-Jones is deceptively meandering. The novella is narrated by Barry Ashton, an engineer attached to the British Army troops... Read more... |
Danielle Evans: The Office of Historical Corrections review - what happens when history comes knocking
Wednesday, 16 June 2021
There’s something refreshing about fiction you can easily trace back to the question “what if... Read more... |
Anna Neima: The Utopians review – after horror, six quests for the good life
Tuesday, 15 June 2021
Not long after the Nazis came to power, Eberhard Arnold sent a manifesto to Adolf Hitler. The Protestant preacher urged the dictator to “embrace universal love”. With his wife Emmy, Eberhard had... Read more... |
Victoria Mas: The Mad Women's Ball review - compelling plot meets disquieting history
Tuesday, 15 June 2021
To this day, if you take a stroll down Paris’ Boulevard de l’Hôpital, you’ll come across an imposing building: the... Read more... |
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Is God Is, Royal Court review – blister, flare and burn, bab...
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Duran Duran, O2 Institute, Birmingham review – an intimate g...
Incredibly it’s now 40 years since the release of Duran Duran...
Our Future in Your Hands, Peckham School Choirs, Multi-Story...
What a way for the Multi-Story Orchestra, conductor Christopher Stark and composer Kate Whitley to celebrate 10 years of pioneering activity in...
Album: The Eivind Aarset 4-Tet - Phantasmagoria, or A Differ...
Phantasmagoria, or A Different Kind of Journey instantly sets its controls for an excursion into the interstellar void between gaseous...
Michael Janisch Band, Ronnie Scott's review - jazz...
This was, said bassist Michael Janisch, his first gig since January last year, and his crack group’s Monday evening set, kicking off at the un-...
Indecent, Menier Chocolate Factory review - cabaret-style de...
Indecent is a play wrapped inside a news story about...
Album: The Felice Brothers - From Dreams To Dust
There’s a modesty to the Felice Brothers, an absenting of ego, even...
Rigoletto, Royal Opera review - routine clouds the best in t...
Another season, another new production of Verdi’s nastiest...
The Lost Leonardo review - an incredible tale as gripping as...
It’s been described as “the most improbable story that has ever happened in the art market”, and The Lost Leonardo reveals every twist...