thu 07/12/2023

book reviews and features

Anne Michaels: Held review - one story across time

Lucy Thynne

Near the end of My Name is Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Strout’s prize-winning 2016 novel, a creative writing teacher tells Lucy, ‘you will...

Read more...

Ishion Hutchinson: School of Instructions review - learning against estrangement

Leila Greening

School of Instructions, a book-length poem composed of six sections, is a virtuosic dance between memory...

Read more...

Jesse Darling: Virgins review - going straight

Alice Brewer

Self-described ‘intermittent poet’ and 2023 Turner Prize-nominee Jesse Darling said this in a recent interview for Art Review: ‘I...

Read more...

Justin Lewis: Don't Stop the Music - A History of Pop Music, One Day at a Time review - deft and delightful pop almanac

Bernard Hughes

This splendid book proves that trivia need not be trivial, and that a miscellany of apparently disconnected facts can cohere, if done well. It is in the proud lineage of the “toilet book”, a form...

Read more...

Adam Biles: The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews review - the old curiosity bookshop

Lia Rockey

Over 10 years in the making, The Shakespeare and Company Book of Interviews reflects its namesake in more ways than one.

To those familiar, it is paean and tribute to one of the...

Read more...

Charlie Porter: Bring No Clothes - Bloomsbury and the Philosophy of Fashion review - dress to impress

India Lewis

It’s not hard to miss the fact that Bloomsbury is back in fashion at the moment. This summer, it felt like everyone’s Instagram story showed a...

Read more...

Adam Sisman: The Secret Life of John le Carré review - tinker, tailor, soldier, cheat

Bernard Hughes

This book is quite a sad read. I had been looking forward to it, as a posthumous supplement to Adam Sisman’s 2015 biography of John le Carré/David Cornwell, which, at the time, quite clearly drew...

Read more...

Caspar Henderson: A Book of Noises - Notes on the Auraculous review - a call to ears

Jon Turney

Have you ever considered the sheer range of sounds? You may think of deliberate human efforts to move the air: music and song, poetry or...

Read more...

'The people behind the postcards': an interview with Priya Hein, author of 'Riambel'

Hannah Hutching

Priya Hein’s debut novel, Riambel, is an excoriating examination of Mauritius’ socio-political structures and the colonial past from which they have sprung. Centred around Noemi, a young...

Read more...

Michael Peppiatt: Giacometti in Paris review - approaching the impossible

Jack Barron

We begin with a dead-end. In 1966, Michael Peppiatt – at the time “an obscure young man” – travelled to Paris to...

Read more...

Pages

 

latest in today

Album: Gregory Porter - Christmas Wish

The cat in the hat with the mellifluous voice delivers his Christmas Wish for the festive season, his first Christmas album, and it...

Paul Lewis, Wigmore Hall review - Schubert sonatas revisited...

A decade has passed since Paul Lewis concluded an endeavour of a kind never previously undertaken: to perform, over two and a half years and...

The Homecoming, Young Vic Theatre review - Pinter's dis...

As the audience enters, thick mist envelopes the thrust stage and jazz music fills the...

Blu-ray: Blackhat

The Boxing Day release of Michael Mann’s first feature in eight years, Ferrari, finally follows up Blackhat, a Chris Hemsworth-...

Kin, BBC One review - in Dublin's not-so-fair city

Folklore tends to depict Dublin as a convivial and picturesque city, with a bar on every corner full of revellers on wild stag weekends, but that’...

Voces8 Foundation Choir and Orchestra, Smith, Voces8 Centre...

There’s a game called Whamageddon, where people see how deep into December they can go without hearing “Last Christmas”. I’m like that, but with...

Infinite Life, National Theatre review - beguiling new comed...

A sun deck with seven pale-green padded loungers is the latest setting for the latest...

Rodelinda, The English Concert, Bicket, Saffron Hall review...

If ever a marriage was made in heaven, it would have to be the one between Lucy Crowe’s beleaguered Queen Rodelinda and Iestyn Davies’ King...

£1 Thursdays, Finborough Theatre review - dazzling new play...

It’s 2012 and the London Olympics might as well be happening on the Moon for Jen and Stacey. In fact, you could say the same for...

newsletter

Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday!

Simply enter your email address in the box below

View previous newsletters