book reviews and features
theartsdesk Q&A: Sally Anne Gross and Dr George Musgrave, authors of 'Can Music Make You Sick?'
Saturday, 10 October 2020
Today is World Mental Health Day and of course that means an awful lot of hugs and homilies, thoughts and prayers, deep-breathing exercises and it’s-good-to-talk platitudes from people speaking... Read more... |
Book extract: Snake by Erica Wright
Thursday, 08 October 2020
Ophidiophobia is one of our most common fears, from the Greek for serpent ('Ophidia'). Writer and editor Erica Wright grew up in Tennessee with periodic interruptions from rattlesnakes,... Read more... |
Hermione Lee: Tom Stoppard, A Life review - the last word on a theatrical wordsmith
Wednesday, 07 October 2020
"The older he got, the less he cared about self-concealment," or so it is said of Sir Tom Stoppard,... Read more... |
William Boyd: Trio review - private perils in 1968
Monday, 05 October 2020
William Boyd’s fiction is populated by all manner of artists. Writers, painters, photographers, musicians and... Read more... |
John Lanchester: Reality, and Other Stories review - campfire spooks for the digital age
Wednesday, 30 September 2020
What do you do when your phone rings, but you know the person ringing isn’t alive? In many ways, the cleverly named Reality, and Other Stories is a collection of... Read more... |
Bob Woodward: Rage review - terror and tyranny in the White House
Tuesday, 29 September 2020
“Build the wall!” exhorted Trump, at rally after rally back in the days when we’d all acknowledged his moral repugnancy but still believed he could never attain the presidency. And Trump has... Read more... |
Ottessa Moshfegh: Death in Her Hands review - a case of murder mind
Tuesday, 29 September 2020
Death in Her Hands was a forgotten manuscript, the product of a series of daily automatic writing exercises... Read more... |
Sudhir Hazareesingh: Black Spartacus review – the life, and thought, of the first black super-hero
Monday, 28 September 2020
The former slave, and coachman on a sugar plantation, began one of his early public proclamations in a typically defiant vein: “I am Toussaint Louverture, you have perhaps heard my name.” At that... Read more... |
Ian Williams: Reproduction review - a dazzling kaleidoscope of life's tragicomedy
Monday, 28 September 2020
Ian Williams’s writing is always in motion. For his 2012 poetry collection Personals, and since, he has... Read more... |
Emma Cline: Daddy review - scintillating short stories by the author of The Girls
Monday, 28 September 2020
The Girls, Emma Cline’s acclaimed debut novel of 2016, was billed as a story based on the Manson murders. But in fact, like some of the stories in Daddy, her new short-story... 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...
The Phoenician Scheme review - further adventures in the idi...
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Album: Sports Team - Boys These Days
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Pygmalion, Early Opera Company, Curnyn, Middle Temple Hall r...
With French baroque opera all but banished from the UK’s major...
Album: Stereolab - Instant Holograms on Metal Film
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The Fifth Step, Soho Place review - wickedly funny two-hande...
The plays of David Ireland have a tendency to build to an explosion, after long stretches of caustic dialogue and very funny banter....