book reviews and features
CLR James: Minty Alley review - love and betrayal in the barrack-yard![]()
CLR James came to London from Trinidad in 1932, clutching the manuscript of his first and only novel. He soon found work, writing about cricket for the Manchester Guardian, as well as a... Read more... |
Tabitha Lasley: Sea State review - a one-woman odyssey through UK oil![]()
Straight off the bat, Tabitha Lasley’s soon-to-be ex-boss points out the fatal flaw in her life-changing project. Jettisoning her job at a women’s magazine, a long-term boyfriend, a cramped London... Read more... |
Francis Spufford: Light Perpetual review - time regained![]()
On 25 November 1944, a German V2 rocket struck the Woolworths store in New Cross at Saturday lunchtime. It killed 168 people. Francis Spufford’s second... Read more... |
Alice Ash: Paradise Block review - a matrix-like collection that reinvents the short story genre![]()
“Burglar alarms jangled through the empty hallways of Paradise Block.” In this ramshackle, lonely tenement, such alarms might be one’s only company. Yet, in this intricate collection of... Read more... |
Eddie S Glaude Jr: Begin Again - James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Today review - can America avoid the fire this time?![]()
I suspect that the work of James Baldwin is not all that familiar to readers in Britain, perhaps not even to... Read more... |
Olivia Sudjic: Asylum Road review - trauma, barely suppressed![]()
In Asylum Road, Olivia Sudjic's third book, everything is purposeful, each loaded gun introduced... Read more... |
Raven Leilani: Luster - portrait of the artist as a black millennial woman![]()
One of the finer episodes in Raven Leilani’s startling debut (which contains an embarrassment of fine episodes)... Read more... |
Mark Fisher: Postcapitalist Desire - The Final Lectures review - imagining the alternative![]()
Postcapitalist Desire: The Final Lectures is a collection of transcripts, recording weekly group lectures... Read more... |
Julia Bell: Radical Attention review - a clear rendering of our withering attention spans![]()
You go out for a walk and leave your devices at home; your head feels a little bit clearer. But when you get back and plonk yourself... Read more... |
George Saunders: A Swim in a Pond in the Rain review – Russian lessons in literature and life![]()
Before he published fiction, George Saunders trained as an engineer and wrote technical reports. The Booker-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo,... Read more... |
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