book reviews and features
Niall Griffiths: Broken Ghost review - Welsh visions of hope and loss
Sunday, 18 August 2019
The trend-hopping taste-makers who run British literary publishing have lately decided that “working-class” writing merits a small dole of their precious time and cash. To assess how long this... Read more... |
Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World ed. Zahra Hankir review – journalism from the front lines
Sunday, 11 August 2019
Many of the women in this pioneering collection of essays have faced unimaginable hardship in their pursuit of... Read more... |
The Collection: Nina Leger trans. Laura Francis - daring, direct and richly imagined
Sunday, 11 August 2019
Jeanne – employment, age and appearance unknown, motives unknowable – is building a collection of penises. In street after street, she feigns dizziness; on the inevitable approach of a man eager... Read more... |
Rachel DeLoache Williams: My Friend Anna review - a fraudster for the Instagram age?
Tuesday, 06 August 2019
Of all the ventures that super-fraudster Anna Delvey might have chosen as bait for her victims, an exclusive... Read more... |
Martin Hägglund: This Life - Why Mortality Makes Us Free review - profound book to be read slowly
Sunday, 04 August 2019
Swedish-born multi-lingual academic Martin Hägglund lives in New York and teaches philosophy and comparative literature at Yale. His new book, This Life, is a substantial examination of secular... Read more... |
Vic Marks: Original Spin review - trouble in Taunton
Sunday, 21 July 2019
In cricket, timing is everything. Played a fraction early and that silky cover drive finds a batsman out to lunch as... Read more... |
Gina Apostol: Insurrecto review – a treacherous archipelago of stories
Sunday, 14 July 2019
As in other countries born out of 19th-century uprisings against imperial power, the literary roots of the Philippines run deep. Executed by the Spanish in 1896, the novelist, poet and physician... Read more... |
CD - The Lost Words: Spell Songs
Sunday, 07 July 2019
Earlier this year, eight musicians – Karine Polwart, Julie Fowlis, Seckou Keita, Kris Drever... Read more... |
Svetlana Alexievich: Last Witnesses: Unchildlike Stories review - anything but childish
Sunday, 30 June 2019
Svetlana Alexievich’s Last Witnesses: Unchildlike Stories is a collection of oral testimonies conducted between 1978-2004 with... Read more... |
Ocean Vuong: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous review – the new avant-garde
Sunday, 23 June 2019
Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is written as a letter to his mother, who cannot read. She cannot read because... Read more... |
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latest in today
Matt Haig: The Midnight Library review - an uplifting modern...
TW: This article discusses suicide, suicidal ideation, antidepressants and self-harm
We first meet Nora Seed, “nineteen years before...
The Adulterer, Channel 4 review - atmospheric, addictive and...
It has taken a good half decade for the Dutch series ...
Blindness, Donmar Warehouse review - a beautifully haunting...
Wowee! Twenty weeks after the last time I set foot in a theatre, I...
The Encore, Opera Holland Park review - stylish return for a...
As Dvořák’s "Song to the Moon" from ...
Album: Tanya Donelly and The Parkington Sisters
It’s exciting to come to an album with no preconceptions and no context and find you fall immediately in love with it. Tanya Donelly is probably...
Reissue CDs Weekly: Dudu Phukwana and the "Spears"
Whether explicitly or indirectly, what’s written on a master tape box can tantalise. Revealing part of a picture creates a desire to want to know...
Blu-ray: Buster Keaton: Three Films, Vol. 3
Every great artist can have an off day, and the the best moments in Eureka’s latest collection of Buster Keaton features are good enough to make...
Heart's Delight, Opera Holland Park review - a classy h...
Nostalgia of all kinds played a part in this summer evening’s divertissement. Some audience members were probably remembering when operetta held a...
Perfect 10 review - a small movie with a big heart
We first see Leigh (Frankie Box), the cheeky heroine of Scottish...