book reviews and features
CLR James: Minty Alley review - love and betrayal in the barrack-yard
Monday, 08 February 2021
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
Thursday, 04 February 2021
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
Tuesday, 02 February 2021
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
Monday, 01 February 2021
“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?
Tuesday, 26 January 2021
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
Wednesday, 20 January 2021
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
Tuesday, 19 January 2021
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
Tuesday, 12 January 2021
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
Monday, 11 January 2021
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
Wednesday, 06 January 2021
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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latest in today
Two Billion Beats, Orange Tree Theatre review - lively, but...
Do the right thing! But doing the right thing isn’t easy – especially if you are a teen. And a female teen who is being pressurised by your mother...
January review - the end is nigh in vampirised Bulgaria
At their best, horror movies reflect destabilisation caused by cracks in the social fabric. The crack indicated in the documentarist Andrey...
Album: Lisa O'Neill - All of This Is Chance
Lisa O’Neill is a part of the new wave of Irish contemporary folk artists, one that encompasses the likes of Lankum, Ye Vagabonds...
Leonskaja, Staatskapelle Streichquartett, Wigmore Hall / Sec...
It’s dangerous to claim a sense of absolute rightness about a musical performance; that could mean no more than responding to an interpretation...
Othello, Lyric Hammersmith review - Frantic Assembly's...
Frantic Assembly’s Othello, originally co-developed with the Lyric in 2008, is back in its third iteration, and it’s still not...
Blu-ray: The War Trilogy - Three Films by Andrzej Wajda
Watching these harrowing films in rapid succession allows us to watch a great...
Ólafsson, LPO, Gardner, RFH review - spirit of delight
This concert was advertised as the completion of an Elgar symphony cycle, though in the absence of the reconstructed Third, that meant the second...
Sound of the Underground, Royal Court review - loud and triu...
Ever been to a queer club? You know, drag cabaret night at Madame Jojo’s, or the Black Cap or Her Upstairs. No? Well, not to worry – the...
Gerhardt, BBC Philharmonic, Gernon, Bridgewater Hall, Manche...
Ben Gernon’s calm and clear way of conducting an orchestra (something he once told me he’d observed in the work of his mentor, Colin Davis) is...
Album: Robert Forster - The Candle and the Flame
Reflections on how the past relates to now suffuse The Candle and the Flame. The album’s closing track is “When I Was a Young Man.” When...