wed 11/06/2025

book reviews and features

María Gainza: Portrait of an Unknown Lady review – queens of the unreal

Boyd Tonkin

It’s no surprise that the theme of fakes and forgery appeals so much to writers, who traffic in plausible illusions and often believe (in María Gainza’s words) that truth is “just another well-...

Read more...

Salley Vickers: The Gardener review - nature has other ideas

Lizzie Hibbert

A garden is a space defined by its limits. Whatever its contents in terms of style and species, and however manicured or apparently wild its appearance, what distinguishes a garden from its...

Read more...

Extract: My Pen is the Wing of a Bird, New Fiction by Afghan Women

theartsdesk

"My pen is the wing of a bird; it will tell you those thoughts we are not allowed to think, those dreams we are not allowed to dream." Batool Haidari’s words give this bold collection of stories...

Read more...

Thomas Halliday: Otherlands review - diving into the deep past

Jon Turney

Life on Earth: David Attenborough has it covered, right? Well, globally, maybe, but not historically. He has presented world-spanning series on pretty much every kind of life except bacteria, but...

Read more...

Tessa Hadley: Free Love review - the Sixties, the suburbs and the hippie dream

Markie Robson-Scott

Free Love opens in 1967 and remains within that heady era throughout; no flashbacks, no spanning of generations as in Hadley's wonderful novels The Past or Late in the Day...

Read more...

Best of 2021: Books

theartsdesk

“Duck! Here comes another year.” We can, I think, all empathise with the motions and emotions of Ogden Nash’s new year poem, “Good Riddance, But Now What?” Before, however, we bid a troublesome...

Read more...

The Holiness of Sex: Leonard Cohen's Biblical Theology

Harry Freedman

On hearing that I had recently written a book about Leonard Cohen, someone asked me why I thought Bob Dylan...

Read more...

Peter Robison: Flying Blind review – a story of decline and crawl

John Carvill

Thomas Pynchon’s saturnine '70s novel Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) begins with “[a] screaming [that] comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.”...

Read more...

Lucie Elven: The Weak Spot review - a cryptic modern fable

Izzy Smith

For most of us, fluttering our eyelids to convince a loved one to cook dinner is harmless meddling. Complimenting our boss on their new coat before asking for a promotion is necessary cunning. For...

Read more...

Sarah Moss: The Fell review - a dark night on the hills

India Lewis

Sarah Moss’s new novel is a slim snapshot of a moment of fear and danger in the year of Covid. That year when judgement and recrimination ruled, and neighbourly feeling was in short supply. It is...

Read more...

Pages

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

The future of Arts Journalism

 

You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!

We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £33,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d

And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.

 

latest in today

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

Samuel Arbesman: The Magic of Code review - the spark ages

The slightly overwrought subtitle gives a good indication how computer enthusiast Sam Arbesman treats his subject. Software, written...

Album: Mary Halvorson - About Ghosts

Although Mary Halvorson leads the sextet Amaryllis on About Ghosts, instrumentally, she does not place her guitar to the fore. The first...

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bridge Theatre review - Nick...

It’s a sign of the inroads that the term “immersive” has made in theatreland that it now gets jokily namedropped at the...

Saul, Glyndebourne review - playful, visually ravishing desc...

This thrilling production of Saul takes Handel’s dramatisation of the Bible’s first Book of Samuel and paints it in...

theartsdesk at the Dublin International Chamber Music Festiv...

If, like me, chamber music isn’t your most frequent home, there are bound to be revelations of what for many are known masterpieces. Mine in...

Album: Marina - Princess of Power

Marina Diamandis is a proper pop star, brilliantly full-on...

The Gold, Series 2, BBC One review - back on the trail of th...

The first series of The Gold in 2023 was received rapturously, though apparently it only told one half of the story of the 1983 Brink’s-...

Eva Quartet, St Cyprian's review - polyphonic bliss

Eva Quartet are four outstanding Bulgarian voices of polyphonic purity and depth, drawn from the legendary choir Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares, who...

Album: Mary Chapin Carpenter - Personal History

In those seemingly long-ago times of loneliness and lockdown, artists around the world invited us into their kitchens and living rooms as they...

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