book reviews and features
Extract: David Lan's As If By Chance
Monday, 14 June 2021
In June 2001 the London Festival of International Theatre brought Amir Nizar Zuabi’s Alive from ... Read more... |
Elinor Cleghorn: Unwell Women review – misunderstanding and misdiagnosis
Monday, 14 June 2021
I’m one of the women in the pages of Elinor Cleghorn’s new history of the female body, Unwell Women: A Journey Through Medicine and Myth in a Man-Made World. I’ve dealt with strange... Read more... |
Ed Miliband: Go Big - How to Fix Our World review - reasons to hope
Monday, 07 June 2021
Almost alone among my friends, I liked and admired Ed Miliband, renewing my on-off relationship with the Labour... Read more... |
Nichola Raihani: The Social Instinct review - the habits of co-operation
Friday, 04 June 2021
An army on the move must be as disturbing as it is, on occasion, inspiring. In E.L. Doctorow’s startlingly good civil war novel The March, General Sherman’s column proceeds inexorably... Read more... |
Kylie Whitehead: Absorbed review - boundary-blurry, darkly funny debut
Wednesday, 02 June 2021
Absorbed meets Allison at the end of her relationship with Owen. They are at a New Year's Eve party when she realises that their 10-year partnership has wound down. So far, so normal. But... Read more... |
Rosie Wilby: The Breakup Monologues review - do breakups make us stronger, better people?
Tuesday, 01 June 2021
According to Rosie Wilby, “breaking up and staying together are simply two sides of the same coin. They are a flick of a switch apart, separated only by one fleeting moment of madness, or perhaps... Read more... |
Natasha Brown: Assembly review - turning personal crisis into perfect criticism
Monday, 31 May 2021
School assembly: one of the many great traditions to be upended by the pandemic. According to this... Read more... |
Esther Freud: I Couldn't Love You More review - the alternative history of a pregnancy
Friday, 28 May 2021
The glamorous unreliability of Esther Freud’s father, Lucian Freud, is an inescapable force in her... Read more... |
Music books to end lockdown: Sam Lee, Hawkwind, Dylan, Richard Thompson, and the Electric Muses
Friday, 14 May 2021
It won’t be long now before concert halls and back rooms, arts centres and festival grounds fill with people again, and... Read more... |
Sam Riviere: Dead Souls review – whip-smart literary satire with a techno tinge
Thursday, 13 May 2021
In 1992 Martin Amis published a story, “Career Move”, in which the writers of sensational screenplays with titles like Decimator and Offensive from Qasar 13 read their work to... Read more... |
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latest in today
London Tide, National Theatre review - haunting moody river...
“He do the police in different voices.” If ever one phrase summed up a work of fiction, and the art of its writer, then surely it is this...
Jonathan Pie, Duke of York's Theatre review - spoof pol...
If you don't like sweary comics – Jonathan Pie uses the c-word liberally – then this may not be the show for you. In fact if you're a Tory, ditto...
Baby Reindeer, Netflix review - a misery memoir disturbingly...
Richard Gadd won an Edinburgh Comedy Award in 2016 with...
Machinal, The Old Vic review - note-perfect pity and terror
Virtuosity and a wildly beating heart are compatible in Richard Jones’s finely calibrated production of Renaissance woman Sophie Treadwell’s ...
Fantastic Machine review - photography's story from one...
The first photograph was taken nearly 200 years ago in France by Joseph Niépce, and the first picture of a person was taken in Paris by Louis...
Simon Boccanegra, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester...
If ever more evidence were needed of Sir Mark Elder’s untiring zest for exploration and love of the thrill of live opera performance, it was this...
All You Need Is Death review - a future folk horror classic
Music, when the singer’s voice dies away, vibrates in the memory. In the hypnotic new Irish horror film All You Need Is Death, those who...
Album: Jonny Drop • Andrew Ashong - The Puzzle Dust
As I sat down to write this review, the sun came out. It was a salutory reminder of the importance of context: where I’d previously thought “mmm,...
theartsdesk on Vinyl: Record Store Day Special 2024
Record Store Day is tomorrow! At theartsdesk on Vinyl...
If Only I Could Hibernate review - kids in grinding poverty...
Teenage Ulzii (Battsooj Uurtsaikh in an elegantly restrained performance) is looking after his little sister and brother in Ulaanbaatar after...