book reviews and features
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... |
Courttia Newland: A River Called Time review - an ethereality check
Tuesday, 05 January 2021
It is near impossible to imagine what the world would look like today if slavery and colonialism had... Read more... |
Best of 2020: Books
Thursday, 31 December 2020
Stuck in our homes for most of this year, we found comfort and escape from books in ways unprecedented in 2020. The chance to dwell in alternative spaces, or inhabit different rhythms of living.... Read more... |
Book extract: Fat by Hanne Blank
Wednesday, 23 December 2020
"Ugh, I just feel so fat today," the woman near me in the locker room says to her friend as they get dressed after their workout. I look over – discreetly, as one does – to catch a glimpse of the... Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Jeff Young: Wild Twin review - a box of tricks
The writer, performer, and lecturer Jeff Young’s latest, Wild Twin, tells – ostensibly – the story of his barefoot, Beat-imitative...
Album: The Innocence Mission - Midwinter Swimmers
A sycamore tree is described to an appaloosa horse before it is mounted to ride off to visit a friend. The thread used for sewing evokes a map...
Witches review - beyond the broomstick, the cat, and the po...
From James I’s campaign to wipe out witchery to the feuding sister sorceresses of The Wizard of Oz and the new film musical ...
EFG London Jazz Festival round-up review - youth, age, and t...
Jazz music crosses, mixes and unites generations, and the 10 concerts I’ve seen at this year’s EFG London Jazz Festival (out of more than 300 in...
First Person: singer-songwriter Sam Amidon on working in Din...
Walking in the morning from my Airbnb along the road in West Kerry...
EFG London Jazz Festival 2024 round-up review - from Korean...
November can be a month to hunker down for the onset of winter and its weather, and where better to do that than in one of the myriad venues...
All's Well That Ends Well, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse revi...
"All’s well that ends well". Sounds like the kind of phrase a guilty parent says to a disappointed child after they’ve been caught...
Rajakesar, Selaocoe, The Hermes Experiment, Wigmore Hall rev...
There were points when this concert felt like the musical equivalent of watching the atom...
Album: Alice Ivy - Do What Makes You Happy
What’s to be said about an album that’s half well-executed body-moving,...