book reviews and features
Luis Sagasti: A Musical Offering review – the sounds of silenceSunday, 19 July 2020
Luis Sagasti attends closely to the silence that precedes, pauses, and follows music in this mesmeric collage of stories inspired by the sounds that humans – and animals, and stars – create. Like... Read more... |
Bette Howland: Blue in Chicago review – the city on trial, with the writer as witnessTuesday, 07 July 2020
You feel at times, while reading the collection Blue in Chicago, that Bette Howland might have missed her vocation... Read more... |
Terri White: Coming Undone review - a British journalist unravels in NYCSunday, 05 July 2020
The journalistic addiction-memoir is a crowded genre these days: Details editor Dan Perez chronicles his massive intake of Vicodin and other opioids in As Needed for Pain; ... Read more... |
Camille Laurens: Little Dancer Aged Fourteen review - the story of a sculptureSunday, 05 July 2020
Edgar Degas is famous for his depictions of ballet dancers. His drawings, paintings and sculptures of young... Read more... |
Tahar Ben Jelloun: The Punishment review - triumph over tortureSunday, 28 June 2020
In July 1966, Tahar Ben Jelloun’s life changed. As punishment for participating in a peaceful student demonstration against the authoritarian King Hassan II of... Read more... |
A. Kendra Greene: The Museum of Whales You Will Never See review - a thoughtful museum pieceSaturday, 27 June 2020
The Museum of Whales is an unfolding: a slow process of describing a country, its people, and its past through its esoteric and bizarre museums. The book is structured into galleries... Read more... |
Joseph Mazur: The Clock Mirage review – brief histories of timeSunday, 21 June 2020
The Greek philosopher Zeno’s paradoxes, which have plagued thinkers for around 2500 years, tell us that super-speedy Achilles can never outrun the tortoise and that an arrow in flight must always... Read more... |
Margarita García Robayo: Holiday Heart review – understated and acuteSunday, 14 June 2020
The epigraph chosen for Holiday Heart locates the book within the tense of an “afterwards”: not passion, but what follows, the wakeful lull and wide-eyed studying of another, in which... Read more... |
Yuri Herrera: A Silent Fury review – the fire last timeSunday, 14 June 2020
History, as protestors around the world currently insist, can be the art of forgetting – and erasure – as much as of memory. Although it explores a single incident from a century ago, Yuri Herrera... Read more... |
Book extract: Holiday Heart by Margarita García Robayo translated by Charlotte CoombeSunday, 07 June 2020
Holiday heart, instead of sentimental love discovered on vacation, describes a faltering organ, overloaded from excess consumption: a heart at risk. In Margarita Garcia Robayo’s brilliantly... Read more... |
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