fri 27/06/2025

book reviews and features

Sudhir Hazareesingh: Black Spartacus review – the life, and thought, of the first black super-hero

Boyd Tonkin

The former slave, and coachman on a sugar plantation, began one of his early public proclamations in a typically defiant vein: “I am Toussaint Louverture, you have perhaps heard my name.” At that...

Read more...

Ian Williams: Reproduction review - a dazzling kaleidoscope of life's tragicomedy

Daniel Lewis

Ian Williams’s writing is always in motion. For his 2012 poetry collection Personals, and since, he has...

Read more...

Emma Cline: Daddy review - scintillating short stories by the author of The Girls

Markie Robson-Scott

The Girls, Emma Cline’s acclaimed debut novel of 2016, was billed as a story based on the Manson murders. But in fact, like some of the stories in Daddy, her new short-story...

Read more...

Naomi Klein: On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal review - an unapologetic manifesto

James Dowsett

On Fire brings together a decade’s worth of dispatches from the frontline of the...

Read more...

James Rebanks: English Pastoral, An Inheritance review - a manifesto for a radical agricultural rethink

India Lewis

Coming from a family of farmers, with periods of time spent working on a farm in the past ten years, I found James Rebanks’ English Pastoral: An Inheritance to be a highly...

Read more...

William Feaver: The Lives of Lucian Freud: Fame 1968-2011 review - mesmerising, exhaustive and obsessively detailed

Marina Vaizey

This is a biography like no other, more or less dictated by...

Read more...

Nick Hornby: Just Like You review - funny but inauthentic Brexit novel

Sarah Collins

Nick Hornby’s protagonists are worlds apart. Joseph is a Black 22-year-old with a “portfolio career", which includes shift work at a butcher’s and a leisure centre and the distant dream of...

Read more...

Susanna Clarke: Piranesi review - the mysteries of the House

Boyd Tonkin

The man called Piranesi lives in a House (he likes Capital Letters, and he tells the story). This House consists of an endless labyrinth, like “an infinite series of classical buildings knitted...

Read more...

Matthew Sperling: Viral review - whip-smart satire about the void at the heart of tech

Daniel Lewis

Strange, that novels like this, which seem to have their finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist, already...

Read more...

Naomi Booth: Exit Management review - unwrapping life's unpleasantness

Lydia Bunt

When you try to get rid of something, it comes back to bite you – so says Naomi Booth in her new novel Exit Management. It’s one of...

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 £49,000 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

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Chicken Town review - sluggish rural comedy with few laughs...

Fans of the character comedian Graham Fellows will possibly turn up for this British film starring the man who created the punk parody...

Album: Lorde - Virgin

Lorde’s trajectory is continually fascinating. From the minimalist, sparse electropop of...

Aldeburgh Festival, Weekend 2 review - nine premieres, three...

Actually it was a Thursday evening to Saturday experience, but what riches in seven concerts. The only Britten I heard was one of the S...

F1: The Movie review - Brad Pitt rolls back the years as mav...

As producer Jerry Bruckheimer cautioned a preview audience, “Remember, this is not a documentary. It’s a movie.” Bruckheimer teamed up with...

Bleak landscapes and banjos: composer Bernard Hughes discus...

Composer Bernard Hughes first met director Richard Bracewell when working on the film Bill, a 2015 Horrible Histories take on...

Album: Bruce Springsteen - Tracks II: The Lost Albums

It’s somewhat surprising to read that The Boss wasn’t happy with Born in the USA. After all, it was –...

Brad Mehldau Trio, St George's Bristol review - exquisi...

There's something luminous about the Brad Mehldau Trio. The music they create with such joy shines with a special clarity, in which ever-changing...

Dangerous Matter, RNCM, Manchester review - opera meets scie...

Opera can take many forms and fulfil many purposes: this chamber opera by Zakiya Leeming and Sam Redway is about vaccination. Based on history, it...

Ian Leslie: John and Paul - A Love Story in Songs review - h...

Do we need any more Beatles books? The answer is: that’s the wrong question. What we need is more Beatles books that are worth reading. As the...

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