book reviews and features
Camille Laurens: Little Dancer Aged Fourteen review - the story of a sculpture
Sunday, 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 torture
Sunday, 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 piece
Saturday, 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 time
Sunday, 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 acute
Sunday, 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 time
Sunday, 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 Coombe
Sunday, 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... |
Matthew Kneale: Pilgrims review – adventures on the road to Rome
Sunday, 31 May 2020
Some things really never change. After a blatant cheat perpetrated by a well-connected lout, one of the humblest pilgrims in Matthew Kneale’s band reminds us that “rich folks’ justice is a penny... Read more... |
Moyra Davey: Index Cards review – fragments of the artist
Sunday, 31 May 2020
Moyra Davey’s biographical note, included in Fitzcarraldo Editions’ copy of Index Cards, describes “a New... Read more... |
Keiichiro Hirano: A Man review - the best kind of thriller
Sunday, 31 May 2020
Keiichiro Hirano’s A Man has all the trappings of a gripping detective story: a bereaved wife, a... 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...
Music Reissues Weekly: John Cale - The Academy in Peril, Par...
The return to shops of a consecutive sequence of five of John Cale's Seventies albums through different labels is undoubtedly coincidental. All...
Conclave review - secrets and lies in the Vatican's inn...
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Album: Lucinda Williams Sings The Beatles from Abbey Road
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Expendable, Royal Court review - intensely felt family drama
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The Purists, Kiln Theatre review - warm, witty, thoughtful a...
Watching Dan McCabe’s 2019 play, older folk might be reminded of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band’s indelible lyrics, “Can blue men sing the...