book reviews and features
Nalini Singh: A Madness of Sunshine review – a lacklustre thriller
Sunday, 15 December 2019
Nalini Singh's debut thriller thrusts us into Golden Cove, a small coastal town in New Zealand at "the... Read more... |
Eva Meijer: Animal Languages review - do you talk crow?
Sunday, 15 December 2019
Animal intelligence has come to the fore as an essential and fashionable subject for study. Dolphins, elephants, bees, prairie dogs, gannets, whales, baboons, wolves, parrots, bats – not mention... Read more... |
Sema Kaygusuz: Every Fire You Tend review – an education in grief
Sunday, 15 December 2019
In March 1937, the government of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk instigated what it called a “disciplinary campaign” against the Zaza-speaking Alevi Kurds in the Dersim region of eastern... Read more... |
Elizabeth Strout: Olive, Again review - compassion, honesty and community
Sunday, 01 December 2019
Elizabeth Strout is fond of plain titles. Much as her stories are interested in subtlety – the quiet complications and contradictions of ordinary life – her books advertise themselves by means of... Read more... |
Ho Sok Fong: Lake Like A Mirror review - an intoxicating collection
Sunday, 01 December 2019
“Truth was further from safety than two islands at opposite ends of the earth,” proclaims the narrator of ‘Lake Like A Mirror’, the titular short... Read more... |
John Grisham: The Guardians review - nail-bitingly good
Sunday, 24 November 2019
Some two million Americans are currently in prison in America. A disproportionate number are black and nearly 200,... Read more... |
Robert Service: Kremlin Winter review – behind Putin's masks
Sunday, 24 November 2019
When U.S. president George W. Bush looked into the eyes of Vladimir Putin he famously “saw his soul”. In his latest meditation on modern... Read more... |
Ted Gioia: Music: A Subversive History review – an informative, giddying ride
Sunday, 17 November 2019
People who derive comfort from Classic FM’s strapline that European classical music is “The World's Greatest Music" are going to have a major problem with this book. American music historian... Read more... |
Book extract: Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich
Friday, 15 November 2019
Between 1991 to 2012, Belorussian journalist and oral historian Svetlana Alexievich travelled the countries that constituted the former... Read more... |
Book extract: Second-Hand Time by Svetlana Alexievich
Wednesday, 13 November 2019
Between 1991 to 2012, Belorussian journalist and oral historian Svetlana Alexievich travelled the countries that constituted the former... Read more... |
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Stephen review - a breathtakingly good first feature by a mu...
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Album: Mdou Moctar - Funeral for Justice
Despite its title, Mdou Moctar’s new album is no slow-paced mournful dirge. In fact, it is louder, faster and more overtly political than any of...
Blue Lights Series 2, BBC One review - still our best cop sh...
The first season of Blue Nights was so close to ...
Sabine Devieilhe, Mathieu Pordoy, Wigmore Hall review - ench...
Sabine Devieilhe, as with many other great sopranos, elicits much fan worship, with no less than three encores at her recent Wigmore Hall recital...
Jonn Elledge: A History of the World in 47 Borders review -...
In A History of the World in 47 Borders, Jonn Elledge takes an ostensibly dry subject – how maps and boundaries have shaped our world –...
DVD/Blu-Ray: Priscilla
There’s a scene in Priscilla where Elvis stands above his wife, who is scrambling to put her clothes in a suitcase. Priscilla has just...
Špaček, BBC Philharmonic, Bihlmaier, Bridgewater Hall, Manch...
Billed as a “Viennese Whirl”, this programme showed that there are different kinds of music that may be known to the orchestral canon as coming...
Banging Denmark, Finborough Theatre review - lively but conf...
What would happen if a notorious misogynist actually fell in love? With a glacial Danish librarian? And decided his best means of...
Album: Fred Hersch - Silent, Listening
The previous solo piano solo album from Fred Hersch, one of the world’s great...