book reviews and features
Marie Darrieussecq: Sleepless review - in search of lost sleep
Thursday, 17 August 2023
“I lost sleep.” So begins Marie Darrieussecq’s elegantly fitful book, Sleepless, now perceptively translated into... Read more... |
Tony Williams: Cole the Magnificent - fantastical tale blends myth, poetry and comedy
Tuesday, 15 August 2023
Cole the Magnificent is a picaresque, fantastical tale of the life (or lives) of a man, Cole, following... Read more... |
Masha Karp: George Orwell and Russia review - dystopia's reality
Thursday, 10 August 2023
The war in Ukraine, which Russia’s President Vladimir Putin insists on calling a “special military operation”, may have given fresh urgency to... Read more... |
Henry Hoke: Open Throat review - if a lion could speak
Wednesday, 09 August 2023
I approached Henry Hoke’s fifth book, Open Throat, with some trepidation. A slim novel (156 pages), it... Read more... |
First Person: Marc Burrows on getting to know Sir Terry Pratchett
Tuesday, 01 August 2023
In a very real sense, Terry Pratchett taught me how to write. I first came across his work when I was 12 years old, in the early 90s. My parents had been given copies of two of the earliest... Read more... |
Lorrie Moore: I am Homeless If This is Not My Home review - between this world and the next
Thursday, 27 July 2023
Lorrie Moore’s brief but haunting I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home is a bizarre, unsettling read. At times it’s a road trip, at others a romance, then supernatural horror, Greek... Read more... |
Nick Laird: Up Late review - attention lapses
Tuesday, 18 July 2023
A few pages before the titular poem of Up Late, Nick Laird describes a haircut in a bathroom mirror, and finds a possible art form reflected back: "something like a poem / glances back /... Read more... |
Extract: Bacon in Moscow by James Birch
Friday, 07 July 2023
In 1988, James Birch – curator, art dealer, and gallery owner – took Francis Bacon to Moscow. It was, as he writes, "an unimaginable intrusion of Western Culture into the heart of the Soviet... Read more... |
Fiona Maddocks: Goodbye Russia - Rachmaninoff in Exile review - an affectionate biographical portrait
Wednesday, 28 June 2023
In 1917, in the face of the Bolshevik revolution closing in on his country estate, Rachmaninoff fled Russia, never to return. He was 44, at his peak as composer, pianist and conductor, but spent... Read more... |
Jacqueline Rose: The Plague review - tracing our response to tragedy
Saturday, 17 June 2023
In The Plague: Living Death in Our Times, Jacqueline Rose makes a surprising pivot from her usual topics – Sylvia Plath, children’s fiction, Zionism, to name a few – to throw a spotlight... 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?
latest in today
Songs We Carry, Ana Silvera and Saied Silbak, Kings Place re...
As the Middle East continues to fragment in hate and horror, a tragic unfolding of events with roots reaching back to the middle of the last...
Music Reissues Weekly: The Devil Rides In - Spellbinding Sat...
Just over two weeks before Christmas 1967, The Rolling Stones issued Their Satanic Majesties Request. The album’s title appeared to serve...
Things Will Be Different review - lost in the past
Time-travel is a trap in debutante Michael Felker’s tender sf two-hander, whose title’s grim irony becomes gradually apparent.
There’s...
Joan, ITV1 review - the roller-coaster career of a 1980s jew...
If you’re looking for an advertisement for how crime doesn’t pay, Joan will do very nicely....
National Ballet of Canada, Sadler's Wells review - see...
What to expect of the National Ballet of Canada since its last...
Lear, Barbican Theatre review - a very stormy saga, Korean-s...
What do the cult TV show Squid Game and National Changgeuk Company of Korea’s Lear have in common? Oddly, a K-Pop...
Album: Goat - Goat
With the Pagan festival of Mabon and the Autumnal Equinox only just past us, it seems appropriate for Scandi psychedelic rockers, Goat to provide...
Monet and London, Courtauld Gallery review - utterly sublime...
In September 1899, Claude Monet booked into a room at the Savoy Hotel. From there he had a good view of Waterloo Bridge and the south bank beyond...
Joker: Folie à Deux review - supervillainy laid low
“Psychopaths sell like hotcakes,” William Holden observed in Sunset Boulevard in 1950, and those individuals have been doing...
A Tupperware of Ashes, National Theatre review - family and...
Queenie is in trouble. Bad trouble. For about a year now, this 68-year-old Indian woman has been forgetful. Losing her car keys; burning rice in...