book reviews and features
Emma Dibdin: 'Being scared of something is a sign you should write about it'
Saturday, 05 August 2017
When I began writing my first novel four years ago, there were a few ideas that had coalesced in my mind. I... Read more... |
Teju Cole: Blind Spot review - haunting hybrid of words and images
Sunday, 30 July 2017
As a photographer, Teju Cole has a penchant for the scuffed and distressed surfaces, materials and tools that form rectilinear patterns on construction sites. Opposite a shot of scaffolding,... Read more... |
Lisa Jewell: 'I’d never killed anyone before'
Sunday, 30 July 2017
I started writing my first novel in 1995. I was 27 and I’d just come out of a dark, dark marriage to a... Read more... |
h.Club 100 Awards: Publishing and Writing - it's not all about the mainstream
Tuesday, 25 July 2017
For more than three decades I reported on the publishing industry as a business journalist. The books, the deals, the authors and the publishers, plus the bookshops that sold then. When I started... Read more... |
Peter Høeg: The Susan Effect review - Nordic noir turns surreal
Sunday, 23 July 2017
Peter Høeg is still overwhelmingly known for a novel published a quarter of a century ago. Miss Smilla’s... Read more... |
Sarah Hall: Madame Zero review – eerie tales of calamity and change
Sunday, 16 July 2017
Five thousand miles away from her native Lake District, I first understood the eerie magnetism of Sarah Hall’s fiction. As a regional judge for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, I’d travelled to... Read more... |
Enter theartsdesk's Young Reviewer of the Year Award
Saturday, 15 July 2017
The Hospital Club’s annual h.Club100 awards celebrate the most influential and innovative people working in the UK’s creative industries, with nominations from the worlds of film and fashion, art... Read more... |
Michael Connelly: The Late Show review - mesmerising and believable characters
Sunday, 09 July 2017
Readers have been committed fans since 1992, when the sometime crime reporter... Read more... |
Danny Goldberg: In Search of the Lost Chord review - 1967 well remembered
Sunday, 09 July 2017
I was 10 in 1967 though I remember much about the year, indeed about the era, not least the release of Sgt Pepper and the first live global satellite broadcast, when the... Read more... |
Eureka: novelist Anthony Quinn on completing his acclaimed trilogy
Sunday, 02 July 2017
I am intrigued by those writers who plan their novels with the bristling rigour of a military strategist,... Read more... |
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latest in today
Two Billion Beats, Orange Tree Theatre review - lively, but...
Do the right thing! But doing the right thing isn’t easy – especially if you are a teen. And a female teen who is being pressurised by your mother...
January review - the end is nigh in vampirised Bulgaria
At their best, horror movies reflect destabilisation caused by cracks in the social fabric. The crack indicated in the documentarist Andrey...
Album: Lisa O'Neill - All of This Is Chance
Lisa O’Neill is a part of the new wave of Irish contemporary folk artists, one that encompasses the likes of Lankum, Ye Vagabonds...
Leonskaja, Staatskapelle Streichquartett, Wigmore Hall / Sec...
It’s dangerous to claim a sense of absolute rightness about a musical performance; that could mean no more than responding to an interpretation...
Othello, Lyric Hammersmith review - Frantic Assembly's...
Frantic Assembly’s Othello, originally co-developed with the Lyric in 2008, is back in its third iteration, and it’s still not...
Blu-ray: The War Trilogy - Three Films by Andrzej Wajda
Watching these harrowing films in rapid succession allows us to watch a great...
Ólafsson, LPO, Gardner, RFH review - spirit of delight
This concert was advertised as the completion of an Elgar symphony cycle, though in the absence of the reconstructed Third, that meant the second...
Sound of the Underground, Royal Court review - loud and triu...
Ever been to a queer club? You know, drag cabaret night at Madame Jojo’s, or the Black Cap or Her Upstairs. No? Well, not to worry – the...
Gerhardt, BBC Philharmonic, Gernon, Bridgewater Hall, Manche...
Ben Gernon’s calm and clear way of conducting an orchestra (something he once told me he’d observed in the work of his mentor, Colin Davis) is...
Album: Robert Forster - The Candle and the Flame
Reflections on how the past relates to now suffuse The Candle and the Flame. The album’s closing track is “When I Was a Young Man.” When...