book reviews and features
Roma Agrawal: Built review - solid love![]()
"I've been known to stroke concrete," writes self-professed geek Roma Agrawal – and from the very beginning of her memoir-cum-introduction... Read more... |
Joe Dunthorne: The Adulterants review - a richly illuminating comedy of disappointment![]()
Joe Dunthorne's debut novel Submarine (2008) burrowed plausibly inside the head of a teenager... Read more... |
Afua Hirsch: Brit(ish) review - essential reading on identity![]()
Usually extracts in newspapers should stimulate the appetite of the reader to get with it; this is a rare moment when the glimpses afforded to Afua Hirsch’s Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and... Read more... |
Julian Barnes: The Only Story review - passion, pain and sorrow in Surrey![]()
From his debut Metroland, right up to the Man Booker-winning The Sense of an Ending, the prospect of a road not taken has haunted the mild and mediocre narrators of Julian Barnes... Read more... |
Dave Eggers: The Monk of Mokha review - how to become a grand master of coffee![]()
A macchiato may never taste the same again. If you’ve ever wondered about the politics and history behind your cup of designer coffee, The Monk of Mokha will answer all your questions,... Read more... |
Bruno Maçães: The Dawn of Eurasia review - middle of nowhere![]()
Part travelogue and part broad analysis of the current and future challenges facing the EU, the premise of Bruno Maçães’s new book The Dawn of Eurasia is to “use travel to provide an... Read more... |
David Lodge: Writer’s Luck - A Memoir 1976-1991 review - literary days, in detail![]()
Metaphor, metonymy, simile and synecdoche, anyone? FR Leavis, Roman Jakobson, Jacques Derrida, Frank Kermode? If any of this, and more, turns you on, this lengthy... Read more... |
Nick Coleman: Voices - How a Great Singer Can Change Your Life, review - earworms explored![]()
Readers familiar with Nick Coleman’s 2012 memoir The Train in the Night will know before embarking on this book that the author suffered the worst possible fate for a music journalist:... Read more... |
Best of 2017: Books![]()
With a clownish bully currently installed in the White House, the 2017 Man Booker Prize aptly went to a... Read more... |
Nicholas Blincoe: Bethlehem - Biography of a Town review - too few wise men but remarkable women![]()
Suitably enough, Nicholas Blincoe begins his personal ... Read more... |
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