book reviews and features
Hilary Fannin: The Weight of Love review – unravelling knotty lives
Sunday, 15 March 2020
The relationship between Joe, Robin and Ruth is far from your average love triangle. On the face of it, Robin loves Ruth, but after introducing her to his charismatic friend Joe – an artist and... Read more... |
Rebecca Solnit: Recollections of My Non-Existence review - feminism, hope and the great American West
Sunday, 08 March 2020
Rebecca Solnit’s autobiography, Recollections of My Non-Existence, is just as you might expect it to be – tangential, changeable, deeply feminist, and imbued with a sense of hope that... Read more... |
Joanna Trollope: Mum & Dad review - redemption in Spain
Sunday, 08 March 2020
In common with her literary forebear, Joanna Trollope’s light hand refrains from the introverted angst so common in contemporary novels. Her immensely readable, witty renderings of English... Read more... |
Christos Tsiolkas: Damascus review - the author of The Slap goes biblical
Sunday, 01 March 2020
To Christos Tsiolkas fans expecting something in the vein of his riveting bestsellers The Slap and Barracuda, the sixth novel by this Australian writer may come as a shock. We're... Read more... |
Michael Nath: The Treatment review - 'deeds, and language, such as men do use'
Sunday, 01 March 2020
Great writing about – or set in – London has one thing in common: voice. It’s tuned into the city’s multiple... Read more... |
Pete Paphides: Broken Greek review - top of the pop memoirs
Sunday, 01 March 2020
Think of the phrase “music ... Read more... |
'You’re Jewish. With a name like Neumann, you have to be'
Monday, 24 February 2020
It was during my first week at Tufts University in America, when I was 17, that I was told by a stranger that I was... Read more... |
Imagining Ireland, Barbican review - raising women's voices
Monday, 24 February 2020
Recent politics surround the EU and nationhood, fantasies of Irish Sea bridges and trading... Read more... |
Panikos Panayi: Migrant City review – the capital of the world
Sunday, 23 February 2020
Some menus never change. In 1910, the Loyal British Waiters Society came into being, prompted by “xenophobic resentment at the dominance of foreigners in the restaurant trade”. London’s German... Read more... |
Patricia Grace: Potiki review – a searching examination of human nature
Sunday, 23 February 2020
With the publication of her first work, Waiariki (1975), Patricia Grace became the author of the first ever collection of short stories by a Māori woman. In the four-and-a-half decades... Read more... |
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latest in today
Picnic at the Castle review - entertaining mixed bill
Of all the outdoor spaces being utilised to keep live performance going in this maddest of years, Warwick Castle is surely among the most striking...
Nocturnal review - an impossible love
The most painterly and ominous sequence in Nocturnal naturally occurs at night. Until recently strangers, 33-year-old Pete (Cosmo Jarvis...
Album: Alicia Keys - Alicia
Alicia Keys is a puzzling mixture. On the one hand she’s the hyper-achieving, multi-platinum, 752-Grammy-winning...
Rocks review - impressively well-crafted neo-realist drama
Rocks is a beautifully made slice of neo-realist filmmaking which deserves to get a wide audience but may well slip off the radar in the...
GogolFest:Dream review - the best music festival of the summ...
GogolFest:Dream in Kherson, somewhere near the Crimea in...
Igor Levit, Wigmore Hall/Hill Quartet, Bandstand Chamber Fes...
An early hero of lockdown, livestreaming from his Berlin home in terrible sound at first, Igor Levit is a supreme example of how adaptable...
The Devil All The Time review – a test of faith in a Souther...
There’s no denying the Faulknerian ambition to the construction of Anthony Campos’ latest feature Devil All the Time...
Eavesdropping on Rattle, the LSO and Bartók’s Bluebeard
One source of advance information told us to expect a reduced version of...
Album: Fish - Weltschmerz
"This party's over" snarls Fish on Weltschmerz, and, this time, it seems the big man really means...
Alban Gerhardt, Markus Becker, Wigmore Hall review - long sh...
It wouldn’t be true to say I’d forgotten what a solo cello in a...