sun 10/12/2023

book reviews and features

Andrew Murray: Is Socialism Possible in Britain? review - what went wrong and why Corbynism failed

Hugh Barnes

The title of Andrew Murray’s new book poses a question that also vexed Friedrich Engels over 130 years ago. The German co-...

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Savala Nolan: Don't Let It Get You Down review - finding voice in the liminal

Hannah Hutching

Liminal: a word that conjures thresholds and between states. Caught between three languages – the adjective is a borrowing from the Latin that enters English by way of German – ...

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Yiyun Li: The Book of Goose - fame, reality and two teenage French girls

Markie Robson-Scott

The Book of Goose, Yiyun Li’s fifth novel, is the gripping story of two teenage French girls and their...

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Bronwyn Adcock: Currowan review - a fire foretold, a warning delivered

Harriet Mercer

In 2019 Australia endured the hottest, driest year since records began and their bushfire season escalated with unprecedented intensity. The fires and pyro-connective storms that swept the country...

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'The first thing I do when I wake up is write.' Hilary Mantel, 1952-2022

Jasper Rees

Hilary Mantel, who has died at the age of 70, was a maker of literary history. Wolf Hall, an action-packed 650-page brick of a book about the rise and rise of Thomas Cromwell, won...

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Ken Auletta: Hollywood Ending - Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence review - if the tide had turned in 2002...

Sebastian Scotney

It was not until October 2017 that The New York Times ran a...

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Olivier Guez: The Disappearance of Josef Mengele review - the Nazi who was never found

India Lewis

Bringing Olivier Guez’s novel The Disappearance of Josef Mengele on a beach holiday may seem like an odd choice (such is the lot of a reviewer). This incongruity transformed into...

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Amalie Smith: Thread Ripper review - the tangled web we weave

Hannah Hutching

Sitting in the park on a hot summer’s day, life began to imitate art. I had been soaking up the sun’s now overpowering rays for over an hour and was beginning to feel its radiating effects.

...

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Phoebe Power: Book of Days review - the clack of walking poles, the clink of scallop shell

Harriet Mercer

The word “shrine” somersaults me back to the path of the Camino de Santiago. I have lost count of the faces that smiled up from photos positioned in the hollow of trees, some with little plastic...

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Jessie Burton: The House of Fortune review - a muted, sensitive sequel

India Lewis

A sequel is always a hard thing to write, especially if the book that precedes it is a bestseller, adapted for television and read by more than a million people. Yet Jessie Burton’s The House...

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Music Reissues Weekly: Chelsea - The Step-Forward Years

On 21 June 1977, listeners to John Peel’s radio show heard a song titled “Pretty Vacant.” It wasn’t a preview of the forthcoming Sex Pistols...

Please Don't Destroy: Treasure of Foggy Mountain review...

Despite an ominous title, there’s always fair weather in the debut comic adventure film featuring Please Don’t Destroy, a NYC sketch...

Wonka review - a confusingly mixed bag of bonbons

As the 117 minutes of Wonka tick by, the question it poses gains momentum: who is this film actually for? Children of all ages...

Smyrna review - Greece at twilight

The Smyrna Catastrophe of 1922, in which tens of thousands of Greeks and Armenians were slaughtered by Turkish soldiers, is a topical subject...

The Peasants review - earthbound animation

After a few years of cinema, the wow factor of seeing actual things moving about on a screen wore off a bit and showmen saw that jump cuts...

Mathias Énard: The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers'...

"Death, as a general statement, is so easy of utterance, of belief", wrote Amy Levy, "it is only when we come face to face with it that we find...

Album: Samara Joy - A Joyful Holiday

This six-track EP on Verve/UMG brings the breakthrough year of 2023 for Samara Joy to a neat close. In February she won two Grammys, as Best New...

Monica review - sombre American drama

There’s a rich seam of folk stories about changelings, infants snatched from home and replaced with a substitute child, to the horror and...

Album: Cher - Christmas

I honestly never thought I'd add a Cher song to my painstakingly curated ...