book reviews and features
Andrew Murray: Is Socialism Possible in Britain? review - what went wrong and why Corbynism failed
Tuesday, 04 October 2022
The title of Andrew Murray’s new book poses a question that also vexed Friedrich Engels over 130 years ago. The German co-... Read more... |
Savala Nolan: Don't Let It Get You Down review - finding voice in the liminal
Thursday, 29 September 2022
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 – ... Read more... |
Yiyun Li: The Book of Goose - fame, reality and two teenage French girls
Wednesday, 28 September 2022
The Book of Goose, Yiyun Li’s fifth novel, is the gripping story of two teenage French girls and their... Read more... |
Bronwyn Adcock: Currowan review - a fire foretold, a warning delivered
Tuesday, 27 September 2022
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... Read more... |
'The first thing I do when I wake up is write.' Hilary Mantel, 1952-2022
Friday, 23 September 2022
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... Read more... |
Ken Auletta: Hollywood Ending - Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence review - if the tide had turned in 2002...
Wednesday, 07 September 2022
It was not until October 2017 that The New York Times ran a... Read more... |
Olivier Guez: The Disappearance of Josef Mengele review - the Nazi who was never found
Thursday, 01 September 2022
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... Read more... |
Amalie Smith: Thread Ripper review - the tangled web we weave
Wednesday, 03 August 2022
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. ... Read more... |
Phoebe Power: Book of Days review - the clack of walking poles, the clink of scallop shell
Tuesday, 26 July 2022
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... Read more... |
Jessie Burton: The House of Fortune review - a muted, sensitive sequel
Tuesday, 05 July 2022
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... Read more... |
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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 ...