book reviews and features
Mary Wellesley: Hidden Hands review - passion in the parchment
Wednesday, 13 October 2021
Outside Wales – even, perhaps, within it – few students will have run across the verse of Gwerful Mechain. The free-... Read more... |
Marcin Wicha: Things I Didn’t Throw Out review - the stories told by stacks of stuff
Tuesday, 12 October 2021
Marcin Wicha’s mother Joanna never talked about her death. A Jewish counsellor based in an office built on top of the rubble of the Warsaw Ghetto, her days were consumed by work and her passion... Read more... |
Jonathan Franzen: Crossroads review - can goodness ever be its own reward?
Monday, 11 October 2021
It’s Christmas 1971 in New Prospect, a suburb of Chicago, and pastor Russ Hildebrandt has plans for... Read more... |
Sarah Hall: Burntcoat review - love after the end of the world
Saturday, 09 October 2021
Sarah Hall’s Burntcoat is one of those new books with the unsettling quality of describing or... Read more... |
First Person: Andrea Levy's husband recalls her path toward becoming a novelist
Thursday, 07 October 2021
The opening sentence of Andrea’s 2010 historical novel The Long Song ... Read more... |
Wole Soyinka: Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth review – sprawling satire of modern-day Nigeria
Thursday, 07 October 2021
Eight-years passed between the publication of Wole Soyinka’s debut novel, The Interpreters (1965), and his second, Season of Anomy (1973). A lot happened in... Read more... |
Extract: The Breaks by Julietta Singh
Wednesday, 06 October 2021
How do we mother “at the end of the world”? Among the ruins of late capitalism, climate catastrophe, and entrenched white state violence? Julietta Singh “admit[s]... Read more... |
Ananyo Bhattacharya: The Man from the Future review - the man, the maths, the brain
Tuesday, 05 October 2021
Suppose I’m a novelist plotting a panoramic narrative through world-shaping moments of the first half of the 20th century. I’ll need a character who can visit a bunch of key sites. Göttingen in... Read more... |
Ruby Tandoh: Cook As You Are review - truly a trailblazer
Monday, 04 October 2021
Ever since her appearance on The Great British Bake Off in 2013, Ruby Tandoh has been a breath of fresh air to the food... Read more... |
10 Questions for writer Lucia Osborne-Crowley
Tuesday, 28 September 2021
Anyone familiar with psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk’s bestseller The Body Keeps the Score (2014) will recognise the ghost of his title in Lucia Osborne-Crowley’s My Body Keeps... Read more... |
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The Cherry Orchard, Windsor Theatre Royal, review - Tolstoy...
The cherry orchard in Anton Chekhov’s eponymous play is a...
Macbeth, Almeida Theatre review – vivid, but much too long
Remembering the months of lockdown, I can’t be the only person to thrill to this play’s opening lines, “When shall we three meet again?”, a phrase...
Manic Street Preachers, Brighton Dome review - solid gig occ...
There is a three song segment midway through Manic Street Preachers’ set which suddenly ramps everything up. For this brief while, the performance...
Tamestit, LSO, Ticciati, LSO St Luke's review - viola a...
Returning to LSO St Luke’s, formerly a beacon in the darkness of...
White Noise, Bridge Theatre review - provocative if not alwa...
"I can't sleep": So goes the fateful opening line of White Noise, the Suzan-Lori Parks play disturbing enough to spark many a restless...
Album: Coldplay - Music Of The Spheres
Chris Martin has talked, not for the first time, of this finally being the Coldplay era of “no rules or fear”. Swedish...
Album: Finneas - Optimist
This record is a heck of a metatextual experience to listen to. In releasing his debut album, 24 year old Finneas O’Connell is attempting to step...
Romeo and Juliet, Birmingham Royal Ballet & Royal Ballet...
Two households, both alike in dignity … and both launching their respective seasons with a production of...
Maximo Park, Saint Luke's and the Winged Ox, Glasgow -...
Time waits for no band, as Maximo Park’s lively singer Paul Smith opined early into his band’s set. “I am young and I am lost” he declared during...
Karine Polwart, Birmingham Town Hall Review: Expertly crafte...
With a few extra dates to her rescheduled UK tour, Scottish folk legend Karine Polwart returned to Birmingham Town Hall with some tunes from her...