book reviews and features
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... |
Katya Adaui: Here Be Icebergs review - odd relations
Friday, 01 July 2022
The title of Katya Adaui’s debut collection in English is taken from one of the 12 short stories it contains: an... Read more... |
Stanislav Aseyev: In Isolation - Dispatches from Occupied Donbas review - journeys through space and time in Ukraine
Wednesday, 29 June 2022
Stanislav Aseyev is a Ukrainian writer who came in from the cold. Until the spring of 2014, he was an aspiring... Read more... |
Pages
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
The future of Arts Journalism
You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!
We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £33,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d
And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.
latest in today
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Music Reissues Weekly: Diggin' For Gold Volume 14 - Nor...
In 1964, the Norwegian division of Philips Records began issuing singles labelled “Bergen Beat.” The picture sleeves of 45s by Davy Dean and the...
The Monkey review - a grisly wind-up
Longlegs’ trapdoor ending snapped tight on its clammy Lynchian mood, reconfiguring its Silence of the Lambs serial-killer yarn...
Richard II, Bridge Theatre review - handsomely mounted, emot...
Screen stardom is generally anointed at the box office so it's a very real delight to find the fast-rising Jonathan Bailey taking time out from...
Backstroke, Donmar Warehouse review - a complex journey thro...
The theatre director Anna Mackmin has...
Donald Rodney: Visceral Canker, Whitechapel Gallery review -...
Donald Rodney’s most moving work is a photograph titled In the House of My Father, 1997 (main picture). Nestling in the...
Album: Heather Nova - Breath and Air
With her 13th studio album, Heather Nova delivers what you might expect from one of the 90s' most distinctive alternative voices – though longtime...
Bach's Mass in B minor, The English Concert, Bezuidenho...
If not quite his last will and testament, the work now known as Bach’s Mass in B Minor represents a definitive show-reel or sample-book...
Light of Passage, Royal Ballet review - Crystal Pite’s cosmi...
“Cry sorrow, sorrow, but let the good prevail”. The refrain of Aeschylus’s chorus near the start of the Oresteia is alive and honoured in...