book reviews and features
Pete Paphides: Broken Greek review - top of the pop memoirsSunday, 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 voicesMonday, 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 worldSunday, 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 natureSunday, 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... |
Eimear McBride: Strange Hotel review - keycards to the heart of a woman in flightSunday, 09 February 2020
Hotels in fiction can serve as places of desolation or discovery; as escape hatches, or else punishment blocks. In her third novel, Eimear McBride channels this ambivalence but annexes it to... Read more... |
Jenny Offill: Weather review - the low hum of misgivingSunday, 09 February 2020
Neatly contained, truncated by decisive white space, Jenny Offill’s paragraphs – they have been called “fragments” and even “stanzas” – might be the first thing you notice about Weather,... Read more... |
Sophy Roberts: The Lost Pianos of Siberia review - a distant musical journeySunday, 09 February 2020
For travellers, “music is a passport, especially in Russia…” Borrowing an adage from the British diplomat Thomas... Read more... |
Francesca Wade: Square Haunting - Bloomsbury retoldThursday, 06 February 2020
These days, Bloomsbury rests in a state of elegant somnolence. The ghosts of... Read more... |
Kapka Kassabova: To the Lake review - Macedonia's lacustrine heartSunday, 02 February 2020
To the Lake, Kassabova titles this book, but the journey it unfolds tells of not one ancient lake but two: “twins” Ohrid and Prespa, the Lake of Light and the Vale of Snow; these siblings... 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?
latest in today
“We hope if you like it, you'll buy it,” says Paul McCartney. It’s 4 April 1963 and The Beatles are on stage and about to perform their third...
Maybe California-born Matthew Modine caught the movie bug courtesy of his father Mark, who used to manage drive-in theatres, but after bagging his...
While some tracks on Marina Allen’s third album are country accented and a pedal steel is used a few times, it’s impossible to categorise as ...
Faye is okay. Or, at least she says she’s okay. But is she really? And, if she really is, like really okay, why is she seeking help for her...
Adaptations of Henry James have often failed to click over the years. The author’s private, introspective works – sightseeing trips around people’...
Being a successful artist is not Judy Chicago’s primary goal. She abandoned that ambition six decades ago when the Los Angeles art world greeted...
There’s a whole generation of singers who’ve risen to considerable fame on the back of the return of home-grown commercial dance music to the...
Prolific playwright James Graham was born in 1982, the year Alan Bleasdale's...
Peerless among the constellation of Irish singers making waves around the world, mezzo Paula Murrihy first dazzled London as Ascanio in Terry...
It’s entirely fitting that Jake Adelstein should have a poster for All the President’s Men on the wall of his Tokyo apartment, since it...