book reviews and features
Panikos Panayi: Migrant City review – the capital of the world
Sunday, 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 nature
Sunday, 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 flight
Sunday, 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 misgiving
Sunday, 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 journey
Sunday, 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 retold
Thursday, 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 heart
Sunday, 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... |
Tomasz Jedrowski: Swimming in the Dark review – of hypocrisy, both personal and systemic
Sunday, 02 February 2020
Conjuring up nostalgia for a past readers never had is, perhaps, the litmus test for any good coming-of-age story. Writers have the hard task of making the general particular – because growing up... Read more... |
Albert Costa: The Bilingual Brain review – double-talking heads and what they tell us
Sunday, 26 January 2020
Those of us who have to toil and sweat with other languages often feel a twinge of envy when we meet truly bilingual folk. That ability to switch codes, seemingly without any fuss, must confer so... Read more... |
Clemens Meyer: Dark Satellites review - eccentric orbits
Sunday, 26 January 2020
In Clemens Meyer’s new collection of short stories Dark Satellites (translated from German by Kate... 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...
Dealer's Choice, Donmar Warehouse review - fresh take o...
Patrick Marber’s powerful debut about gambling men is 30 years old, born as the Eighties entrepreneurial boom was starting to sour but...
theartsdesk Q&A: director Leonardo Van Dijl discusses hi...
"Julie's story takes place everywhere", says the writer-director Leonardo Van Dijl, whose psychological drama Julie Keeps Quiet has...
Album: Lael Neale - Altogether Stranger
Over its crisp 32 minutes and nine songs, Altogether Stranger embraces electropop, lo-fi terrain and gothic solo contemplation. By...
Much Ado About Nothing, RSC, Stratford - Messina FC scores o...
Fragile egos abound. An older person (usually a man) has to bring the best out of the stars, but mustn’t neglect the team ethic....
Zsuzsanna Gahse: Mountainish review - seeking refuge
Mountainish by Zsuzsanna Gahse is a collection of 515 notes, each contributing to an expansive kaleidoscope of mountain encounters....
DVD/Blu-ray: All We Imagine as Light
All We Imagine as Light focuses on the lives of three women in contemporary...
Sheku Kanneh-Mason, Isata Kanneh-Mason, Wigmore Hall review...
I came to Isata and Sheku Kanneh-Mason’s Wigmore Hall recital on Saturday armed with a certain degree of scepticism. Not about the siblings’...
Simon Boccanegra, Opera North review - ‘dramatic staging’ pr...
Opera North have recently pioneered a way of presenting some big works which they call “dramatic concert stagings”, performing in concert halls as...
Mahler 8, LPO, Gardner, RFH review - lights on high
Transcendence is everywhere in Mahler’s most ambitious symphony, from the flaming opening hymn to the upper reaches in the epic setting of Goethe’...