thu 28/03/2024

book reviews and features

Michael Peppiatt: The Existential Englishman review - we'll always have Paris

Marina Vaizey

In this memoir, subtitled “Paris Among the Artists”, Michael Peppiatt presents his 1960s self as an absorbed,...

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Magda Szabó: Katalin Street review - love after life

Katherine Waters

This is a love story and a ghost story. The year is 1934 and the Held family have moved from the countryside to an elegant house on...

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John Lanchester: The Wall review - dystopia cut adrift

Boyd Tonkin

John Lanchester’s fifth novel begins with a kind of coded warning to the reader – and, perhaps, to the author too. Freezing conditions plague life on the defensive wall – or “National Coastal...

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Best of 2018: Books

Boyd Tonkin

Reasons to be cheerful? A fortissimo blast of anguish and foreboding currently sounds from both those end-of-year round-ups that look back over the past twelve months, and the doomy previews that...

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Timothy Day: I Saw Eternity the Other Night review - heavenly harmony, earthly discord

Boyd Tonkin

In 1955, Sylvia Plath attended the Advent Carol Service at King’s College in Cambridge. Like countless other visitors, listeners and viewers before and since, she was entranced by “the tall chapel...

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Ed Vulliamy: When Words Fail review - the band plays on

David Nice

If you're seeking ideas for new playlists and diverse suggestions for reading - and when better to look than at this time of year? - then beware: you may be overwhelmed by the infectious...

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Boris Akunin: Black City review - a novel to sharpen the wits

Marina Vaizey

It is 1914 – a fateful year for assassinations, war and revolution. The fictional Erast Petrovich Fandorin,...

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Global fiction: the pick of 2018

Boyd Tonkin

If you believe the bulk of the “books of the year” features that drift like stray tinsel across the media at this time of year, Britain’s literary taste-makers only enjoy the flavours of the...

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Matthew Dennison: Eternal Boy review – the banker who stayed forever young

Boyd Tonkin

In Ian McEwan’s 1987 novel The Child in Time, a high-powered publisher and politician named Charles Darke quits his posts, regresses to a child-like state, and frolics in the woods like a...

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Daša Drndić: Belladonna review - a tragicomic journey into Europe's darkness

Boyd Tonkin

Daša Drndić, the Croatian author who died in June aged 71, has posthumously won the second Warwick Prize for Women in Translation for her coruscating novel Belladonna. The award, set up...

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First Person: author-turned-actor Lydia Higman on a play tha...

I first read Anne Gunter’s story about five years ago, when I was in my first year of university at Oxford, little knowing it would over time lead...

The Origin of Evil review - Laure Calamy stars in gripping F...

A young woman (Laure Calamy; Call my Agent!; Full Time; Her Way) is trying to pluck up the courage to call her...

Foam, Finborough Theatre review - fascism and f*cking in a G...

In a too brightly tiled Gentlemen’s public convenience (Nitin Parmar’s beautifully realised set is as much a character as any of the men we meet...

Album: Ride - Interplay

What a time to be alive it is for fans of late Eighties, early Nineties ...

Schubert Piano Sonatas 4, Paul Lewis, Wigmore Hall review -...

“Death doesn’t scare me at all,” said my friend Christopher Hitchens during our last telephone conversation. “After all, it’s the only certainty...

Vossa Jazz 2024 review - Norwegian festival embraces William...

“The name of this group is Mayan Space Station.” In spite of the billing as The William Parker Trio, their bassist – coolly introducing himself as...

First person: playwright Paul Grellong on keeping pace with...

I’m writing this in the lobby of the...

Album: Sum 41 - Heaven :x: Hell

Sum 41 honour their 27-year career with Heaven :x: Hell, a 20-track double album, due to be their final, without a single skip. Harking...

3 Body Problem, Netflix review - life, the universe and ever...

From Game of Thrones producers David Benioff and DB Weiss, in cahoots with Alexander Woo, 3 Body Problem is Netflix’s daring...

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