book reviews and features
Ellen McWilliams: Resting Places - On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution review - finding art in the inarticulable
Friday, 19 July 2024
How do you give voice to a history that is intimate to your own in one sense, whilst being the story of others whom you never knew? This is a... Read more... |
Claire Messud: This Strange Eventful History review - home is where the heart was
Thursday, 18 July 2024
Claire Messud’s This Strange Eventful History is personal: a novel, that is, strangely inflected by autobiography, a history that is... Read more... |
Paul Alexander: Bitter Crop - The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year review - setting the record straight
Saturday, 06 July 2024
It’s often said that nobody mythologised Billie Holiday like Billie Holiday. I’m not so sure. In this fine, clear-eyed... Read more... |
Kelly Clancy: Playing with Reality - How Games Shape Our World review - how far games go back
Monday, 24 June 2024
For a couple of decades, the free video game America’s Army was a powerful recruitment aid for the US military. More than a shoot-em-up, players might find themselves dressing virtual... Read more... |
Hugo Rifkind: Rabbits review - 31 wild parties and a funeral
Monday, 10 June 2024
In some ways I’m an appropriate person to review Hugo Rifkind’s new novel Rabbits, a coming-of-age comedy set in the early... Read more... |
Extract: Pariah Genius by Iain Sinclair
Friday, 03 May 2024
Iain Sinclair is a writer, film-maker, and psychogeographer extraordinaire. He began his career in the poetic avant-garde of the Sixties and Seventies, alongisde the likes of Ed Dorn and J. H.... Read more... |
Jonn Elledge: A History of the World in 47 Borders review - a view from the boundaries
Tuesday, 23 April 2024
In A History of the World in 47 Borders, Jonn Elledge takes an ostensibly dry subject – how maps and boundaries have shaped our world – and makes from it a diverting and informative read... Read more... |
Lisa Kaltenegger: Alien Earths review - a whole new world
Thursday, 18 April 2024
Our home planet orbits the medium-size star we call the Sun. There are unfathomably many more stars out there. We accepted that these are also suns a little while back, cosmically speaking, or a... Read more... |
Heather McCalden: The Observable Universe review - reflections from a damaged life
Tuesday, 16 April 2024
Artist and writer, Heather McCalden, has produced her first book-length work. The Observable Universe examines, variously, her familial history, the death of her parents to AIDS, and the... Read more... |
Dorian Lynskey: Everything Must Go review - it's the end of the world as we know it
Wednesday, 10 April 2024
According to REM in 1987, “It’s the end of the world as we know it”. And while they sang about topical preoccupations – hurricanes, wildfires and plane crashes – they were really just varying a... Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Jeff Young: Wild Twin review - a box of tricks
The writer, performer, and lecturer Jeff Young’s latest, Wild Twin, tells – ostensibly – the story of his barefoot, Beat-imitative...
Album: The Innocence Mission - Midwinter Swimmers
A sycamore tree is described to an appaloosa horse before it is mounted to ride off to visit a friend. The thread used for sewing evokes a map...
Witches review - beyond the broomstick, the cat, and the po...
From James I’s campaign to wipe out witchery to the feuding sister sorceresses of The Wizard of Oz and the new film musical ...
EFG London Jazz Festival round-up review - youth, age, and t...
Jazz music crosses, mixes and unites generations, and the 10 concerts I’ve seen at this year’s EFG London Jazz Festival (out of more than 300 in...
First Person: singer-songwriter Sam Amidon on working in Din...
Walking in the morning from my Airbnb along the road in West Kerry...
EFG London Jazz Festival 2024 round-up review - from Korean...
November can be a month to hunker down for the onset of winter and its weather, and where better to do that than in one of the myriad venues...
All's Well That Ends Well, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse revi...
"All’s well that ends well". Sounds like the kind of phrase a guilty parent says to a disappointed child after they’ve been caught...
Rajakesar, Selaocoe, The Hermes Experiment, Wigmore Hall rev...
There were points when this concert felt like the musical equivalent of watching the atom...
Album: Alice Ivy - Do What Makes You Happy
What’s to be said about an album that’s half well-executed body-moving,...