book reviews and features
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... |
Mieko Kawakami: All the Lovers in the Night review - the raw relatability of loneliness
Saturday, 25 June 2022
Mieko Kawakami is the champion of the loner. Since achieving immense success in the UK with her translated works, she has become an indie fiction icon for her modern, visceral depictions of... Read more... |
Philip Ball: The Book of Minds review - thinking about the box
Friday, 17 June 2022
Years ago, one of the leading mathematicians in the country tried to explain to me what his real work was like. When he was on the case, he said, he could be doing a range of other things – having... Read more... |
10 Questions for art historian and fiction writer Chloë Ashby
Saturday, 11 June 2022
“Is she at a pivotal point in her life but unable to pivot…?” Eve, the young heroine of Chloë Ashby’s dazzling debut... Read more... |
Kim Hye-jin: Concerning My Daughter review - room for complication
Friday, 27 May 2022
In this best-selling Korean novella, recently translated into English by Jamie Chang, Kim Hye-jin offers us the perspective of a Korean... Read more... |
Alyn Shipton: On Jazz - A Personal Journey - digging jazz deeply and musically
Monday, 23 May 2022
“I suppose you’re going to ask all the usual questions...?” When Keith Jarrett was interviewed by Alyn... Read more... |
Joanna Walsh: Girl Online - A User Manual review - how 'beatifoul' it is to be online
Wednesday, 11 May 2022
Scrolling to the top of my Twitter DMs, most of which are from close friends or acquaintances, I notice the message request section flash “1”. It’s a signal I usually ignore, having learnt from... 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...
Music Reissues Weekly: Ibex Band - Stereo Instrumental Music
Stereo Instrumental Music was recorded in July 1976 and originally issued only on cassette. The release was organised by...
Blu-ray: Yojimbo / Sanjuro
Akira Kurosawa described his 1961 hit Yojimbo as a tale of “rivalry on both sides, and both sides are equally bad… we are weakly caught...
Levit, Sternath, Wigmore Hall review - pushing the boundarie...
Igor Levit is a master of the unorthodox marathon, one he was happy to share last night with 24-year-old Austrian Lukas Sternath, his student in...
Rhinoceros, Almeida Theatre review - joyously absurd and abs...
Is the theatre of the absurd dead? In today’s world, when cruel and crazy events happen almost daily, the idea that you can satirize daily life by...
Mr Burton review - modest film about the birth of an extraor...
Many know that the actor Richard Burton began life as a miner’s son called Richard Jenkins. Not so many are aware of the reason he...
Album: The Waterboys - Life, Death and Dennis Hopper
Mike Scott is The Waterboys. Launched by wide-eyed 1980s folk-...
Restless review - curse of the noisy neighbours
Horror comes in many forms. In writer-director Jed Hart’s...
MobLand, Paramount+ review - more guns, goons and gangsters...
A year ago Guy Ritchie brought us the Netflix series The Gentlemen, and now here he is on Paramount+ with his latest romp through the...