book reviews and features
Laura Beatty: Looking for Theophrastus review - adventures in psychobiography
Friday, 06 May 2022
Laura Beatty is a kind of Shirley Valentine figure in contemporary English literature. A decade and a half ago she published an astonishing debut novel entitled Pollard about female... Read more... |
Emily St John Mandel: Sea of Tranquility review - time travel, pandemics and the simulation hypothesis
Tuesday, 26 April 2022
Emily St John Mandel’s wonderful novel of 2020, The Glass Hotel, featured people and places from her... Read more... |
Scholastique Mukasonga: The Barefoot Woman review - remembering Rwanda before 1994
Thursday, 14 April 2022
To read Scholastique Mukasonga’s memoir, The Barefoot Woman, beautifully translated from the French by... Read more... |
Extract: Catching Fire by Daniel Hahn
Tuesday, 12 April 2022
Daniel Hahn began his translation of Jamás el fuego nunca, a novel by experimental Chilean artist Diamela Eltit, in January 2021. Considering the careful, difficult but not impossible “... Read more... |
Alejandro Zambra: Chilean Poet review - from here to paternity
Tuesday, 05 April 2022
Time-honoured advice warns actors never to work with children or animals. Perhaps the literary equivalent should tell novelists not to invent other writers in their books. Especially poets. Unless... Read more... |
Extract: Where My Feet Fall - Going For A Walk in Twenty Stories
Tuesday, 29 March 2022
I began work on Where My Feet Fall a few months into the pandemic of 2020. After lockdown was announced we all became better walkers, and the collection took on greater resonance. ... Read more... |
Marianne Eloise: Obsessive, Intrusive, Magical Thinking review - bargaining with the devil
Wednesday, 23 March 2022
No mental health condition has become quite as kitsch as obsessive-compulsive disorder. Its tacky shorthands – the hand washing,... Read more... |
María Gainza: Portrait of an Unknown Lady review – queens of the unreal
Tuesday, 01 March 2022
It’s no surprise that the theme of fakes and forgery appeals so much to writers, who traffic in plausible illusions and often believe (in María Gainza’s words) that truth is “just another well-... Read more... |
Salley Vickers: The Gardener review - nature has other ideas
Tuesday, 01 March 2022
A garden is a space defined by its limits. Whatever its contents in terms of style and species, and however manicured or apparently wild its appearance, what distinguishes a garden from its... Read more... |
Extract: My Pen is the Wing of a Bird, New Fiction by Afghan Women
Monday, 21 February 2022
"My pen is the wing of a bird; it will tell you those thoughts we are not allowed to think, those dreams we are not allowed to dream." Batool Haidari’s words give this bold collection of stories... 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...
All We Imagine as Light review - tender portrait of three wo...
Documentary maker Payal Kapadia scored this year’s Cannes Grand Prix with her debut feature film, All We Imagine as Light, ...
Album: Hibernacula - Three Cane Whale
Since their eponymous 2011 debut, Three Cane Whale have kept it small without losing scale. A trio of Spiro’s Alex Vann, Get The Blessing’s Pete...
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...
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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...