book reviews and features
Thomas Halliday: Otherlands review - diving into the deep past
Wednesday, 02 February 2022
Life on Earth: David Attenborough has it covered, right? Well, globally, maybe, but not historically. He has presented world-spanning series on pretty much every kind of life except bacteria, but... Read more... |
Tessa Hadley: Free Love review - the Sixties, the suburbs and the hippie dream
Tuesday, 25 January 2022
Free Love opens in 1967 and remains within that heady era throughout; no flashbacks, no spanning of generations as in Hadley's wonderful novels The Past or Late in the Day... Read more... |
Best of 2021: Books
Friday, 31 December 2021
“Duck! Here comes another year.” We can, I think, all empathise with the motions and emotions of Ogden Nash’s new year poem, “Good Riddance, But Now What?” Before, however, we bid a troublesome... Read more... |
The Holiness of Sex: Leonard Cohen's Biblical Theology
Wednesday, 15 December 2021
On hearing that I had recently written a book about Leonard Cohen, someone asked me why I thought Bob Dylan... Read more... |
Peter Robison: Flying Blind review – a story of decline and crawl
Tuesday, 30 November 2021
Thomas Pynchon’s saturnine '70s novel Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) begins with “[a] screaming [that] comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.”... Read more... |
Lucie Elven: The Weak Spot review - a cryptic modern fable
Tuesday, 23 November 2021
For most of us, fluttering our eyelids to convince a loved one to cook dinner is harmless meddling. Complimenting our boss on their new coat before asking for a promotion is necessary cunning. For... Read more... |
Sarah Moss: The Fell review - a dark night on the hills
Monday, 22 November 2021
Sarah Moss’s new novel is a slim snapshot of a moment of fear and danger in the year of Covid. That year when judgement and recrimination ruled, and neighbourly feeling was in short supply. It is... Read more... |
Claire Tomalin: The Young H.G. Wells review – days of the comet
Wednesday, 17 November 2021
In late 1894 an unknown 28-year-old science tutor and wannabe writer finished a story in his dismal lodgings just north of Euston station. Divorced, after a brief, calamitous marriage to a cousin... Read more... |
Devin Jacobsen: Breath Like the Wind at Dawn review – the disturbances of the Civil War
Monday, 15 November 2021
How do you imagine the wind at dawn? Biting, brisk, peremptory – a kind of summons as another day begins? For Les Tamplin, wife-beater, sheriff, father to three sons, it is a detective... Read more... |
Ruth Ozeki: The Book of Form and Emptiness review - where the objects speak
Friday, 05 November 2021
“Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” Ruth Ozeki’s latest novel takes its name from a Buddhist heart sutra... 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...
Peter Grimes, Welsh National Opera review - febrile energy a...
Emotions run high at WNO these days. When the company’s co-...
An Evening with Joan Armatrading, Cadogan Hall review - tho...
I can’t hear Joan Armatrading without being instantly transported back to Liverpool, and my student digs just around the corner from Penny Lane. I...
Frang, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review - every beauty revealed
When Vladimir Jurowski returns to what used to be “his” London Philharmonic Orchestra, you’d better jump. I would have done on Wednesday had I...
Kenny Garrett, Ronnie Scott's review - a mixed bag
The sax-player Kenny Garrett established a reputation as one of Miles Davis’s band in the Amandla (1989) period. He was also a member of...
Album: Sofia Härdig - Lighthouse of Glass
The titular “lighthouse of glass” is a place where the narrator is “crying into the sun,” in which there is a need to “stand by my solitude.”...
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...