book reviews and features
Sudhir Hazareesingh: Black Spartacus review – the life, and thought, of the first black super-hero
Monday, 28 September 2020
The former slave, and coachman on a sugar plantation, began one of his early public proclamations in a typically defiant vein: “I am Toussaint Louverture, you have perhaps heard my name.” At that... Read more... |
Ian Williams: Reproduction review - a dazzling kaleidoscope of life's tragicomedy
Monday, 28 September 2020
Ian Williams’s writing is always in motion. For his 2012 poetry collection Personals, and since, he has... Read more... |
Emma Cline: Daddy review - scintillating short stories by the author of The Girls
Monday, 28 September 2020
The Girls, Emma Cline’s acclaimed debut novel of 2016, was billed as a story based on the Manson murders. But in fact, like some of the stories in Daddy, her new short-story... Read more... |
Naomi Klein: On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal review - an unapologetic manifesto
Tuesday, 22 September 2020
On Fire brings together a decade’s worth of dispatches from the frontline of the... Read more... |
James Rebanks: English Pastoral, An Inheritance review - a manifesto for a radical agricultural rethink
Monday, 21 September 2020
Coming from a family of farmers, with periods of time spent working on a farm in the past ten years, I found James Rebanks’ English Pastoral: An Inheritance to be a highly... Read more... |
William Feaver: The Lives of Lucian Freud: Fame 1968-2011 review - mesmerising, exhaustive and obsessively detailed
Sunday, 13 September 2020
This is a biography like no other, more or less dictated by... Read more... |
Nick Hornby: Just Like You review - funny but inauthentic Brexit novel
Sunday, 13 September 2020
Nick Hornby’s protagonists are worlds apart. Joseph is a Black 22-year-old with a “portfolio career", which includes shift work at a butcher’s and a leisure centre and the distant dream of... Read more... |
Susanna Clarke: Piranesi review - the mysteries of the House
Sunday, 13 September 2020
The man called Piranesi lives in a House (he likes Capital Letters, and he tells the story). This House consists of an endless labyrinth, like “an infinite series of classical buildings knitted... Read more... |
Matthew Sperling: Viral review - whip-smart satire about the void at the heart of tech
Sunday, 13 September 2020
Strange, that novels like this, which seem to have their finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist, already... Read more... |
Naomi Booth: Exit Management review - unwrapping life's unpleasantness
Sunday, 13 September 2020
When you try to get rid of something, it comes back to bite you – so says Naomi Booth in her new novel Exit Management. It’s one of... 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?
latest in today
Hoard review - not any old rubbish
A visually dazzling, fiercely acted psychological drama with a manic comic edge, Hoard channels an 18-year-old South Londoner’s quest to...
Hidden Door 10th Birthday Party, St James Quarter, Edinburgh...
It’s hard to imagine that The Arches – a string of stylish glass-fronted units in prime city centre location, housing boutique bars,...
Blu-ray: Chocolat
Claire Denis’ 1988 debut is a sensual madeleine to her Cameroonian childhood, with its taste of termites on butter, sound of birdsong and insect...
Coote, LSO, Tilson Thomas, Barbican review - the triumph of...
Programme notes for Mahler’s monumental symphonies will often...
Conchúr White, St Pancras Old Church review - side-stepping...
If there’s a feeling of déjà vu, it isn’t detectable. Conchúr White played St Pancras Old Church in April 2016 with County Armagh’s Silences, the...
Our Mothers review - revisiting the horrors of Guatemala...
Director Cesar Diaz’s debut feature film was...
Rhod Gilbert, G-Live Guildford review - cancer, constipation...
Rhod Gilbert is disarmingly honest about his thought process when he received his diagnosis of head and neck cancer in 2022. Following quickly...
Pop Will Eat Itself, Chalk, Brighton review - hip hop rocker...
By midway, things are cooking. “Can U Dig It?”, a post-modern list-song from another age (Ok,...
Album: Beth Gibbons - Lives Outgrown
It’s been a long while since Beth Gibbons released an album. Portishead’s Third was out in 2008. She has lived through so many...