mon 29/09/2025

book reviews and features

Jeet Thayil: Low – grief’s seedy distractions

Daniel Lewis

Like many writers, Jeet Thayil is a bit of an outsider. And, if his track record is anything to go by, he has been happy to keep it that way. The poet,...

Read more...

Deborah Orr: Motherwell review - memoir, but so much more

India Lewis

Published in the year following Orr’s death at the age of 57, Motherwell is an analysis of the author’s ...

Read more...

Francine Toon: Pine review – trauma and terror in the Highlands

Boyd Tonkin

Supernatural and Gothic stories have always haunted the misty borderlands between high and popular culture. The finest manage to hover between page-turning genre tales and what counts as...

Read more...

Nathalie Léger: Exposition review – mysteries, rumours and facts

Charlie Stone

Nathalie Léger’s superbly original Exposition is a biographical novel meditating on the nature of ...

Read more...

Rosamund Lupton: Three Hours review - gripping thriller with a Macbeth twist

Markie Robson-Scott

This is not a drill. Lock down, evacuation. An active school shooter is on the loose, actually more than one: two or three men in balaclavas with automatic shotguns. But this isn’t a high school...

Read more...

Best of 2019: Books

theartsdesk

In a year that saw some notable highs (Ilya Kaminsky's Deaf Republic) and some stonking lows (...

Read more...

Michael Hunter: The Decline of Magic review - when mockery killed witches

Boyd Tonkin

During a single day of bloated idleness last week, I managed to watch three televised ghost stories, adapted from the works of Charles Dickens and a brace of Jameses: MR and Henry. Christmas,...

Read more...

Nalini Singh: A Madness of Sunshine review – a lacklustre thriller

Lauren Brown

Nalini Singh's debut thriller thrusts us into Golden Cove, a small coastal town in New Zealand at "the...

Read more...

Eva Meijer: Animal Languages review - do you talk crow?

Marina Vaizey

Animal intelligence has come to the fore as an essential and fashionable subject for study. Dolphins, elephants, bees, prairie dogs, gannets, whales, baboons, wolves, parrots, bats – not mention...

Read more...

Sema Kaygusuz: Every Fire You Tend review – an education in grief

Daniel Baksi

In March 1937, the government of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk instigated what it called a “disciplinary campaign” against the Zaza-speaking Alevi Kurds in the Dersim region of eastern...

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 £49,000 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

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Black Rabbit, Netflix review - grime and punishment in New Y...

They say no good deed goes unpunished, so when New York restaurateur Jake...

The Hack, ITV review - plodding anatomy of twin UK scandals

The latest instalment of the ITV drama department’s attempts at trial by television is another anatomy of a scandal, but with little of...

Punch, Apollo Theatre review - powerful play about the stren...

For the first part of Punch it feels as if you’re riding a roller coaster, watching the world speed and loop past as you see it from the...

Cinderella/La Cenerentola, English National Opera review - t...

When you go to the prince’s ball, would you prefer a night of sobriety or excess? Julia Burbach’s new production of Rossini’s Cinderella...

Music Reissues Weekly: The Peanut Butter Conspiracy - The Mo...

“It's a Happening Thing,” January 1967’s debut single from...

Goldscheider, Brother Tree Sound, Kings Place review - music...

Last night’s concert at Kings Place was a programme of...

The Billionaire Inside Your Head, Hampstead Theatre review -...

What would it be like to be driven by OCD urges into idolising Elon Musk and aspiring to be one of his tribe of tech bros? In his debut...

theartsdesk Q&A: composer Donghoon Shin on his new conce...

Donghoon Shin has a taste for the esoteric – a love of labyrinths, literary puzzles, and contradictory aspects of the self. One of his favourite...

newsletter

Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday!

Simply enter your email address in the box below

View previous newsletters