book reviews and features
Sheila Heti: Alphabetical Diaries review - an A-Z of inner life
Tuesday, 20 February 2024
After a first read of the blurb for Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries, you might be forgiven for assuming that this is merely a gimmick. The book does what it says on the tin: each... Read more... |
David Harsent: Skin review - our strange surfaces
Saturday, 17 February 2024
David Harsent has won a lot of prizes. From the Eric Gregory to the T. S. Eliot, he has carved out a literary career positively glittering... Read more... |
Brian Klaas: Fluke review - why things happen, and can we stop them?
Saturday, 27 January 2024
One day in the early 90s I accepted the offer of a lift from a friend to a university open day I hadn’t been planning to go to. I ended up attending that university and there met my wife, and if I... Read more... |
Richard Schoch: Shakespeare's House review - nothing ill in such a temple
Thursday, 25 January 2024
Richard Schoch, in the subtitle of his new book on Shakespeare’s House, promises something big: “a window onto his life and legacy.” To the disgruntled reader – pushed to the brink... Read more... |
Richard Dorment: Warhol After Warhol review - beyond criticism
Tuesday, 09 January 2024
2023 was a good year for Andy Warhol post-mortems: after Nicole Flattery’s Nothing Special, after... Read more... |
Best of 2023: Books
Sunday, 31 December 2023
From wandering Rachmaninoff to Ulysses tribute, or a poet’s boyhood in Dundee to sleeplessness and arboreal inner lives, our reviewers share their literary picks from 2023. ... Read more... |
First Person: novelist Pip Adam on the sound of injustice
Wednesday, 20 December 2023
I know it rattles me, so I try to prepare for it. But I am never fully prepared for the noise. The correctional facilities I have visited over the last 30 years are noisy places. A secure... Read more... |
Angela Leighton: Something, I Forget review - the art of letting go
Monday, 18 December 2023
Half way through Something, I Forget, in a poem entitled “Returns”, and subtitled “Invasion of Ukraine,... Read more... |
Mathias Énard: The Annual Banquet of the Gravediggers' Guild review - a man of infinite death
Saturday, 09 December 2023
"Death, as a general statement, is so easy of utterance, of belief", wrote Amy Levy, "it is only when we come face to face with it that we find the great mystery so cruelly hard to realise; for... Read more... |
Anne Michaels: Held review - one story across time
Friday, 24 November 2023
Near the end of My Name is Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Strout’s prize-winning 2016 novel, a creative writing teacher tells Lucy, ‘you will... Read more... |
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