book reviews and features
Listed: 10 classic tales of the citySunday, 01 July 2018
Now is the time of year when weary travellers find themselves in some sun-strafed piazza, gazing in bemusement at a world-renowned monument and wondering why on earth they came. Hectored by... Read more... |
Katharine Kilalea: OK, Mr Field review - architecture and alienation on the Cape Town coastSunday, 24 June 2018
Modern novels with an architectural theme have, to say the least, a mixed pedigree. At their finest, as in Thomas Bernhard’s Correction, the fluidity and ambiguity of prose fiction... Read more... |
Sarah Langford: In Your Defence review - messy livesSunday, 24 June 2018
When Sarah Langford goes to work, she puts on warpaint and wig and acts. But she is not an actor. She defends those who might or might not be guilty of the crimes with with they’ve been charged,... Read more... |
Enter theartsdesk / h Club Young Influencer of the Year awardTuesday, 19 June 2018
Are you a young blogger, vlogger or writer in the field of the arts, books and culture? If so, we've a competition for you to enter. The Hospital Club’s annual h Club100... Read more... |
Kelleigh Greenberg-Jephcott: Swan Song review - Capote reduxSunday, 17 June 2018
Here you will find Babe Paley, Slim Keith, CZ Guest, Gloria Guinness, Lee Radziwill, Marella Agnelli, the stylish leaders of society, gorgeous, gilded, well-married ladies: the men they were with... Read more... |
Robert Gordon: Memphis Rent Party review - a fast-moving Mississippi anthologySunday, 10 June 2018
“There’s a rhythm in the air around Memphis, there always has been,” Carl Perkins once said. "I don't know what it is, but it's magic." The city on the Mississippi lives up to its... Read more... |
Meg Wolitzer: The Female Persuasion review - the many faces of feminismSunday, 03 June 2018
Meg Wolitzer’s 10th novel has been hailed as a breakthrough, a feminist blockbuster, an embodiment of the zeitgeist. (Nicole Kidman has bought the film rights, which goes to show.) But... Read more... |
Frank Gardner: Ultimatum review - topical terrorismSunday, 03 June 2018
The journalist Frank Gardner has turned to fiction to illuminate with imagination the world that he knows inside out from years of reporting. His biographical trajectory, from scholar of the... Read more... |
Sophie Mackintosh: The Water Cure review - on the discipline of survivalSunday, 27 May 2018
A body can be pushed to the brink, to the point where thoughts flatten to a line of light, and come back from death, but the heart is complex and the damage it wreaks barely controllable. For... Read more... |
The World Of Moominvalley, Brighton Festival review - a fascinating insight into the world of Tove JanssonMonday, 21 May 2018
It was no matter that journalist Daniel Hahn dropped out ill at the 11th hour of this "audience with" event. Author Philip Ardagh's deep knowledge and unflappable demeanour comfortably carried the... Read more... |
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In a secret chamber somewhere, the producers of ...
"[A]n unimaginably beautiful day": this was how Kikue Shiota described the morning of the 6th of August, 1945, in Hiroshima. The day was soon to...
Like all great literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s final, eccentric, playfully wondrous short story seems to have been written just for us – across...
Waiting, and hoping, may prove just as intense an experience as the fulfilment of a wish – or of a fear. Bach knew that, and infused his Easter...
“Motif,” Love In Constant Spectacle’s fourth track, is the closest Jane Weaver has come in over a decade to the folk influences embraced...
I first read Anne Gunter’s story about five years ago, when I was in my first year of university at Oxford, little knowing it would over time lead...
The screenwriting debut of actor Andrew Buchan,...
A young woman (Laure Calamy; Call my Agent!; Full Time; Her Way) is trying to pluck up the courage to call her...
In a too brightly tiled Gentlemen’s public convenience (Nitin Parmar’s beautifully realised set is as much a character as any of the men we meet...