book reviews and features
'In order to write my book I had to kill Jane Austen'
Sunday, 11 March 2018
My heroine would not have appeared in a Jane Austen novel. Brilliant, arch and incisive though Austen... Read more... |
Stephen Walsh's Debussy - A Painter in Sound - extract
Monday, 05 March 2018
All this time La Mer had been brewing. It was almost a year since Debussy had written to Colonne... Read more... |
Lisa Halliday: Asymmetry review - unconventional and brilliant
Sunday, 04 March 2018
Lisa Halliday’s striking debut novel consists of three parts. The first follows the blooming relationship between Alice and Ezra (... Read more... |
Rhidian Brook on The Killing of Butterfly Joe
Thursday, 01 March 2018
When I was 23 I had a job selling butterflies in glass cases in America. I worked for a guy who, as well as... Read more... |
Ursula K Le Guin - Dreams Must Explain Themselves review - enraging and enlightening
Sunday, 25 February 2018
Essay collections are happily mainstream now, from Zadie Smith to Oliver Sacks, with more and more bits and bobs coming from unexpected quarters. These patchwork quilts from remarkable writers can... Read more... |
John Tusa: 'the arts must make a noise' - interview
Thursday, 22 February 2018
In our era of 24/7 news, downloadable from anywhere in the world at the touch of an app, it's hard to... Read more... |
Mick Herron: London Rules review - hypnotically fascinating, absolutely contemporary
Sunday, 18 February 2018
London Rules – explicitly cover your arse – is the fifth in the most remarkable and mesmerising series of ... Read more... |
Roma Agrawal: Built review - solid love
Sunday, 11 February 2018
"I've been known to stroke concrete," writes self-professed geek Roma Agrawal – and from the very beginning of her memoir-cum-introduction... Read more... |
Joe Dunthorne: The Adulterants review - a richly illuminating comedy of disappointment
Sunday, 04 February 2018
Joe Dunthorne's debut novel Submarine (2008) burrowed plausibly inside the head of a teenager... Read more... |
Afua Hirsch: Brit(ish) review - essential reading on identity
Sunday, 04 February 2018
Usually extracts in newspapers should stimulate the appetite of the reader to get with it; this is a rare moment when the glimpses afforded to Afua Hirsch’s Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and... Read more... |
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latest in today
Eye to Eye: Homage to Ernst Scheidegger, MASI Lugano review...
With a troubled gaze and a lived-in face, the portrait of artist Alberto Giacometti on a withdrawn...
Christian Pierre La Marca, Yaman Okur, St Martin-in-The-Fiel...
The French cellist Christian-Pierre La Marca confesses that – like so many classical musicians...
That They May Face The Rising Sun review - lyrical adaptatio...
In director Pat Collins’s lyrical adaptation of John McGahern’s last novel, with cinematography by Richard Kendrick, the landscape is perhaps the...
Album: Pet Shop Boys - Nonetheless
This album came with an absolutely enormous promo campaign. As well as actual advertising there were “Audience With…” events, and specials on BBC...
Ridout, Włoszczowska, Crawford, Lai, Posner, Wigmore Hall re...
Advice to young musicians, as given at several “how to market your career” seminars: don’t begin a biography with “one of the finest xxxs of his/...
Stephen review - a breathtakingly good first feature by a mu...
Stephen is the first feature film by multi-media artist Melanie Manchot and it’s the best debut film I’ve seen since Steve McQueen’s ...
Album: Mdou Moctar - Funeral for Justice
Despite its title, Mdou Moctar’s new album is no slow-paced mournful dirge. In fact, it is louder, faster and more overtly political than any of...
Blue Lights Series 2, BBC One review - still our best cop sh...
The first season of Blue Nights was so close to ...
Sabine Devieilhe, Mathieu Pordoy, Wigmore Hall review - ench...
Sabine Devieilhe, as with many other great sopranos, elicits much fan worship, with no less than three encores at her recent Wigmore Hall recital...
Jonn Elledge: A History of the World in 47 Borders review -...
In A History of the World in 47 Borders, Jonn Elledge takes an ostensibly dry subject – how maps and boundaries have shaped our world –...