book reviews and features
Rachel Hewitt: A Revolution of Feeling review - from passions to emotions
Sunday, 10 December 2017
Utopias have a way of going up in flames. Rachel Hewitt’s new book, A Revolution of Feeling: The Decade that Forged the Modern Mind, charts the revolutionary fervour and disappointment... Read more... |
Reza Aslan: God - A Human History review - on being 'sapiens', and believing
Sunday, 03 December 2017
It is not just the season of holidays and holy days in the monotheistic ... Read more... |
Javier Marías: Between Eternities review - matters of life and death from the Spanish master
Sunday, 19 November 2017
One of these years, Javier Marías will probably win the Nobel Prize in Literature. If and when that... Read more... |
Tina Brown: The Vanity Fair Diaries 1983-1992 review - portrait of an era of glitz and excess
Sunday, 19 November 2017
Tina Brown’s first Christmas issue of Vanity Fair in 1984 had this to say about “the sulky,... Read more... |
The Best of AA Gill review - posthumous words collected
Sunday, 12 November 2017
Word wizard. Grammar bully. Sentence shark. AA Gill didn’t play fair by syntax: he pounced on it, surprising it into splendid shapes. And who cared when he wooed readers with anarchy and aplomb?... Read more... |
Jonathan Coe: The Broken Mirror review - potent, crystalline, but rather small
Sunday, 12 November 2017
Novelist Jonathan Coe has, for some time, been assuming the role of an Evelyn Waugh of the... Read more... |
Richard F Thomas: Why Dylan Matters review - tangled up in clues
Sunday, 12 November 2017
A year ago, Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, his work commended by the committee "... Read more... |
Han Kang: The White Book review - between what is, what was, what might have been
Sunday, 05 November 2017
A woman gives birth alone two months early in a frost-bound village in the Korean countryside. In Poland, a solitary woman washes down white migraine pills and concludes she must write. The child... Read more... |
Oliver Sacks: The River of Consciousness review - a luminous final collection of essays
Sunday, 29 October 2017
Oliver Sacks was the neurologist – and historian of science, and naturalist – whose exceptionally elegant, clear and accessible prose has captivated that almost mythical creature, the general... Read more... |
Susie Boyt: Love & Fame review - as highly strung as a violin factory
Sunday, 29 October 2017
At first glance, Susie Boyt’s sixth novel seems in danger of echoing her... Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
I.S.S. review - sci-fi with a sting in the tail
Earthrise, the 1968 Apollo 8 photograph of our small island of a planet, taken from the Moon’s surface, transformed our vision of our...
Album: St Vincent - All Born Screaming
The thing with Annie Clark, better known as the triple-Grammy-winning iconoclast St Vincent, is that much like an actual saint the multi...
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 ...