book reviews and features
'The first thing I do when I wake up is write.' Hilary Mantel, 1952-2022
Friday, 23 September 2022
Hilary Mantel, who has died at the age of 70, was a maker of literary history. Wolf Hall, an action-packed 650-page brick of a book about the rise and rise of Thomas Cromwell, won... Read more... |
Ken Auletta: Hollywood Ending - Harvey Weinstein and the Culture of Silence review - if the tide had turned in 2002...
Wednesday, 07 September 2022
It was not until October 2017 that The New York Times ran a... Read more... |
Olivier Guez: The Disappearance of Josef Mengele review - the Nazi who was never found
Thursday, 01 September 2022
Bringing Olivier Guez’s novel The Disappearance of Josef Mengele on a beach holiday may seem like an odd choice (such is the lot of a reviewer). This incongruity transformed into... Read more... |
Amalie Smith: Thread Ripper review - the tangled web we weave
Wednesday, 03 August 2022
Sitting in the park on a hot summer’s day, life began to imitate art. I had been soaking up the sun’s now overpowering rays for over an hour and was beginning to feel its radiating effects. ... Read more... |
Phoebe Power: Book of Days review - the clack of walking poles, the clink of scallop shell
Tuesday, 26 July 2022
The word “shrine” somersaults me back to the path of the Camino de Santiago. I have lost count of the faces that smiled up from photos positioned in the hollow of trees, some with little plastic... Read more... |
Jessie Burton: The House of Fortune review - a muted, sensitive sequel
Tuesday, 05 July 2022
A sequel is always a hard thing to write, especially if the book that precedes it is a bestseller, adapted for television and read by more than a million people. Yet Jessie Burton’s The House... Read more... |
Katya Adaui: Here Be Icebergs review - odd relations
Friday, 01 July 2022
The title of Katya Adaui’s debut collection in English is taken from one of the 12 short stories it contains: an... Read more... |
Stanislav Aseyev: In Isolation - Dispatches from Occupied Donbas review - journeys through space and time in Ukraine
Wednesday, 29 June 2022
Stanislav Aseyev is a Ukrainian writer who came in from the cold. Until the spring of 2014, he was an aspiring... Read more... |
Mieko Kawakami: All the Lovers in the Night review - the raw relatability of loneliness
Saturday, 25 June 2022
Mieko Kawakami is the champion of the loner. Since achieving immense success in the UK with her translated works, she has become an indie fiction icon for her modern, visceral depictions of... Read more... |
Philip Ball: The Book of Minds review - thinking about the box
Friday, 17 June 2022
Years ago, one of the leading mathematicians in the country tried to explain to me what his real work was like. When he was on the case, he said, he could be doing a range of other things – having... Read more... |
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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 –...
DVD/Blu-Ray: Priscilla
There’s a scene in Priscilla where Elvis stands above his wife, who is scrambling to put her clothes in a suitcase. Priscilla has just...
Špaček, BBC Philharmonic, Bihlmaier, Bridgewater Hall, Manch...
Billed as a “Viennese Whirl”, this programme showed that there are different kinds of music that may be known to the orchestral canon as coming...
Banging Denmark, Finborough Theatre review - lively but conf...
What would happen if a notorious misogynist actually fell in love? With a glacial Danish librarian? And decided his best means of...
Album: Fred Hersch - Silent, Listening
The previous solo piano solo album from Fred Hersch, one of the world’s great...
Music Reissues Weekly: Linda Smith - I So Liked Spring, Noth...
Three years ago, the release of Till Another Time 1988-1996 generated a thumbs up. A compilation of recordings by the Baltimore and/or...