literature
Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am review - a fitting tribute to a masterful storytellerFriday, 13 March 2020
When the Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison died last year, it was a chance to celebrate the remarkable life of a storyteller who shook the literary establishment. Her work, including her debut novel The Bluest Eye, broke radical new... Read more... |
Sema Kaygusuz: Every Fire You Tend review – an education in griefSunday, 15 December 2019
In March 1937, the government of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk instigated what it called a “disciplinary campaign” against the Zaza-speaking Alevi Kurds in the Dersim region of eastern Turkey. What followed was a bloody, coordinated assault that resulted in... Read more... |
Greg Davies: Looking for Kes, BBC Four review - touching insights into the story of Barnsley boy Billy CasperWednesday, 20 November 2019
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Ken Loach’s film Kes, and the 51st of A Kestrel for a Knave, the Barry Hines novel it was based on. The story of Barnsley boy Billy Casper who finds an escape from his painful home life and brutal schooling by... Read more... |
Arena: Everything is Connected - George Eliot's Life, BBC Four review - innovative film brings the Victorian novelist into the presentMonday, 11 November 2019
Gillian Wearing’s Arena documentary Everything is Connected (BBC Four) is a quietly innovative biography of an author whose works still resonate with their readers and the country within which she wrote. Wearing and George Eliot are a sympathetic... Read more... |
'I’m having too much fun writing novels': author Nicolas Searle on The Good LiarThursday, 07 November 2019
"Surreal" is how the man calling himself Nicholas Searle describes the last five years of his life. He began working on his debut novel The Good Liar in 2014 at the age of 57, having recently retired from the Civil Service. The nature of his former... Read more... |
Ben Okri, Brighton Festival 2019 review - adventures in writingWednesday, 08 May 2019
If there’s one thing to learn from Ben Okri in this evening of conversation at Brighton Festival between the Famished Road writer and author Colin Grant it’s how to “upwake”.The phrase, coined in his new (11th) novel The Freedom Artist – a post-... Read more... |
Tolkien review - biopic charms but never wowsThursday, 02 May 2019
Finnish director Dome Karukoski’s Tolkien follows the same formula of many literary biopics, with a tick-box plot of loves, friendships and hardships that forged the writing career of one the 20th Century’s greatest fantasy writers.We open at the... Read more... |
Suede, Brighton Dome review - Brett Anderson gives it full frontman chutzpahWednesday, 24 April 2019
Suede finish “Sabotage”. It’s a mid-paced, elegant number set off by swirling, circling central guitar. Frontman Brett Anderson hangs from his microphone stand on the left apron of the stage to deliver it, with the lights down low. Afterwards he... Read more... |
Connolly, Drake, Berrington, Wigmore Hall review – between the actsSaturday, 16 March 2019
Vary the stale format of the vocal recital and all sorts of new doors open for performers and listeners alike. The only downside, as became clear at the Wigmore Hall last night, is that the audience may hear less of a stellar soloist than they... Read more... |
Can You Ever Forgive Me? review - no page unturned in a comedy about literary forgerySaturday, 02 February 2019
What is it with all these new films based on biographies? Vice, Green Book, The Mule, Stan & Ollie, Colette… and that’s before we even get to the royal romps queening up our screens. At least Can You Ever Forgive Me? brings a lifestory... Read more... |
The Daughter-in-Law, Arcola Theatre review - searing simplicityThursday, 17 January 2019
There’s a stark power to Jack Gamble’s production of DH Lawrence’s The Daughter-in-Law, which has transferred to the Arcola’smain stage after an acclaimed opening run in the venue’s downstairs studio last May. It still plays with a concentrated... Read more... |
Barneys, Books and Bust Ups, BBC Four review - the Booker Prize at 50Tuesday, 16 October 2018
You had to keep your eyes skinned. Was that Iris Murdoch or AS Byatt, Kingsley Amis or John Banville, Margaret Atwood or Val McDermid – maybe, even, Joanna Lumley? Tables as far as the eye can see, dressed with white tablecloths and crowded with... Read more... |
