book reviews and features
Naomi Klein: On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal review - an unapologetic manifesto
Tuesday, 22 September 2020
On Fire brings together a decade’s worth of dispatches from the frontline of the... Read more... |
James Rebanks: English Pastoral, An Inheritance review - a manifesto for a radical agricultural rethink
Monday, 21 September 2020
Coming from a family of farmers, with periods of time spent working on a farm in the past ten years, I found James Rebanks’ English Pastoral: An Inheritance to be a highly... Read more... |
William Feaver: The Lives of Lucian Freud: Fame 1968-2011 review - mesmerising, exhaustive and obsessively detailed
Sunday, 13 September 2020
This is a biography like no other, more or less dictated by... Read more... |
Nick Hornby: Just Like You review - funny but inauthentic Brexit novel
Sunday, 13 September 2020
Nick Hornby’s protagonists are worlds apart. Joseph is a Black 22-year-old with a “portfolio career", which includes shift work at a butcher’s and a leisure centre and the distant dream of... Read more... |
Susanna Clarke: Piranesi review - the mysteries of the House
Sunday, 13 September 2020
The man called Piranesi lives in a House (he likes Capital Letters, and he tells the story). This House consists of an endless labyrinth, like “an infinite series of classical buildings knitted... Read more... |
Matthew Sperling: Viral review - whip-smart satire about the void at the heart of tech
Sunday, 13 September 2020
Strange, that novels like this, which seem to have their finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist, already... Read more... |
Naomi Booth: Exit Management review - unwrapping life's unpleasantness
Sunday, 13 September 2020
When you try to get rid of something, it comes back to bite you – so says Naomi Booth in her new novel Exit Management. It’s one of... Read more... |
Gabriel Pogrund & Patrick Maguire: Left Out review - story of Corbynism from 'Glastonbury to catastrophe'
Sunday, 06 September 2020
Readers of Left Out may be surprised to find out how much of party politics is conducted over WhatsApp. The Labour Party under Jeremy... Read more... |
Wayne Holloway-Smith: Love Minus Love review – powerfully excavating the tormented poet's psyche
Sunday, 06 September 2020
Roughly two years since “... Read more... |
Selva Almada: Dead Girls review – the stark proximity of women to violence
Sunday, 06 September 2020
Selva Almada’s newly translated work has a stark title in both English and the original Spanish: Dead Girls, or Chicas Muertas. That apparent bluntness belies the hybrid... Read more... |
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It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
House of Games, Hampstead Theatre review - adapted Mamet scr...
There is so much that is right about Jonathan Kent’s new production of House of Games – the casting, the staging, the...
Album: MØ - Plæygirl
Danish singer MØ is a paradox. Initially she appeared to be another Scandi electro-pop princess of the bangers. The monster 2015 hit “Lean On”...
Stile Antico, Wigmore Hall review - a glorious birthday cele...
There was a wonderful festal spirit at the Wigmore Hall last night, as the vocal ensemble Stile Antico ran through a Greatest Hits selection in...
PUP, SWG3, Glasgow review - controlled chaos from Canadian p...
According to PUP lead singer Stefan Babcock, the Toronto foursome practiced together a grand total of twice before embarking on their current UK...
Zoe Lyons, Touring - midlife, without the crisis
Zoe Lyons knows her audience; as a few shoutouts confirmed, many of them are long-time fans, and have had lives with similar highs and...
The Last Musician of Auschwitz review - a haunting testament...
“It is so disgraceful, what happened there,” says Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, in a comment that is the understatement of the century. She is referring...
Giulio Cesare, The English Concert, Bicket, Barbican review...
Is Giulio Cesare in Egitto, to give the full title, Handel’s best and shapeliest opera? Glyndebourne’s revival of the legendary David...
Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - premiere...
Huw Watkins’ Concerto for Orchestra, the fourth new work of his to be commissioned and premiered by the Hallé and Sir Mark Elder, is...
DVD/Blu-ray: Slade in Flame
Over the years Slade in Flame has been hailed as one of the greatest rock movies (albeit rarely seen or screened), up...