book reviews and features
Salley Vickers: The Gardener review - nature has other ideas
Tuesday, 01 March 2022
A garden is a space defined by its limits. Whatever its contents in terms of style and species, and however manicured or apparently wild its appearance, what distinguishes a garden from its... Read more... |
Extract: My Pen is the Wing of a Bird, New Fiction by Afghan Women
Monday, 21 February 2022
"My pen is the wing of a bird; it will tell you those thoughts we are not allowed to think, those dreams we are not allowed to dream." Batool Haidari’s words give this bold collection of stories... Read more... |
Thomas Halliday: Otherlands review - diving into the deep past
Wednesday, 02 February 2022
Life on Earth: David Attenborough has it covered, right? Well, globally, maybe, but not historically. He has presented world-spanning series on pretty much every kind of life except bacteria, but... Read more... |
Tessa Hadley: Free Love review - the Sixties, the suburbs and the hippie dream
Tuesday, 25 January 2022
Free Love opens in 1967 and remains within that heady era throughout; no flashbacks, no spanning of generations as in Hadley's wonderful novels The Past or Late in the Day... Read more... |
Best of 2021: Books
Friday, 31 December 2021
“Duck! Here comes another year.” We can, I think, all empathise with the motions and emotions of Ogden Nash’s new year poem, “Good Riddance, But Now What?” Before, however, we bid a troublesome... Read more... |
The Holiness of Sex: Leonard Cohen's Biblical Theology
Wednesday, 15 December 2021
On hearing that I had recently written a book about Leonard Cohen, someone asked me why I thought Bob Dylan... Read more... |
Peter Robison: Flying Blind review – a story of decline and crawl
Tuesday, 30 November 2021
Thomas Pynchon’s saturnine '70s novel Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) begins with “[a] screaming [that] comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.”... Read more... |
Lucie Elven: The Weak Spot review - a cryptic modern fable
Tuesday, 23 November 2021
For most of us, fluttering our eyelids to convince a loved one to cook dinner is harmless meddling. Complimenting our boss on their new coat before asking for a promotion is necessary cunning. For... Read more... |
Sarah Moss: The Fell review - a dark night on the hills
Monday, 22 November 2021
Sarah Moss’s new novel is a slim snapshot of a moment of fear and danger in the year of Covid. That year when judgement and recrimination ruled, and neighbourly feeling was in short supply. It is... Read more... |
Claire Tomalin: The Young H.G. Wells review – days of the comet
Wednesday, 17 November 2021
In late 1894 an unknown 28-year-old science tutor and wannabe writer finished a story in his dismal lodgings just north of Euston station. Divorced, after a brief, calamitous marriage to a cousin... Read more... |
Pages
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
The future of Arts Journalism
You can stop theartsdesk.com closing!
We urgently need financing to survive. Our fundraising drive has thus far raised £33,000 but we need to reach £100,000 or we will be forced to close. Please contribute here: https://gofund.me/c3f6033d
And if you can forward this information to anyone who might assist, we’d be grateful.
latest in today
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Album: Sleep Token - Even In Arcadia
It has never been an exact science understanding when something will capture lightning in a bottle and go viral. Even less expected is for an...
The Trunk, Netflix review - stylish, noir-ish Korean drama w...
The trunk in the title is a luxury item, worth 50 million won – just north of £27,000 – shown sinking in deep water in the opening...
The Gang of Three, King's Head Theatre - three old Labo...
There was a time when the only daytime TV (ex-weekends and ex-Wimbledon fortnight) comprised the annual party conferences and the...
Words of War review - truth and other casualties of war
The reporting of Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist who was shot dead in her Moscow apartment building in 2006 – on Vladimir Putin’s birthday, a...
theartsdesk Q&A: Gary Oldman on playing John Cheever in...
Gary Oldman has always lived life to the fullest, on screen and off. Maybe that's why he is often at his best in his pitch-perfect portraits of...
Album: Mark Pritchard & Thom Yorke - Tall Tales
I’ve got an admission: I never really got Radiohead, in no small part because of Thom Yorke’s singing. I appreciate his technical abilities and...
The Excursions of Mr Brouček, LSO, Rattle, Barbican review -...
Who doesn’t love the quirky, passionate and humanitarian genius of Leoš Janáček? All of it, these days. Since Charles...
Conversations After Sex, Park Theatre review - pillow talk p...
In Dublin, a city that has changed more than most in the last 30 years, a young woman, with an English accent that is expensive to...
Album: PinkPantheress - Fancy That
There’s plenty of noise out there about 24-year-old Kentish musician Victoria Walker, AKA PinkPantheress. Since being acclaimed BBC Sound of 2022...