thu 10/07/2025

book reviews and features

Edward St Aubyn: Double Blind review - constructing 'cognition literature'

Charlie Stone

If it weren’t for the warning on the blurb, the first chapter of Double Blind would have you wondering whether you’d ordered something from the...

Read more...

Agustín Fernández Mallo: The Things We've Seen review - degrees of separation

Daniel Baksi

Trilogies (it is noted, in the term’s Wikipedia entry) “are common in speculative fiction”. They are found in...

Read more...

Extract from Sauntering: Writers Walk Europe, introduced and edited by Duncan Minshull

theartsdesk

Wandering, ambling, sauntering. The last, least heard of the three, captures a sense of leisurely aimlessness: a jolly meander unbound by destination, admitting none of the qualms of...

Read more...

Nina-Sophia Miralles: Glossy - debut author takes on Vogue and the Condé Nasties

Markie Robson-Scott

“Bringing out a luxury magazine in a blitzkrieg is rather like dressing for dinner in the jungle,” wrote Audrey Withers, editor of British Vogue, in December...

Read more...

Brenda Navarro: Empty Houses review - the pains and pressures of motherhood

Daniel Lewis

The horror novelist Sarah Langan recently compared motherhood to being treated like a game of Operation. “The point of the game is to correct us...

Read more...

Kazuo Ishiguro: Klara and the Sun review - what makes us human?

India Lewis

Unsettling, unremitting and psychologically stark, Klara and the Sun has all the hallmarks of a...

Read more...

Katherine Angel: Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again review – the complexities of consent

Lydia Bunt

Katherine Angel borrows the title of her latest book, Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again, from an essay by Foucault. The phrase parodies the supposed...

Read more...

Frances Larson: Undreamed Shores review - journeys without maps

Boyd Tonkin

Beatrice Blackwood had lived in a clifftop village between surf and jungle on Bougainville Island, part of the Solomon archipelago in the South Pacific. She hunted, fished and grew crops with...

Read more...

Joseph Andras: Tomorrow They Won't Dare to Murder Us review - injustice and tenderness in the Algerian War

Daniel Lewis

Joseph Andras wastes no time. “Not a proud and forthright rain, no. A stingy rain. Mean. Playing dirty.” This is how his debut novel kicks off, and it’s a fitting start for his retelling of the...

Read more...

Karla Suárez: Havana Year Zero review - maths, phones and mysteries in down-at-heel Cuba

Boyd Tonkin

Havana, 1993. Far away, the fall of the Soviet empire has suddenly stripped Fidel Castro’s Cuba of subsidy and...

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 £49,000 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

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
Insomnia, Channel 5 review - a chronicle of deaths foretold

A mixture of legal drama, medical mystery and psychological thriller with creepy supernatural overtones, Insomnia sometimes seems to be...

The Merry Wives of Windsor, Shakespeare's Globe review...

Shakespeare’s Prince Hal may have rejected Sir John Falstaff as a symbol of his misspent...

Album: Mark Stewart - The Fateful Symmetry

I met Mark Stewart once. It was on a platform at Clapham Junction, I wouldn’t normally approach a famous person like that, but I felt I had to pay...

First Person: country singer Tami Neilson on the superpower...

I was born Tamara Lee Neilson. I had an Uncle Kenny and an Aunt Dolly (who played guitar and banjo, respectively). I mean, did I really have a...

Album: Gwenno - Utopia

Stylistically, Utopia wears multiple faces. Opening cut “London 1757” drifts by like a twig floating upon an unhurried stream. Next, “...

Live Aid at 40: When Rock'n'Roll Took on the World...

“Bob’s not the kind of guy you can say no to,” said Sting, reminiscing about the origins of 1984’s Band Aid charity single “Do They Know It’s...

theartsdesk Q&A: actor Emma Mackey on 'Hot Milk...

Emma Mackey might have had her breakthrough role as a teenage tough cookie in Netflix's hit Series Sex Education (2019-20223), but there...

Blu-ray: A Hard Day's Night

Andrew Sarris, doyen of auteurist film critics, dubbed A Hard Day’s Night “the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals”. Wild over-...

newsletter

Get a weekly digest of our critical highlights in your inbox each Thursday!

Simply enter your email address in the box below

View previous newsletters