book reviews and features
Brenda Navarro: Empty Houses review - the pains and pressures of motherhood
Thursday, 11 March 2021
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?
Tuesday, 09 March 2021
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
Monday, 08 March 2021
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
Tuesday, 02 March 2021
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
Thursday, 25 February 2021
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
Tuesday, 23 February 2021
Havana, 1993. Far away, the fall of the Soviet empire has suddenly stripped Fidel Castro’s Cuba of subsidy and... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Amina Cain on her first novel and her eternal fascination with suggestion
Monday, 22 February 2021
Amina Cain is a writer of near-naked spaces and roomy characters. Her debut collection of short fiction, I... Read more... |
Jackie Kay: Bessie Smith review – vivid writing about the Empress of the Blues
Thursday, 18 February 2021
Blues singer Bessie Smith (1894-... Read more... |
Patricia Lockwood: No One is Talking About This review - first novel goes beyond the internet
Tuesday, 16 February 2021
This is a novel, says Patricia Lockwood in her Twitter feed, about being very inside the... Read more... |
CLR James: Minty Alley review - love and betrayal in the barrack-yard
Monday, 08 February 2021
CLR James came to London from Trinidad in 1932, clutching the manuscript of his first and only novel. He soon found work, writing about cricket for the Manchester Guardian, as well as a... 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...
Supergrass, Barrowland, Glasgow review - nostalgia played wi...
It is a family affair at Supergrass shows these days. There were plenty of parents and offspring filing onto the Barrowland’s famous old...
Louis Cole, Roundhouse review - nothing is everything
London's iconic Roundhouse, packed to the rafters, provided the perfect setting for the UK premiere of Louis Cole's groundbreaking album ...
Album: Peter Doherty - Felt Better Alive
Following on from an impressive set with the Libertines – last year’s No 1 album All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade – Peter Doherty...
Here We Are, National Theatre review - Sondheim's sensa...
You don't have to be greeting the modern day with a smile unsupported by events in the wider world to have a field day at Here We Are....
Riefenstahl review - fascinating fascism? Portrait of the Na...
There used to be an unwritten rule among BBC commissioners about how long an interval had to pass before greenlighting a new documentary on a...
Giant, Harold Pinter Theatre review - incendiary Roald Dahl...
When Mark Rosenblatt was preparing his debut play, the miseries of the assault on Gaza were still over the horizon. Now they are here,...
'Classic-era prog’s Olympian pinnacle': Pink Floyd...
Pink Floyd’s “Echoes”, the ineffable progressive rock epic that occupies side two of...
The Surfer review - Nicolas Cage is relentlessly down and ou...
“Don’t live here, don’t surf here,” is the menacing motto (sounds more scary with an Australian accent) of the tanned, muscular denizens of Luna...
Einkvan, Det Norske Teatret, The Coronet Theatre review - al...
Watching the stricken faces on the split screen, I felt at times like callow Farfrae in Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge: when faced...