book reviews and features
Sophy Roberts: The Lost Pianos of Siberia review - a distant musical journey
Sunday, 09 February 2020
For travellers, “music is a passport, especially in Russia…” Borrowing an adage from the British diplomat Thomas... Read more... |
Francesca Wade: Square Haunting - Bloomsbury retold
Thursday, 06 February 2020
These days, Bloomsbury rests in a state of elegant somnolence. The ghosts of... Read more... |
Kapka Kassabova: To the Lake review - Macedonia's lacustrine heart
Sunday, 02 February 2020
To the Lake, Kassabova titles this book, but the journey it unfolds tells of not one ancient lake but two: “twins” Ohrid and Prespa, the Lake of Light and the Vale of Snow; these siblings... Read more... |
Tomasz Jedrowski: Swimming in the Dark review – of hypocrisy, both personal and systemic
Sunday, 02 February 2020
Conjuring up nostalgia for a past readers never had is, perhaps, the litmus test for any good coming-of-age story. Writers have the hard task of making the general particular – because growing up... Read more... |
Albert Costa: The Bilingual Brain review – double-talking heads and what they tell us
Sunday, 26 January 2020
Those of us who have to toil and sweat with other languages often feel a twinge of envy when we meet truly bilingual folk. That ability to switch codes, seemingly without any fuss, must confer so... Read more... |
Clemens Meyer: Dark Satellites review - eccentric orbits
Sunday, 26 January 2020
In Clemens Meyer’s new collection of short stories Dark Satellites (translated from German by Kate... Read more... |
Ilya Kaminsky: Deaf Republic - silence as 'a soul's noise'
Sunday, 19 January 2020
"The deaf don’t believe in silence. Silence is the invention of the hearing." This is one of two author’s "Notes" to Ilya Kaminsky’s latest... Read more... |
Jeet Thayil: Low – grief’s seedy distractions
Sunday, 19 January 2020
Like many writers, Jeet Thayil is a bit of an outsider. And, if his track record is anything to go by, he has been happy to keep it that way. The poet,... Read more... |
Deborah Orr: Motherwell review - memoir, but so much more
Saturday, 18 January 2020
Published in the year following Orr’s death at the age of 57, Motherwell is an analysis of the author’s ... Read more... |
Francine Toon: Pine review – trauma and terror in the Highlands
Sunday, 12 January 2020
Supernatural and Gothic stories have always haunted the misty borderlands between high and popular culture. The finest manage to hover between page-turning genre tales and what counts as... Read more... |
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