book reviews and features
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... |
Devin Jacobsen: Breath Like the Wind at Dawn review – the disturbances of the Civil War
Monday, 15 November 2021
How do you imagine the wind at dawn? Biting, brisk, peremptory – a kind of summons as another day begins? For Les Tamplin, wife-beater, sheriff, father to three sons, it is a detective... Read more... |
Ruth Ozeki: The Book of Form and Emptiness review - where the objects speak
Friday, 05 November 2021
“Form is emptiness, emptiness is form.” Ruth Ozeki’s latest novel takes its name from a Buddhist heart sutra... Read more... |
Mark Bould: The Anthropocene Unconscious review - climate anxiety is written everywhere
Tuesday, 02 November 2021
Our everyday lives, if we’re fortunate, may be placid, even contented. A rewarding job, for some; good eats; warm home; happy family; entertainment on tap. Yet, even for the privileged, awareness... Read more... |
Stuart Jeffries: Everything, All the Time, Everywhere - How We Became Post-Modern review - entertaining origin-story for the world of today
Tuesday, 02 November 2021
In his 1985 essay “Not-Knowing”, the American writer Donald Barthelme describes a fictional situation in which an unknown “someone” is writing a story. “From the world of conventional signs... 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...
