book reviews and features
Alan Hollinghurst: Our Evenings review - a gift that keeps on giving
Monday, 04 November 2024
In Alan Hollinghurst’s first novel, The Swimming Pool Library (1988), set during the summer of 1983, the young gay narrator, William Beckwith, lives in Holland Park. That same year and... Read more... |
Jonathan Coe: The Proof of My Innocence review - a whodunnit with a difference
Tuesday, 29 October 2024
Anyone who has been on a British train in the last ten years will have been irritated to distraction by the inane and ubiquitous “See it, say it, sorted” announcement that punctuates every journey... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Anna Bogutskaya on her new book about the past decade of horror cinema
Tuesday, 22 October 2024
You may have heard the phrase “elevated horror” being used to describe horror films that lean more toward arthouse cinema, favouring tension and psychological turmoil over jump-... Read more... |
Olga Tokarczuk: The Empusium review - paranoid prose
Tuesday, 22 October 2024
In his first of a series of meditations on the sickness that was consuming him, John Donne reflected... Read more... |
Stevie Smith: Not Waving But Drowning review - riding the wave
Wednesday, 02 October 2024
Last year, Wendy Cope’s poem, "The Orange", went viral on TikTok. I’m not totally certain how a poem goes viral, but it did – and there’s nothing we can do about it. In fact, Faber &... Read more... |
Ellen McWilliams: Resting Places - On Wounds, War and the Irish Revolution review - finding art in the inarticulable
Friday, 19 July 2024
How do you give voice to a history that is intimate to your own in one sense, whilst being the story of others whom you never knew? This is a... Read more... |
Claire Messud: This Strange Eventful History review - home is where the heart was
Thursday, 18 July 2024
Claire Messud’s This Strange Eventful History is personal: a novel, that is, strangely inflected by autobiography, a history that is... Read more... |
Paul Alexander: Bitter Crop - The Heartache and Triumph of Billie Holiday's Last Year review - setting the record straight
Saturday, 06 July 2024
It’s often said that nobody mythologised Billie Holiday like Billie Holiday. I’m not so sure. In this fine, clear-eyed... Read more... |
Kelly Clancy: Playing with Reality - How Games Shape Our World review - how far games go back
Monday, 24 June 2024
For a couple of decades, the free video game America’s Army was a powerful recruitment aid for the US military. More than a shoot-em-up, players might find themselves dressing virtual... Read more... |
Hugo Rifkind: Rabbits review - 31 wild parties and a funeral
Monday, 10 June 2024
In some ways I’m an appropriate person to review Hugo Rifkind’s new novel Rabbits, a coming-of-age comedy set in the early... Read more... |
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