book reviews and features
Bette Howland: Blue in Chicago review – the city on trial, with the writer as witness
Tuesday, 07 July 2020
You feel at times, while reading the collection Blue in Chicago, that Bette Howland might have missed her vocation... Read more... |
Terri White: Coming Undone review - a British journalist unravels in NYC
Sunday, 05 July 2020
The journalistic addiction-memoir is a crowded genre these days: Details editor Dan Perez chronicles his massive intake of Vicodin and other opioids in As Needed for Pain; ... Read more... |
Camille Laurens: Little Dancer Aged Fourteen review - the story of a sculpture
Sunday, 05 July 2020
Edgar Degas is famous for his depictions of ballet dancers. His drawings, paintings and sculptures of young... Read more... |
Tahar Ben Jelloun: The Punishment review - triumph over torture
Sunday, 28 June 2020
In July 1966, Tahar Ben Jelloun’s life changed. As punishment for participating in a peaceful student demonstration against the authoritarian King Hassan II of... Read more... |
A. Kendra Greene: The Museum of Whales You Will Never See review - a thoughtful museum piece
Saturday, 27 June 2020
The Museum of Whales is an unfolding: a slow process of describing a country, its people, and its past through its esoteric and bizarre museums. The book is structured into galleries... Read more... |
Joseph Mazur: The Clock Mirage review – brief histories of time
Sunday, 21 June 2020
The Greek philosopher Zeno’s paradoxes, which have plagued thinkers for around 2500 years, tell us that super-speedy Achilles can never outrun the tortoise and that an arrow in flight must always... Read more... |
Margarita García Robayo: Holiday Heart review – understated and acute
Sunday, 14 June 2020
The epigraph chosen for Holiday Heart locates the book within the tense of an “afterwards”: not passion, but what follows, the wakeful lull and wide-eyed studying of another, in which... Read more... |
Yuri Herrera: A Silent Fury review – the fire last time
Sunday, 14 June 2020
History, as protestors around the world currently insist, can be the art of forgetting – and erasure – as much as of memory. Although it explores a single incident from a century ago, Yuri Herrera... Read more... |
Book extract: Holiday Heart by Margarita García Robayo translated by Charlotte Coombe
Sunday, 07 June 2020
Holiday heart, instead of sentimental love discovered on vacation, describes a faltering organ, overloaded from excess consumption: a heart at risk. In Margarita Garcia Robayo’s brilliantly... Read more... |
Matthew Kneale: Pilgrims review – adventures on the road to Rome
Sunday, 31 May 2020
Some things really never change. After a blatant cheat perpetrated by a well-connected lout, one of the humblest pilgrims in Matthew Kneale’s band reminds us that “rich folks’ justice is a penny... 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 £33,000 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
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Saul, Glyndebourne review - playful, visually ravishing desc...
This thrilling production of Saul takes Handel’s dramatisation of the Bible’s first Book of Samuel and paints it in...
The Gold, Series 2, BBC One review - back on the trail of th...
The first series of The Gold in 2023 was received rapturously, though apparently it only told one half of the story of the 1983 Brink’s-...
Eva Quartet, St Cyprian's review - polyphonic bliss
Eva Quartet are four outstanding Bulgarian voices of polyphonic purity and depth, drawn from the legendary choir Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares, who...
Album: Mary Chapin Carpenter - Personal History
In those seemingly long-ago times of loneliness and lockdown, artists around the world invited us into their kitchens and living rooms as they...
Miss Myrtle’s Garden, Bush Theatre review - flowering talent...
The Bush Theatre is becoming a garden...
Così fan tutte, Nevill Holt Festival/Opera North review - re...
Marianne Moore once famously defined poems as “imaginary gardens with real toads in them”. Operas also fill, or anyway should fill, their...
Music Reissues Weekly: Gather In The Mushrooms
“Forest and the Shore” by Keith Christmas is remarkable. In his essay for Gather In The Mushrooms, compiler, author and Saint Etienne...
Big Star: The Nick Skelton Story review - the ways of a man...
If you’re horse mad or merely an every-four-years Olympic fan, you already know Nick Skelton’s story. Equestrianism can favour mature competitors...