The Threepenny Opera
If you put on a production of Romeo and Juliet in Verona, how much does anyone care that the action is ostensibly set in...
The Red and Yellow Nothing by Jay Bernard
It is difficult to put a finger on the immediate aftermath of reading The Red and Yellow Nothing: there is puzzlement, rage, and wonder,...
A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk
I was reading Orhan Pamuk’s Snow in London recently, when a Scottish man stopped me to say how much he’d enjoyed it – ‘best book ever’, he...
The Lobster
If you were to be turned into an animal what animal would you choose? This question remains at the forefront of Yorgos Lanthimos’s first...
Macbeth
Scotland herself is the main character in this blood-soaked reimagining of Shakespeare's shortest tragedy. So enamoured is director Justin Kurzel of his Highland landscape...
Jackson Pollock: Blind Spots
Upon viewing Jackson Pollock’s 1951 solo show in which he debuted his now famed ‘black paintings’, friend and fellow painter Alfonso Ossorio commented that...
40 Sonnets by Don Paterson
Paterson is at his best when writing about heartbreak. “The Six,” this reviewer’s favourite piece in 40 Sonnets, speaks of a guitar picked up...
The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood
In 2009, Ursula K. Le Guin caused something of a stir in the science-fiction community by contradicting Atwood’s claim that her novels belonged to...
The New World by Chris Adrian & Eli Horowitz
The New World
Chris Adrian & Eli Horowitz
Granta, £12.99 (paperback)
The New World opens grippingly by immersing the reader in the consciousness of Jane, a...
Iain Sinclair and Will Self on Walking London
I’ve got a new eternal certainty to file alongside death and taxes: if you walk around London enough, and you know what he looks...
Undermajordomo Minor by Patrick DeWitt
'Cheerily, then, as one making teatime conversation, she asked “do you yourself ever think of suicide?” Lucy pondered this. “No more than is customary,...
The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwood
The Heart Goes Last
Margaret Atwood
Bloomsbury, £18.99
Reworked from an e-serial, Atwood’s latest novel is as captivating and humorous as her previous work. The America inhabited...
Purity by Jonathan Franzen
Jonathan Franzen likes big books. Each one of his critically acclaimed works are weighty door-stoppers but their tangible size in no way matches the...
My Salinger Year – Joanna Rakoff
‘"We need," she said, as I arranged myself in the chair across from her large wooden desk, "to talk about Jerry."’ Who’s Jerry? The...
Dark Fairytale – Review of McQueen at the Theatre Royal Haymarket
McQueen
Theatre Royal Haymarket
Limited run from 19th August
Reviewed by Lauren Hepburn
It's been five years since Lee McQueen took his life. The exquisite dress worn by...
Defining the Unfinished – Works from The Courtauld Gallery
Unfinished…Works from The Courtauld Gallery
Summer Showcase Special Display
18th June-20th September 2015
Unfinished masterpieces tend only to come to light upon the artist’s death,...
In the Belly of a Beast – The Serpentine Pavilion
On the 25th June The Serpentine Pavilion unveiled its much-anticipated 15th annual commission, this time appointed to young Spanish architects José Selgas...
Where my Heart Used to Beat by Sebastian Faulks
In Where My Heart Used to Beat, we witness the transformation of protagonist Robert Hendricks’s ideas on memory and its place within the present....
The Atheist’s Burden
Submission, Michel Houellebecq, William Heinemann, 256pp, ISBN 1785150243 £12.91
(French edition) Soumission Flammarion ISBN 2081354802
'Rats will most probably outlive mankind; their social system, in any case,...
‘Birdsong’ at Richmond Theatre
Now in the final week of its critically acclaimed tour, Rachel Wagstaff’s stage adaptation of Birdsong will be running at Richmond theatre until 4th...
‘Savage Beauty’ – Alexander McQueen exhibition at the V&A
From 14th March - 2nd August, the V&A is graced by the biggest Alexander McQueen exhibition in Europe. Since McQueen committed suicide in 2010,...
The First Bad Man by Miranda July
Cheryl Glickman — isolated, alone and with no true friends to speak of — is an acute example of the lonesome modern narrator. Miranda...
One Thousand Things Worth Knowing by Paul Muldoon and Sentenced to...
These are two very contrastive books both making a clear announcement through their titles. The first is brash, claiming something unbelievable, just as the...