It’s Terrible the Things I Have to Do to Be Me: the spectacle’s sinister pullTaking its title from a courtroom lament by Anna Nicole Smith, this read is a study of how fame transforms a woman into an imageFri Jul 11 2025 - 04:31
Camila Cabello at 3Arena review: Fast, loud and fun – except for one humiliating momentIn Dublin the star pulls a fan onstage and gets the crowd to chant that the poor girl’s ‘a 10 out of 10′ before launching into a motivational speechThu Jul 10 2025 - 11:19
Love Forms by Claire Adam: A novel of cumulative forceThe Trinidadian-Irish author brings a refreshing seriousness and sincerity to her study of the mysteries of loveFri Jul 04 2025 - 04:13
Static review: A stranded astronaut, an Irish radio ham and snatches of a strange, poignant frequencyJimmy McAleavey’s play, at the Peacock, fictionalises and slightly flattens a moment of unlikely connectionThu Jun 26 2025 - 15:58
The Second Woman review: Eileen Walsh’s 24-hour performance reveals something astonishing about usCork Midsummer Festival 2025: Playing the same break-up scene on a loop, with 100 different men, the actor is up for anything, alive to each variationMon Jun 16 2025 - 09:33
Theatre for One: Made in Cork review – One actor, one audience member and a life unravellingCork Midsummer Festival 2025: In a tiny peep-show-style booth, in a five-minute play, a character opens the mess of their private life to youSun Jun 15 2025 - 04:58
Escaped Alone review: Four women, catastrophe and the comforts of ordinary chatterCork Midsummer Festival 2025: Anna Healy, Sorcha Cusack, Ruth McCabe and Anna Monaghan star in Caryl Churchill’s dark, cracklingly funny playSat Jun 14 2025 - 10:11
Look At You by Amanda Smyth: This autobiographical novel is a true originalShort stories each provide a snapshot of a moment in the narrator’s life Sat Jun 14 2025 - 04:14
Sister Europe by Nell Zink: A novel driven almost entirely by dialogueWhile the prose fizzles, it rarely deepens and the emotional pitch remains staticSat May 31 2025 - 04:41
Children of Radium by Joe Dunthorne: An excellent and unsettling excavation of family secretsThe book tackles dark subject matter with moral precision and a surprisingly keen sense of humourFri Apr 04 2025 - 04:09
I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There by Róisín Lanigan: A new hauntDebut novel tackles big themes with wit and precisionTue Mar 25 2025 - 04:28
In Judgement of Others by Eleanor Anstruther: An astonishingly chilly comedy of mannersThis satire of middle-class England is keenly observed and quietly devastatingSat Feb 08 2025 - 00:00
The man gave every indication of being dead just seconds before he revived to defend himself To recognise myself in the man crawling through Temple Bar with bitterness in his heart – that is a hard thing to doSun Jan 12 2025 - 06:00
The Rose Garden by Maeve Brennan: Stories that refuse to behaveThe publication of The Rose Garden completes The Stinging Fly’s three-volume collection of Maeve Brennan’s published workFri Jan 03 2025 - 04:51
The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller: A beautiful, slow-burning novelSentences of unrelenting realism builds up gradually, layer by layer, to an astonishing depth and tendernessSat Dec 21 2024 - 00:00
The American No by Rupert Everett: Velvety camp and the poetry of the glitterballThe main problem with this short story collection is its form: much of the dialogue might work on screen but is lifeless on the pageSat Oct 12 2024 - 00:00
The Jesus Trilogy: Beautifully textured adaptation captures all the sadness and mystery of JM Coetzee’s novelsDublin Theatre Festival 2024: Annabelle Comyn’s evocative production, featuring Fergal McElherron and Elaine O’Dwyer, makes clever, convincing choicesFri Oct 11 2024 - 10:48
Ask Not: The Kennedys and the Women They Destroyed by Maureen Callahan – A pulpy approach that provides facile answersJFK recruited teenage interns to have sex with and pass around to his friends. Why is he remembered as one of the best presidents in US history?Sat Sept 07 2024 - 04:00
The Silence in Between, Greta & Valdin, and Mongrel: New writers’ exciting thematic scopeReviews: Works shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize by Josie Ferguson, Rebecca K Reilly and Hanako FootmanWed Aug 14 2024 - 04:19
Short stories from Kafka to the Kafkaesque: making strange againTwo new books, Selected Stories and A Cage Went in Search of a Bird, make the case for reading the worst of Franz Kafka afreshFri Jun 28 2024 - 04:18
Private Rites by Julia Armfield: Atmospheric and deeply weird novel about a banal kind of apocalypseAmid mass suicides, famine and displaced populations, the characters still have to tap on and off the boats that have replaced public transportSat Jun 15 2024 - 00:00
