Out of the Woods Review: A brave sort of intimacyLuke Turner mixes vulnerability with the sort of insight that comes only through a complex honestySat Jan 19 2019 - 06:00
Anna Burns’s first two novels: Bold, terrifying, funny, profoundBooker winner’s first two novels have been reissued in the wake of Milkman’s successSat Dec 22 2018 - 06:00
Writer to Writer: The Republic of Elsewhere reviewCiaran Carty explores idea of authors overseas as being creatively beyond bordersSat Dec 08 2018 - 00:00
Winter Papers 4: handsome volume, bright with eloquenceA treasure trove of contemporary art, although the steep price may limit appealThu Dec 06 2018 - 06:00
Truth & Dare review: Reimagining Irish women’s livesMartina Devlin, in her first collection of short stories, brings to life a cast of historical figuresSat Dec 01 2018 - 06:00
Sleeping with the Lights On by Darryl Jones review: The horror never endsAn exploration of the horror genre’s subversive potential and shape-shifting natureSat Nov 03 2018 - 06:00
Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know: The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce reviewColm Tóibín’s essays explore the emotional resonances and drama of writers’ familiesSat Oct 27 2018 - 06:01
Unsheltered: Intertwined narratives connect the 1870s to Trump eraBarbara Kingsolver is no stranger to topical themes in her work and this is no exceptionSat Oct 20 2018 - 06:00
Bridge of Clay review: Slow-paced novel is both masterful and tediousMarkus Zusak’s rich characterisation is dragged down by overwrought styleSat Oct 13 2018 - 06:00
Melmoth review: elegant and atmospheric return to Victorian gothicSarah Perry reanimates Maturin’s Byronic character to eerie and human effectSat Oct 06 2018 - 06:00
The Labyrinth of Spirits by Carlos Ruiz Zafón: a novel to lose oneself inThe final instalment of a series of four interconnected works is full of mysterySat Sept 29 2018 - 06:00
Love is Blind review: an easy-going period-drama romanceWilliam Boyd’s elegantly written tale of a piano-tuner in Paris is too enslaved to its plotSat Sept 22 2018 - 06:00
The End by Karl Ove Knausgaard: hypnotic tedium and flashes of insightSixth and final book in the Norwegian author’s autobiographical project is part literary criticism, part portrait of the artist, part exploration of family lifeSat Sept 01 2018 - 06:00
John Boyne’s A Ladder to the Sky gets lost in narrative acrobaticsThe story of one man’s cut-throat path to literary stardom, starts impressively but then loses its waySat Aug 11 2018 - 06:00
Perfidious Albion review: satire on post-Brexit Britain bristles with energySam Byers paints a disorientating world of quickfire data and England in chaosSat Aug 04 2018 - 06:00
The Day the Sun Died by Yan Lianke: a brave, masterful novelThemes of dreams and reality are explored in this poetic book set over one nightSat Jul 28 2018 - 06:00
Beasts at Bedtime: Revealing the environmental wisdom of children’s literatureZoologist Liam Heneghan encourages parents to surround their children with natureSat Jul 14 2018 - 06:00
So Much Life Left Over by Louis de Bernières: strained plot is lost in timeEpic in scope, this historical novel is at times strikingly anachronisticSat Jul 07 2018 - 06:00
The Cambridge Companion to Irish Poets review: insightful essaysGerald Dawe edits this admirable poetry guide, balancing complexity and readabilitySat Jun 30 2018 - 06:00
Good Trouble by Joseph O’Neill – Poised comedy and subtle psychologyO’Neill’s short story collection is stuffed with comic and quietly tragic potentialSat Jun 23 2018 - 06:00
Lucia by Alex Pheby: a novel that rethinks James Joyce’s daughterThe troubled Lucia Joyce gets an intellectually uncompromising fictional biographySat Jun 16 2018 - 06:00
The Soul Exceeds its Circumstances: The Later Poetry of Seamus HeaneyBrowser reviewSat Jun 16 2018 - 00:01
All the Lives We Never Lived review: A paean to motherhood and loss in IndiaAnuradha Roy sets family drama against the national drama of Indian independenceSat Jun 09 2018 - 06:00
Barracoon, The Story of the Last Slave: a momentous bookZora Neale Hurston’s interviews with Oluale Kossola, the last known survivor of the Atlantic slave trade, resonates deeply with 21st century racial inequalitiesSat Jun 02 2018 - 06:00
White Houses: a tender exploration of a hidden but profound loveAmy Bloom reimagines the relationship between Eleanor Roosevelt and Lorena HickokSat Apr 28 2018 - 06:00
Young Lions: How Jewish Authors Reinvented the American War Novel by Leah GarrettBrowser reviewSat Apr 28 2018 - 00:00
JM Synge and Travel Writing of the Irish Revival by Giulia BrunaBrowser reviewSat Apr 21 2018 - 00:00
Patient X: A paean to a past author that leaves readers disconnectedSubtitled ‘The Case-Book of Ryunosuke Akutagawa’, David Peace’s episodic novel is well-researched but ultimately impersonalSat Apr 07 2018 - 06:00
The Executor by Blake Morrison – a literary detective story?It delves into big ideas but never fully interrogates them; it raises questions about art but offers, in the end, little insightSat Mar 17 2018 - 06:00
Asymmetry review: A novel that puts a refreshing trust in its readersLisa Halliday’s debut novel has three discrete parts, and the reward is in seeing how they connectSat Mar 10 2018 - 06:00
The Sacred Combe, by Thomas Maloney review – a Gothic pasticheImpressive lyricism in places, and a delicate evocation of the English countrysideSat Mar 03 2018 - 00:00
‘The Men of Art have lost their heart’: poetry and the hunger strikesThe duty of the poet to respond is felt in the poetry of the hunger strikes, but only in the best poetry do the subtleties of that duty, and the subtleties of history, take prominenceWed May 04 2016 - 17:42
