The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle (Penguin, £9.99)This short novel won almost every genre award following its 2016 US publication. As a Black writer, LaValle had a conflicted relationship with... Read more »
Television is an intimate art form, once beamed into living rooms, now on devices right in front of our faces. The screenwriter Russell T Davies understands that intimacy. Whether discussing his early days developing lost-to-history... Read more »
Margaret Atwood had to be persuaded to write a memoir. The thought of writing about herself initially seemed “dead boring. Who wants to read about someone sitting at a desk messing up... Read more »
Donald Trump’s catastrophic errors get so much attention that his systemic ones can easily be missed. While the world looks on in dismay at his farcical war in Iran, the thuggery of... Read more »
Bear with me, because there is some backstory to get through before we can talk about the book I am actually here to review. Back in 1984, Stephen King and Peter Straub... Read more »
What is the role of art in an artist’s life? Should you commit everything to honing your talent in the hope of becoming a great master? Or should you use your artistic... Read more »
Since Whitney Houston’s death in 2012, a flurry of books and documentaries have appeared, most of them presenting her life as a cautionary tale. In this new biography, Emily Lordi, a professor of... Read more »
There’s barely been a moment in the last half-century when David Byrne hasn’t been zinging about, dancing forward, opting odd. The art-school dropout frontman of Talking Heads, he moved sideways into ballet,... Read more »
Canadian author Patrick deWitt broke through with a western, 2011’s Booker-shortlisted The Sisters Brothers. Now, he has taken on another hallowed American genre: the road novel. Recent works by Miranda July and... Read more »