books
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Douglas Stuart has once again delivered a novel that feels emotionally bruising in the best possible sense. John of John explores masculinity, inheritance, addiction and working-class survival with the same devastating clarity that defined Shuggie Bain. Stuart’s greatest strength remains his ability to write tenderness within brutality. Even in environments shaped by violence, poverty and…
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Elizabeth Strout remains one of the finest observers of human loneliness currently writing, and The Things We Never Say continues her extraordinary ability to locate emotional devastation within ordinary lives. The novel explores silence in all its forms: silence between partners, silence within families and silence people impose upon themselves out of fear or shame.…
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Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear feels perfectly calibrated for this cultural moment. A novel obsessed with nostalgia, memory and reinvention, it interrogates why modern society remains so addicted to romanticising the past. Part literary fiction, part cultural critique, the novel has already generated enormous attention ahead of its forthcoming film adaptation starring Anne Hathaway, who is…
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7/10 In an era where so much film and television feels algorithmically assembled, loud, cynical and terrified of sincerity, Remarkably Bright Creatures arrives like a deep breath. Quietly devastating and unexpectedly beautiful, Olivia Newman’s adaptation of Shelby Van Pelt’s bestselling novel understands something many modern films have forgotten: audiences do not need constant spectacle to…
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With Waxing | Waning, Taupe reject almost every convention currently driving music consumption. This is not a record built for ease. It is built for friction. Operating somewhere between jazz, noise, experimental rock, and improvisational structure, the album refuses stable ground. Tracks shift direction without warning. Rhythms dissolve and reassemble. Melodic ideas appear briefly before…
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The Ivors have announced the nominations for 2026, with 61 songwriters and composers recognised across seven categories, celebrating music released in the UK in 2025. The awards take place on 21 May at Grosvenor House in London. The Ivors 2026 nominations are in. Peer-judged by songwriters and composers, this is still one of the only…
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Book Review Invisible Women is the kind of book that shifts your perspective in small, permanent ways. After reading it, everyday systems start to look slightly different. You begin to notice assumptions that once felt neutral. Caroline Criado Perez builds her argument around a deceptively simple premise. Much of the modern world has been designed…
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Book Review Ireland has produced political memoirs. It has produced literary fiction that dissects power. It has produced feminist scholarship rooted in academia. What it has rarely produced is a forensic cultural manifesto that drags an entire creative industry into the light and demands structural reform. Why Not Her? A Manifesto for Culture Change is…
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Our Rating 7/10 Soda Blonde – “Suit & Tie” I have always considered Faye O’Rourke to be one of Ireland’s finest and most undervalued vocalists. How a voice like hers has not travelled globally is something I will never fully understand. Perhaps it speaks less to talent and more to the chronic inability of Ireland’s…
The Industry Review 