Category: Reviews

Free content

The Sheriff of Geneva

Alex Diggins wants to gorge on this darkly delicious crime caper set in the fast world of gourmet burgers and Venezuelan gold, but finds that the saucepans ultimately run dry

PUBLISHED ON: 23/02/21

CATEGORY: Reviews

Yes, Chef! The spitting tension and steamy press of a professional kitchen is fertile creative ground. Hard-boozing, hard-bonking and filthy-mouthed – …

Read more
Subscribers only

The City Beneath: A Century of Los Angeles Graffiti

Ian Cutler on a reverse travelogue/social archaeological survey of Los Angeles’ marginalised visitors and inhabitants, from hobos to taggers

PUBLISHED ON: 23/02/21

CATEGORY: Reviews

  The text and prolific illustrations that make up The City Beneath provides a hundred-year cultural history of Los Angeles and its environs, fro …

Read more
Subscribers only

Pier Closing Time

Chris Moss, mulls on the mixed legacy of the British seaside that this wonderful collection evokes, and concludes that the artiness of monochrome, a world away from Instagram, gives us poetry as well as social realism

PUBLISHED ON: 23/02/21

CATEGORY: Reviews

There is no such thing as realism. Photographers might choose to capture the gritty, the depressing, the down at heel, but they do so by selection, by …

Read more
Subscribers only

The Tall Owl and Other Stories

Gwen Davies notes that this debut story collection on art, community and estrangement, finds its place in the fairy tale tradition, the oldest and most powerful form of storytelling

PUBLISHED ON: 23/02/21

CATEGORY: Reviews

Ed Garland’s book of criticism, bibliotherapy and memoir, Earwitness, which New Welsh Review published in 2019, raised my awareness of the neglected s …

Read more
Subscribers only

In the Sweep of the Bay

Gwen Davies admires the craft of this homage to David Constantine’s ‘Tea at the Midland’, set in Morecambe Bay, in which time, trauma and healing become the author’s recurrent themes

PUBLISHED ON: 23/02/21

CATEGORY: Reviews

The woman behind plate glass could not have been in their thoughts, they were not performing to impress and entertain her. Far out, they rode on the w …

Read more
Free content

Secret Britain: Unearthing Our Mysterious Past

Amy Aed discovers worlds and wonders right beneath her feet

PUBLISHED ON: 27/01/21

CATEGORY: Reviews

Secret Britain: Unearthing Our Mysterious Past is an informative, immersive book, into which the author weaves poetry, dusting old stories with magic. …

Read more
Free content

The Worrier’s Guide to the End of the World: Love, Loss, and Other Catastrophes through Italy, India, and Beyond

Amy Aed discovers that she enjoys the philosophical moments of this travel title as much as its brutal honesty towards travel companions, its humour and its informal voice

PUBLISHED ON: 27/01/21

CATEGORY: Reviews

Torre DeRoche is one of the most immersive, enigmatic travel writers in the industry, blessed with an easy, relaxed form of prose. The Worrier’s Guide …

Read more
Free content

Land of the Dawn-lit Mountains: A Journey across Arunachal Pradesh, India’s Forgotten Frontier

Amy Aed enjoys travel writing that restores human values, and discovers a remote state in north-eastern India

PUBLISHED ON: 27/01/21

CATEGORY: Reviews

Not only was Land of the Dawn-lit Mountains shortlisted for the 2018 Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award, but it has also been given high praise by o …

Read more
Subscribers only

The Works of Gwerful Mechain [A Broadview Anthology of British Literature edition]

Chris Moss notes that sex and the sacred were sweaty bedfellows in Medieval literature, and delights in these vivacious and deftly constructed translations that positively bounce along, shining a light on this worthy, if less prolific, rival to Chaucer and Dafydd ap Gwilym

PUBLISHED ON: 26/01/21

CATEGORY: Reviews

As every schoolgirl or boy lucky enough to be introduced to Chaucer knows, sex and the sacred were sweaty bedfellows during the Medieval period. If th …

Read more
Subscribers only

South Wales Monuments and Transmissions, 1996–2004 and Not Still: Rhondda Photographs, by Paul Cabuts

Tim Cooke assesses two publications of the formidable, challenging and subversive Valleys photographs of Paul Cabuts

PUBLISHED ON: 26/01/21

CATEGORY: Photo essay, Reviews

Not Still, the title of Paul Cabuts’s stunning collection of images of the Rhondda Valley, comes from Border Country, Raymond Williams’ classic novel …

Read more