The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews Sebastian, Four Mothers, Restless, and The Most Precious of Cargoes
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NLR - wtf?
WILL PODMORE is glad to find that a survey of editorials exposes the pretentions of the New Left Review
NLR
JOHN GREEN explores the argument that psychiatry needs to move away from the idea of just seeing and treating the individual
SYLVIA HIKINS applauds a polemic against “cleanfluencers” and considers radical alternatives to current inequalities of housework
RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
IAN SINCLAIR draws attention to the powerful role that literature plays in foreseeing the way humanity will deal with climate crisis
High quality pulp, rollicking online murders, Abnorman Britain, and high skates drama: reviews of The Get Off, Everyone In The Group Chat Dies, Pagans and First To Fall
DENNIS BROE notes what happens to content when the streaming giants incorporate AI and deregulation into their economic models
Contraventions: editorials from New Left Review
Susan Watkins, Verso, £25
THIS selection of editorials from the New Left Review in the years from 2000 to 2022 reveals more about NLR’s ideology than was possibly intended.
The self-important NLR team has always seen its role as indispensable — to inject correct theory into the somnolent masses. NLR’s philosopher-kings will enlighten the benighted masses across the world. There is no need for all the hard work of building a party, which it sees as inevitably doomed to bureaucratic deformation.
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