ANDY HEDGECOCK relishes two exhibitions that blur the boundaries between art and community engagement
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ANDY HEDGECOCK recommends two collections of short stories that use a single location to connect the narratives, and explore the limits of our ability to understand the world
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE reviews I Am Martin Parr, September Says, The Monkey, and The Gorge
RITA DI SANTO applauds a touching and witty opener that touches a hot topic in Germany: the future of the immigrant population
SIMON PARSONS is discomfited by an unflichingly negative portrait of motherhood and its trials
PAUL FOLEY recommends an extraordinary double bill that packs a punch and leaves you reeling
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a play about AI that results in a deadening disconnect for its audience
SIMON PARSONS applauds an insightful state-of-the-nation play that explores the growing class divide in South Africa
The Hotel
Daisy Johnson, Jonathan Cape, £14.99
Barrowbeck
Andrew Michael Hurley, John Murray, £16.99
THESE books share a common origin. Commissioned as story sequences for Radio 4 by BBC producer Justine Willett, they were read by a distinguished cast of voice actors.
There are further similarities. They use the imagery and atmospheres of contemporary folk horror — a sense of foreboding, ambiguous perceptions, undercurrents of violence and a collision of the mythic with the mundane — to explore the influence of landscape on psychology.
Furthermore, both books focus on single locations and present a view of history in line with the fabulist Russell Hoban’s assertion that “the past is something that sticks to your shoes like cow shit.”
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