A no-nonsense ex-Garda female cop, Scandi-noir’s newest flawed hero, the lure of Aussie gold, and unexpected decency in Silicon valley
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SETH SANDRONSKY appreciates a fresh take on a 100-year-old novel that helps to contextualise the current moment of conspicuous wealth, waste and climate chaos
JAN WOOLF doubts that soft-core musical is the best way to transmit an important story of heroism and resistance
Reviews of Ella Fitzgerald, My Morning Jacket, and Toria Wooff
GORDON PARSONS admires a version of Marlowe’s grim tragedy that strips it down to its gay essentials
When Cassy’s father fails to connect with his daughter — and misses out on
an evening in the Bitter End — a stranger’s self-mocking charm brings seething resentment.
The Bard encounters Laibach’s revival of their 1987 album Opus Dei, and is stirred to verse
ANDREW MURRAY is compelled by the moment of revolution in British history when Parliament had political intimacy with society
A Rotten Crowd: America, Wealth, and One Hundred Years of The Great Gatsby
John Marsh, Monthly Review Press, £16.99
AS month two of the Trump 2.0 era careens forward, reading author and English professor John Marsh’s book is a wake-up call to systemic themes and trends as he unpacks culture and the economy over a century through the lens of Fitzgerald’s novel.
He revisits an influential work of fiction to examine an enduring “popular fascination with the rich – their houses, their clothes, their manners.” At the base of these cultural features is an economic system of, by and for the accumulation of capital held together by competition and class.
