Joanna Di Mattia
Joanna Di Mattia is from Readings Carlton
Review — 6 Sep 2021
The Inseparables by Simone de Beauvoir & Lauren Elkin
In 1954, five years after she published The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir wrote a short novel. Beauvoir believed the unnamed work wasn’t serious enough to publish in her…
Review — 20 May 2021
Real Estate by Deborah Levy
Deborah Levy sits at the top of my list of brilliant women I’d like to have a few drinks with. I imagine we’d sit in a smart London bar, martinis…
Review — 26 Apr 2021
Second Place by Rachel Cusk
Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy challenged my understanding of the novel. It is so unlike what I expect from plot or character, that I now no longer read contemporary fiction the…
Review — 2 Feb 2021
We Are Who We Are
Luca Guadagnino is a master at depicting big feelings. In his most celebrated films, I Am Love (2009), A Bigger Splash (2015), and Call Me by Your Name (2017), he…
Review — 2 Mar 2021
Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford
It starts with a bang. November 1944. A Saturday lunchtime on the Bexford high street, a fictional South London neighbourhood. There’s a buzz at Woolworths, the kind explained by wartime…
Review — 27 Jan 2020
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
Kiley Reid’s debut arrives after a major publisher bidding war. It is easy to see why – Such a Fun Age is an immensely readable and topical novel that opens…
Review — 30 Sep 2020
My Brilliant Friend: The Story of a New Name (Series 2)
Season two of the television adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels picks up where the first ended – at Lila’s wedding and its aftermath. Now sixteen, the brilliant friends’ lives…
Review — 31 Jul 2020
Belgravia
The new six-part series from Julian Fellowes, the creator of Downton Abbey, opens with a view he knows well – high society at play. In Belgravia, written by…
Review — 27 Jun 2020
Honeyland
Honeyland is a lyrical, realist documentary and an intimate character study of a resilient, wise woman. Hatidze Muratova is in her fifties, living a simple life in a remote and…
Review — 19 Aug 2019
The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy
There is nothing ordinary about Deborah Levy’s new novel, her first since 2016’s Booker Prize-shortlisted Hot Milk. As a result, it isn’t an easy one to condense here, but…
