Blogcritics Author: Natalie Bennett

Book Review: Blood River - A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart by Tim Butcher

Natalie Bennett — Sat, 5 Jul 2008 10:47:29 EDT

Takes you gently through the 20th-century horror ride that is the history of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The Democratic Republic of Congo has been in the news of late -- although certainly still much less than it deserves to be given its unfortunate status as the site of "Africa's first world war", and the place where 45,000 people continue to die every month from violence, disease and starvation. It can seem, from the quick news...

Book Review: The Janissary Tree by Jason Goodwin

Natalie Bennett — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 11:00:40 EDT

Goodwin not only knows 19th-century Istanbul intimately, but he's got a close eye for detail and a fine line in elaborate plotting.
There's a whole class of detective fiction in which a place, usually a city, is more the hero, more the key to the story, than any mere human. I'm thinking of the Sydney of Jon Cleary, the Victorian London of Anne Perry.Having been to modern Istanbul, I can imagine, with its narrow ancient streets, its half-buried mysteries, its drifting...

Book Review: Blood on the Wood and Dead Man Riding, Nell Bray Mysteries by Gillian Linscott

Natalie Bennett — Sun, 1 Jun 2008 08:42:46 EDT

I'll be visiting with Nell again, even if I will be frustrated by the social restrictions that also frustrate her.
The dashing detective Phyrne Fisher now has a rival for my literary affections. It was the Women Writers Through the Ages group that introduced me to her rival, Nell Bray, fittingly, since this character's defining characteristic is that she's a suffragette - she works for the Women's Political and Social Union.In the first book...

Theater Review (London): I Saw Myself

Natalie Bennett — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:28:37 EDT

Sleev is super-intelligent, manipulative, and magnificent. With a different set of genitals she'd have made a superb king.
At the heart of I Saw Myself is a woman - a powerful, self-aware, sexual, physical woman. This is Eve before she was castrated by the Abrahamic religions. She's not good, but she is strong, and glories in that strength. She's a Western Kali - whether she uses her power for good or evil is, to her, incidental.The woman, the queen, is Sleev,...

Theater Review (London): Days of Significance by the RSC at the Tricycle

Natalie Bennett — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 10:03:21 EDT

The subject is Iraq, and the "heroes" are the achingly young, ill-educated lads who wind up in the British army ranks.
Were Falstaff to wander into the Tricycle Theatre in Kilburn over the next couple of weeks, he'd feel right at home. For in the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of a new play, Days of Significance, there's drinking, cussing, jokes about bodily fluids, vile curses, and martial strutting. There are, however, none of the fine tricksy...

Theater Review (London): Believe at the New End

Natalie Bennett — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 20:24:02 EST

If you're a man with a guilty conscience about how you've treated a woman, you should go - the nightmares should be good for your soul.
The four women played by Linda Marlowe in Believe, which opened tonight at the New End Theatre, would appear, from a simple description of their fates, to all be victims. Rahab is a prostitute who chooses to harbour spies who will assist in the destruction of her city; Bathsheba, seduced by her husband's commander, is forced to watch him sent...

Theater Review (London): Walking on Water at the White Bear, Kennington

Natalie Bennett — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 22:21:32 EST

Superb acting and neat writing can't entirely save this depressing story we've seen many times before.
The production of Walking on Water that opened last night at the White Bear Theatre in south London features a notably fine cast led by one of the grande dames of British acting, Susannah York. York plays the senile-some-of-the-time, not so matriarchal grandmother in a story that also features her two daughters and a grand-daughter....

Book Review: Cleaning Up - How I Gave Up Drinking and Lived by Tania Glyde

Natalie Bennett — Sun, 6 Jan 2008 06:56:05 EST

A personal account fails to explain Britain's binge drinking "epidemic".
It is rare to open a British newspaper these days without finding an article about the "binge drinking epidemic". I'll admit to a certain degree of scepticism about this: not a question that it is happening - visit any town centre on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday night and it will be obvious - but that there's anything very new...

Book Review: World Without End by Ken Follett

Natalie Bennett — Wed, 2 Jan 2008 01:00:44 EST

He's not a great writer, or even a good one, but he's a great storyteller.
With his immensely popular The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett introduced one enormous, overbearing, dangerous main character, a Gothic cathedral, the building of which consumed, in one way or another, the life of most of his 12th-century characters.He's returned to that building, in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, for World Without End,...

Book Review - A Question of Death: An Illustrated Phryne Fisher Treasury

Natalie Bennett — Sat, 1 Dec 2007 20:55:03 EST

She's the perfect dashing detective - good with a gun, a decent pilot, an astonishingly keen observer, an expert on all of the regular poisons.
How to describe Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher series? You might call it classy, historical detective chick-lit, but the Hon. Miss Phyrne would never be caught in something so inelegant-sounding. A feminist Agatha Christie, with style and sex? Well that might do it.Phryne's back for Christmas, in Australia at least, with A Question of...