Joanna Di Mattia
Joanna Di Mattia is from Readings Carlton
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…
Review — 6 Sep 2020
The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante
Last year, when I heard that a new Elena Ferrante novel was imminent, I experienced palpable waves of excitement through my body. That’s the kind of writer Ferrante is –…
Review — 23 Feb 2020
Parasite
When Bong Joon-ho won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2019, Parasite was the first South Korean film ever awarded the festival’s top prize. Almost a year later, director Bong…
Review — 20 May 2020
Square Haunting by Francesca Wade
I love women’s history. I love group biographies. I love English social and cultural history in the period between the wars. And I love Bloomsbury, the place and its lore…
Blog post — 14 Nov 2019
The best DVDs of 2019
Every year our staff vote for their favourite books, albums, films and TV shows of the past 12 months. Here are our top 10 DVDs of the year, voted for…