A very great book

A smart, funny and well-written take-down of modern showbiz

Smart, funny, vivid, honest, dark, timely

An entertaining and original memoir touching on career, life and identity. It is an enjoyable read, despite the humiliating tales of auditions or filming situations where she is physically assessed, objectified or subject to casual racism. Understandably there is an undertone of rage in her keen observations

Character Breakdown embraces darkness while also being a wickedly absurd look at modern show business

A meditation on womanhood, failure and performance…her experiences and conflicts feel universal…it is very funny

Sees the hotshot actress/writer/director who you might remember as mentalist Vod in student sitcom, Fresh Meat, look at the absurdity of pretending to be other people for a living

An extremely imaginative and well-written volume that has the pace and page-turning attractions of a novel… a fine, painfully honest autobiographer/ novelist… [and] a good, witty read but which also gives purchasers a real insight into life in the acting profession today

I loved it...smart, funny, highly original and with an unconventional narrative that asked deep questions about the roles we all play in our lives

A fascinating look at the fine line between performance and life, written with style

Entertaining... Funny, revealing, shocking and inventively structured

You don't have to be a music scholar to enjoy this brilliant, and pleasingly concise book. But, if you don't love Beethoven, both the man and his music, when you start, you should by the time you finish

Cuts straight to the action . . . Tunbridge balances the traditional narrative of universal, timeless genius, of innovation before its time, with a pragmatic, jobbing musician working hard to make a living

Compact but also rewarding...a lot of information is packed into her musical portraits

Laura Tunbridge finds something fresh to say about Beethoven by looking at his life through nine pieces... An entertaining way to celebrate the great man's 250th birthday

A twinkling elucidation of concert life in Vienna... fluent, concise and engaging

Laura Tunbridge, in her new biographical study, has found an elegant way to give Beethovenian heroism and struggle its due, while slyly plucking at the reverse of Solomon's martial banner... Each chapter delivers its little shock of correction

Laura Tunbridge offers a timely portrait of the composer in an elegant biography . . . refreshingly, [she] focuses on the man rather than the myth. Knowledgeable and humane, this is a deeply sympathetic portrait of a turbulent musical genius

Tunbridge never stints on musical description, nor compromises her admirable rigour, while her prose is vivid, crystal-clear and never less than fascinating . . . a wonderfully rewarding book

Beautifully written, warmly-accessible, fascinating

Thought-provoking, superb

Subtle and extensive

Fascinating

Important, beautifully written, fascinating

Consistently perceptive critical acumen

Original, superbly done, beautifully written

Illuminating

Abdurraqib, known for his playful, intelligent sense of humor on Twitter, highlights amazing performances that shed light on societal constructions and moments of sheer joy his book about Black culture in America. Writing about joy is challenging; falling back on cliche is a constant temptation that Abdurraqib avoids in this insightful tome

That sense of limitlessness wraps itself around every essay in Abdurraqib's newest book, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance. In it, he writes about Black performance in America-from Great Depression-era dance marathons to the enduring cool of Don Cornelius to the art of Mike Tyson entering a boxing ring-with both great reverence and rigorous analysis. The book, in the way Abdurraqib's work so often does, erects monuments to our should-be legends and our unignorable icons alike, and paints an expansive, deeply felt portrait of the history of Black artistry

This deft consideration of seemingly irreconcilable values, between the personal and private dimensions of performance, can be found throughout the essays in A Little Devil in America...Abdurraqib sees performance as a site of radical questioning, experimentation, and dream-making. This book is not a work of theory. It is sensual. We watch him watching his idols and we watch him dancing along with them, sometimes clumsily. If Brooks's goal is to make a case for performers' intellectualism, Abdurraqib's is to help us understand how they teach us to live richer, more embodied lives

Engrossing and moving ... A new, poetic take on essays that, I think, changes the game in many ways.

Astonishing, impressive ... the connections he makes point to the enduring influence of Black art ... a book as bold as it is essential

Abdurraqib writes with uninhibited curiosity and insight about music and its ties to culture and memory, life and death, on levels personal, political, and universal.

A towering work full of insightful observations about everything from the legacy of Nina Simone to the music of Bruce Springsteen... a powerful work about art, society, and the perspective through which its author regards both.

A joyful requiem - emphasis on joyful. Abdurraqib has written a guide for the living as well as a memorial for those we have lost.

As powerful and touching as anything I've read this year, and Abdurraqib has emerged as the Ta-Nehisi Coates of popular culture.