Wolf Moon by Arifa Akbar: On the night shift
Author
:
Arifa Akbar
ISBN-13
:
978-1399712859
Publisher
:
Sceptre
Guideline Price
:
£16.99
Wolf Moon by Arifa Akbar is a book I wanted to like. Its central question—'What does it mean to be a woman in the night?'— serves as a loose thread binding together memoir, cultural criticism and feminist theory.
Akbar's experiences of menopausal insomnia lead into analyses of Louise Bourgeois's night drawings and Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis. Visits to her father's care home are interwoven with eerie Pakistani folktales he once told her. She interviews night-shift workers, dancers in Lahore and security guards. She drifts through galleries, goes clubbing and attends late-night films.
There's a perceptive reading of Henri Fuseli's The Nightmare, as well as some evocative descriptions of David Lynch scenes. The cultural references are obvious and a little self-consciously tasteful, but they are handled deftly. This is, unmistakably, a serious and intelligent book.
Still, the cumulative effect is deadening.
READ MORE
The problem isn't the material, which is often fascinating, but Akbar's compulsive need to filter it through the dull strainer of introspective autotheory. Entire pages are padded with limp self-reflection—'I think back to' 'I felt' 'I wondered'—until the prose begins to sag under the weight of its own inwardness.
The analytical intensity is often laughably disproportionate to the life being examined: 'I put a notebook beside my bed. I open it up the next morning. I write a few words down, but I am left straining for more.'
There's also a wearying performance of liberal empathy. When she encounters sex workers dancing in Amsterdam's red-light district, she rushes to ally herself with them, as though fending off imagined accusations. 'I feel horrified,' she declares at a Jack the Ripper tour. 'I was in awe of her fortitude,' she writes of a security guard at her theatre, then asks, 'How did Maria remain invisible to me?' I am naturally distrustful of anyone so easily scandalised.
Again and again, moments that might have thrummed with tension are robbed of all charge. We don't just hear that she went to Berghain; we're told what Berghain is, then led through one of the tamest nights in club history. Not her fault, but it's hard to be invested in such a safe and orderly life. A book about night, yes, but drained of its Dionysian wildness.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
9 hours ago
- Irish Times
Helen Mirren on turning 80: ‘I am not ageing gracefully at all. I hate that term'
Actor Helen Mirren has said she is 'ageing with fun' rather than 'gracefully' as she marked her 80th birthday at the weekend. The Academy Award -winning actor from London, who turned 80 on Saturday, is best known for playing the Queen and detective Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect. Speaking to OK! Magazine, Mirren said she feels 'insulted' when people tell her she looks good for her age, she finds it 'patronising'. Mirren said : 'I am not ageing gracefully at all! I hate that term – it sounds like you have to be elegant and accepting, and, no, I am not. [ 1923 review: Yellowstone prequel is a well-put-together drama apart from Helen Mirren's Irish accent Opens in new window ] 'I am ageing with fun, with commitment, but not gracefully. Who cares about graceful? 'We just do grow older, there's no way you can escape that. You have to grow up with your own body, your own face and the way it changes. 'It's not always easy but it is inevitable. You have to learn to accept it.' As she marks her milestone birthday, she also shared her tops tips to keeping healthy and feeling good. She said: 'It's as important to make the inside of you as healthy as the outside of you. I always go everywhere with my vitamins. That is probably the most important thing in my beauty bag, actually. 'What you eat, what you drink, what you don't smoke, really makes a massive difference to your skin, especially as you progress through life. 'It's incredibly important to feed the inside of your skin, as much as the outside of your skin.' Mirren plays the Harrigan family matriarch Maeve Harrigan alongside Pierce Brosnan in Guy Ritchie's MobLand. She also stars in the upcoming Netflix film adaptation of Thursday Murder Club, based on the book series by gameshow host and author Richard Osman where Mirren plays one of four retirees alongside Brosnan, Celia Imrie and Ben Kingsley, who spend their time solving cold-case murders. ― PA
Irish Times
13 hours ago
- Irish Times
Rosie O'Donnell's Dublin world premiere review: Head-scratching stand-up set has a weirdly rose-tinted view of Ireland
Rosie O'Donnell: Common Knowledge 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin ★★☆☆☆ Rosie O'Donnell 's new show opens not with jokes but with a long, sad story. It's St Patrick's Day 1973, and young Rosie is called home from a play date to find her Irish-American Catholic family gathered with devastating news: her mother has died. 'I know what you're thinking,' the actor and comedian quips to the audience at 3Olympia Theatre on Sunday night, where the set is getting its world premiere. 'Did I buy tickets to the wrong show?' It's a good opener, but it's a question I find myself asking in earnest as the show goes on. O'Donnell is an assured presence on stage, and the production is polished: sound effects, well-timed slide shows, family photographs, archival footage. Her comic timing and rhetorical skill are considerable, even when the content veers more towards memoir than comedy. READ MORE The show is structured around her fifth child, adopted later in life, whom O'Donnell presents as a nonbinary, autistic, truth-speaking prodigy. Photographs of this undeniably cute kid accompany her anecdotes, which she delivers with warmth and reverence. The show's title, Common Knowledge, comes from a line O'Donnell's child uses whenever correcting their mother with bemused exasperation: 'It's common knowledge, Mom.' It's touching stuff, though not side-splitting. If the show were reframed not as stand-up but as an autobiographical monologue by a witty, charismatic performer, the expectations would land more fairly. Rosie O'Donnell at 3Olympia Theatre in Dublin on Sunday. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill Rosie O'Donnell at 3Olympia Theatre in Dublin on Sunday. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill Eventually, O'Donnell moves to the show's emotional core: her loathing of Donald Trump . Here the tone shifts. A slide show features paintings of the US president, his face rendered demon-red, words such as 'TRAITOR' and 'HYPOCRITE' etched across them. These are paintings O'Donnell began to make during his first term; they now apparently number in the hundreds. There's a comic opportunity here to say something about the quality of the art, but she doesn't rise to it. [ Rosie O'Donnell: 'People say, you moved to Ireland, just forget about Trump. I can't. The crimes are endless' Opens in new window ] Given recent, more interesting reckonings on the left about how liberal discourse may have helped fuel Trump's re-election, this section feels not only dated but counterproductive. O'Donnell's rage and disbelief, however sincere, feel lazy. Rosie O'Donnell at 3Olympia Theatre in Dublin on Sunday. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill Rosie O'Donnell at 3Olympia Theatre in Dublin on Sunday. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill Rosie O'Donnell at 3Olympia Theatre in Dublin on Sunday. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill What's missing is a deeper confrontation with the possibility that such disdain might not only fail to persuade but also, in fact, deepen the fractures it claims to lament. Admittedly, it would be difficult to craft a comedy capable of confronting these tensions but not, you'd like to think, impossible. Perhaps a less complacent-seeming comedian might attempt it, or at least gesture toward complexity, rather than defaulting to familiar material that flatters the audience but challenges nothing. [ Are we really going to pass up the chance to do the most hilarious thing in the history of world leaders? Opens in new window ] O'Donnell's vision of Ireland, meanwhile, is ridiculous. She praises the lollipop lady, the kindly pharmacist, the atmosphere of 'calm and peace', the country's incredible 'hospitality'. Has she read the news? 'I think Sandymount is amazing. We ended up buying a home there,' she says. Her joy at no longer paying $78,000 a year for her child's US education also rankles. It's easy to sentimentalise from within a bubble. O'Donnell closes the evening with a little homily on how we must get through the hard times with endurance and laughter. Then Angels, by Robbie Williams, booms from the speakers as a slide show shows her kid hugging a dog in their nice Sandymount home. It's the most I laugh all night.
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Irish Times
Wolf Moon by Arifa Akbar: On the night shift
Wolf Moon Author : Arifa Akbar ISBN-13 : 978-1399712859 Publisher : Sceptre Guideline Price : £16.99 Wolf Moon by Arifa Akbar is a book I wanted to like. Its central question—'What does it mean to be a woman in the night?'— serves as a loose thread binding together memoir, cultural criticism and feminist theory. Akbar's experiences of menopausal insomnia lead into analyses of Louise Bourgeois's night drawings and Sarah Kane's 4.48 Psychosis. Visits to her father's care home are interwoven with eerie Pakistani folktales he once told her. She interviews night-shift workers, dancers in Lahore and security guards. She drifts through galleries, goes clubbing and attends late-night films. There's a perceptive reading of Henri Fuseli's The Nightmare, as well as some evocative descriptions of David Lynch scenes. The cultural references are obvious and a little self-consciously tasteful, but they are handled deftly. This is, unmistakably, a serious and intelligent book. Still, the cumulative effect is deadening. READ MORE The problem isn't the material, which is often fascinating, but Akbar's compulsive need to filter it through the dull strainer of introspective autotheory. Entire pages are padded with limp self-reflection—'I think back to' 'I felt' 'I wondered'—until the prose begins to sag under the weight of its own inwardness. The analytical intensity is often laughably disproportionate to the life being examined: 'I put a notebook beside my bed. I open it up the next morning. I write a few words down, but I am left straining for more.' There's also a wearying performance of liberal empathy. When she encounters sex workers dancing in Amsterdam's red-light district, she rushes to ally herself with them, as though fending off imagined accusations. 'I feel horrified,' she declares at a Jack the Ripper tour. 'I was in awe of her fortitude,' she writes of a security guard at her theatre, then asks, 'How did Maria remain invisible to me?' I am naturally distrustful of anyone so easily scandalised. Again and again, moments that might have thrummed with tension are robbed of all charge. We don't just hear that she went to Berghain; we're told what Berghain is, then led through one of the tamest nights in club history. Not her fault, but it's hard to be invested in such a safe and orderly life. A book about night, yes, but drained of its Dionysian wildness.
