unpicks

Another January debut, Scissors, Paper, Stone Bloomsbury, by Observer journalist Elizabeth Day, deftly unpicks a daughter's troubled relationship with her mother after her father has lapsed into a coma.

Books in 2011 – from the new Alan Hollinghurst to David Foster Wallace's unfinished The Pale King 2011

James McConnachie in the Sunday Times was also enthusiastic about a "thrilling book, which reads at times like a good Victorian novel": Colquhoun's book "burrows deep into the legal and journalistic issues surrounding the case, and a thoughtful afterword unpicks its profound impact on Victorian society."

Critical eye – book reviews roundup 2011

In his artwork, Zanolari sucks out the botox, unpicks the stitches and removes the fake public face from his subjects.

Evelyne Politanoff: The Art of Saul Zanolari: Taking Away the Emperor's Clothes Evelyne Politanoff 2011

In his artwork, Zanolari sucks out the botox, unpicks the stitches and removes the fake public face from his subjects.

Evelyne Politanoff: The Art of Saul Zanolari: Taking Away the Emperor's Clothes Evelyne Politanoff 2011

Incorporating soul music, Kung Fu flicks and Star Wars into his videos and comics, this Briton unpicks pop culture and its illusions

Artist of the week 107: David Blandy Skye Sherwin 2010

Francis Fyfield unpicks the hidden codes of a beautiful 11th-century manuscript that confirms that the English were pioneers of musical notation long before the arrival of staves.

BBC Tales Before the Stave: The Story of the 11th Century Winchester Troper 2009

The artist unpicks pop culture's illusions, uncovering a lack of selfhood that would make a martial arts master proud but has far more difficult connotations out in the world.

Artist of the week 107: David Blandy Skye Sherwin 2010

Playful and teasing, this is a play with a dark heart as it unpicks art's capacity to feed upon the horrors of the real world under cover of creativity and the imagination, asking what it does to an audience and how we become complicit.

This week's new theatre 2010

It's an expert piece of historical and psychological archaeology, which unpicks the (bewitching) intricacies of ordinary life while also asking the terrifying, unanswerable, yet endlessly fascinating questions that haunt us all: "What persists beyond this cataclysm of making and unmaking?"

Debut fiction: Mr Peanut by Adam Ross; Who Is Mr Satoshi? by Jonathan Lee; Tinkers by Paul Harding 2010

Just as Mann unpicks platitudes around childhood innocence, and proffers children's bodies as a site of adult discomfort rather than certainty, she is likewise transgressive in how her professional life impacts upon her duties as a parent.

Our image of children rests on who takes the picture 2010