No Drinking, No Dancing, No Doctors, by Martina Evans (Bloomsbury, £6.99 in UK)

The length of time it takes to read a book is sometimes a sign that it is at best lacking in dramatic tension, or at worst downright dull. Martina Evans's book did take me a disproportionate amount of time to read, but probably because, although it doesn't exactly demand the reader to turn the page, it does suggest in a quiet way, that the end might be rewarding. The story is set in an Irish village and centres on Beulah Kingston, who together with her sister, Hannah, are two of the few remaining survivors of a strict fundamentalist religion founded by a medicine-hating, fun-scorning Victorian Luddite. The restrictions that such a teaching brings on the lives of Beulah and her sister are the backdrop to the narrative and the story is one of lost love, the pain of being an outsider, and repression.

In the end Beulah is fascinating and comes alive off the page as a suberbly drawn, headstrong but sour old lady who is painfully aware that her life could have been so different.