Our pick of the latest releases
The Sisters Brothers
Patrick deWitt
Granta, £12.99
Taking place in the dirt and dust between 1850s Oregon City and the Californian gold rush, this Man Booker runner-up, which should have won, is miraculously well sustained through its slightly stupid but increasingly wised-up narrator, Eli, ably abetted by a lively sense of atmosphere, a feel for place and a cast of memorable minor characters, not least a doomed clan of dam-building beavers. The comic flair of this Canadian writer eases this violent, highly original novel through its many shocking sequences. Eli discovers love through the novel's hero, Tub, the horse. Also vital is the narrator's pathetic realisation that he loves his cold, laconic older brother, Charlie. The brothers bicker with each other, and butcher most of the men they encounter until a wonderfully crazy narrative detour brings the story to a very strange interlude by a river rich in gold. DeWitt's inspired, many-layered yarn about loneliness, friendship and love is as entertaining and as stylistically accomplished as it is deeply moving. Eileen Battersby
How to Change the World: Tales of Marx and Marxism
Eric Hobsbawm
Abacus, £12.99
Hobsbawm argues that it's time to take Karl Marx seriously again: untrammelled capitalism, fuelled by a faith in the self-correcting mechanisms of the market, has led to our present economic crisis. The essence of Marxism, says Hobsbawm, is the critique of capitalism and of the economists who failed to recognise where it would inevitably lead. The book does not, however, present a unified argument. It is, rather, a collection of many of the veteran historian's writings from 1956 to 2009. Its core is a detailed and scholarly account of the influence of Marxism from 1880 to 2000, tracing the publication and influence of Marxist writings. But the peripheral essays are much the most stimulating: a coherent and passionate defence of Engels's Condition of the Working Class in England; a lucid analysis of Gramsci's theory of "hegemony", and a sparkling description of the Communist Manifesto's "almost biblical force" and "compelling power as literature". Tom Moriarty
What I Did
Christopher Wakling
John Murray, £7.99
Six-year-old Billy Wright is witnessed being slapped soundly by his dad at a busy roadside. He then tells a social worker that her resulting visit to his family is "delaying his predators". Billy means that his favourite wildlife TV programme is being interrupted, but without context his truthful phrase paints a dubious picture. A child's view of the actions and attitudes of adults has seldom been so compellingly or tenaciously illustrated as by Wakling in this perfect little book. Ultimately, we grow to love the fiercely bright child, who thinks that if God spoke, He'd sound like David Attenborough. He soaks up his surroundings, including all the jaundiced worldly wisdom doled out by his unthinking father – and Billy's keen eye for human behaviour leads him hilariously to categorise the people around him in terms of their apparent animal characteristics. Kids can be cruel, and sometimes the truth hurts. But truth is always obvious to an adult. Isn't it? Claire Looby
Bás in Éirinn/May You Die in Ireland
Edited by Aodán Mac Póilin and Róise Ní Bhaoill
Ultach Trust, £10
The seven stories in this collection explore death in its various manifestations, and how Irish society has dealt with it over the generations. Four of the writers will be familiar to many students of the Irish language – Pádraic Ó Conaire; Seosamh Mac Grianna, Séamus Ó Grianna, Liam Ó Flaitheartha – all of whom have gone to their eternal reward – and the one living writer, Daithí Ó Muirí, has quietly won himself a reputation for the excellence of his work. The Irish and English texts are published cheek to cheek, with the aim of helping readers improve their literacy skills without the need to dive into the dictionary at the sight of an unfamiliar fada. The work in Irish serves as a reminder to contemporary writers of just how high these writers have set the benchmark; the work in English will give those ignorant of Irish a very poignant set of stories that stretch from the 1920s until the present day. Pól Ó Muirí
The Reluctant Taoiseach: A Biography of John A Costello
David McCullagh
Gill and Macmillan, €16.99
Among the reasons for John A Costello’s reluctance to become taoiseach was his fear that he might not be up to the job. But, once in it, he took to the task “with his characteristic determination, energy and application”. His was a pioneering role as the leader of the first coalition government in independent Ireland. It was no easy task: that government comprised five parties and needed the support of eight independents. Costello is probably mainly remembered for the declaration of the Republic and Mother
and Child scheme controversies, and McCullagh deals with these in a thorough and balanced manner. Costello's second coalition wrestled with the economic crisis of the 1950s; he favoured a Keynesian approach but came up against conservative forces in the shape of government departments and some fellow ministers. As a person, he seems to have been modest, self-effacing and charitable. This is a valuable addition to Irish political biography. Brian Maye
