This week's releases reviewed
Skippy Dies
Paul Murray
Penguin, £8.99
Novels rarely come as funny and as moving as this utterly brilliant exploration of teenhood and the anticlimax of becoming an adult. From the opening scene, a doughnut-eating race to the death, and on through the various flashbacks and set pieces, Murray's control over his deceptively profound material astonishes. The print begins to move because the hands holding the book are quaking from laughter. Murray re-creates the one-upmanship between classmates tormented by hormones, maths and appearing uncool. The ruthlessness and vulnerability are there, as are the insecure and bullying teachers. In the touchingly human Skippy, Murray has created an unforgettable Everyman hero, a dreamer and a romantic, while Ruprecht the nerd is also heroic. Keith Ridgway's The Parts(2003) remains a special novel, yet Murray's comic achievement inhabits a darker hell than Dublin gangland: a southside boarding school. Skippy Diesis intuitive, truthful and one of the finest comic novels written anywhere. Dies? Never! Skippy lives. Eileen Battersby
Why Translation Matters
Edith Grossman
Yale University Press, £10.99
Joyce and Faulkner influenced Gabriel García Márquez, who in turn influenced Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Don DeLillo and Michael Chabon. This alone could go a long way towards proving why translation matters, but Edith Grossman, one of the biggest names in literary translation today, goes further in her straight-talking and thought-provoking introduction to the major debates on translation. To a translator the issues she describes are all too familiar: how best to carry over a foreign text into your own language and culture; the refusal to acknowledge translators sufficiently on copies and in the press; and the industry's squeamishness about publishing translations in the first place. Grossman doesn't mince words in dealing with limited and outdated attitudes towards her art, and clearly she revels in the excitement of opening up foreign-language works to a new life in the minds of anglophone readers, cross-pollinating literature across borders. Translation matters. Having read this, you won't be in any doubt. Nora Mahony
Reality Hunger
David Shields
Penguin, £8.99
A revelatory piece of work in every respect, Reality Hungerwhizzes by in a flood of artistic maxims, anecdotal snippets and denouncements of the old modes of creative expression. The novel comes under particular attack, dismissed as an inadequate, outdated means of addressing what is now an increasingly fragmented culture. In its place Shields, whose intent is the writing of "the ars poetica for a burgeoning group of interrelated but unconnected artists in a multitude of forms and media . . . who are breaking larger and larger chunks of 'reality' into their work", extols the virtues of modern mediums such as the lyric essay, musical sampling and the collage of disparate ideas. Reality Hungeris also a call to arms against the already crumbling pillars of copyright and ownership. It is a rare experience to read such a bold and palpably relevant book that has its finger so firmly on the pulse of the cultural zeitgeist. Dan Sheehan
Samhradh an Chéasta
Catherine Foley
LeabhairComhar, €10
Catherine Foley's novella is the 14th in a line of books aimed at adult learners of Irish, a series to which this reviewer contributed many years ago. Samhradh an Chéastais her third book for adult language learners – Foley, formerly a staff journalist at this newspaper, where she wrote the On the Town social column, picked up awards for the first two – and it follows a tried-and-trusted method. The setting is contemporary (Passage East in Co Waterford); the story is told in language that is simple and direct but full of feeling; and there is a glossary of terms and words at the back. Neasa is 16, lonely and bored, and falls for the easy charm, and easier wares, of a small-time drug dealer. The pill-popping and her struggles with anorexia and bulimia have dire consequences but, thankfully, not fatal ones. After the summer of torture comes redemption. Pól Ó Muirí
The Great Perhaps
Joe Meno
Picador, £8.99
Jonathan Casper has staked his career on finding the prehistoric giant squid. A professor of palaeontology at the University of Chicago, he is so obsessed with his quest that he has retreated from his wife and two teenage daughters who, between them, have found Marxism and God. As Jonathan's father wilts in a nursing home the Caspers descend into full-blown dysfunction. Neurotic and in flight from fear, they each vacillate between action and passivity. Their choices reflect a larger reality. In the background the Iraq war rages and the US prepares to vote in the 2004 presidential election. Joe Meno's engagingly quirky fifth novel is a finely judged balance of pathos, absurdity and empathetic psychological close-ups. Meno's unadorned prose sits well with his formal innovations, such as drawings of clouds and chapters in the guise of field notes. Serious as well as playful, The Great Perhapsis never preachy, resonating as a poignant and thought-provoking antiwar novel. Joanne Hayden
