Paperbacks

Our pick of the week's releases

Our pick of the week's releases

Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

Ed Anthony Thwaite

Faber, £12.99

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Philip Larkin was a rigorous poet, able to whittle complex ideas into sparse, devastating language, but he struggled with his talent.This frailty about his gift, along with his all-too-human battle with friends' success (particularly that of Kingsley Amis), certain societal conventions (marriage, children, family) and the very act of living (often exhausting), permeate these previously unpublished letters to his love, Monica Jones. They met at University College, Leicester, in 1946, and their romantic and intellectual relationship and correspondence lasted until Larkin's death, in 1985. Peppered with wry humour and biting critiques, these letters are as much a social and cultural history as a reflection of his tenderness towards his "bunny", Jones. But it is this tenderness that resonates and surprises most, all bound up in that last line from his 1956 poem An Arundel Tomb, "what will survive of us is love". Exceptional. Siobhán Kane

Everybody Loves Our Town: A History of Grunge

Mark Yarm, Faber £16.99

Grunge is a term used to describe the sludgy mush of punk and metal that emerged from Seattle and environs in the early 1990s. Or, as local journalist Jeff Gilbert puts it in this lively oral history, "It's complaining set to a drop D tuning." This is not a chinstroking, pseudosociological treatise on a music genre but a juiced-up account of a time when a loose bunch of slacker bands from the US northwest found themselves in the spotlight for doing what most bands would normally do: playing loud and partying hard. It's like being thrown into the mosh pit at the deep end, as members of Nirvana, Mudhoney, Pearl Jam, The Melvins and Alice in Chains, plus Jonathan Poneman and Bruce Pavitt of the seminal label Sub Pop, and various scenesters and hangers-on give accounts of the era, from proto-grungers The U-Men and Disfunktion to the rise of corporate grunge and the death of Kurt Cobain. Kevin Courtney

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

Claudia Carroll

Avon, £6.99

If a successful marriage can be characterised by a series of compromises, is it possible for a relationship to go one compromise too far? Annie Cole has been married to Dan for five years, having given up her happy life as an actor in Dublin and moved to the village of Stickens, where Dan is the vet, on call to all, 24 hours a day. Tiring of a life populated by a jealous mother-in-law, overpowering neighbours and a well-meaning but melodramatic sister-in-law, Annie jumps at the chance to work in theatre again. Even the fact that the show is to play in New York for a year seems a gift at first, given the distance that has grown between her and Dan. A line from Friends – "but we were on a break!" – springs to mind as Annie's adventures in the Big Apple unfold. The story is light and entertaining but measured enough to hold a grain of truth here and there. Claire Looby

A Man in Full

Tom Wolfe

Vintage, £10.99

Norman Mailer once wrote that reading Tom Wolfe was like being "seduced by a 300lb woman. Once she gets on top it's all over. Fall in love or be asphyxiated." And A Man in Full is a slightly overbearing read. Everything about this satire is big: its ambition, scope, themes and even length. Originally published in 1998, this reissue is nicely timed: its central preoccupations of white-collar greed and blue-collar despair are just as relevant today, even if the book takes aim at a pre-9/11 US. Set mainly in Atlanta, the various story strands concern a property mogul in financial difficulty, a mayor seeking re-election, an alleged rape involving a local star footballer and a factory worker who loses his moral compass after losing his job. Novels of this size (742 pages) always have flaws and the occasional lull, but Wolfe's fizzy prose and amusingly mean-spirited social observations make up for any other deficiencies. Highly entertaining. Patrick Nugent

Daniel

Henning Mankell

Vintage, £7.99

This is the first English translation of the Wallander writer's chilly culture-clash novel, first published in Sweden in 2000 as Vindens Son ("Son of the Wind"). In the 1870s, a rootless Swedish entomologist impulsively journeys to the Kalahari Desert, where he hopes to make a name for himself academically by discovering a heretofore unknown insect. Hans Bengler finds his bug – and an orphaned boy. Christening him Daniel, Bengler, bizarrely, brings him back to Sweden, first with the vague notion of "civilising" him, then using Daniel as an exhibit for his lectures. About a third of the way in, the perspective switches to that of the child, whose real name is Molo, as he struggles with life in the whitest country imaginable. No surprise, given the author, that it all ends in tragedy and death. Mankell's unflinching depiction of his country's racist and imperialist past no doubt made for shocking reading at home. A compelling downer. Kevin Sweeney