Dogs Enjoy the Morning, by Benedict Kiely (Wolfhound Press, £6.99)

Kiely's novel, first published in 1968, is set in a mythic Irish village called Cosamona which appears to be largely in fact, almost exclusively populated by eccentrics, alcoholics, zanies and "characters" of various kind and degrees. There are clerics among them including one priest who used to fly an aeroplane but was grounded by his bishop. Under a facade of quasi rural realism, the book is anarchic and almost surreal in its humour and even smuggles in a certain amount of oblique social satire. Several of the characters appear to lead lives of noisy, rather than quiet, desperation, but the verve and comic invention are constant, and thankfully we are spared yet another Squinting Windows type chronicle of small people ekeing out narrow, sunless existences. A very welcome reissue.