A guide to the latest releases
The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett Edited by CJ Ackerley and SE Gontarski Faber and Faber, £20
This is a marvellous compendium of all things Beckettian, of great value both as a very good browse and as an extremely useful reference work. The alphabetical format makes for ease of use, and for a pleasing variety which reflects the variety of the writer's own achievement. It covers biography, works, themes, influences and many other topics. Even Beckett scholars are likely to find surprising material here, and for others there is endless instruction and amusement. The occasional error crops up, but it would be surprising not to stumble every now and then in such a venture. Originally published in 2004 by Grove Press New York, its reissue in these islands by Faber is a very substantial contribution to this year's centenary celebrations. Terence Killeen
The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes Us Smarter Katherine Ellison Basic Books, $15
New motherhood is a kind of death of the old self, requiring the surrender of autonomy, career (if only temporarily), social contact and disposable income. Sheer stress and sleep deprivation make most new mothers feel so muddled they suspect they've expelled brain cells along with the placenta. Doctors called this "placenta brain", "porridge brain", "maternal amnesia" and even "pregnancy dementia". After starting her own family, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist and author Ellison investigated this medical myth and unearthed new scientific evidence. Pregnancy and new motherhood are actually "windows" in the brain's development, encouraging new neural pathways that enable levels of ingenuity, creativity and efficiency that would, frankly, lay flat anybody who hasn't just had a baby. But we already knew that, didn't we? Kate Holmquist
Dr Johnson's Dictionary Henry Hitchings John Murray, £7.99
Although Dr Johnson's dictionary, compiled in the mid-18th century, wasn't the first English dictionary, it set the standard for all that followed. It was also a work of literature that took its author eight years to complete. This story of the dictionary is a pleasurable stroll through Johnson's life, and combines elements of biography with social history and an examination of Johnson's concerns, illustrated by examples from the great work itself. Each chapter bears the title of a word in alphabetical order. The one entitled "X" is thus because Johnson could find no word in English beginning with that letter. ("Xenophobia", surprisingly, dates only from the early 20th century and X-rays hadn't yet been discovered.) Some words that have changed meaning? "Barbecue" was defined as "a hog dressed whole, in the West Indian manner"; and "urinator" was "a diver; one who searches under water". Brian Maye
Anny: A Life of Anne Thackeray Ritchie Henrietta Garnett Pimlico, 322pp. £14.99
In Henrietta Garnett's biography, Anne Thackeray Ritchie, writer and daughter of novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, is her father's number one fan. However, Anny is not shown as blinded by the paternal "star in her eye". Beginning her study with William Thackeray's death, Garnett shows the ways in which Anny's dedication to her father's memory, flexibly combined with the realities and demands of the day, operated as an illuminating and energising force in both her life and writing. This considered and well-researched piece of work offers itself as a biographical resource to a versatile writer of fiction, prose, biography and memoir. It offers the reader a fascinating insight into the social and political world of mid-to-late 19th-century England, through the lens of a star-system of literary and artistic figures. Claire Bracken
Sean O'Casey: Writer at Work - A Biography Christopher Murray Gill & Macmillan, €16.99
Though he gave up manual labour for writing, Seán O'Casey's life among the Victorian-era Dublin tenements was central to his work. Without experiencing the daily grind of the workers and their families, Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock and The Plough and the Stars would never have been. Politically and artistically, the middle-aged man was already made when he left Ireland for good in 1926, and so Christopher Murray firmly roots his biography in these formative years. But it is the older O'Casey, in self-imposed exile, battering away on his typewriter, at odds with the world and seemingly out of tune with the zeitgeist, that is the enduring, and oddly comforting, image. Like his subject, for whom the work was the only thing that mattered, Murray places the writing to the fore in this deservedly authoritative appraisal. Tim Fanning
After Daybreak: The Liberation of Belsen, 1945 Ben Shephard Pimlico, £8.99
For the British soldiers who entered Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in April, 1945 to find 60,000 starving survivors on the verge of a major typhus outbreak, not only the Holocaust but the rescue operation were on a scale that was difficult to comprehend, and debate has since raged about how effective the British efforts really were considering the thousands of people who died in the weeks after so-called liberation. Shephard's meticulously researched book persuasively argues that, considering the difficulty in obtaining supplies and medical provisions, the rescue team (which included eight Irish nurses) did all that was possible to save lives, though mistakes were undoubtedly made. This is the sort of work that stops history becoming a list of statistics, and allows us to learn from the past. Davin O'Dwyer