A guide to the latest releases
Memoir by John McGahern Faber & Faber, £7.99
The genius of integrity and of the fields is gone and what will we do now? We will read and reread this final work and we will see how wholly his life was devoted to and consumed by his transfiguring art of fiction. We will wonder at his extraordinarily selfless devotion to the hushed perfections of style and story that we now know were always intimately guided by his private experience of pain and loss. We will beam at his sublime ear for the anecdote and his wicked way with the rural demotic of one-liners and non sequiturs. We will quote and intone the beautiful last paragraphs for his mother until they assume the stature of Joyce on snow. And we will try to understand that there is no more of his life to give, that no more is coming from the nearest we've had in our time to an Irish Flaubert. John Kenny
Notes From a Coma by Mike McCormack Vintage, £6.99
Who am I, really? That is the tricky philosophical question addressed on a number of different levels in this stylish futuristic satire from Galway-based author Mike McCormack. The story touches a staggering number of bases - neuroscience, celebrity, reality TV, binge drinking, the quality of light on Killary Fjord - as it moves between the twin poles of consciousness and conscience. Five narrators tell the story of bright and beautiful JJ, adopted from a Romanian orphanage and raised in a rural community in Co Mayo. He suffers a breakdown after the death of a friend and volunteers to take part in a government project researching the possibility of storing prison inmates in comas rather than cells. Startling and sometimes bleak - but also bleakly funny - this is hugely original and entertaining. Arminta Wallace
The Woman's Guide to Second Adulthood by Suzanne Braun Levine Bloomsbury, £8.99
More women are using the menopause as an opportunity to reconstruct themselves into someone wiser and more daring, with new outlooks, confidence and dreams. Certain types of memory get rusty ("Remembering a name is as good as having an orgasm," one woman recalls) but the part of the brain responsible for making judgments, finding new solutions and managing emotions takes a big leap forward. An ex-editor of Ms. magazine, the slightly scatty but gung-ho Levine interviewed dynamic older women on the menopause and found them relishing their abilities to see the big picture and rise to bigger challenges. Letting go of "false powers", such as the ability to manipulate men, leads to a more powerful persona. Accepting leadership and becoming a power-broker in one's own right more than makes up for the loss of dewy skin. Kate Holmquist
Sharon and My Mother-in-Law: Ramallah Diaries by Suad Amiry Granta Books, £7.99
In this compelling diary, Suad Amiry gives the trials and tribulations of life in occupied Palestine a human face. Putting up with sometimes arbitrary and mainly hostile treatment from Israeli soldiers, battling for food in the shops when curfew is raised, and dealing with an aged mother-in-law, almost oblivious to the situation and adamant that her day-to-day routine should not be disturbed, are among the everyday challenges facing the author. Filled with witty anecdotes, such as risking one's life to make a cappuccino under occupation, and an occasion where being treated like an animal would be an improvement (her dog was granted a passport to enter Jerusalem, something the author could never hope for), she never loses sight of the fact that life must go on. Amiry's writing skill shows us that, contrary to what she would have us believe, she is more than an ordinary woman in extraordinary circumstances. Séamus Conboy
Haunted by Chuck Palahniuk Vintage, £7.99
In the introduction to the paperback edition of Haunted, Chuck Palahniuk takes his chance to scotch a myth of how, triggered by the gross-out nature of his latest book, a woman threw up at one of his readings. What made that semi-believable is that Palahniuk's collection of mystery tales, loosely held together by a story involving writers locked into a hellish retreat, does contain all manner of vile and stomach-churning scenes. As the writers mutilate themselves in an attempt to put themselves at the centre of an evolving narrative, they tell horror stories. In one, a police officer guards an anatomically correct doll; another features a teenager who has a (literally) gut-wrenching encounter in a swimming pool. The background story is a rather broad and saggy satire on reality television and fame, but the short stories are sometimes brilliant, with twists and turns galore, and are enough to leave you feeling at least a little queasy. Shane Hegarty
Lost in the Forest by Sue Miller Bloomsbury, £7.99
It is a sad comment on readers and critics that women whose books describe domestic situations are known as "women's writers", as if to develop romantic and familial relationships in prose is women's work. To pigeonhole Sue Miller in this way would belittle the universality of her take on the modern family. She writes men as well as she does women, if not better, as witnessed by her memoir of her father's descent into Alzheimer's. Lost in the Forest is a startling story of a girl coming of age in the wake of her beloved stepfather's accidental death, in which the best-conceived voice is that of her three-year-old half-brother. The toddler understands more about his father's sudden death than he is willing to reveal, and Miller's gift for dialogue gives voice to his budding sadness and the vulnerability of his sister. Sentimental at times, this is nonetheless strong and winning. Nora Mahony