The latest paperbacks reviewed.
Never Let Me Go. Kazuo Ishiguro, Faber, £7.99
Displacement and the multiple problems of identity have always preoccupied the gifted and original Ishiguro. In this, his sixth, and most terrifying novel, a deeply sinister and prophetic element enters his complex thesis about the nature of belonging. A group of lost souls is adrift in modern day England. They have no personal history, only memory as determined by a shared experience. Kathy, the narrator, a carer with donor patients, attempts to find the answers by remembering. Her recollections are expressed in typically deadpan, Ishiguro understatement - not quite as elegant as usual but sufficiently possessed of his eerie grace to sustain the slow release of horror. Kathy's life, and that of her friends has been determined by the school they attended. Devoid of polemic or trickery, this is a cautionary, important tale about human cloning and a bravely moral philosophical tract. - Eileen Battersby
A Fine Place To Daydream: A Classic Story of the National Hunt. Bill Barich, HarperSport, £7.99
The thrills and spills of National Hunt Racing were inescapable last week as the Cheltenham Festival brought its heady mix of rivalry and camaraderie to the genteel Cotswold town. It's all over now, for another year, but if you're suffering withdrawal symptoms, dip into this book, in which former New Yorker staff writer Bill Barich recounts his experiences of a winter spent meeting the great personalities, human and equine, of the Irish jump scene as they prepared for another tilt at Cheltenham glory. In his quest for a good yarn, Barich was given "access all areas" and his tale is an engaging account that runs in tandem with another love story - the human one that brought him to Ireland in the first place. This book won't help you pick the winner of the 2.30 at Punchestown, but it will certainly give you a better understanding of the sport. - Maire-Claire Digby
Labyrinth. Kate Mosse, Orion, £7.99
Mosse's thoroughly researched, epic novel tells the stories of two women living at different points in history, both of whom become caught up in events connected to the legend of the Holy Grail. Some may be cynical about the inclusion of the Grail as a plot device in the wake of The Da Vinci Code's success, but Mosse creates a very different and poignant novel, largely concerned with a family living in medieval France during the Crusades and the struggle for survival of those hunted as heretics. In the present day, Dr Alice Tanner discovers the entrance to a mysterious cave in Southern France, while her counterpart in the past protects an ancient book as her home city prepares itself for war. Though the story at times gets bogged down in overly descriptive prose, Mosse's enthusiasm for historical detail is admirable, and the twin threads dovetail together in a moving conclusion. - Kevin Cronin
The Rattlesnake: A Voyage of Discovery to the Coral Sea. Jordan Goodman, Faber, £9.99
In 1847, respected hydrographer Owen Stanley was commissioned by the British Admiralty to finish a major surveying operation of the Great Barrier Reef and to produce the first accurate chart of the coasts of New Guinea and the Louisiade Archipelago. The mission was undertaken on the 24-year-old frigate HMS Rattlesnake, manned by a young and untested crew, and required sailing Antipodean territories that had witnessed some of the worst maritime disasters in living memory. Goodman's exhaustively researched account of the voyage is equal parts biography, scientific history, colonial text and boy's own adventure. Occasionally esoteric details and jargon are rendered in a style that is engrossing, suspenseful and unexpectedly moving. - Declan Cashin
On the Wing : To the Edge of the Earth with the Peregrine Falcon. Alan Tennant, Vintage, £7.99
This is the ultimate twitchers' story for birdwatchers who wish they could fly. Alan Tennant, with his septuagenarian aviator friend George Vose, and a geriatric, single-engine Cessna, followed a migrating peregrine from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic; and on the other leg of the migration from the Texas south into Central Mexico. Hopping from small municipal airfield to farm strip, they fuelled when possible, losing the bird and finding her, through Texas, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, east of the Rocky Mountains, and illegally into Canada. In a desire to enter into the essence of wildness, the author was addicted to the extreme edge of danger, gratuitously confronting a polar bear for example, but the story is spiced with natural history, philosophy, archaeology, and geography and also conveys a vicarious pleasure in consorting with birds. - Ethna Viney
Poisoned Peace - 1945: The War That Never Ended. Gregor Dallas, John Murray .£9.99
Dallas writes from a variety of perspectives - German, Russian, British, French and American, from presidents to the citizen on the bombed streets. The detail is exhaustive and, occasionally for non-lovers of this genre, exhausting. But perseverance is rewarded for in certain instances this merits its description as a "ground breaking" book. Unlike after the first World War, there was no peace settlement in 1945 as the shape of Europe was determined by military force. Dallas persuasively argues how from D-Day to the collapse of Berlin, military movements were dominated by separate national ambitions. This is an ultimately depressing account, as the horrors of the war continued to spill over into distant corners of the globe and - as the author argues - the second World War was indeed the war that never ended. - Owen Dawson