The latest releases reviewed
The Essential Dave Allen, Edited by Graham McCann, Hodder, £8.99
The son of a former general manager of this very newspaper, the late, Dublin-born Allen himself worked as a journalist and as a Butlin's Redcoat before making his mark as a hugely popular comic, first in Australia, then on BBC and ITV. This is a collection of his greatest material - jokes, anecdotes, monologues, lyrics, poems and sketches - divided into thematic sections, ranging from childhood to growing up to the afterlife. Allen's artful, observational humour was often merciless - particularly regarding Catholicism - but was so sharp and classy that people could forgive him anything. This is a joy to read and there is, of course, something extra for Irish readers, who will immediately identify with the domestic cultural peculiarities that Allen both mocks and celebrates with almost poignant affection. Declan Cashin
The Ice Queen, Alice Hoffman, Vintage Books, £6.99
Imbued with fairytale resonances and uncanny tropes, The Ice Queen is a modern-day fairytale about death, love and redemption, timeless themes to which Hoffman gives a new edge. It tells the story of an unnamed woman, the narrator of the tale, whose eight-year-old self wishes for her mother's disappearance, a wish which promptly comes true in the form of her death. For protection, both from the world around her and the self which she so desperately fears, the little girl hardens her heart to the outside, as the reader watches her symbolic transformation into ice. Many years later and the ice girl is now an ice queen. Fate intervenes with a (literal) lightning bolt to the heart and what follows is a moving account of her struggle towards self-discovery and love. The moral? It is in the desire to truly know another that we are brought closest to our own self. Claire Bracken
Hard to Choos, Pixie Pirelli/Kate Thompson, New Island Press, €9.99
Have you ever stood in front of a pair of designer shoes and heard them talking to you? Inviting you to part with all you possess merely to slide your under-
privileged toes into their luxurious interior? Well Charlotte Cholewczyk has. In this incident-laden confection, Pixie Pirelli (or Kate Thompson, depending on which one of the cover credits you read first) introduces us to Charlotte at a time when some friends are having babies and others look destined for celebrity couple status. Between weekends in exclusive English country hotels and visits to Paris, Pirelli's opus holds all the fantasy settings you could desire in a good summer read. Add a group of friends who throw literary quotations into almost every conversation, and references to many luxury goods, and you have a book that will inspire you to spend more, read more and appreciate the finer things in life, including romance. Claire Looby
Come Back to Afghanistan: My Journey from California to Kabul, Said Hyder Akbar and Susan Burton, Bloomsbury, £8.99
This book is important and timely: a necessary reminder of the Afghanistan situation's continuing critical importance. Akbar, a 17-year-old Californian college student, encounters his native land for the first time when his father returns as a leading figure in Afghanistan's fledgling government. Understanding its cultural dynamics as an insider, but retaining the global perspective of an outsider, Akbar examines a highly complex state of affairs with commendable clarity. He is impassioned and uninhibited, but clear-sighted and sensitive in his analysis. Understandably for a young narrator taking on a massive subject, his tone is slightly self-conscious and uncertain. Overall, however, this is an absorbing and insightful study of Afghanistan and its people. Claire Anderson-Wheeler
Dining With Terrorists: Meetings With The World's Most Wanted Militants, Phil Rees, Pan, £7.99
Nine days after 9/11, George W Bush vowed that the "war on terror" wouldn't end until "every terrorist group of global reach" had been "found, stopped and defeated". During his career as a war correspondent, Phil Rees has met many of those to whom the US president was referring. He also met a paranoid KLA commander in Kosovo, a member of Pol Pot's genocidal regime in Cambodia and Uzi-toting Jewish settlers in the Occupied Territories, all regarded with legitimacy - at one time or another - by the US. In this highly readable collection of dispassionate reportage, the author tries to define the loaded T-word and finds the abuse of political language as bad as in Orwell's time. One man's terrorist may be another man's freedom fighter, but equally, it seems, one man's terrorist is anyone his administration doesn't like. Tim Fanning
The Day War Ended: Voices and Memories From 1945, Jennie Condell, Phoenix, £8.99
Released originally to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the ending of the second World War, this eclectic, tightly edited anthology of remembrances torn from the pages of journals, diaries, websites, archives, interviews and newspapers, among other sources, is a worthwhile personal collection of memories of the period from May to September 1945 when the engines of war slowly came to a halt from Germany to the Pacific. There are BBC news reports, Mass-Observation Archive entries, snippets from the military powerbrokers, and from the odd actor (Clive Dunn) and theatrical maestro (Noël Coward). Although biased towards the victors of the European campaign and lacking the balance of a more thorough look at German and Nazi perspectives, it is a useful launchpad for anyone interested in further study. Paul O'Doherty