Paperbacks

Irish Times writers review the latest paperbacks

Irish Timeswriters review the latest paperbacks

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters Virago, £7.99

After reading The Night Watch there is a sense of achievement at having accompanied a small group of people through war-time London. Waters confidently takes you, usually at night, onto the streets during bombing raids - often behind the wheel of an ambulance sent out to rescue people from the rubble of their dwellings. She will have you overhear intense conversations in a prison-cell, but because her characters live and work in Central London, her most gripping scenes are in their rooms and flats, which range from the rickety to the bizarre. Like Dickens in Bleak House she envelops everywhere in smoke - either fog or smoke from cigarettes or the dry powder of mutilated buildings.Waters daringly opens the novel in 1947 and ends it in 1941, but so sure is her control that the reader almost never has to look back. There is occasional over descriptiveness, but overall Waters provides a lip-smacking experience for her readers. Kate Bateman

Tooth and Claw by TC Boyle Bloomsbury, £7.99

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This offbeat, dynamic collection of short stories concerns the strange and sometimes hilarious encounters of drop-outs, loners and insomniacs. A suburban neighbourhood is mystified and terrified by the behaviour of a local woman who has taken to hanging around - on all fours - with a pack of dogs. A young, nature-loving couple chat about bears and eels as they lose their way in the snowy mountains. A drive-time DJ starts to hallucinate during a publicity-seeking attempt stay awake for 12 days, and a young man ends up sharing his apartment with a wildcat after a drunken bet. While there is a quirky edge to this book, the tone throughout is forlorn, as things go wrong and chances are missed. The curiosities and wonders of nature form an intriguing, sometimes frightening backdrop to a rich and carefully crafted collection of stories. Sorcha Hamilton

Among the Dead Cities by AC Grayling Bloomsbury, £8.99

This is a complex, if not a contradictory, book. It is also an unsatisfactory book. The author, who admits to having been a wannabe fighter pilot in his childhood (he became a philosopher instead), argues the Allies waged a just second World War - "one of the very few just wars in history". Yet he is utterly convinced that the British bombing of German cities and the US bombing of Japanese cities were unjustified crimes. He doesn't accept that obliterating everything and everyone was the way to collapse the civilian morale and wartime economy of Germany. And, he further argues, most of the heavy bombing was done in the final months when the war was already won. He asks: are there ever circumstances in which killing civilians in wartime is not a moral crime? Readers may ask: does not the end justify the means? Grayling presents his case with great clarity but some will beg to differ with him. Owen Dawson

The English Civil War by Diane Purkiss Harper Perennial, £9.99

The author has been accuse d of not being able to see the wood for the trees in this book, and a general introduction to or survey of its subject it is not. But it does not set out to be such. "If the past is not to be dry, then it must live, and so must its people," proclaims Purkiss. What she aspires to do is to tell the stories of individuals caught up in a terrible but momentous conflict, one which shaped the future not only of England but of the world, through its influence on the American and French revolutions. The struggle between Crown and Parliament lifted the lid on society, as it were, and opened up a range of expression about every imaginable topic, from theology to political theory to cookery. Purkiss's portrayal of people operating in a "world turned upside down" is the outstanding achievement of this narrative. Brian Maye

Jewels: A Secret History by Victoria Finlay Sceptre, £8.99

Do you know which gem comes from the fossilised monkey puzzle tree? Or why vegetarians should not wear pearls? Or that a carbuncle is a desirable ruby? If these or any other questions about precious stones have ever idly crossed your mind Victoria Finlay's book will fill in many gaps. Packed full of incident and anecdote and minutely researched, it's a compact history of some of our favourite bits of bling, a fascinating book, whether you read from cover to cover or just dip in here and there. Finlay's travels take her from Scotland to Lithuania, from Japan to Australia and some surprising points in between, tracing the history and uses of gemstones most of us only associate with glittering catwalks and glamorous red carpets. Finlay's stories bring out the human and romantic side of the finding and owning of these symbols of power and objects of adoration. Claire Looby

The Truth, with Jokes by Al Franken by Penguin, £8.99

In Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them Al Franken took on Fox News and the right-wing media in the US. In The Truth, with Jokes the comedian, radio host and possible future Senate candidate has moved on to tackle the Bush administration and Republican Congress. Surprisingly, Franken is rather more adept at telling the truth than telling jokes. The book is an impressively researched, cogently argued case against the practices and policies of the GOP, from the war in Iraq to making political footballs out of Terri Schiavo and social security. The humour, however, is more hit and miss, a symptom of Franken's genuine anger at the Bush presidency. It seems the only satire people can bring themselves to laugh at now is the surreal "fake" news of Jon Stewart or The Onion. These days, the truth is no laughing matter. Davin O'Dwyer