The latest paperback releases.
Be Near Me Andrew O'Hagan Faber, £7.99
A Catholic priest in squalid small-town Scotland; a pair of snarling teenagers; a forty-something housekeeper straight out of central casting. Doesn't sound like the stuff of first-class fiction, does it? In O'Hagan's hands, however, these folks not only become real but serve as the springboard for a meticulously observed, yet wonderfully compassionate, meditation on art and politics, love and loss, youth and energy. The priest is living in the rose-tinted past of his time at Oxford in the 1960s; but the present sneaks up on him, with devastating consequences for his future. The writing, though unshowy and often grittily funny, has enough substance to make something inside you change gear as you read it. And what about that title? Perfection in three words, it's from a love poem by Tennyson. O'Hagan has always been a good writer: this is a great book. Arminta Wallace
Mother Country Jeremy Harding Faber, £ 6.99
We are born to fall in love with our parents unconditionally, but they fall off their pedestals eventually and we begin to question their motives, their values and sometimes even their sanity. This eternal story is the subject of editor and journalist Jeremy Harding's mesmerising memoir of an optimistic childhood with an edge: he had two mothers: Mother One, the alcoholic social-climber who adopted him and Mother Two, the working-class Irish woman who gave him up and went on to have a brood of no-hopers. Both mothers coat him in love but neither proves completely adequate. You don't have to have been adopted to identify with this painful and funny account of parent-child relationships. Besides, his beautiful writing makes Harding a true and faithful guide to the problem of adored parents who become heroic fools in retrospect. Kathryn Holmquist
Return to Akenfield Craig Taylor Granta, £7.99
In 1969, Ronald Blythe wrote the bestselling Akenfield, a portrait of a typical English village, with the rich vernacular of its inhabitants - people whose lives revolved around agricultural life and the cycle of planting and harvest festivals. Almost 40 years later, Craig Taylor embarked on a similar exploration, seeing what had changed over the years. The answer: virtually everything. The contrast between that era and our mechanised, globalised one is powerfully brought home, yet this is no exercise in nostalgia. Taylor's work is without agenda. It is essentially a collection of interviews, edited to read seamlessly, like a thought-provoking diary. Taylor is self-effacing, letting his subjects tell their own stories. Their perspectives range from anxious to optimistic, to amusingly phlegmatic, as they contemplate the past and future of a village and its people. Claire Anderson-Wheeler
The Great Wall Julia Lovell Atlantic Books, £9.99
The Great Wall, or more correctly Walls, of China are estimated to be almost 4,000 miles long, 30 feet wide and the amount of stone in the wall is equivalent to "all the dwelling houses in England and Scotland". The wall-building impulse is a fairly universal one; empire builders like walls, whether for offence or defence. But, asks the author, was the Great Wall built to repel foreign influences or to control and encircle the Chinese people within? If the former, then it provided only a temporary advantage over determined raiders and pillagers. To Ghengis Khan and the Mongols, these frontier walls were merely a nuisance and, for the greatest wall builders of all, the Ming Dynasty, the wall was equally ineffective. Lovell looks behind the mythology of the wall, uncovering its 3,000-year history, but she also writes of the Great Wall mentality, of Chinese racism, its dynasties and its uneasy relationship with the outside world. Owen Dawson
Hormóin agus Scéalta Eile Pól Ó Muirí Comhar, €6
This beautiful collection of eight short stories is aimed at teenage/adult learners of Irish. Each story is concerned with a different aspect of growing up, from the teenage boy who can't sit still (Hormóin) to the young man whose body is beginning to sprout hair (Coinleach). Ó Muirí is concerned with the way individuals relate to those who are closest to them, dealing with the traumas, anxieties and interests of the young, delving into the darker issues of identity with a simplicity and a directness that should appeal to young and adult readers alike, such as his story about the desire to disappear (Cíarán sa Chófra), or his description of a young woman's need to protest in spite of her father's seeming disapproval (Eachtraí Aoibhne). Solas deals with a young woman coping with grief while Litir chuig Aoibheann is about a father's need to express his love for his daughter. Catherine Foley
A Sense of the World Jason Roberts Pocket Books, £7.99
Jason Roberts's ambitious biography of the blind 19th-century world traveller James Holman is a story that can make almost any reader feel a bit lazy. After a handful of years as an officer in the British Royal Navy (which he joined at the ripe old age of 12), Holman was blinded by a mystery illness at the age of 25. But instead of resigning himself to life as an invalid, Holman became an inspiration, completing medical school and setting off to travel the globe alone. From Exeter to Egypt, he rambled on, undeterred by his inability to see the characters and the landscapes he encountered. After his death in 1859, Holman's name and story sank into the mists of history. Roberts revives Holman in painstakingly researched detail. Worth reading for the story of the blind traveller - but also for the fascinating glimpse into the time in which he lived. Erin Golden