The latest paperbacks reviewed.
Ghost Town, Patrick McGrath, Bloomsbury, £6.99
The private hells festering in our diseased minds inspire this invariably original English writer's singular fictions. His contribution to the Writer and the City series is in the form of three near-Gothic stories spanning three centuries in the history of New York. Each of his three narrators addresses the reader with a convincing, slightly crazed intensity. A dying man looks back 55 years to the day his mother, a War of Independence patriot, died due to his failure of courage. A long-dead New York merchant presides over a grisly saga of disappointments, from the portrait that was once painted of him and at which the mesmerised narrator stares. The final and darkest narrative, Ground Zero, set post-9/11, explores self-delusion, as a female psychiatrist, in helping a favoured patient, becomes involved in the obsession she was trying to cure. Eileen Battersby
Love Comes Tumbling, Denise Deegan, Penguin Ireland, €14.99
At the start of this book we learn that graphic designer Lucy Arigho has no intention of getting over the death of her fiancé, never mind starting a new relationship. But after an uncharacteristic bout of road rage strikes, she can't help being seduced by the suave driver of a Mercedes sports convertible. Greg Millar is an Irish literary sensation with luxury homes in Dublin and France. He is also a widower with two children. Their reluctance to accept her into their life when Greg proposes after just a short time is the least of Lucy's worries. The dream relationship quickly starts to disintegrate and she wonders whether her fiancé is the man she thought he was. Deegan's third book has the sparky dialogue, fresh storylines and believable characters her fans have come to expect and the dark subject at the heart of the book is deftly dealt with. Enjoy it on the beach. Róisín Ingle
The Broken Boy, Patrick Cockburn, Vintage, £7.99
The award-winning foreign correspondent of the London Independent is on mainly Irish ground with this autobiography. Cockburn's memories of boyhood, specifically his contracting of and recovery from polio after he returned with his parents from London to Youghal in the 1950s, expands into two further areas: a general account of the Cork polio epidemic of the time, the last of its kind in the world, and a detailed tracing of a frequently eccentric Anglo-Irish ancestry. Amid moments of implicit humour and anecdotal diversion a beguiling honesty is the keynote, and Cockburn is as forensically detached about everything as he is in his scientific explanation of the poliomyelitis virus. His no-nonsense reporter's prose keeps the narrative strands in check. In its assiduous avoidance of self-regarding pathos, this memoir shows how restraint in style and expression can increase the value of personal reflection. John Kenny
You're History, Edited by Michelle P Brown and Richard J Kelly, Continuum, €14.90
On the 20th anniversary of Live Aid, Bob Geldof called for a political and intellectual debate concerning extreme poverty and its consequences. The political response came with the G8 summit in Gleneagles. Only time will tell on that one. This book is the response of the so-called intelligentsia. Powerful individual voices have come together here to make a collective roar which is hard to ignore. Robin Philpot's thought-provoking essay, How the Modern-day Missionaries Called 'Human Rights Activists' Help Wreak Havoc in Africa, and Alan Titley's revealing The Dregs in the Pot of Gold: the Irish Experience of Exchanging Dignity for Racism alone are worth the cover price. Ultimately the purpose of the book is to encourage people to think. If knowledge is power, these essays are missives of mass instruction. Martin Noonan
Mr Nice & Mrs Marks, Judy Marks, Ebury Press, £10.99
Life, love and fun on the run with the world's most wanted pot-smuggler is the subject of this curious memoir. Judy Marks was the wild-child daughter of a Belfast Catholic mother and a well-to-do Hampshire father. She found the perfect soulmate in cheerful Welshman Howard. In his 1970s heyday, Judy's hubbie was thought to have trafficked one-tenth of all the marijuana smoked in the world, and his successful landing of 50 tons of Colombian gold in Scotland is still a record. But Howard was a fanatical risk-taker, and even with a wife and three kids to provide for and the drug law-enforcers of the world on his tail, he wouldn't get out. Eventually they were jailed. Judy writes movingly about being separated from their children for two years, but offers little in the way of introspection, and ends on a surprisingly flat note in 1995. Kevin Sweeney
Time Out 1,000 Films to Change Your Life, Edited by Simon Cropper, Time Out Guides, £9.99
As the editors are keen to point out, this is not a "best of" collection; instead each chapter is based around a particular emotional response. For example, under "Fear" we get an obvious entry such as the pure horror of Nosferatu alongside the less obvious The Wizard of Oz. Other chapters have titles such as "Exhilaration", "Wonder" and "Contempt", and the book is full of strange bedfellows, coupling seemingly unconnected films such as American Pie and Rear Window under the rubric of "Voyeurs". The collection's trump card is that the films are chosen by industry professionals such as Terry Jones, Jonathan Romney and Atom Egoyan, and their contributions are erudite, eclectic and nerdish in equal measure. The esoteric structure at times feels muddled, but this is also its greatest charm. One to dip into.
Ken Walshe