The latest paperbacks are reviewed.
This is the Country. William Wall, Sceptre, £7.99
As in The Map of Tenderness, Wall again moves stealthily through contemporary Ireland, using the theme of the domestic unit as his dark guiding star. With an inventively variant pace worthy of Jazz, the young narrator's girlfriend, we are taken into a countryside whose potential as a peaceful antithesis to the chaos of a childhood and youth on a corporation estate is threatened by the violence, sadness and vagrancy that here seem unavoidable legacies for the drugged-out and disenfranchised. The narrator's ultimately tragic story is brilliant on the ways in which the contentment of gainful work and the warm normalcy of his domestic unit with Jazz and child are held up as talismans against the harm threatened by society in general and certain thugs in particular. Wall successfully broaches perhaps the greatest challenge in a socially conscientious first-person novel: writing articulately about those who may be inarticulate. - John Kenny
Istanbul: Memories of a City. Orhan Pamuk, Faber and Faber, £8.99
Orhan Pamuk's elegantly written and nostalgic tribute to his home city combines a memoir of his childhood with grand, sweeping descriptions of the sights and textures of this multifaceted city. Pamuk's prose flows like poetry, stirring up highly intimate images of a once great and noble city now reduced to a pale shadow of its former self, following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In acknowledging the melancholic atmosphere that permeates Istanbul, Pamuk identifies the soul of the city as one defined by its sadness and sense of loss. It is this lingering sadness that fires Pamuk's creative impulses, and there is a certain artistic symbiosis between author and subject. Projected against this bittersweet canvas is a fascinating account of Pamuk's early life, family relationships, and the self-doubt he experiences as to his true calling. Highly recommended. - Kevin Cronin
Blink. Malcolm Gladwell, Penguin, £8.99
This is an examination of the power of rapid cognition. Instinct, or as experts call it, "thin-slicing", is a formidable factor in the decision-making process, which often cuts through more cautious analysis. Gladwell outlines how many decisions in all spheres of life are made in an instant and how, by recognising this, we can hone our unconscious reactions. These snap judgments are often correct, even if we cannot pinpoint exactly why. Despite the seemingly heavy subject matter, complex concepts are broken down easily in a highly readable manner. Drawing on diverse areas such as marriage therapy, speed-dating, food technology, military strategy and marketing, Gladwell has constructed a clever and engaging argument with implications for the business world and personal life. - Eoghan Morrissey
At Arm's Length. Anne Chambers, New Island, €14.99
Anne Chambers follows the bestselling Granuaile: The Life and Times of Grace O'Malley with this reflection on how wealth, power, religion, English public school education and political allegiance made the Ascendancy in Ireland a class apart. Sean O'Faolain once opined that "Ireland was their country, never their nation". Whether Gael, Norman or Anglo, Lord Inchiquin (Conor O'Brien) or Lord Henry Mountcharles, the all-embracing term "Anglo-Irish" became their label. However, it's not just on the past that Chambers's book concentrates but on the expressions of the descendants still living and working in Ireland today. If you want to challenge old prejudices and take a fresh look at Irish history, read this buzzing account of a class that has finally, it seems, become part of the fabric of their nation. - Martin Noonan
The Darling. Russell Banks, Bloomsbury, £7.99
The storyline of The Darling is laughable. The privileged daughter of a stable American 1960s home forsakes her family to become a bomb-maker, quits radical group the Weathermen for Africa, where she soon gives up a friendship with real-life warlord Charles Taylor and marries a dull, pompous Liberian civil servant, by whom she has three sons. They get left by the wayside, but this time for chimpanzees, which are lovingly evacuated to a rural island to avoid encroaching civil war. An exercise in reading between the lines, The Darling is more than implausible plot twists: not a true novel, it's a highly developed character sketch of one of the most surprising women of contemporary fiction. The work might be more at home on the stage, as the narrator exposes her innermost demons to the audience through monologue, yet somehow leaves her own conscience unscathed. Very worth reading. - Nora Mahony
Peter Brook. Michael Kustow, Bloomsbury, £9.99
Peter Brook's icy stare challenges the reader from the cover of Michael Kustow's biography, and in a strange way it tells you almost as much about the man as the book itself. Born in London in 1925, Brook's prolific directing career began when, as a 10-year-old, he staged a production of Hamlet in his parent's sitting room. He went on to Oxford and from there embarked upon the series of productions that made his reputation: Measure for Measure with Gielgud, Titus Andronicus with Olivier and Vivien Leigh, and King Lear with Paul Scofield. In the 1960s he turned to mysticism and in the 1970s found inspiration from Africa. Kustow's study reveals a man of extraordinary creative energy, an intense, somewhat obsessive iconoclast, whose career seems to have been based around challenging the status quo. - Ken Walshe