A selection of paperbacks reviewed
Torn Water by John Lynch Harper Perennial, £7.99
A 17-year-old boy learns about life and love in this coming-of-age story set in Newry during the Troubles. The first novel from Irish actor John Lynch follows teenager James as he struggles to come to terms with the mysterious death of his "patriot" father. What follows is a grim but familiar narrative of an Irish childhood characterised by an alcoholic mother, her "waster" boyfriend and a masturbating priest. Dark forces interrupt the banality of everyday life, but it is James's own imaginings that startle most as he fantasises about death at the hands of Al Pacino, the Spanish Inquisition and the land itself. An amateur drama production and a Gaeltacht love affair afford glimpses of a more positive future, but first James must come to terms with the ghosts of his own past. As a moral lesson for modern Ireland it is conventional but appealing. Freya McClements
Al-Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenged the World by Hugh Miles Abacus, £8.99
A part of an American-backed ploy to sow dissent among Arab nations and undermine the Palestinian cause, a hopelessly biased station skewed against the US and Israel, or the mouthpiece for al-Qaeda? Its critics can't agree where the Qatar-based Arabic TV station Al-Jazeera fits in. But to supporters and loyal viewers (and there are more than 50 million of them) it's a shining example of fair and principled journalism. Set up in 1996 by the emir of Qatar (Al-Jazeera translates as the island, a reference to the Qatar peninsula which juts into the Persian Gulf), the station's principle is, "The opinion and the other opinion". Its struggle to maintain journalistic independence in the face of intimidation (and having its bureaus bombed) makes for a fascinating story, shedding much light on the issues it has covered in the past 10 years, prior to the launch of Al-Jazeera English - its English-language station - last year. Fionnuala Mulcahy
Mishima's Sword: Travels in Search of a Samurai Legend by Christopher Ross Harper Perennial, £7.99
Japanese writer Yukio Mishima was thrice shortlisted for the Nobel Prize for literature, yet he is remembered more today as a deranged martial-arts fanatic who publicly disembowelled himself in Tokyo on November 25th, 1970. Mishima's last day is recalled in snippets throughout this book, in a largely unsuccessful attempt to hold together various observations and reflections by Ross on his travels between Oxford and Japan, on martial-arts rituals and on his half-hearted search for the sword used by Mishima in his suicide. Whether Mishima's act was a protest against Japanese modernisation, a narcissistic destruction of his ageing body, or due to the pressures of combining marriage and children with a string of casual male lovers, we are none the wiser after reading this frequently disturbing volume. Indeed, we learn as much about Ross's own troubled spirit as we do about Mishima's. John Moran
When I Grow Up by Bernice Rubens Abacus, £7.99
This memoir is the Booker Prize winner's final work before her death in 2004. Born in Cardiff to Jewish parents, an adolescent Rubens experienced first-hand the atrocities of the second World War. It is no surprise then to find the issue of trauma, ranging from the historical and the political to the personal and familial, central to this elegant piece of work- what's surprising is the innovative and creative handling of this theme. It's an extraordinary book that, through a blending of humor and poignancy, not only provides fascinating insight into Rubens's rich and varied life, but also sets out the terms of an ethical project of remembering, in which the past is faced in a spirit of honesty, integrity and hope. Claire Bracken
The March by EL Doctorow Abacus, £7.99
General WT Sherman's infamous March to the Sea provides the backdrop for EL Doctorow's comprehensive exploration of the horrors of war. The March follows Union soldiers as they cut a destructive swathe through the South in a series of bloody and brutal engagements that will bring the American Civil War to an end. Atrocities and acts of mercy sit side by side - a woman is gang-raped as a doctor struggles to save the wounded - and a series of characters, ranging from Southern deserters to a "white Negro" girl to Abraham Lincoln, allows Doctorow to piece together a narrative out of viewpoints as uncertain and incomplete as the war itself. Historically accurate, Doctorow's work addresses themes - of race relations, the cult of celebrity and the impact of war on civilians - that are no less significant today. As Sherman concludes, "our civil war . . . is but a war after a war, a war before a war." Freya McClements
My Middle Name Is Lucky by Lee Dunne Killymon House Books, €10.99
In the mid-1960s, while John McGahern and Edna O'Brien were giving the infamous Censorship of Publications Board food for thought, Lee Dunne, an unknown young Dubliner, hit the spotlight with his bestselling debut novel, Goodbye to the Hill. Over the next decade, he provided a feast of fantasies for the vigilant board. Eight rejections earned him the title "Ireland's most banned writer", not a bad sales kick in the 1960s and 1970s. And, with his novels keeping the censors preoccupied, he was busy entertaining the nation, with more than 2,000 scripts for daily radio soaps The Kennedys of Castleross and Harbour Hotel. This is one for his fans, as Dunne recalls a colourful life of wine (lots of), women (lots of), the occasional song and, finally, the discovery of redemption in academia and contentment in old age. Martin Noonan