Irish Times reviewers cast a critical eye over the latest batch of paperbacks.
Life of Pi Yann Martel Cannongate, £7.99
A young Indian boy, Pi, finds himself adrift on the Pacific in a life boat after the cargo ship carrying his parents and a number of his father's zoo animals to Canada sinks. Pi's fellow survivors include a hyena, a zebra with a broken leg, a female orang-utan - and a Royal Bengal tiger named Richard Parker. This polemical yarn presents adventure and survival, merging fable with belief. Although last year's Booker Prize seemed destined for William Trevor or Rohinton Mistry, I did identify this as the dark horse. It duly won. Life of Pi succeeds on many levels, not least because Martel develops and sustains the voice of a bewildered young boy determined to live. The narrative, with its vivid sense of life at sea, chronicles a tense power struggle based on mutual dependence. Fantastic but believable, it is a funny, sad and highly imaginative parable. - Eileen Battersby
Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex Olivia Judson Vintage, £7.99
The title definitely catches the attention and the contents don't disappoint either. Judson is a biologist and award-winning science journalist. This funny, original and hugely informative first book was shortlisted for this year's BBC4 Samuel Johnson Non-Fiction Prize. It is written in the form of agony aunt letters from various creatures and insects, all concerning mating and reproduction, with brisk replies from the doctor. "I'm a European praying mantis and I've noticed I enjoy sex more if I bite my lovers' heads off first. It's because when I decapitate them they go into the most thrilling spasms. Do you find this too?" from 'I Like 'Em Headless' in Lisbon. Such are the topics on which Dr Tatiana enlightens us. Science and biology have rarely been such fun. - Rosita Boland
Hokkaido Highway Blues, Hitchhiking in Japan By Will Ferguson
Canongate, £7.99
Canadian Will Ferguson worked for five years in Japan before setting out at the start of his final summer holidays to do what nobody else had done before, hitchhike from the southern to the northern tip of Japan. Ferguson followed the Cherry Blossom Front, the blooming of the cherry blossom trees, which marks the arrival of summer. Local television stations bring news of the Front's progress up the islands, and parties are held to commemorate the event. This book is an account of his epic 1,800-mile journey, detailing his encounters with ordinary and not-so-ordinary Japanese in various situations and locations. At its best, this road book contains the hilarious observations of an irreverent young bull let loose in the Japanese chinashop, though his attitude towards the Japanese occasionally disturbs. Towards the end he clearly has had enough of Japan, perhaps pining for the girlfriend he previously travelled with. - John Moran
Ash Wednesday Ethan Hawke Bloomsbury, £6.99
The popular dictum "write what you know" comes to mind as Hawke combines two of Hollywood's most popular themes - the Road Trip and the Coming of Age. The book is one of contrasts both in form and content. It is at once childlike and ludicrous, all the while hinting at a profound underlying wisdom. The reader may be simultaneously confounded by hackneyed Hollywoodisms and compounded by a DIY epistemological ontology which reveals moments of real clarity amid the chaos of the His 'n' Her narrators, as they meander through numerous emotional and geographical states. Hawke borrows from Sartre and Camus in his treatment of his narrators and their world. They are up to their proverbial necks in existential wrangling and paradox, condemned to be free in a deterministic universe while clinging to religion for answers. - Mark McGrath
A Case of Bad Blood: The Human Story Behind the Public Tragedy
Rosemary Daly with Paul Cunningham Poolbeg 12.99
In political lobbying, those who shout loudest succeed is the depressing message of A Case of Bad Blood, whose author spent 13 years campaigning for justice for haemophiliacs infected with HIV and hepatitis C through contaminated blood products. Daly captures the familial nature of the community with which she worked, comforting AIDS victims in the final stages of their illness, and helping their families deal with their deaths. Politicians, once willing to collapse a government rather than pay for emergency nursing care for those affected, come out badly, as do lawyers, whom Daly discovered were "just bullshitting" when they claimed to hold a "secret store of knowledge". An index and more editing would have improved the book but it is an important memoir of a dark episode. - Joe Humphreys
High Season in Nice Robert Kanigel Abacus £7.99
How did Nice, a modest town in a backward rural county come during the Belle Époque to epitomise European beauty and elegance? This chronicle of one town's adventures in the travel industry is an engaging, surprisingly meaty read. The book is brimful of anecdotes from a glittering array of visitors and appreciators but, crucially, Kanigel uncovers a wealth of stories from more modestly endowed travellers. It is their testimonies that really bring this account to life. A pleasing airy atmosphere permeates a deceptively thorough analysis, tracing the towns development from "saucy little girl" to today's "aging grande dame", made alluring by the sheer weight of her life experience. In tracing her slow decline the author demonstrates astutely how tourism, with all its banalities and capriciousness, remains "high among the dividends of peace". - Fergal Quinn