Irish Times reviewers cast a critical eye over recent paperbacks.
Rory and Ita. Roddy Doyle, Vintage, £7.99
The 20th century was a turbulent one for Ireland. But, as they do, people find ways of surviving and finding happiness whether on the periphery or at the hub of the tumult. As did Roddy Doyle's parents: Rory and Ita. Without sentiment, Doyle stitches together the patchwork of his parents' memories to form the ambling narrative of Rory and Ita. Yet, despite the lack of saccharine, Doyle's love of, respect for and fascination with his parents speaks from every line of this gentle social history. The undertaking is a brave one - the glimpse into Doyle's background could not be more intimate. His bid to reassemble his parents' lives in the early and mid 20th century has given us an eloquent book about simple lives, monumental in their universality. And not a typically drunken, brutish Irish da in sight. What a relief. - Christine Madden
Seabiscuit. Laura Hillenbrand. 4th Estate, £7.99
There have been many mythic racehorses - but at the height of its 1930s Depression, the US revelled in the incomparable Seabiscuit, now also the subject of a movie showing at a cinema near you. Nothing, it seems, captures the imagination like a horse with a story. Hillenbrand takes this real-life adventure and soars, in a tough-bitten, emotional, appealing and forensically detailed narrative. Seabiscuit, an ordinary-looking bay with a crooked leg, was fond of his food and his sleep. It even took him 50 races to figure out what racing was all about. But God finally placed him in the right hands - of three oddballs; owner Charles Howard, trainer Tom Smith and jockey Red Pollard, all of whom had their own problems. Luckily, grumpy old Smith and Pollard the dreamer could detect genius in the heroic little horse who drew 78,000 spectators to his final race and greatest victory. - Eileen Battersby
Seven Ages of Paris. Alistair Horne, Pan Books, £8.99
In breaking the story of Hugo's "city of cities" down to seven ages, Alistair Horne delivers a compelling insight into the evolution of la ville lumière. Paris, under Philippe Auguste, Henri IV, Louis XIV and Napoleon, through the age of the Commune, the first World War and Nazi occupation in the second World War, is depicted in all its grandeur and brutality. Horne conveys a city decorated in triumph and failure, continually ravaged and reborn. He charts the architectural and cultural development of the French capital, as well as the rise and fall of the Bourbons and the bloody revolutions that were to change history in the 18th and 19th centuries. The book brings to life the streets and buildings of Paris, providing access to the many famous figures that ruled its palaces and salons as well as the forgotten history of the Parisian underworld. A work of love for all things Parisian - the beauty, horror and la Gloire. - Tom Cooney
No Laughing Matter; The Life and Times of Flann O' Brien. Anthony Cronin, New Island, €16.99
Flann O'Brien (once known in this paper as Myles na Gopaleen) was an endlessly adaptable author and a forerunner of Irish postmodernism, a key figure of the literary scene of 1950s Dublin of which Anthony Cronin was also a member. As his many pseudonymous personalities in life and in writing would suggest, O'Brien was a complex, difficult man, here sympathetically examined by his biographer. The new introduction, while at times wordy, highlights the difficulties O'Brien experienced as the many lives he led came to be at odds with one another. No Laughing Matter is a well-balanced portrait of this uproariously funny, irreverent, and gifted writer, one which will be welcomed in its new format both by O'Brien's fans and readers looking for an introduction to the man and his work. - Nora Mahony
The Baghdad Blog. Salam Pax, Guardian Books, £7.99
"Come here and let's get bombed," writes Salam Pax to his friend Raed at the start of this extraordinary book. It's a typical line from Pax's web log (or "blog") - a day-by-day online account of life in a city starved by sanctions and Saddam Hussein's tyrannical rule. Both anti-Saddam and anti-Bush, Pax's writing is full of western influences, irreverent humour and sarcastic observation. He listens to Massive Attack, reads Gibson and Burroughs, and jokes about selling America's propaganda leaflets on Ebay. As war approaches, however, his tone, understandably, changes. Staccato entries on music, television and the absurdities of everyday life give way to heartfelt accounts of the impact of the conflict. Covering the period from September 2002 to June 2003, this book is a compassionate, vivid portrait of life lived in the eye of the second Desert Storm. - Breffni O'Malley
The Dark Heart of Italy. Tobias Jones, Faber £7.99
It's a country that can reduce the most seasoned travel writer to whimsy and romanticism. Tobias Jones, however, seeks the stranger and altogether more sinister truths of modern Italy. This is a hard-hitting book about a country so "painfully legalistic", that as a result it is almost lawless, its people resigned and impotent in the face of a political system which is "the negation of democratic logic". Jones's Italy is a labyrinthine arena of perpetual intrigue and philosophical and political deadlock, where truth "is obscured by the sheer weight of conjecture". But it is Silvio Berlusconi who is at the centre of "a sad national story". The book is a crisp, damning indictment of the President's governance "by bamboozlement". Jones is both in love with and infuriated by his adopted country. Much of the reader's enjoyment derives from his exasperation at its dichotomies. - Fergal Quinn