A selection of paperbacks reviewed
The Savage Detectives Roberto Bolaño Picador, £8.99
The Savage Detectives made waves across the Spanish-speaking world when it was first published in Spain in 1998. Since then, Bolaño (now deceased) has been acclaimed as a postmodern great along the lines of Jorge Luis Borges. This is indeed a rich and remarkable book. Set principally in Mexico in the 1970s, it is a rambling epic that revolves around a group of fervent student "would-be-poets". It brings together an almost dizzying cast of characters, who narrate the book in turns. As a piece of literary ventriloquism alone, it is exceptional. The narrative is a discursive, tumbling collection of events, full of digressions and daunting in scope.
Against a historical background, Bolaño paints a world that is sometimes absurd, sometimes wistful, sometimes comic. The result brings the reader face to face with ideas about the nature of art, politics and life in a way that is both destabilising and hugely original. Claire Anderson-Wheeler
The Deportees Roddy Doyle Vintage, £7.99
In the year 2000, Roddy Doyle began to write for the multicultural magazine, Metro Éireann. His stories were originally published as serialised chunks, so to read eight of them at once is like eating eight slices of Roddy Doyle-flavoured cake: you'll either end up chuckling and licking your fingers, or feeling slightly green around the gills.
The opening piece, an awkward tale about a Nigerian boyfriend who turns up at a Dublin dinner table, is followed by a cheerfully daft Commitments sequel and a pretty damp attempt at horror and haunting. By the time he gets to the final two stories in this volume, however, Doyle is on top form. Home to Harlem and I Understand are confident, accomplished short stories which could stand tall in any literary company, told with Doyle's trademark lightness of touch and bringing the excellent Metro Éireann to a wider audience in the process. More cake, anyone? It's Doyle-icious. Arminta Wallace
Dreams of Speaking By Gail Jones Vintage, £7.99
Dreams of Speaking, which was shortlisted for this year's Impac award, is the second novel by Australian author Gail Jones. This is the story of Alice, a young, single woman living in Paris, who has a fascination with the poetics of technology. For Alice, everything from neon signs to computers and Xerox machines holds a curious kind of beauty.
By chance, she enters into an unlikely friendship with an older Japanese man, who shares an interest in technological inventions, and particularly in the life of Alexander Graham Bell. As Alice struggles with an increasingly detached relationship with her family in Australia, she grows closer to Mr Sakamoto, a survivor of the atomic bomb. The quiet search for belonging and a more whole sense of place runs throughout this subtle, fragmented book, which sets a very personal story against the cool beauty of modern technology. Sorcha Hamilton
Confessions of a Demented Housewife: The Celebrity Year Niamh Greene Penguin Ireland, €14.99
Susie Hunt is back and is just as much an airhead as she was in Niamh Greene's bestselling debut, Secret Diary of a Demented Housewife, revisiting the chatty diary format for the mummy-lit adventures of a young stay-at-home Dublin mother. In this instalment, Susie has her eye on the ultimate prize that no amount of daytime TV presenters could have promised when she sets out to befriend the glamorous wife and son of a visiting Hollywood actor. The cliché-heavy plot includes all-too-frequent appearances by an interfering mother-in-law and even Susie's intrepid delivery of her friend Louise's baby in the hospital car park - in a people-carrier, naturally.
There are plenty of PSs and NBs in Susie's diary entries to underline her ever-increasing stress levels as she lands a dream job that turns out to have as many drawbacks as benefits, and financial disaster looms. There's even a reappearance of her former lust-object, Lone Father. All in all, it's an untaxing read, a bit of a chuckle. Claire Looby
New Europe Michael Palin Phoenix, £7.99
This time our intrepid traveller (and film guide) takes us on a literary jaunt through the once-forbidden lands of eastern Europe or, as he calls it, New Europe - 20 countries in 123 days to be precise. The book is chock-full of incidental information, and clarifies considerably the confusion of the politics of most of these still-traumatised countries. Palin gives us a cleverly disguised history lesson in a style that makes writing look deceptively easy. And, as always, his chronicle is laced with gentle humour: "His name is Dimiter and I gather he is quite high up in the hierarchy of the White Brotherhood - if indeed they have a hierarchy, which they don't."
Nature has been generous to most of these countries, which are blessed with beautiful landscapes. Man has been far less kind, having wrought war havoc on many towns and cities. Today some of these countries have a clear sense of their own identity, defined by their own language, culture, history and currency. Palin is full of optimism for their future and believes their gradual induction into the European Union should be welcomed with open arms. Owen Dawson