Sir, - One of life's pleasures is the Saturday edition of The Irish Times. It usually arrives on Monday and I read it from cover to cover, slowly, trying to make it last until the Monday of the following week.
I always turn to the book section first; to say I am a bookworm is somewhat of an understatement. However, I find myself constantly frustrated by your reviewers' paperback choices. Take the selection in one recent edition: two translations from the French - surrealist plays and a novel by Celine, not exactly the things you'd read on the bus. These were accompanied by two works of non-fiction connected with the cinema, one of which (Sex Lives of Hollywood Idols) you mightn't want to read on the bus either, unless you wanted to encourage attention from certain quarters. The selection was rounded off by two other books of non-fiction, selections from The Farmer's Journal (great for a bus trip to the National Ploughing Championships), and a travel book.
While I admire the attempt at varying the kinds of books reviewed, I feel that narrative fiction, which is, after all, the most widely practised and read genre, is seriously under-represented in the paperback review column. Couldn't at least two novels/collections of short stories be subjected to the critical scrutiny of your reviewers each week? What about the idea of devoting special attention to the excellent paperback original imprints which are now produced by a wide variety of publishers? And if Brian Fallon could avoid falling for every book translated from the French and return to reviewing common-or-garden versions of books written in English, Saturday's Irish Times would be right up there with Hadji Beyes Turkish Delights and bright sunny days on Cape Clear. - Yours, etc.,
rue de Chezy, Neuilly sur Seine, France.