The latest titles reviewed
Between a Rock, Chuck Kruger Bradshaw Books, £15
Chuck Kruger writes good old-fashioned stories, mainly set in his adopted home, Cape Clear Island, and around Roaring Water Bay. Strong characters undergo significant life-changing events: a farmer's wife gets the better of a series of bereavements by volunteering for the lifeboat crew; a hurricane-force storm on Christmas Eve reinforces a writer's decision to live where he does, while a worker on the building of the Fastnet Lighthouse is compelled by a sudden insight to move to nearby Crookhaven. Kruger, an American who taught English and philosophy and studied at the CJ Jung Institute in Switzerland before moving to Cape Clear in 1986, has read widely, and observes his new home with an empathetic eye. If occasionally the sentiment is too strong for some tastes, overall the stories have the ring of truth. Alannah Hopkin
Pablo Neruda: A Passion for Life, Adam Feinstein, Bloomsbury, £9.99
Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda (1904-1975) is perhaps best known for his hugely successful volume, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair. Given and received by lovers the world over, it is simply one of the finest and most passionate collections of lyrical poetry of the 20th century. Feinstein's biography recounts with infinite skill Neruda's rise to literary success from a sickly childhood in a depressed mining town in Chile. Equally well handled are the stickier points of Neruda's early Stalinism, his ambassadorial appointments and his fiery temper when faced with literary opposition. This enjoyable story of the poet's many passions - women, wine, politics and exotic travel, to name but a few - is an excellent companion volume to Neruda's work. If you haven't already given your other half a copy of the love poems, do it now, and include this biography in the package. Nora Mahony
Amazonia, James Marcus, The New Press, £8.99
James Marcus was the 55th employee at Amazon.com, back when Amazon was all about selling books, rather than being the world's largest online department store. This book promises to give an insider's account of the early years of the dot.com boom years, when it appeared that e-commerce could generate never-ending wealth. Indeed, the chapters dealing with the sudden goldrush (at one stage Marcus's shares were worth more than $9 million) offer a fascinating impression of the madness of the time. (It's been barely half a decade, but that ebullient market already seems somehow unreal, a capitalist mirage quickly defeated by reality.) However, as a history of Amazon itself it is rather lacking. Marcus was an insider, but not that much of an insider. In particular, founder Jeff Bezos is restricted to brief appearances, so the project is akin to a history of Microsoft in which Bill Gates merely cameos. Davin O'Dwyer
Hatchet Jobs: Writings on Contemporary Fiction, Dale Peck, The New Press, £8.99
This collection of rants is prefaced by a quote from William Carlos Williams: "All I said was: there, you see, it is broken." What's broken, in Peck's view, is the novel itself, slowly ruined in a degeneration that began with Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man and has continued to the present and the twin evils of "recherché postmodernism" and "recidivist realism". Best known for describing the much-admired Rick Moody as "the worst writer of his generation" (in a review of Moody's The Black Veil, included here), Peck is also hard on Julian Barnes, Dave Eggers and his McSweeney's gang and, especially, Jim Crace. His bile-spewing is excusable, though, as he is not just inspired by bitterness but, it's clear, genuinely cares about literature. Also, he often has a point, and even when he doesn't he is often very funny, his academese, endearingly, peppered with a gunslinger's vernacular. Cathy Dillon
Like Nowhere Else, Denyse Woods, Penguin Ireland, £9.99
As an idealistic postgraduate, this novel's heroine, Vivien Quish, had wanted to become a travel writer, taking her lead from explorers of bygone ages. But when she set foot in Yemen, a country she had dreamed of since childhood, she found herself unequal to the task and left in shame. Now, after 12 years of embarrassment about letting herself down, and despite establishing a solid career in a Dublin gallery, Vivien sets out again to reclaim the mystical city of Sana'a as her own. This time, however, there are emotional as well as cultural complications. Woods tells her tale beautifully, weaving it to the melodies of the call to prayer and the rhythm of ancient desert life, bringing the searing sun to the weary reader in a narrative of personal redemption set against a background of living history. Claire Looby
Quotable Quotes for Quoters, Aubrey Malone, Clarion, £1.99
Aubrey Malone opens his collection with an appropriate quote from Winston Churchill: "It's a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations." Who today has time to read the complete works of Shakespeare, Wilde or Leonora Strumpfenburg? A good and varied book of quotations is the next best thing, and every bookshelf should have at least one. In my abode it has been a long-established practice to leave one in the bathroom. I know this may be considered a health hazard but it's a proven method of gauging a varied opinion on a book that, after all, is meant to be read in short sittings. And, Malone's compilation of more than 2,500 one-liners from Woody Allen, Hal Roach and Joan Rivers, plus all the usual suspects, passed the test, and should prove a handy conversation aid for parties. Martin Noonan