The latest titles reviewed.
Sean Penn: His Life and Times, Richard T Kelly, Faber, £8.99
What makes Sean Penn tick like a time bomb? One thing his admirers and detractors would say: through it all - through the sensational performances in largely non-commercial films, through the wacky marriage to the Material Girl, the boorish slugfests with paparazzi, through close, puzzling friendships with American oddities like poet Charles Bukowski, through to responsible fatherhood, an Academy Award and a gutsy anti-war activism - Sean Penn has always done things his way. For this authorised oral biography, Richard Kelly interviewed some 70 loyal family, friends and colleagues, as well as Penn himself, who provides thoughtful and general articulate contributions. Despite a few moments of luvvy crawling, the result is humorous, absorbing and, eventually, touching. Kevin Sweeney
Birth of a Nation: The Further Adventures of A Very English Agent, Julian Rathbone, Abacus, £7.99
Following on from his exploits in A Very English Agent, Charlie Boylan (now calling himself Eddie Bosham) continues his memoirs, this time from the confines of a jail cell, documenting his abandonment by Charles Darwin on Albemarle (in the Galápagos Islands) to the prologue to the Californian goldrush.
Delving into the thin layers that separate reality from what-if, Rathbone rips the embroidery of history, untying this and that, and cleverly restitching the dichotomy of actual events with speculative invention, within the threads of Darwin's theory of natural selection, the Rose of Tralee and a few ingenious lines from Leonard Cohen and the Drifters, among others.
While slow at times, there is no shortage of action from foster-care in the arms of two adoring seals Maggie May and Kate, whale exploration, Mississippi riverboat poker nights, the Texan War of Independence, Generals Santa Anna and Houston, and the real story behind Jim Bowie, William Travis and the Alamo. Paul O'Doherty
The Sheep Who Changed the World, Neil Astley, Flambard, £8.99
Wally is a black sheep - and then some. Having taught himself to speak by watching soap operas on the telly, he sets out to take his revenge on the religious fundamentalists of the Men's Republic of Battymanistan, who turned his dad into doner kebab, and on the scientist who, when cloning him, added some human DNA into the mix. Neil Astley was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award for his previous outing, The End of My Tether, and this off-the-wall satirical tale is of a similarly irreverent order. There are some good one-liners, but the material is very slight; and by the end, what with the sheep's inability to pronounce his "r's", the terrorists' obsession with "keeling theese sheep" and the unlovable Cockney army sergeant, it all gets pretty tedious. Arminta Wallace
Mantrapped, Fay Weldon, Harper Perennial, £7.99
Not so much a novel as a compendium-for-a-novel, this comes, like the Pompidou Centre, with its structures showing brightly on the outside. There are two parallel stories: a fiction and a real-life record of the author's thoughts and doings. There are commentaries on the novel form and sometimes helpful, instructive recaps as aides-mémoire in case the reader loses the plot. There's also an interview with the author and two end pieces. It is easy to see that the author is bravely trying to show the fictive nature of the ordinary lives most of us live, and that what is imagined is neither truth nor untruth, but there is just too much intention and insufficient shape on the work. Whether readers think they are reading a novel or a confessional sort of autobiography, or a parable on the post-modern novel, it does not much matter. For this reader the thrillingly-naughty-but-nice tone palled at the same rate as interest in the subject(s) waned. Kate Bateman
The Town that Forgot How to Breathe, Kenneth J Harvey, Vintage, £7.99
The inhabitants of Bareneed, a Newfoundland fishing village fallen on hard times, become victims of a mysterious ailment which leaves them unable to breathe. At the same time fantastic creatures from sea-faring legends start appearing in the waters whilst bodies long lost at sea are washed up on the shore. The reason for these unusual occurrences becomes clear: the locals have lost their sense of identity, which in a supernatural way has become linked to the act of breathing itself. An eerie sense of paranoia permeates the novel with an imminent sense of disaster present. It has elements of mythology, science fiction and folklore, all drawn together by an imaginative author at the top of his form. Eoghan Morrissey
Empire Adrift: The Portuguese Court in Rio de Janeiro 1808-1821, Patrick Wilcken, Bloomsbury, £8.99
What 19th-century European capital moved out of Europe? An interesting trivia question, but also the subject of Patrick Wilcken's absorbing history, detailing the flight of the Portuguese monarchy to Brazil in 1807. Walking a tightrope between Britain and Napoleonic France, and struggling to maintain a large empire undermined by the weakness of Portugal in relation to her neighbours, the prince regent, Dom João, was forced to move a 10,000-strong bureaucracy to Rio de Janeiro, and there they stayed for more than a decade. Wilcken, in his first book, demonstrates a first-class storytelling ability, deftly conveying the background of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, Portugal's imperial adventures, the politics of the court and the history of Brazil. The really interesting element here, though, is the dysfunctional royal family itself, the Braganças, from the indecisive João to his demented mother Queen Maria and his scheming wife, Dona Carlota. Trivia answers don't come more compelling. Davin O'Dwyer