A selection of paperbacks reviewed...
God's Own Country By Ross RaisinPenguin, £7.99
Fear not, this is not a collection of self-serving, incoherent speeches by former US president George W Bush. Instead it is one of the finest, most assured and bizarrely moving of recent British fiction debuts. Young social outcast Sam Marsdyke tends sheep on the family farm, his place of exile following expulsion because of an incident involving a girl. Raisin brilliantly evokes the angry despair of a narrator whose fantasies are vivid, often funny and never sentimentalised. Although the book is comprised of Sam's interior monologue, replete with his views on life as lived by the people around him as well as his own concerns, the narrative pointedly considers the clash of rural and urban cultures being fought out in the Yorkshire Moors as old farms are purchased by townies intent on paradise. Sam, with his feel for his native landscape, is bright and angry. He is also a dreamer, ripe for further disappointment and misunderstanding when an ill-judged odyssey goes badly wrong.
EILEEN BATTERSBY
Bard of Erin: The Life of Thomas MooreGod's Own Country By Ronan KellyPenguin, £9.99
Kelly's self-proclaimed task here was to restore the full picture of Moore the man, and he succeeds admirably. Moore was a gifted scholar, a brilliant satirist, a popular oriental fabulist and "a much-censured coy eroticist" as well as a pioneering historian, a struggling journalist and a daring biographer (Lord Byron, Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Lord Edward Fitzgerald). Of humble Dublin background, he moved in the highest social and literary circles in England and for a time his popularity as a writer was exceeded only by that of Scott and Byron. In his family life, he was to experience repeated tragedy. He remained committed to the rights of his Catholic fellow countrymen but it is above all as the composer of his Irish Melodies – those songs of longing for love and country – that Moore's memory lives on; as an exile, it is little wonder he could register such nostalgic regret so well.
BRIAN MAYE
The Untold History of the Potato By John ReaderVintage £8.99
In this impressively researched account of this underrated commodity, John Reader explores the potato’s essential usefulness and versatility, while tracing its crucial and sometimes unfortunate role in world history. Central to the ecological and economic structure of the world, the potato has, throughout history, facilitated exploitation and hunger. The most notable example is, of course, the Great Famine in Ireland, on which Reader is informed, balanced and empathetic. With a respect
born of years of economic, ecological, agricultural and historical research, as well as 18 months spent living in the West of Ireland, Reader convincingly illustrates the potato's role in the past, present and future of mankind – the ubiquitous tuber will be the dietary mainstay of astronauts journeying to Mars.
EIMEAR NOLAN
The Northern Clemency By Philip HensherHarper Perennial, £8.99
Philip Hensher’s epic family saga, starting in 1974 and spanning 20 years, is not the usual convulsive take on
modern British history familiar from a clutch of other recent novels which similarly pivot on the miners’ strike of the 1980s. Instead, its tale of two middle-class Sheffield families adapting to a changing world is a mellow and empathetic feat of storytelling, selectively packed with period detail and spacious enough to accommodate the subtle development of a large cast of characters. Though clemency (as in mildness) is the prevailing mood, there are moments of acute tension along the way, from the
moment in the opening section when the dissatisfied and unfaithful Katherine Glover humiliates her young son in front of the newly arrived neighbours, an incident which reverberates through the decades. But as his symphonic soap opera's themes are established, revisited and embellished, Hensher's leisurely, almost timeless view of the recent past does seem to be lacking an edge.
GILES NEWINGTON
Nothing To Be Frightened Of By Julian BarnesVintage, £8.99
Julian Barnes's brilliant book about death is a blend of family history, philosophical musings and mortal terror. Barnes – something of an expert on death, having lived the greater part of his life tormented by a powerful anxiety about his inevitable demise – tells stories of his forebears and compares his thoughts with those of his brother (a philosopher), his doctor, and the figures of French literature that he loves. The author treats of everything from religion, cloning and cryonics to "dying well" and dying in character. Barnes's myriad hypotheses and "would-you-rathers" concerning the mystery of the hereafter are thought-provoking and very funny, at times espousing a Beckettian black humour ("The fury of the resurrected atheist: that would be worth seeing"). The rigour of the treatise is matched by the novelist's great eloquence and style. It is a sincere, humble work, punctuated by moments of poignancy; a morbid book which is also humorous and strangely heartening. COLM FARREN