The Dead School, by Patrick McCabe (Picador, £6.99 in UK)

With this tale of two teachers gone to the bad Pat McCabe goes so close to the bone that jagged shards fly everywhere, puncturing and deflating just about every aspect of Irish life: the phoney conviviality of small towns, the pitiless hierarchies of the educational system, the emigrant's despairing search for anonymity, the soulless deserts of the suburbs. Even when they're teetering, as they often are, on the verge of lunacy, his characters observe their out of joint world with startling clarity, and persuade, cajole and charm the reader into seeing it too until, just as you're laughing along with them, you realise your laugh is actually a gasp of horror and disbelief. The manic atmosphere is brilliantly sustained, and McCabe's ability to render on paper the rhythms of rural Ireland is consistently astonishing.