This week's paperbacks
The Equality Illusion: The Truth About Women and Men Today
Kat Banyard
Faber, £8.99
Here's the truth. Last week we elected a house of representatives that looks like this: men TDs, 141; women TDs, 25. Nobody said life was fair. Oh, I forgot, they did. Some commentators seem to think the struggle for gender equality is over. The former chairperson of MS Stuart Rose believes that now there's a woman Red Arrow it's time for lady moaners to shut up. Knickers to feminism, so to speak. Kat Banyard is having none of it. She enlists real women enduring real discrimination to put self-starving, violated flesh on the bones of her argument that we need feminism as much as we ever did. Listen to Ellen, who starves herself to keep skeletal a body she hates. Or Jena, who has stopped going to school because a boy in her class keeps grabbing her breasts and calling her a slut. Or Lucy, who's drinking more to get through a night at work in a lap-dancing club. Read it and weep. Then start screaming. Anthea McTeirnan
The Brightest Star in the Sky
Marian Keyes
Penguin, £7.99
For her latest novel, an intriguingly plotted and absorbing page-turner, Marian Keyes has fun with the reader, teasing, loading on surprises and delivering at least one shock that will stop you in your tracks. She gives herself what could have been a very ordinary set-up: the novel is set in a large house in Dublin that has been divided into four apartments. Very different people live in each: the just-turned-40 career woman; the mouthy 24-year-old female taxi driver sharing with two Polish lads (their scenes are hilarious); the feisty elderly woman living out the end of her days; and the loved-up couple who hide a tragic secret. Hovering over them all, watching their antics, is a spirit who may or may not be benign. People fall in and out of love – that's the frothy bit – but all the characters have stories of their own. This is a doorstop of a book, and once again Keyes is unafraid to deal with weighty issues such as death, sexual assault and what happens when children become the carers of their parents. She balances light and shade with skill. Bernice Harrison
Lean on Pete
Willy Vlautin
Faber, £7.99
Young Charley Thompson lives in his head, sustained only by his memories of an aunt who was kind to him. If Charley ever had a mother it was all so long ago that he has long forgotten. His days are filled by waiting for his unreliable father, who may return, often accompanied by whatever woman he happened to have picked up. The boy is always hungry and shoplifts all the time. He also runs, and on moving to Portland he discovers the local race track: a sorry wasteland populated by losers and exploited racehorses. There he meets Del, the lowest of the low, intent on the racing success that is never going to happen. Charley begins to work for him and quickly learns all about humiliation. But he also befriends Lean on Pete, a stoic Quarter horse. Disney it is not. Charley's powerful, deadpan and surprisingly philosophical narrative explores despairing loneliness far more perceptively than many far more ambitious novels. Eileen Battersby
Parrot and Olivier in America
Peter Carey
Faber Faber, £7.99
Those familiar with the two-time Booker prize-winner Peter Carey will expect scores of striking similes and sumptuous descriptions in his work. His most recent novel does not disappoint. The bold imagery flies off the page to such arresting effect that he makes Solomon's Song of Songs sound like a shopping list. Taking its inspiration from Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America, Carey's story follows French aristocrat Olivier de Garmont, an incorrigible snob forced to tour with his English servant, Parrot, who aspires to be an artist. As told through their alternating voices, Parrot and Olivier loathe each other from the start, but over the course of their travels in the New World they become friends. Carey can switch from comedy to pathos with the sweep of a line. As well as the sensory detail and wit, this picaresque adventure is a complex discussion of philosophy, politics, art, love and the injustice generated by social hierarchies. Adam Wyeth
In Office Hours
Lucy Kellaway
Penguin, £6.99
Readers familiar with Lucy Kellaway's column in the business pages of this paper will know that she knows a thing or two about office politics. If Kellaway's second novel is anything to judge by, she also knows a thing or two about office affairs, as a keen-eyed observer. In Office Hours is the story of Stella Bradberry and Bella Chambers, two of the few women executives who work for Atlantic Energy, a global oil company in London. Bella is a pretty single mother who dropped out of college and works as assistant to a series of men she could wipe the intellectual floor with. Stella is 20 years her senior, a high achieving mother of two destined for a seat on the board. The common factor? Both women embark on affairs with male colleagues they wouldn't look at twice outside of work. Kellaway delivers the tale with wry humour and the caveat that ending an affair is always harder than beginning one. Claire Looby
