Paperbacks

This week's releases reviewed

Homer and Langley

EL Doctorow

Abacus, £7.99

EL Doctorow's poignant book, a "a free imaginative rendering" of the lives of New York eccentrics the Collyer brothers, was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize last year. It tells the story of the American century through the lives of the siblings, upper-class New Yorkers, living in a large house on Fifth Avenue. Homer, the narrator, becomes blind while still a teenager; his brother, Langley, goes to fight in the Great War and comes back traumatised and wheezing from the effects of mustard gas. As the brothers retreat into eccentricity, and the house becomes increasingly crammed with the newspapers and bric-a-brac Langley collects, the events of the century come and go, often referred to obliquely and all seen, as it were, through Homer's blindness. Doctorow has taken liberties with the real-life story: the Collyers died in 1947, but he extends their lives. That said, within his reinterpretation he never loses focus and stays unerringly true to Homer's vision. It's an impressive feat of imagination and a beautiful piece of writing. CATHY DILLON

Molotov’s Magic Lantern: Uncovering Russia’s Secret History

Rachel Polonsky

Faber and Faber, £9.99

When Rachel Polonsky took up residence on Romanov Lane in Moscow in the 1990s, she found herself amid both grandeur and terror in what was the address of the Soviet elites. Vyacheslav Molotov, Stalin's closest protege, had resided in her very apartment building, and when Polonsky gained access to what remained of his vast personal library she embarked on a journey of physical and scholarly proportions to match the immensity of Russia itself. Molotov, apparently, was a bibliophile and the book sets out to capture the times and places discernible in his literary collection. Polonsky travels as far as the permafrost in the north and Russia's far eastern border with Mongolia, in each place confronted with the past of a country fashioned through changing ideology. Contradictions of elegance and dilapidation, greatness and barbarism pervade this erudite travelogue as Polonsky takes the reader on an intellectual excavation of Russia with digressions of dreamy contemplation and comment on relations of power. SARAH McMONAGLE

For Richer, For Poorer: Confessions of a Player

Victoria Coren

Canongate, £8.99

Victoria Coren discovered poker in her teens, when it became a way of escaping her adolescent woes. Her love of the game followed her into adulthood. She has seen it leave smoky casino card rooms and embrace the internet and watched as Scandinavian maths geeks took over from Stetson-wearing Texans at the top of its tree. For Richer, For Poorer is an account of how she has grown up with poker. The game's growing popularity offered her opportunities in broadcasting and newspapers. She has presented tournaments on TV and writes a poker column in the Guardian. As a player she has developed into a formidable operator who won £500,000 in a European Poker Tour final and has earned a $1.5 million. A narrative of the final helps form the spine of a book that acts as a memoir and a meditation on the game, and details the still thankfully colourful characters she meets at the card table. BARRY O'HALLORAN

The Crazy Life of Brendan Behan

Frank Gray

AuthorHouse, £12.49

Although not containing a lot that is new, this compact biography is an enjoyable read informed by a broad knowledge of Irish political, social and cultural history. "In the space of a decade (1954-64), Brendan Behan rocketed to fame as a playwright, autobiographer, columnist, humorist, wit, roustabout, debauchee, charmer." Forever self-righteous, he saw himself as a David fighting so many Goliaths – or, like Don Quixote, "he was given to tilting at windmills, sometimes with honourable intent but with self-destructive results". Gray stresses the influence of Behan's wife, Beatrice, arguing that without her he would be remembered only for The Quare Fellow, because his alcoholism would have prevented further worthwhile output. Sadly, Behan eventually succumbed to his own hunger for fame and the media's hunger for sensation and scandal, and the damage done by drink led to his early death, at 41. BRIAN MAYE

The Suicide Run

William Styron

Vintage, 192pp. £7.99

The five stories in this posthumous collection were drawn from the author's own experience in the US marine corps. Set predominantly during the build-up to the Korean War, they depict the mental anguish of soldiers on the brink of combat, waiting with shredded nerves and over-active libidos to step into war's abyss. Styron's ornate prose has a wonderful rhythmic flow. His soldiers display all the lustful, cocky swagger of arrogant youths, yet they are also second World War veterans and, as such, are haunted by the spectre of past horrors, horrors that lie in wait on another battlefield just over the horizon. The title story, a sultry, white-knuckle sex odyssey across the US, is a particular gem. Told with a frenetic humour that bleeds out into lyrical disquiet, it paints a vivid picture of young men trying in vain to drown out their own death knell. (Styron himself died in 2006). DAN SHEEHAN