Paperbacks

Sebastian Faulks on Fiction: The Story of the Novel in 28 CharactersSebastian Faulks

BBC Books, £8.99

Sebastian Faulks takes 28 characters from well-loved novels and divides them into heroes, lovers, snobs and villains. His take on Miss Jean Brodie sent me rushing to my tattered copy of Muriel Spark's book. I remembered Jean Brodie as a fearless, inspiring teacher; Faulks says she's a monster. Sadly, I had to concede that Faulks is right. Presumably the aim of this book is to get readers to reread and re-examine old favourites, and it succeeded with me at least. (Mind you, I'll never agree with Faulks that Mr Darcy is a depressive.) If it provokes a few Junior Cert or Leaving Cert students to do likewise, so much the better. The book is weak when Faulks wanders off the subject of his characters on to himself: the story of his discovery of literature as a teenager would touch his mum's heart but bored me. Mary Feely

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer

By Siddhartha Mukherjee

Fourth Estate, £9.99

With its black bile, suppurations of the blood, gratuitous excision of body parts by gore-soaked surgeons, thrilling scientific breakthroughs in minute underground labs, corporate cover-ups and heroic interventions by tiny, odd-shaped molecules, this is an enthralling book of medicine, science and history that covers a lot of ground. Mukherjee says that this book "is written entirely for a layperson to understand", and he has succeeded in his ambition without being simplistic or cutting corners. Cancer, "our desperate, malevolent, contemporary doppelganger", is exhaustively explored and its nature limpidly explained. We've come a long way from the fatalistic pronouncement of Imhotep, in 2625 BC, on therapy – "There is none" – and, in tracking this history, the book is a testament to human fortitude, dedication and inventiveness. It won a Pulitzer Prize earlier this year, and deserves it for being scholarly, intellectually stimulating and viscerally emotive. Colm Farren

A Reader on Reading

Alberto Manguel

Yale University Press, £12.99

As a treatise on the magic of literature, A Reader on Readingis near definitive. The lectures, columns and essays of Alberto Manguel gathered here represent 20 years of insight from the Argentina-born writer, translator and editor. Though the subjects are very varied, its account of the ingenuity and imperfection of writing reflects what Manguel calls a "mad faith in the ultimate rationality of language". The lengthier analyses of his favourite writers (Dante, Cervantes, Carroll, Borges) feel excessively academic in places, and it's the minor meditations on punctuation, translation and even Manguel's own flawed first attempt at fiction that triumph. Manguel convinces us that to lend a book is an incitement to theft, that the ideal reader knows what the writer only intuits and that the art of reading is that of rereading and asking questions.  Cian Traynor

The Country Life

Rachel Cusk

Faber and Faber, £8.99

This latest novel from the English author Rachel Cusk reads like an old classic. Stella Benson sets off to the countryside to begin a new job as an au pair. "Please don't try to find me," she writes in a letter to her parents to inform them that she is leaving London to begin a new life on the enormous estate of the Madden family. But quandaries and intrigues present themselves – the wicked temper of Mrs Madden, the manipulative son, the dashing father – and soon the reality behind life in this idyllic country setting begins to emerge. Stella, meanwhile, has plenty of her own secrets. It's a rather lengthy, descriptive read with language straight from a Jane Austen novel, but there are many moments of domestic hilarity around the pool and at the dinner table, and insights into the awkwardness of being alone in a strange place. Sorcha Hamilton

Postcards from the Heart

Ella Griffin

Orion, £6.99

Ella Griffin's debut novel is packed with characters, plot twists and humorous incident, so, for many, this story gives plenty of bang for your buck. The tale centres on the lives and loves of two couples living in Dublin, whose often unlikely friendships have seen them through life's many ups and downs. Saffy is a high-flying advertising executive who harbours dreams of Greg, her long-term, narcissistic boyfriend, popping the question. Her friend Jess is equally determined not to marry her partner, Conor, the father of her madcap twins, for reasons that are difficult to pin down. Supporting characters come and go, and Saffy's farcical wedding day, her mother's treatment for cancer and the fallout from both incidents spur her on to find her father's identity. Veering from one plot twist to another, the story's merry gallop is halted occasionally by the sudden appearance of a diverting subplot, but it's a journey on which many readers will be happily swept away. Claire Looby