A roundup of today's paperbacks
The Lemur
Benjamin Black
Picador, £7.99
The third book penned under John Banville’s crime-writer pseudonym revolves around John Glass, a worn-out Irish international correspondent who has recently moved to New York City. The former journalist has been commissioned to write the biography of his father-in-law: magnate and former CIA man William Mulholland. Trouble ensues after Glass attempts to employ a technically savvy young researcher – “The Lemur” – to uncover the secrets of “Big Bill”.
Black's style is the antithesis of the meticulous prose of Banville novels. The fast pace and terse dialogue are so conspicuously in the thriller mode that for a time the narrative seems oddly superficial. There is a strange depth to it though, with the characters all playing unconvincing roles and accusing each other of being clichés. Even the protagonist's name suggests transparency. In the end, this is a subtle thriller where the tension comes from the unease the characters feel about inhabiting their hollow roles. Colm Farren
Contemporary Irish Drama
Anthony Roche
Palgrave Macmillan, £18.99
To understand the present you must look to the past, Anthony Roche suggests in this second edition of his seminal survey of Irish theatre from the latter half of the 20th-
century. Beginning in the 1950s, Roche charts Beckett's shaping influence on more culturally specific playwrights Brendan Behan, Tom Murphy and Brian Friel, whose work interrogated the Irish state as it crawled towards its protracted social modernity. First published in 1994, Roche's insightful study takes the reader from the political hotbed of the 1980s to the present day, with a final chapter on theatre from the 1990s, and the work of Marina Carr, Martin McDonagh and Conor McPherson. However, several major names do not suit Roche's through-line: Enda Walsh, Mark O'Rowe and Paul Mercier are not even mentioned in the index, and the lacunae suggest the necessity for another, truly contemporary study; one that leaves behind the past and acknowledges the writers who will shape the future. Sara Keating
The House of Wittgenstein
Alexander Waugh
Bloomsbury, £9.99
In 21st-century, “celebrity” terms, the most notable members of the Viennese Wittgenstein family are Paul, the one-
handed concert pianist, and his brother Ludwig, who is now regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century. However, in Alexander Waugh's fascinating, dramatic rendering of the family, each member of this talented – but troubled – clan is allowed centre stage. Their anguish, troubles, passions and epic bickering are brought to life in a gripping narrative that picks its way over a time span following the fall of the Habsburg Empire and two World Wars, as well as through the suicides of three of the brothers. Waugh flits from person to person, possibly remaining mindful of delivering his exhaustive research in digestible mini-bites. In this respect, while his subject matter may belong to the 20th century, its execution roots itself in the 21st. Claire Coughlan
Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Marriages in Literary London 1910-1939
Katie Roiphe
Virago, £9.99
Uncommon Arrangements is a fascinating and original study of seven literary couples and how they tried, with varying degrees of success, to challenge or transcend the conventions of marriage. Seeking greater authenticity and personal freedom in their relationships than they felt marriage offered, these couples carved out alternative relationship structures. From Vanessa Bell's highly unconventional ménage to Vera Brittain's "semi-detached marriage", Roiphe presents her subjects with honesty and sympathy. The narrative is driven by Roiphe's genuine curiosity to discover whether love is more fulfilling and lasting when traditional rules are rejected, or whether her high-flying subjects were largely deluding themselves and hurting each other. Ultimately their attempts to challenge convention emerge as sometimes destructive and often self-deceiving, but also brave and certainly worthy of analysis. Eimear Nolan
Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan
Ian Buruma
Atlantic, £9.99
Although originally published in 1994, Buruma's impressive analogy of German and Japanese cultural and political responses to their appalling atrocities in the second World War still has a powerful resonance. With a new preface, the narrative examines the historical reactions to Auschwitz, Hiroshima and Nanking, among other wartime crimes, and how, despite occasional claims of "we never knew" or "we were only following orders", there still persists one country's acceptance of its crimes against humanity while another has steadfastly refused to pay the wages of guilt. Full of cinematic and literary references that do much to enlighten the subject matter, Buruma is never far from his best when analogising and searching for logic, be it in Günter Grass's The Tin Drum or Alexander and Margarethe Mitscherlich's The Inability to Mourn. Paul O'Doherty
