Object Lessons, by Eavan Boland (Vintage, £6.99 in UK)

Eavan Boland is a considerable literary critic as well as a respected poet, and this book shows her in both capacities, though in a highly personalised and subjective sense. It is subtitled "The Life of the Woman and the Poet in Our Time", and mingles self-analysis, biographical retrospection, the reality of Irish nationhood, the task of today's women poets, the nature of female eroticism and other issues into a web of thoughtful prose. Not all reviewers have been sufficiently alert or sensitive to the particular nature of this work, which has far more than merely topical relevance.