Paperbacks: Irish Times reviewers cast a critical eye over a selection of paperbacks including Alistair MacLeod's Island and Moments of Truth by Lorna Sage
Island. Alistair MacLeod. Bloomsbury £8.99
With his respectful and sympathetic foreword, John McGahern perfectly creates the atmosphere for the reader to enter the world of this beautifully constant and spellbinding collection of stories. Alistair MacLeod's elegiac stories deal with the sombre ushering in of modernising influences on the rustic and introspective lives of a simple folk whose complexities are masked by their silences and inaction. Humanity seeps through every page. It is carried on the freezing winds that blow across Cape Breton from the Atlantic. It breathes in the ocean and the lakes, whether lapping against the shore or frozen in the seasonal ice drifts of winter. It lives in the trees, in the grass, on the mountain tops and on the islands of Nova Scotia. Death and rebirth combine to give the stories a natural order in accordance with the Gaelic-speaking witnesses to the events. The characters' relationships with themselves, each other, the landscape, the seasons and time leaves the reader with the impression that the pace and relative ease of modern life have left us somehow bereft of something elemental, something essential - something forgotten. Mark McGrath
The Diaries of Kenneth Tynan Edited by John Lahr Bloomsbury £8.99
"A small talent for brilliance" were the whispered deathbed words of Kenneth Tynan, world-famous theatre critic, impresario and louche sophisticate. His review of himself was characteristically harsh. While a new generation of theatre-lovers and glittering socialites won't now even know his name, Tynan in the 1970s knew everyone from Princess Margaret to Gore Vidal, Groucho Marx to Laurence Olivier - and he was as well-connected in New York and LA as he was in London. His diaries are gossipy and frank - his wife, Kathleen, tried to suppress their publication largely on account of his fascination with S&M sex and his various infidelities, which are detailed fairly lovingly in the book. The diaries themselves garnered rave reviews when first published and they do capture vividly the sense of the man and the time he lived in, which is what all good diaries should do. However, unless you're a dyed-in-the-wool luvvie with an interest in the 1970s, you might find it less than compelling - despite all the lipsmacking indiscretions. Bernice Harrison
Moments of Truth. Lorna Sage Fourth Estate £7.99
The aptly-named author of this eloquent book lavished her too-short life on interpreting literature, especially that of women writers, creating a body of exceptional critical work and revealing her own superb literary talent. A voracious reader herself, Lorna Sage's Moments of Truth was published as a sequel to Women in the House of Fiction (1991). Sage chose the writers examined in this study - such as Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Iris Murdoch, Simone de Beauvoir and others - by the works that rang truest with the respective writers' essential voice. Most of these insightful essays, the result of her trademark responsive and perceptive reading, had appeared previously as introductions to the respective works, yet together they form an intricate whole - an exemplar of the harmony of Sage's vision and method. Moments of Truth was published posthumously; Sage lived just long enough to experience the success of her memoir, Bad Blood, and see it receive a Whitbread award. How fortunate that her excellence as a memoirist brought her greater public attention - books such as this therefore find the larger audience they deserve, beyond the rarified world of academe.
Christine Madden
Recollections of a Writer by Accident. J. Anthony Gaughan. Kingdom Books €15
This book is a readable memoir from a well-seasoned practitioner. It is less about the craft of writing biography based on exhaustive research, which has been Gaughan's métier for more than 30 years, than a recollection of accidental encounters and personal involvement with the individuals, organisations and happenings that made it all possible. There are walk-on parts for the literati, a handful of prominent politicians, an ambassador or two, trade unionists et al. Significant or not, they all appear to have made their mark on Gaughan's consciousness at one time or another. He comes from a proud tradition of Listowel writers, who all held on to the "day job" - men such as John B. Keane, a publican, and the schoolmaster Bryan McMahon. Tony Gaughan is a priest - he was 36 before it occurred to him to write for publication. A modest man, his courage in tackling forgotten subjects such as the RIC, Tom Johnston, first leader of the Labour Party and Alfred J. O'Rahilly, the controversial UCC educationalist, will be his lasting legacy. Colman Cassidy
Kennedy's Wars. Lawrence Freedman. Oxford University Press $17.95
This book is principally about the John F. Kennedy wars and for the most part steers clear of his well-documented private life. Kennedy's thousand days as president were filled with crises in Laos, Cuba, Vietnam and Berlin (when the often hot Cold War was at its most frightening and dangerous). If today the Cold War is seen not to have been as threatening as it appeared at the time, Kennedy nevertheless took it very seriously. This in part was expedience - he knew that appeasement was the gravest charge that might be levelled at him. Communism was to be despised and feared. He inherited a troublesome commitment to South Vietnam and bequeathed it in an even worse condition to his successor, while Castro's Cuba, seven presidents later, is still something of a damn nuisance to the US. Historians may quibble with the author's essentially pro-Kennedy standpoint, though Freedman is fully aware of Kennedy's failings. The rest of us can reflect on this careful study of the full drama of war as we watch the president wrestle with a succession of major crises. The implications of his decisions were as far-reaching then as Bush's are today. Owen Dawson