Irish Times reviewers cast a critical eye over the latest crop of paperbacks.
Family Matters. Rohinton Mistry, Faber, £7.99
Nariman, a retired professor, is old and ailing. An accident worsens his situation, particularly as Coomy, the churlish, embittered stepdaughter with whom he lives, is hardly an ideal nurse. Jal, his stepson, is merely cowardly. Mistry, one of several superb contemporary Indian novelists, has a flair for characterisation and the comedy of exasperated verbal exchanges. Coomy shrewdly engineers Nariman's passage out of his roomy flat, which he shares with his stepchildren, and despatches him off to his natural daughter, Roxana, who loves him but has less accommodation. Tensions emerge through Roxana's husband, Yezad, a sporting goods sales assistant. Set in Bombay, this is a rich narrative of dark secrets and sudden shocks, humour and pathos, inhabited by family members whom the author brings to life. - Eileen Battersby
A Pelican in the Wilderness. Isabel Colegate, HarperCollins, £8.99
Snails are lucky creatures. As instant hermits, they can pull into their portable hermitage at the slightest flickering of emotional or spiritual need. Humans, however, must go through more complex preparation and ritual, as Colegate describes in her meditative but cheering book, its title a line taken from Psalm 102. From the beginning of recorded history - and probably before - individuals in all societies have sought peace, tranquillity and enlightenment in seclusion from the beehive of society. Colegate recounts the particulars of these solitaries - from monks in the Far East and Russia to Romantic idealists in artificial ruins to contemporary recluses such as Howard Hughes. In the absence of a physical shell, open it up on the bus or train to work and wait for the hubbub around you to recede. Perhaps we're not so badly off after all. - Christine Madden
Islam's Black Slaves: A History of Africa's Other Black Diaspora. Ronald Segal, Atlantic Books, £8.99
This book, a companion piece to the previously published The Black Diaspora, gives an account of the absorbing and clandestine record of the Islamic slave trade. Whereas Segal's original work follows the West's history of slavery, this details a tradition of slavery as old as Islam itself . Here he outlines the differences between the scale and movement of slaves in the East and the West and in how slaves were used and treated. For example, slaves living under Islamic law were more likely to be granted freedom, were generally treated more humanely and were more likely to be women. Segal explores the persistent denial by Muslims that this element of the black diaspora even exists, despite the fact that the practice persists to the present day, and examines the appeal of Islam to American communities whose roots are firmly planted in the slavery of the West. - Mark McGrath
Frida:The Biography of Frida Kahlo. Hayden Herrera, Bloomsbury, £9.99
The principal characters in this book were full-blooded Mexicans, married and with powerful personalities, so inevitably the sparks flew. Diego Rivera, whose murals made him "the most famous painter in the world", was the husband of Frida Kahlo, whose self-portraits made her the most original painter of her time and whose life was recently made into a film. Though Rivera loved her dearly, this never interfered with his philandering. For her part she loved him, men, women and especially herself. She also heroically endured lifelong suffering, the result of a horrific accident in her teens. This should make for a splendid read but, sadly, Herrera lets us down. We are swamped with much dull detail and the pages are almost damp from the number of times we learn of poor Frida's weeping. Such a dynamic and feisty duo should arouse some emotion, but we are rarely moved. - Owen Dawson
The Mechanical Turk. Tom Standage, Penguin, £6.99
Automata and other scientific amusements were popular in the royal courts of Europe in the 18th century. Wolfgang von Kempelen, an expert in physics, mechanics and hydraulics at the court of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, constructed a chess-playing automaton - the mechanical Turk of the book's title - that has ensured his place in history. As if a machine that played chess wasn't astonishing enough, the Turk proved to be a formidable player: fast, aggressive and capable of beating most opponents within half an hour. Kempelen's creation baffled scientific experts in Britain, France, Germany and Holland, as well as his own homeland. Standage summarises the attempts to pluck from the machine its mystery, and in this way superbly builds up the suspense. So, how does one explain how the Turk functioned? Read this rattling good yarn and find out. - Brian Maye
Kilbrack. Jamie O'Neill, Scribner, £6.99
Subtitled Or, Who is Nancy Valentine?, this is a reprint of one of the two virtually unnoticed novels O'Neill published prior to the splash of At Swim, Two Boys in 2001. O'Neill has distanced himself emotionally from Disturbance (1989) and Kilbrack (1990), and feels he wrote them in a previous incarnation; but Kilbrack, at least, seems worth a second go. An amnesiac (car accident) would-be biographer, O'Leary Montagu, comes to Ireland to visit the Kilbrack idyllically described in a memoir by one Nancy Valentine, only to have the capering locals confuse him to the point where he no longer knows what's real, who's alive or dead. The tale that develops is gabby and, intermittently, hilariously parodic of detective fiction. Derivation need not be an accusation: O'Neill's debt to Flann O'Brien is confirmed in this bagatelle of bucklepping fun. - John Kenny