Irish Times writers review some of the latest releases in paperback.
How could it have been that in the 20th century monstrous tyrants in a European capital conspired in the deaths of perhaps 20 million of their citizens yet still had Western intellectuals singing their praises? How can it be that fellow-travellers of Lenin and Stalin can still defend a system that inflicted on the Soviet Union a murderous series of mass purges, tortures, gulags and famines? How can it be that it is still possible for some to make jokes about this appalling regime, which was allowed to outlive the dismantling of its mirror empire of evil, Nazism? In this powerful, indignant polemic, Martin Amis posits these questions - not least to his once-Communist father, Kingsley, and his leftist friend, Christopher Hitchens. Amis gives a virtuoso performance charting the annihilation of idealism from 1917 to 1953 in an almost unbearable litany of industrial-scale horror.
Koba the Dread Martin Amis. Vintage, £7.99
- John Moran
Twelve years after her nine-year-old brother was found dead in the garden, Hannah is determined to solve the mystery of his death. The precocious sleuth knows all too well what has happened since then: her mother has retreated into a tranquilliser daze and her father has left home, while her newly poor and ageing great-aunts and grandmother try to make sense of their reduced circumstances. Tartt creates the claustrophobia of a suburban backwater in the Deep South and constantly reminds the reader of the swampy heat that lies like a dead weight over everything, like a blanket stopping movement and progress and hiding dark secrets. The great-aunts are wonderfully vivid Southern belles who often add comic touches to this dark, slow-paced novel that seems weighed down by Tartt's minute detailing of her characters' lives.
The Little Friend Donna Tartt Bloomsbury, £7.99
- Bernice Harrison
There is no attempt to graft a modern moral sensibility onto this tale of an unhappy plantation owner's wife in Louisiana in the years before the civil war, but her unnervingly believable portrayal of a corrupt, inhuman and decaying society leaves us in little doubt as to Martin's view. Two women are victims of the truly appalling husband: Manon, his wife, and the slave, Sarah, who has, unwillingly, borne him two children. It was a brave decision by Martin to make the unsympathetic Manon the sole narrator. No heroine, she never questions the morality of slavery, even as the rumblings of a slave revolt grow louder. But, as Martin reveals in her spare, unsentimental prose, Manon feels her own powerlessness as a woman without an independent income. Sarah's feelings we can only guess at. It's not surprising that this small but resonant story, brilliantly told, won Martin the Orange Prize this year.
Property Valerie Martin Abacus, £6.99
- Cathy Dillon
A young boy has a ringside seat at the closing stages of his parents' marriage. His unhappy mother is desperate to salvage something for the rest of her life before she gets too old to hope. Meanwhile, Father, a writer, is busy ranting and planning the next book. He is not worried about his marriage, although Mother has recruited a new man - new but not young. It seems the narrator and his father must leave, while the little girl stays at home with Mother. Domestic realism doesn't come much sharper, funnier or sadder than this brilliant book by a great German writer whose short career produced many wonderful books. This tragicomedy keeps the reader and Father guessing until the final page. The boy's-eye narrative is magically sustained as is Father's despairing optimism in the face of defeat.
Luck Gert Hofmann, translated by Michael Hofmann Vintage, £6.99
- Eileen Battersby
Dedicated followers of fashion on this side of the Atlantic who heard about the hullabaloo that greeted Lauren Weisberger's novel can stop flapping their French manicures around and relax - it's really not that good. Weisberger worked as a lowly PA to Vogue editor Anna Wintour - a famously hard taskmaster - and she took the grim experience and built a book around it. The Devil Wears Prada (great title) is set in glossy, glam Runway magazine in New York, where staff cruelly assess each other's fashionability, and the cold-hearted, controlling editor makes her assistant perform a zillion menial tasks. The trouble is that the writer spends a lot of time detailing just about every one of these tasks and after a promising start the book gets bogged down in whining. It's hard to believe, given the juicy material available to her, but it all quickly becomes dull. So last year, darling.
The Devil Wears Prada Lauren Weisberger Harper Collins, £6.99
- Bernice Harrison
In this occasionally harrowing but often uplifting tale Dervla Murphy explores and sometimes despairs at "our" acceptance of Yugoslavia's disintegration. This is a country so geographically and politically divided (and then sub-divided) that its people are understandably shell-shocked - often literally. Murphy writes of atrocious war crimes and argues persuasively that Yugoslavia would have survived had the "great powers" acted differently. But as ever, the fascination of her writing is in the detail of her relationships with ordinary people. She writes of Balkan hospitality, of people who give even though they possess so little, of friends made who pass her on to other friends. This is Murphy at her best - entertaining, observant, informed and, above all else, thoroughly human.
Through the Embers of Chaos: Balkan Journeys Dervla Murphy John Murray, £8.99
- Owen Dawson