The latest paperbacks reviewed
Inner Workings: Essays 2000-2005
JM Coetzee
Vintage, £8.99
As a writer of fiction, the reputation of Nobel laureate and double Booker winner JM Coetzee is assured. This new collection of essays, written primarily for the New York Review of Books, indicates that his non-fiction merits a similar degree of recognition. Coetzee reviews works by fellow Nobel prize-winners, such as Günter Grass, Nadine Gordimer and Gabriel García Márquez, as well as those by relative unknowns As a reviewer, Coetzee is authoritative and perceptive. Into each review is woven an examination of the function of literature - and of the role and responsibilities of the author - and through this series of insightful analyses of the works of others, Coetzee reveals much about his own. Freya McClements
Trouble in Paradise
Kathy Marks
Harper Perennial, £8.99
Pitcairn Island was seen as a paradise, a last, remote outpost of the British empire whose population, descendants of Fletcher Christian and the other mutineers of the Bounty, embodied the ideal of community spirit in the face of an unforgiving physical environment. But alarming claims of child abuse began to surface and eventually a culture of systematic abuse stretching back decades was uncovered. This remarkable book looks at life on the island, the events of the 2004 trial and, in perhaps the most difficult sections to read, the aftermath of the court case, as those found guilty continue bullishly to plead their innocence, finding a startling level of support around the world. In some cases the victims' own parents come to the defence of their attackers. A compelling, deeply disturbing work, written with restraint and impartiality. Laurence Mackin
The Importance of Being Kennedy
Laurie Graham
Perennial, £7.99
Novelist Laurie Graham has taken the tumultuous rise of the Kennedy clan of Massachusetts and Hyannis Port, led by the graspingly ambitious patriarch, Joe, and his flint-hard wife, Rose, and examined their lives through the pragmatic eyes of Nora Brennan, a girl from Co Westmeath, who started as a nursery maid to an uppity Brookline family in 1917 and lived to see one of them become president. It's a fine yarn, layered with historical detail, and well told, with enough flashes of wry wit to stop the reader wondering too often if Graham could be right in the thoughts and words she puts into the charming, toothy mouths of the best-known Irish-American clan. Bernice Harrison
The Discovery of France
Graham Robb
Picador, £9.99
The fruits of 14,000 miles on a bike and four years in a library, this book is a stupendous feat of historical and cultural recovery. Dismissing the official France of 18th- and 19th-century historians and administrators as a convenient myth, Graham Robb inquires instead after the "faceless millions" whose existence out in the pays remained all but hidden to those living and moving in Paris and its environs. Through a blend of archival research and astute ideological critique, Robb gaily disabuses us of our most cherished notions of la France profonde. He shows how the "propaganda of national unity" was mocked by the linguistic chaos - less Tour de France than Tour de Babel - which reigned. And did you know that most "provincial" French dishes actually reached the provinces from Paris? Someone please translate this book into French - and give Monsieur Le Pen a copy while you're at it. Daragh Downes
St Lucy's Home for Girls
Raised by Wolves
By Karen Russell
Vintage Books, £7.99
This eccentric short-story collection is a stunning debut for Karen Russell. Most of the stories focus on children in the struggles of growing up, balancing between youth and adulthood in moments of subtle crisis. Yet in tandem with the ordinary eccentricities of everyday life - such as a young astronomer who finds himself stealing baby sea turtles with the cool kid in school, or a boy who, asked by his stepfather, reluctantly befriends the mute boy in his school choir - Russell delivers the utterly fantastical. While these stories might initially stun with their unquestioned magical realities - two boys search for their drowned sister with goggles that reveal an underwater world of dead fish, a Minotaur leads his family out west - they still evocatively summon up the same unrelenting difficulty of being young. Russell's reality is solid, although at times abstruse, but each story is readable and compelling. Emily Firetog
Eric Clapton: The Autobiography
By Eric Clapton, with Christopher Simon Sykes
Arrow Books, £7.99
"Clapton is God" - the one-time pervasiveness of this graffiti slogan around London is testimony to the cult that sprang up around the young Eric Clapton. Raised by grandparents in Surrey, Clapton's talent took flight the day they bought him his first guitar. As a member of The Yardbirds and Cream, his early career crossed paths with The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix. He later fell in love with Patti Boyd, the wife of his close friend, George Harrison, an obsession that consumed him and remained unrequited for years. This work is most powerful in its poignant moments. In recounting his antics as a former heroin addict and alcoholic, Clapton confesses his darkest moments with admirable honesty. The tragedy that inspired his song Tears in Heaven is particularly devastating to read. Clapton's dignity in suffering lends his songs a greater resonance. Kevin Cronin