A selection of paperbacks reviewed
Hotel de Dream Edmund White Bloomsbury, £7.99
The 19th-century American writer Stephen Crane is speculated to have begun a novel about a boy-prostitute in New York named Elliott, though no trace of such a story exists today. White uses the phantom novel to imagine the final days of Crane's life as well as recreate the novel itself. As Crane is too weak to write, he dictates the novel from his deathbed to his partner, Cora. Full of rhapsodic prose and vivid descriptions of sexual encounters, the novel is titillating as it follows Elliott to underground burlesque shows and encounters with transvestites. Elliott's lover, a married banker named Theodore, soon becomes the focus. Though surely an interesting premise and artfully executed, one can easily be overwhelmed by White's sexually-driven fantasia. Emily Firetog
Night Elie Wiesel Penguin, £7.99
Reissued to coincide with the author's 80th birthday, Night is one of the most widely read of the Holocaust narratives. Oprah Winfrey said this first-hand account of surviving the Nazi concentration camps "should be required reading for all humanity" when she selected it for her book club in 2006. Elie Wiesel won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986, and has spoken extensively about his responsibility as a witness, focusing his writing on the specificity of the Holocaust and the Jewish survivor/
victim narrative. Born into a Jewish family in 1928 in Transylvania, Wiesel was 15 when he was taken to Auschwitz and later Buchenwald. This story describes all the small, tragic details of his experience: the stench in the sealed cattle cars; the desperate attempts to avoid selection for the crematorium; how his father's face was "the colour of dead leaves". Sorcha Hamilton
The Invisible Cure Africa, the West and the Fight Against Aids Helen Epstein Penguin, £9.99
Aids, as we unfortunately know, is worldwide but the situation in Eastern and southern Africa is uniquely severe. It has ruined families, villages, businesses, armies and created havoc in its wake. Many millions (billions?) of US dollars have been spent to fund Aids treatment programmes but, argues Epstein, these drugs will not halt the epidemic on their own. However, Epstein believes the solutions are perhaps simpler and less costly than we imagine. For example, male circumcision offers more effective protection against HIV than any of the vaccines currently undergoing clinical trials around the world. This lucid, chilling book challenges us to think more about Aids, a disease without precedent.
Owen Dawson Thanks for the Memories Cecelia Ahern Harper Collins. £6.99
When Joyce falls down the stairs of her Dublin home she miscarries her first baby and is rushed to hospital for a blood transfusion. Justin Hitchcock, the blood donor, gets extra brownie points from Cecelia Ahern because he's scared of needles. Inexplicably, Joyce suddenly possesses Justin's memories, dreams and expertise in art history. She quickly recovers from the death of her baby and the end of her marriage as she seeks out her donor in order to thank him for the gift of life, backed up by her father, whose physical impairment is exploited for sentimental and comic effect. This story is full of improbabilities and Ahern's trademark light touch is no match for the serious matters contained in it, including a parent's suicide. The convoluted love spiel is the only thing that keeps it chugging along. Claire Looby
Going to Extremes: Notes from a Divided Nation Barbara Ehrenreich Granta, £8.99
The heart of darkness which this intrepid American columnist experienced a few years back as an undercover low-paid worker clearly spooks her still. In this collection of over 60 newspaper and magazine articles, she records the "low, strangled cry of pain" of those tens of millions of her fellow citizens who have fallen victim to "the upward redistribution of wealth" that has so scandalously characterised US economic life in recent years. The breathtaking callousness of those leeching off the "sick and subaffluent" forms an inevitable and unseemly subplot. As ever, Ehrenreich's righteous fury is matched by her trademark wit. Thus, for instance, her deadpan observation that "people earning Wal-Mart-level wages tend to favour the fashions available at the Salvation Army". Great journalist, great book. Daragh Downes
The Wild Trees Richard Preston Penguin, £9.99
Giant redwoods, native to the northern California coast, are the tallest trees on earth. The tallest are twice the height of Liberty Hall. Some sprightly survivors are at least 2,000 years old. Preston describes a group of redwood-lovers who devote their lives to finding and climbing the greatest of the surviving redwoods. They are eccentric, driven people, difficult to know or understand. Preston becomes a member of their close-knit group. His best stories are of a climber falling ("whoosh") from a great height and of a precarious, stormy night spent in hammocks at the very top of an ancient, tottering redwood. A weakness of the book is the excess of personal detail such as how one hero and heroine made love, sans harness and with difficulty, at the very top of a gnarled old specimen.The line-drawings of the trees are pretty and the botanical analysis of the "canopy" at their top is fascinating. Tom Moriarty