The Princess of 72nd Street by Elaine Kraf (Penguin Modern Classics)
In this newly reissued lost classic from 1979, Ellen is an eccentric artist and single woman living alone in New York’s Upper West Side. Slipping into episodes of ‘radiance’ – or what some might call mania – she becomes the titular princess and escapes the humdrum reality and ordinary violence of everyday life. During her radiances, lights become water lilies, and time ‘breaks up into pieces like lovely flickering white moths’. Weaving between radiance and reality, Ellen intimately relays her encounters with the artists, doctors and ‘self-made mystics’ that populate her street. Falling somewhere between The Bell Jar and Sex and the City’s weirder moments, this novel is an empathetic, fun and challenging insight into mental illness and female agency in a rapidly changing New York City. Maija Makela
The World Administered by Irishmen: The Life and Times of Robert Hart and Contemporary Irish in East Asia by Robin Masefield (Special Collections, Queen’s University Belfast, £20)
The allure of Asia has long held a strong appeal for Irish people. Robert Hart, who was born in Portadown in 1835, led the Chinese maritime customs service for 45 years and was noted for his diplomatic skills. He was employed by the Qing dynasty making friends with many Chinese officials, although his story is just one of many Irish men and women who made a career in East Asia. Among those from Dublin were governors of Hong Kong, while a doctor came from Cork, and a nurse from Roscommon. Augustine Henry, from Cookstown in Tyrone, was a customs surgeon who became, in the words of one commentator, an ‘accidental botanist’ discovering in 1888 the handkerchief tree in a valley near the Chinese town of Wushan. Paul Clements
The New Nuclear Age by Ankit Panda: Could ‘growing loose talk’ lead to the ultimate disaster?
Author Seán Farrell: ‘Dermot Bolger said there was a whiff of silage off my novel. I think that was a compliment’
Beartooth by Callan Wink: Spare and remarkable
Books in brief: The Princess of 72nd Street; The World Administered by Irishmen; The Lamb
The Lamb by Lucy Rose (Orion, £16.99)
The plot of Lucy Rose’s gothic novel The Lamb unfolds sluggishly and incoherently, like events in a bad dream. Little Margot lives in a cottage in Cumbria with Mama, a beautiful and volatile recluse. When strangers come seeking shelter, Mama seduces and eats them. That is, until she falls in love with a woman named Eden, who comes to the door one day. Appetite, both physical and sexual, reigns supreme in this volatile, cannibal-lesbian household. Somehow, little Margot manages to go to school throughout it all, where she is bullied, quite unsurprisingly, because the other kids find her weird. The novel has the feel of an almost-allegory in which the alternate world described never quite aligns with our own to produce a satisfying revelation. Though the overall effect is unfocused, there is real lyricism on a line-by-line basis. Ruby Eastwood
