Irish Times reviewers cast a critical eye over the latest batch of paperbacks.
In the Forest. By Edna O'Brien, Phoenix, £6.99
Despite her residence outside the country - or perhaps enabled by it - Edna O'Brien has never shied away from probing the raw wounds in Irish society. Not much scar tissue has yet formed over the trauma of the 1994 murders of Imelda Riney, her son Liam and Father Joe Walshe in Co Clare. O'Brien's rendering of the circumstances of these murders by Brendan O'Donnell into fiction outraged many; however, her account - in which landscape and forest also assume major roles as indifferent yet eternally innocent witnesses - was on the bestseller lists for months. So close to the event, with friends and family of the deceased still alive and mourning, a writer takes on a Herculean moral responsibility in smudging and applying make-up to fact to portray her own emotional truth about the tragedy. Only the scabbing over of years will show whether she was successful. - Christine Madden
Microcosm: Portrait of a Central European City. Norman Davies and Roger Moorhouse, Pimlico £12.50
The notion that there is an easy identity between state and nation is one which has often been historically problematic, and nowhere more so than in that large chunk of territory called Central Europe, or, in German, Mitteleuropa. Davies and Moorhouse's mammoth, 2,000-year history of the city which is now Polish Wroclaw, but which has also been German Breslau, Austrian Presslaw, Bohemian Vretslav and Polish Wrotizla, illustrates the complexities of the region's changing political geography, but more importantly the pitfalls of enlisting history in the service of nationalism. The authors - one a Polish specialist, the other a Germanist - fluently recount the complex political, social and cultural history of a great European provincial city in a pleasantly digressive and readable style. - Enda O'Doherty
Great Virtues. André Comte-Sponville, Vintage, £7.99
The subtitle of this book, "the uses of philosophy in everyday life", gives a good indication of what the author is trying to achieve. His book, he writes, is "entirely about practical morals" and "the virtues . . . are our moral values". Defining a virtue as "a force that has or can have an effect", Comte-Sponville, Professor of Philosophy at the Sorbonne, boils down the entire spectrum of virtues to the following 18: politeness, fidelity, prudence, temperance, courage, justice, generosity, compassion, mercy, gratitude, humility, simplicity, tolerance, purity, gentleness, good faith, humour and love. This is in ascending order - the author agrees with St Paul (he quotes his beautiful Hymn to Charity in full) that love is the greatest virtue. There are so many superb turns of phrase, it seems invidious to select any one but, as a taster: temperance "is not about enjoying less but about enjoying better". - Brian Maye
Language in Danger. Andrew Dalby, Penguin. £8.99
We in Ireland are acutely aware of the meaning of a language's decline. So Andrew Dalby's fascinating study on the origins, decline and fall of languages throughout the world will have added resonance here. Dalby tells us that every two weeks somewhere in the world another language is lost and, barring any unforeseen circumstances, this process may continue until only one language remains. In the past, language loss was effected by physical catastrophe, the annihilation by a dominant group of all those who spoke a different language, and political and economic factors. But is it not a good thing that difficulties caused by multiple language use are being eliminated? Dalby argues passionately and cogently to the contrary, and that the death of each language is a cultural catastrophe, representing the total eclipse of a complete world view. - John Moran
The Road to Verdun. Ian Ousby, Pimlico, £8.99
Since war is becoming increasingly less acceptable to the masses, this book may have limited appeal. It is the story of a war within the first World War - one can hardly call it a battle when over 305,000 soldiers were killed, almost one death a minute, day and night, for the 10 months it lasted. The French and Germans fought for Verdun, and the author in this well-researched, gruesome book spares us little. The German intention was "to bleed the forces of France to death", while France needed to recover her pre-eminence in European politics and, especially, her sense of national pride. Ousby seems to equate war with a game of chess: generals make moves in pursuit of glory while the foot-soldiers seem to count for little other than statistical fodder. This account is so effortlessly written that it almost masks the horror of the reality it describes. - Owen Dawson
Short Fellow: A Biography of Charles J. Haughey. T. Ryle Dwyer, Marino Books, 16.49
It is likely that Haughey will always divide opinion, since he has shown a dual capacity for making loyal friends and unforgiving enemies. Arguably he came to power a little too late, but from the start certain character flaws may have told against him. Jack Lynch was responsible for pushing Haughey and Neil Blaney out of the Cabinet after the Arms Crisis into a long spell in the political wilderness. While he had been an excellent Minister in various departments, Haughey had a patchy career as Taoiseach, though Ryle Dwyer defends him firmly over the Larry Goodman connection. His personal flair and colour, his good work for the arts, and his considerable talents as a politician tend to be overshadowed by exposure of his financial exploits. Perhaps the time has now come for an overall view? - Brian Fallon