Irish Times reviewers cast a critical eye over the latest batch of paperbacks.
Ireland's Holy Wars: The Struggle for a Nation's Soul, 1500-2000. Marcus Tanner, Yale University Press, £10.99
The spirit of inquiry and engagement - not judgment - infuses this succinct, occasionally ironic, elegantly written work on Ireland's past. Fine theological discrepancies are central to the book and interestingly meshed with the relentless emergence of the Irish nation. The writer steadily trains his lens on two countries: Britain, engaged in empire construction, and Ireland (North and South), which is part of the project. Plantations, wars, brutal suppression and reluctant constitutional change are threaded through the narrative, as are features of Irish religious political life since 1921. Apt comparisons with other nations are useful reminders of a world outside these islands. Hard as it is to read more about the political Troubles and the criminal mismanagement by the clergy, Tanner's sustained viewpoint makes his book a pleasure. - Kate Bateman
Serious: John McEnroe, the Autobiography. TimeWarner, £6.99
As his smooth metamorphosis from superbrat to, potentially, a modern-day Peter Alliss of the tennis commentary booth has already shown, this one-time scourge of linesmen and umpires is an intelligent, articulate and incisive observer of the game, with an irreverent sense of humour. His collaborator, James Kaplan, has done an excellent job in finding his subject's "voice", and this honest and revealing work often reads as if McEnroe were the sole author (which is a good thing). McEnroe is not shy in describing his strengths but is equalling frank on his weaknesses. And as we watch him develop, we can revel in telling vignettes from the 1970s and early 1980s concerning everyone from Borg and Gerulaitis to Warhol and Jagger. There is some repetition and a bit too much point-by-point tournament action, but fans of the man and of the era will enjoy. - Joe Culley
The Moviegoer. Walker Percy, Methuen, £10
Approaching 30, former soldier turned relaxed stockbroker "Binx" Bolling appears intelligent, urbane and quasi-philosophical. He is interested in the movies and in girls - invariably his secretaries. Sponsored by his aunt, who stepped in when his father died and his mother remarried, Bolling the gracious narrator is not exactly driven. His aunt is intent on him taking up medical research, while he is more interested in his troubled cousin, Kate. Set in New Orleans, this stylish début won the 1961 National Book Award. Funny and sad, it possesses an unusual ease, grace and aimlessness as well as a cast of vividly drawn characters. Although best remembered as the champion of John Kennedy Toole's frenetic masterpiece, A Confederacy of Dunces (1980), published 11 years after its author's suicide, Percy, who wrote six novels, is yet another gifted Southern master with a flair bordering on genius. - Eileen Battersby
The Public Confessions of a Middle-Aged Woman. Sue Townsend, Penguin, £6.99
Sue Townsend has always vowed never to write an autobiography - in fact, she says she has never even kept a diary because she "couldn't possibly risk \ private thoughts and feelings being read one day". Until she changes her mind, this hugely enjoyable book will have to do. Gathering together the best of her columns for Sainsbury's Magazine, these public confessions show Townsend at her witty, likeable best. Whether writing about the army of slugs who have invaded her garden or puzzling over a posh Englishwoman who had never heard of Winnie the Pooh, she's as funny as one would expect from the woman who invented Adrian Mole. And, as in the Mole books, she also manages to be genuinely touching without being mawkishly sentimental, especially when writing about her diabetes-induced blindness. -
Anna Carey
Measuring America - How the United States Was Shaped by the Greatest Land Sale in History. Andro Linklater, Harper Collins, £7.99
On September 30th, 1785 the first Gunter's chain was unravelled west of the Ohio river by Thomas Hutchins, who had been commissioned to survey the land there for sale by the US Congress. It was a momentous incident, for it shaped the unique and regimented layout of the US while at the same time inventing an idea of property that existed nowhere else in the world. One cannot help but be both mesmerised and impressed at the precise grid-like formation of the US, its regimented squares of land and farm, its city grids, its long straight roads, but not many know their origin. In explaining them to the reader, Measuring America tackles a topic of mammoth proportions, and does it with ease. What is produced is a book steeped in history but with a startling relevance for the present day. - Sophie MacNeice
Neighbours. Jan T. Gross, Arrow, £7.99
On July 10th, 1941, and with little assistance from the newly arrived Nazis, the people of Jedwabne, Poland rounded up and murdered the village's 1,600 Jews. Killing the men, women and children individually proved such toil that the perpetrators eventually marched the remainder into a barn and burned them alive. It was the ultimate expression of an anti-Semitism that had been building, not just over the course of the Soviet occupation that preceded it, but for centuries before. It was the largest pogrom of the period, but not unique, and as Poland convinced itself it was a victim of the second World War rather than a willing collaborator, it filed the incident to the back of its subconscious. Gross's account finally confronts Poland's idealised war history, identity and conscience. The writing is terse and academic, but poses questions about basic human nature that are as profound as the event was horrific. - Shane Hegarty