A SELECTION of the latest paperbacks reviewed
Point to Point Navigation, Gore Vidal, Abacus, £8.99
During the second World War, "point to point navigation" allowed Gore Vidal and his US Navy colleagues to find their way without a compass through the rocks and fog of the Bering Straits. Over 60 years later, it serves as an apt title for this second volume of memoirs by America's foremost man of letters. More erudite meanderings than chronological autobiography, Vidal's reminiscences take in everything from his experience of piloting a plane at age 10 to the illness and death of his life-long partner. Told with an unabashed intellectualism and a raconteur's love of storytelling, these are memories that critique as well as entertain. With an impressive number of celebrities for friends - including Jackie Kennedy, Paul Newman, Federico Fellini and Tennessee Williams - Vidal's anecdotes about them can occasionally become repetitive, but this is a minor flaw in an otherwise engaging and insightful book. - Freya McClements
Twilight, William Gay, Faber , £7.99
This gripping, ghoulish tale is set in a small, quiet town in America's south. In one of the opening scenes a young woman smokes a cigarette under the moonlight while watching her brother dig up graves. Kenneth and Corrie, the children of a violent whiskey bootlegger, are thrown into a dangerous game of pursuit after the death of their father reveals the sinister ways of the local undertaker, Fenton Breece. When they decide to take revenge, the wretched underbelly of the town rapidly begins to emerge - including corrupt sheriffs and judges - and Kenneth and Corrie are left to fend for themselves. William Gay has a rich, sometimes menacing style which is sustained throughout this dark, surrealist story in everything from the descriptions of the lone, awkward characters of the town to the "milkwhite stones" and the "stand of cypresses" shrouding the graveyard. - Sorcha Hamilton
Adam Smith's seminal treatise, called "Wealth" for short by O'Rourke, at 900 pages is certainly in need of a synopsis. O'Rourke gives us a jaunty, whistle-stop tour. He does Smith and his ideas a service, linking Wealth's sensible, pro-freedom, pro-trade ideas to Smith's earlier work, Theory of Moral Sentiments. The two books comprise Smith's "blueprint for the soul", not just for the economy. O'Rourke uses copious quotations from Wealth, long-winded but elegantly expressed, the deep thoughts of a thoroughly decent fellow. Good as the quotes are, they are surpassed by the sparse anecdotes from Smith's scholarly life, such as when, lost in his thoughts, he walked 15 miles to Dunfermline in his dressing gown and slippers.The book's only jarring note is O'Rourke's penchant for sarcastic sideswipes at socialism or "leftism". But Adam Smith cannot be typecast: " . . . merchants and manufacturers complain of the bad effects of high wages . . . They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits". - Tom Moriarty
Sunday at the Cross Bones, John Walsh, Harper Perennial, £7.99
This comic novel is based on the story of Harold Davidson, a 1930s Church of England clergyman who spent his time not in his leafy Norfolk parish, but in the company of London prostitutes whose immortal souls he was determined to save. From "immortal" to "immoral" is but a small step, however, and the Rev Davidson's "innocent" ministrations eventually attract the attentions of the church authorities and the tabloid press. Or, as the latter might put it, the rector of, ha, ha, Stiffkey, eh? Walsh is on potentially fascinating moral territory here, and Davidson's real-life story is a cracker (he was eventually defrocked, and died after being mauled by a circus lion while taking part in a show entitled Daniel in the Lion's Den). The book's self-consciously "rollicking" tone is irritating, however - and at nearly 500 pages the whole thing is, as the actress might have said to the bishop, far too damned long. - Arminta Wallace
Calcio: A history of Italian Football, John Foot, Harper Perennial: £8.99
Aspiring Italian politicians and businessmen were among the first to recognise that the fanatical dedication football fans gave to their clubs could be harnessed and used for their own advantage. And so the modern history of Italy, from Mussolini to Berlusconi, became intrinsically linked with the progress of the nation's football teams. The current holders and four-time winners of the World Cup are the most successful football nation in Europe. But recalling past victories would a dull book make, and John Foot's updated insight into calcio - the preferred Italian word for football - is anything but dull. Accounts of match-fixing, bribery, racism and politically motivated violence - from both wings - enliven its pages alongside Maldini, Baggio and Maradona. And, with Giovanni Trapattoni taking over as Ireland manager and Italy providing the biggest obstacle to our qualification for the next World Cup, this is a must-read for home fans. - Martin Noonan