A selection of paperbacks reviewed
The Lost, By Daniel Mendelsohn, Harper Perennial, £10.99
His grandfather's death triggered Mendelsohn's urge to find out about the lost branch of his family: the great-uncle and his wife and daughters who died in the Holocaust, leaving behind just a handful of photographs and that vague, awful tag in family history, "killed by the Nazis". There is surprisingly little sense of urgency, less still anger. It is not so much Holocaust narrative as part-memoir, part-meditation: a gentle, intelligent reflection on truth, memory, and human nature. Mendelsohn's highly personal account grapples with issues peculiar to his times: as he points out, his is the last generation to have grown up on first-hand accounts of the Holocaust; yet even the space of two generations can raise profound barriers. From this perspective, Mendelsohn examines the importance of looking back: to bear witness for our ancestors, and to better know ourselves. - Claire Anderson-Wheeler
'Complicity with Evil': The United Nations in the Age of Modern Genocide, By Adam LeBor, Yale University Press, £9.99
The inverted commas in the title should be noted, for without them LeBor would have the United Nations damned forever. In fact, the quote is from the UN's own report on its peacekeeping operations during the 1990s. Though he claims the book is not to be read as a blanket criticism of the UN, he pulls no punches when analysing his three primary chosen countries: Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur. In our lexicon, certain condemnatory words need to be used carefully ("genocide", "scorched earth", for example) but LeBor is an experienced journalist who selects his words with discretion. Where, he asks, was the UN when in Rwanda it failed to prevent the genocide of 800,000 Tutsis? Was it watching the Sudanese government for three years as it waged its scorched-earth policy across Darfur while Sudan meanwhile enjoyed all the privileges of UN membership? LeBor does not ask if the UN is guilty, he simply asks how guilty. If the UN remains the institutionalised hope of our dreams for a better world, this then is a hugely depressing, occasionally heartbreaking but thoroughly engaging read. - Owen Dawson
Red Princess, By Sofka Zinovieff, Granta Books, £8.99
Although Princess Sofka Dolgorouky witnessed some of the most momentous events in Russian history, her namesake's account of her life is more family reminiscence than a timeline of a turbulent era. Given her diary as a teenager, Sofka Zinovieff has since compiled a comprehensive, funny portrait of a remarkable woman, following her life story from a cosseted childhood in tsarist St Petersburg, through her time in Nazi-occupied Paris, internment at Vittel, and finally, as a card-carrying communist in England. Some families make for better books than others, and this one had a promising start, with a line that extends back to an illegitimate son of Catherine the Great. With a great-grandmother who was both a pilot and a surgeon, refugee royalty sewing jewels into their underclothes, a demented governess, and the princess's strong feminist take on life, sex and education, Zinovieff's admiration for her grandmother inspires a deeply personal history. - Nora Mahony
Sunstroke and Other Stories, By Tessa Hadley, Vintage, £7.99
Rachel and Janie are friends on holiday with their husbands and children in Tessa Hadley's title story, Sunstroke. Hadley writes that "they are both in their early thirties, at the piquant moment of change when the outward accidents of the flesh are beginning to be sharpened from inside by character and experience". So it is for many of Hadley's mostly female subjects; they are on the cusp of change, or realisation. Hadley has an uncanny touch in rendering the interior landscapes of middle-class girls and women who are, to outside eyes, often socially conventional, but who like to rub their sandy thighs against teenage boys in summertime, or seduce a gas-fitter because he looks like a lusted-after English lecturer, or steal an illicit kiss while a husband and friends walk ahead on a dark country road. Hadley's craft is expertly honed, with each story achieving a completeness that makes it unforgettable. - Yvonne Nolan
Body Parts: Essays on Life Writing, By Hermione Lee, Pimlico, £12.99
The premise is inviting: an essay collection that is neither biography nor literary criticism, but an exploration of life-writing itself. Such an acclaimed biographer and critic as Lee would seem ideally placed to make the most of it. However, while the essays are thoughtful and well-styled, the collection may not quite live up to expectations. The most intriguing of the essays is probably the final one, How to End it All, on how biographers handle their subjects' deaths: the pull between duties of faithful representation and the "neat", emotionally satisfying, ending. In general, though, Lee mines such engrossing questions - truth and artificiality; biography's unique role - only lightly. Most of the essays confine themselves either to straightforward biography (Jane Austen Faints) or others' biographical efforts (Thurman's Colette; Ellmann's Elizabeth Bowen). Body Parts is an appealing collection to dip into, but perhaps more a thing of "parts" than "body". - Claire Anderson-Wheeler