To School Through the Fields Country Days Quench the Lamp, by Alice Taylor (Brandon £5.99 each)

It seems that Alice Taylor's of her Co Cork childhood have won an international readership and have been translated even into Japanese and Polish. Her books are, usually short, chatty and episodic, written in an artless manner reminiscent of the old "school essay" style most of us remember from our early school days, and they deal with a rural Ireland of still unquestioned values, domestic security and close, almost tribal familial ties. The parish was the natural unit, neighbours were usually friendly, and if you had trouble with your Leaving Cert Latin, there was always St Patrick to be courted with a novena (it worked, too). Needless to say, Alice's first dance was a landmark in her young life and her family had firm ideas of the kind of dress she should or could wear (no low tops). Literary strictures seem beside the point you either like this kind of thing, or you leave it alone.