This week's paperback releases reviewed

The House of Special Purpose

John Boyne

Black Swan, £7.99

Wisely, if somewhat disappointingly for us readers, John Boyne has never tried to re-create the hothouse atmosphere of his best-selling Holocaust fable, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. At first glance his new book appears to be heading in a similar direction. Georgy Jachmenev is just 16 when he steps in front of a bullet intended for a senior member of the Russian imperial family. He is promptly uprooted from his desperately poor farming family and taken to St Petersburg to act as guardian to the tzar's 11-year-old son, Alexei – giving Boyne the opportunity to comment on the ludicrous luxury of the royal lifestyle from the point of view of his wide-eyed young narrator. An elaborate framing device, however, ensures that it's an older – and much grumpier – Georgy who actually tells the tale. His relationship with his wife, who's dying as the book begins, is at the core of the story, but by far the best bits are the vivid, sometimes hilarious scenes at home with the pre-revolutionary Romanovs. Arminta Wallace

Family Album

Penelope Lively

Penguin, £7.99

Allersmead, a suburban Edwardian house with a sprawling garden, seems like the perfect place to bring up a middle-class English family. It is where the six children of writer Charles and homemaker Alison were raised, with Ingrid, the long-term au pair, a continuous presence. As adults, however, all but one have dispersed around the globe and rarely visit – as though seeking to escape the "smothering embrace" of the family home. This novel, as the title suggests, is an astutely observed portrait of a family, created by an accumulation of detailed yet fragmentary snapshots. Past and present infiltrate each other, with time and perspective shifting to focus on particular moments from particular viewpoints. So while Family Album – shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award – is a light, engaging read, it is also a thoughtful meditation on the complex workings of memory. Eimear McKeith

Come What May: The Autobiography

Dónal Óg Cusack

Penguin, €9.99

As the goalkeeper for the Cork hurling team over the past decade or so, Dónal Óg Cusack has always flirted with controversy: his activism for players' rights and involvement in the GPA, his prominent role in the infamous Cork hurling strikes and even his short puck-outs have set him apart as a classic sporting iconoclast. But he came into the spotlight for an entirely different reason last year when he publicly acknowledged his homosexuality, becoming the first openly gay elite sportsman in Ireland. This award-winning autobiography, ghostwritten by Irish Times sports writer Tom Humphries, excels at revealing the personal sacrifices required to be a devoted club man, a successful intercounty player and, yes, a closeted gay man in a tough sport – though it deserves high praise for keeping the issue of Cusack's sexuality in perspective, no more important than his love of hurling or his inherent idealism about the game and what it stands for. This is, above all, a triumphant meditation on what makes the amateur game so special. Davin O'Dwyer

The Last Englishman: The Double Life of Arthur Ransome

Roland Chambers

Faber, £9.99

Arthur Ransome is better known to British readers as the author of the uber-

popular Swallows and Amazons series of children's books – tales of innocent escapades in the English Lake District. Yet, as Chambers uncovers in this surprisingly engaging biography, the author lived an altogether different sort of life. As a newspaper journalist in Revolution-era Russia, Ransome fell into the company of some of the most influential figures of the period. Lenin was a regular interviewee, Trotsky's secretary was his mistress and Bolshevik chief of propaganda Karl Radek was a close friend. Chambers plants his tongue firmly in cheek when detailing some of the more ludicrous aspects of his subject's persona, yet there is also something grotesque about Ransome's inability to grasp the human cost of the upheaval, which for him was merely an increasingly tiresome adventure. Dan Sheehan

American Adulterer

Jed Mercurio

Vintage, £7.99

How does the most powerful man in the world lead his country while maintaining a secret, adulterous life?

This is the conundrum addressed in Jed Mercurio's latest novel, a fictional biography of US president, and serial womaniser, John F Kennedy. The familiar details are there – Monroe, Sinatra, willing White House interns – but Mercurio's tone is dispassionate, not salacious. His interest is in the contradictions that allowed Kennedy to save the world from nuclear war while, as an adulterer, "his capacity for inhumanity" was "limitless". The exploration of themes such as the division between personal and public life, and the role and responsibility of the media, are full of contemporary resonances – at one point Kennedy denies he "had sexual relations with that woman" – and these deepen as the narrative heads towards its inevitable tragic climax in Dallas. Like any adulterer, Mercurio asserts, Kennedy must take responsibility for his actions. Nonetheless, this is a life for which we have much to be thankful still. Freya McClements