The Irish times reviews a selection of paperbacks
The Sailor in the Wardrobe Hugo Hamilton Harper Perennial, £7.99
The first instalment of Hamilton's memoir, The Speckled People, introduced us to his odd, bifurcated childhood in Dún Laoghaire, with his rabidly nationalistic (and frequently violent) father and his German mother, traumatised by her experiences in the war. In this second volume we are introduced to his grandfather (the sailor of the title) who joined the British Navy, and whose photo, as a result, Hamilton's father has consigned to the back of the wardrobe. Hugo wants to free him, and to free himself, and so he does with the help of a job with a fisherman at the harbour, his friend Packer, John Lennon, and trips to the west of Ireland and, eventually, England and Germany. His fight against tyranny has parallels in the wider world but it's Hamilton's ability to create beauty out of everyday thngs that makes this account of his often bleak and bewildering adolescence such a pleasure to read. - Cathy Dillon
Shalimar the Clown Salman Rushdie Vintage, £7.99
The problem with Rushdie is that he always seems to be writing the same, high-speed, terribly clever, almost-funny big novel, complete with cultural observations by the sack load. If ever a writer has been burdened by an early masterpiece it is Rushdie, whose 1981 Booker-winning Midnight's Children, remains his great novel. Another difficulty is that while he has become addicted to spinning frenzied carton narratives loosely connected to important political issues, his fellow Indian writers are writing superb fiction, leaving the Westernised Rushdie behind. He shimmers, jests and repeats himself. This particular burlesque romp spins on a crime of passion. Hidden among the layers of rhetoric, gags, sexual innuendo and digressions is the plight of Kashmir. If only he could stop showing off, this wayward prophet might yet produce another major achievement. - Eileen Battersby
Breaking the Mould: How the PDs Changed Irish politics Stephen CollinsGill & Macmillan, 12.99
The Progressive Democrat party has fundamentally altered Irish politics, above all through its low tax policies. In this invaluable book Stephen Collins tells the story of the party's first two decades. Its leaders, Des O'Malley, Mary Harney and Michael McDowell, dominate the book. But Collins, political correspondent of The Irish Times, shows how things might have been different. Charlie McCreevy wrote a blueprint for the PDs in 1985, but never left the Fianna Fáil fold. Seven years ago, McDowell was considering rejoining Fine Gael. Now he leads the party he helped found. Collins captures the party's essence - in government for over half its lifespan, yet always on the verge of extinction, with no safe seats in the next election. McDowell once said the PDs must be "radical or redundant". At times, Collins remarks, it has risked being both. - Ralph Benson
Well-Remembered Friends: Eulogies on Celebrated Lives Collected by Angela Huth John Murray, £8.99
In our dispiriting culture we often seem to wallow in the worst of each other, which makes this fabulous collection of eulogies particularly satisfying. In her introduction, Angela Huth quotes the late Lord Longford's eulogy for a friend whom he teased as a shameless name-dropper, only to be told, "Funny you should say that, the Queen Mother has just said the same thing". Auberon Waugh and Peter Cook are among others featured here. Name-dropping further, from the arts: there's Laurence Oliver by Alec Guinness, WH Auden by Stephen Spender, Seamus Heaney on Ted Hughes and an occasional lesser-known mortal. If death is the leveller, here it is the reveller and the very last word in name-dropping. Steal this book if you must. - John Moran
Winifred Wagner: A Life at the Heart of Hitler's Bayreuth Brigitte Hamann, translated by Alan Bance Granta, £12.99
In 1896, Winifred Marjorie Williams, the Sussex-born woman at the heart of this biography, came to become, through her adoption by German relatives and subsequent marriage to Siegfried Wagner, the director of the Bayreuth festival during its most infamous period. As the controversial matron of the Wagner clan, she manoeuvred the festival onto its pedestal as a supreme expression of the Aryan race and the Third Reich through her chummy relationship with Hitler. Although she was able to intercede for some threatened artists of Jewish descent, the extent of warped thinking imposed upon the arts that this book exposes is mind-boggling. And it's not only its subject matter that makes this book fascinating - the author, Brigitte Hamann, is one of the best biographers writing today. - Christine Madden
Irish Flames John Waller Yiannis Books, €12.99
With his successful film The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Ken Loach has rekindled interest in the War of Independence - and perhaps opened a hornets' nest. With the countdown to the centenary already underway, memoirs and histories, revised and otherwise, are on their way to the bookshelves. John Waller's story, based on the childhood memories of his half-brother, won't be the best of them, but it's still worth a read. Interestingly, it's told from the viewpoint of a "big house" family, the Casemonds. Alex, a first World War veteran and champion sportsman, his out-of-place English-born wife, Meli, and their young son, Robin became embroiled in the war after an IRA ambush on the Black and Tans, whose commander is killed in the attack. In keeping with its semi-fictionalised genre all names in the book have been changed to protect the innocent - even the Black and Tans. - Martin Noonan