The latest paperback reviewed.
Nothing Happens in Carmincross by Benedict Kiely Methuen, £7.99
This book is one of only two Kiely novels which deal directly with violence in the North. Proxopera (1977) is the first, an exquisitely lyrical work whose refrain, "the lake will never be the same again", follows from Kiely's belief that irreversible violence has been done not only to the people but to the actual body of the Northern land itself. In contrast, Nothing Happens in Carmincross (1985) is a complex, gleefully self-mocking and hilariously funny novel, yet it documents virtually every atrocity on both sides of the divide.
Historian Mervyn Kavanagh travels to Carmincross for a wedding. Neither Mervyn nor the sleepy town can know that, for the first time, something is going to happen in Carmincross which will brutally sweep them into the company of more than 2,000 victims since 1969. Kiely, one of Ireland's major writers, died last month. His last publication will probably not linger long in the bookshops. Val Mulkerns
The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock Penguin, £8.99
James Lovelock first put forward his Gaia thesis in 1972. His contention was that the earth is a living entity with a self-regulating system that functions to preserve its own life, and that industrialisation and the destruction of its eco-system is having disastrous results. Thirty-five years on, we are finally looking this inconvenient truth in the face.
Once considered a guru by eco-warriors, Lovelock still considers himself green, but the solutions to global warming he puts forward in this book are sometimes surprising. In his view the situation is now too drastic for us to be able to rectify things using renewable energy and sustainable development. Instead he advocates the use of technology to help repair the damage to Gaia and to buy us time for a sustainable retreat. He is encouraging, for example, of the American scientists who propose building in space a sunshade, placed between the earth and the sun, to help cool the planet. More controversially, he argues that we must embrace nuclear power, at least in the short term. He writes knowledgeably - he has been a scientist for more than half a century - but simply and clearly, which makes his frightening, fascinating book all the more compelling. Cathy Dillon
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani, translated by Jamie McKendrick Penguin Classics, £ 9.99
New translations of beloved books are often viewed warily, but anything that returns the beautiful story of The Garden of the Finzi-Continis to the public eye can only be welcomed. Giorgio Bassani's careful classic tells of a young Jewish boy who is drawn into the aristocratic, walled world of the Finzi-Continis when anti-Semitism takes hold in Mussolini's Italy, and loses his heart to their insouciantly beautiful daughter. It's this priggish young aesthete's infuriating obsession with the lofty pursuits of love and culture which in turn walls him off from the alarming changes transforming his home town on the brink of the second World War. A meticulous translation from poet Jamie McKendrick gathers all the layers of this slow-burning novel, allowing the rambling Italianate sentences and shifting dialects to recreate a historical space where a lost community is resurrected. And though the detailed, dense paragraphs and studied conversations require some labour from the reader, the dividends are paid out long beyond its final page as a beautiful reminder of things that should never be forgotten. Fiona McCann
On Trying to Keep Still by Jenny Diski Little Brown, £7.99
In this genre-resistant book, Diski addresses something we imagine we'd like to experiment with - being alone for long enough to discover something about ourselves, but doing so comfortably, safely, warmly, without alarming anybody, accident-free and in good health. She travels to places where she stays alone for months at a time, reading Montaigne's essays and other thought-provoking works, while doing her best to avoid or minimise human contact. Her first lone sojourn is in New Zealand after attending a writers' conference; the last is spent within the Arctic Circle. Several months leading up to Christmas are spent at her second address, a rented cottage on a farm some miles from her Cambridge home, allowing herself one visit from her husband, "The Poet".
Midway through the book her discovery that she is "very good at passing the time and taking pleasure in passing the time, reading, idling, and pottering, rarely bored, hardly ever restless, sometimes miserable, often dissatisfied with myself and the world, without finding out an iota more than that about who I am" rings as an honest but modest insight for such a hefty investment. Kate Bateman
Poppy Shakespeare by Clare Allan Bloomsbury, £7.99
"Since prisons and madhouses exist, someone is bound to sit in them." Clare Allan's first novel - recently longlisted for this year's Orange Prize - explores Chekhov's observation through the prism of a North London day hospital for mental patients.
N - so "crazy" that staff have run out of names for her numerous disorders - is selected to help new "dribbler" Poppy Shakespeare settle in. But Poppy is different. She insists she isn't mad and devotes all her energies to persuading the authorities of their mistake - despite the Catch-22 of having to certify herself mentally ill in order to prove her sanity. N relates Poppy's tale through a fractured prose that highlights the extent of her own madness while subverting her narrative authority and ultimately blurring the lines between reality and make-believe. Contemporary preoccupations - from privatisation to reality television - blend with surrealist concepts such a's a Ministry of Madness to create a dystopian world that subtly satirises the real one. Freya McClements