The latest releases reviewed.
Langrishe, Go Down
Aidan Higgins. New Island, 12.95
The three Langrishe sisters live in a decaying Big House in Co Kildare in 1937. In the first part of this remarkable novel, they confront - or, rather, fail to - the reality of the imminent end of their traditional way of life. In the third, and last, part, we are brought forward a year to the death and funeral of one the sisters. But the heart of the work is the story, in the second part, of the doomed love affair, some years previously, between the youngest of the sisters and a visiting German scholar. Time has done nothing to dim the originality and greatness of this work, first published in 1966. Its reissue by New Island, with a valuable Afterword by John Banville, is an appropriate means of marking the scarcely credible fact that its youthful-seeming author has arrived at the auspicious age of 80. One hopes the republication gains it a new and wider audience. Terence Killeen
The Bird Woman
Kerry Hardie, Harper, £6.99
Ellen McKinnon doesn't want to be a healer. A Northern Presbyterian to her fingertips, she regards her bouts of clairvoyance, and the mysterious energy that flows from her hands, with a kind of quasi-puritanical horror. Still, when people come knocking on the door of the Kilkenny farmhouse she shares with her sculptor husband and their two children, she does her best to help. Then she gets word that her estranged mother is dying of cancer in Derry. Can Ellen's healing gift work its magic on festering family wounds? Hardie, a poet who has worked for the BBC and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and who - like her heroine - now lives in Kilkenny, tells her tale with frankness, humour and the occasional burst of (understandable) anger at us southerners. We don't often see ourselves through Presbyterian eyes, and it's a bracing experience. Arminta Wallace
The Judgement of Paris
Ross King, Pimlico, £8.99
The dizzy days of the art world in Louis-Napoleon's last years are colourfully evoked in King's latest work. Wearing his knowledge lightly, King fascinates the reader with his fluid understanding of a global social context. He conveys an era of wide-eyed industrialisation, when photography and hot-air balloons were in their celebrated youth, and travel was still romantic. A bevy of feted names flicker across its pages - the likes of Zola, Baudelaire and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The main subjects are Manet, spearhead of the new Impressionist movement, and, pitted against him, the old worthy, Meissonier: the lifetime success of the first deeply underwhelming; the critical and popular success of the latter making him the unchallenged champion of his time. The parallel lives of these two noteworthy figures provide a compelling read but also food for thought about the nature of art and fame's favours. Claire Anderson-Wheeler
Shanghai Nights
Juan Marsé, trans. Nick Caistor
Vintage, £7.99
A published writer since the age of 14, prize-winning author Juan Marsé has held an impressive variety of creative jobs in Barcelona, including, like the protagonist of Shanghai Nights, apprentice jeweller. Daniel is 14: given the choice, he would read comic books and make the wrong sort of friends. To keep him busy, his mother arranges an apprenticeship for the near future, but meanwhile, Daniel is to mind a local old man, who introduces him to a young, consumptive girl. A mysterious stranger arrives, and the two children are entranced by his stories of Shanghai. The reader is enthralled by Marsé's storytelling and astonishing cast of characters, with Nick Caistor's translation setting its own spell. In an impoverished landscape of suspicious, weary people, the children lead by example with their appreciation of the romance of the adult world and the exotic place they may never see. Nora Mahony
Seminary Boy
John Cornwell, Harper Perennial, 7.99
At the age of 13, John Cornwell decided to escape his poor, chaotic home and unpredictable mother by entering a seminary . This evocative, gripping memoir follows his spiritual progress from troubled boy to perfect seminarian. But as he becomes closer to the priests who teach him, he starts to wonder whether it is possible to be a Catholic priest and to be fully human. Cornwell's range as a writer is surpassed only by his compassion not just for others, but for himself as he tries to make sense of his need for a relationship with God. His struggle to come to terms with having been raped leads him to question his sexuality, but he is taught to deal with those questions by repressing them. Not just a memoir, Seminary Boy also serves as a social document of a peculiarly English form of 1950s Catholicism. Kate Holmquist
Relative Stranger: A Sister's Life After Death
Mary Loudon , Canongate, £7.99
In this vivid, often harrowing book, Mary Loudon tells a deeply personal story. The first chapter describes how Loudon was skiing down a mountain in France, unaware that her eldest sister lay dying from cancer in a hospital ward. Her death reveals to Loudon just how little she knew about Catherine, a schizophrenic who had long isolated herself from the family. The book takes you on Loudon's journey to discover more about the troubled, kind and highly creative sister she never knew. As she learns more about her sister's solitary existence, Loudon sees many heartbreaking details: the polar bear teddies in her bedroom; the empty Pot Noodle packets; the clothes piled high in the spare room. While at times a tough read, Relative Stranger is an important testimony to those struggling with mental illness and those seeking to help. Sorcha Hamilton