The Irish Times reviews a selection of paperbacks
The Swing of Things Sean O'Reilly Faber, £7.99
His most ambitious work yet, Sean O'Reilly's second novel fulfils the expectations raised by his outstanding début collection of stories, Curfew, in 2000. (In the interim, there was a first novel, Love and Sleep, which itself reads like an extended short story.) Here, O'Reilly brings the full range of his dazzlingly varied style to bear on his portrait of Dublin outsiders 100 years on from Bloomsday. The main characters, Boyle (IRA prisoner turned Trinity student) and Fada (mental patient turned street performer), are both on the run from their pasts, and their desperation infuses the narrative with an intensity that is sustained to the end. The stories, settings, ideas and characters encountered on their rush towards their destinies are memorable but it is O'Reilly's poetic gift that sets him apart and ensures that this is a vision of a city and an era that will last. - Giles Newington
The Amateur Marriage By Anne Tyler Vintage
It's an ordinary, everyday story as all Anne Tyler stories are, but the Pulitzer Prize-winning author has a way of taking the most familiar situations and emotions and weaving a powerful, unforgettable narrative around them. Wartime lovers Michael and Pauline married and built a suburban illusion that somehow made sense in 1950s America but creaked and fractured under the pressure of family life and the shifts in personal expectations that came with subsequent decades. "Was it possible to dislike your own wife," Michael asks himself early on in the marriage as differences between the couple develop a pattern. Tyler explores why people hang on after they realise how mismatched they are and how, even when it is over, a marriage still has a life in the memories of those involved. An effortless, absorbing read.- Bernice Harrison
The End: An Illustrated Guide to the Graves of Irish Writers Ray Bateson Irish Graves Publications, €20
We've all been warned about judging a book by its cover; however, Ray Bateson's beautifully produced register of the last resting place of Irish writers should have a "do not judge by the title" warning. This is a highly readable and intensely visual guide which provides all the information needed to trace the whereabouts of the graves, at home and abroad, of just about every published Irish author - and a few who qualified on the residency rule - of the past 500 years. From the first entry, the composer of the hymn All Things Bright and Beautiful, Cecil Frances Alexander (1818-1895), to the final entry, the blind bard of the Liberties, Zozimus (Michael Moran, 1794-1846), this engages the reader. A memorable epitaph and required reading for all literary buffs and cemeterians alike. - Martin Noonan
No Earthly Estate: God and Patrick Kavanagh Tom Stack Columba Press, €12.99
The thoughtful introduction to this choice of 60 poems, with explicitly religious themes, images and references, shows that poetry and theology have much in common, although, as Stack himself acknowledges, they are not the same. Particularity and sacramentality (Kavanagh had a special gift of investing the natural world with spiritual significance) are the two aspects of Kavanagh's poetry that Stack focuses on, and he sees creation, incarnation and redemption as three "foundational doctrines of Christianity" encompassed in the poet's work. Of particular significance in the detailed introduction is the discussion of the complex question of Kavanagh's mysticism. "Intimations of God's presence in nature and in the innocent joys of life serve always as a mainstay of Kavanagh's credo," remarks Stack. - Brian Maye
Weekend in Paris Robyn Sisman Penguin, £6.99
Molly Clearwater is not a "stupid secretary". She knows it, even if her obnoxious boss doesn't. So, to prove it to herself if nobody else, she walks out of her job in London and on to the Eurostar to Paris. A bold move in anybody's book. In a pacy story as sweet as a chocolate crepe and as light as a sorbet, with scenes that seem tailor-made for a screen adaptation, Robyn Sisman propels Molly through the streets of Paris on a whirlwind weekend she'll never forget. From falling in love with a beautiful artist to rollerblading at breakneck speed through crowds of chic Sunday morning strollers, Molly has the time of her life, even managing to encounter the father she was never sure she had. The struggle in her between innocent and conformist and vamp and traveller comes to an end during amazing adventures in fantastic locations. And not a string of onions in sight. - Claire Looby
Death's Other Kingdom: A Spanish Village in 1936 Gamel Woolsey Eland, £9.99
First published on the eve of the second World War (and quickly forgotten as a result), American writer Gamel Woolsey's account of life in an Andalucian village during the Spanish Civil War is less well-known than the work published later by her English husband, Gerald Brenan, author of The Spanish Labyrinth. Starting with a lyrical description of her village idyll before the nightmare begins, Woolsey's depiction of a stoic community overwhelmed by events is intended as a counter to the gleeful, perverse and, in her view, usually fictional, tales of Spanish savagery swapped between British ex-pats in Gibraltar. Her perspective is determinedly local and non-partisan: as Malaga burns in the distance, the priority of her neighbours is to protect their own from air raids and visiting murder squads, and even political enemies must be sheltered if they are "children of the village". There is an interesting afterword too, about the rest of Woolsey's nomadic and troubled life. - Giles Newington