A selection of paperbacks reviewed
Divisadero
Michael Ondaatje
Bloomsbury,
£7.99
As the title suggests, Ondaatje's latest is divided, a novel of three loosely bound stories. Each could be a book in its own right, but together they are a study of love and family, covering a father with two girls raised as twins and the young hired hand on their California farm, a band of Roma musicians travelling through France, and the tragic story of a reclusive writer. The parts are linked by themes and poetic leitmotifs. As ever, Ondaatje's language is captivating, and he revels in deconstructing the form of his novel into ever-smaller pieces and scenes to better examine splintering relationships. It is not easy reading, but between the variety and complexity of the characters and the far-flung, breathtaking landscapes, it is certainly rewarding. - Nora Mahony
The Boy Who Loved Books
John Sutherland John Murray,
£8.99
John Sutherland went through childhood haunted by the feeling that he was "an inconvenience". In an effort to numb the pain of his father's sudden death, and his mother's subsequent neglect, he turned to books. The diffident young bibliophile grew up to become one of Britain's leading literary academics. Hardly surprising, then, that his memoir, written as he approaches his eighth decade, is a tour de force. He describes many colourful family episodes, developing along the way some high-resolution snapshots of working-
class life in Colchester and Leith during and after the war. But the book has one poignant irony: painful memories are too often revisited in a prose so erudite that the emotional impact is all but deadened. At such moments, language again becomes what it was for the traumatised boy - an aesthetic anaesthetic.- Daragh Downes
Hungry for Home: Leaving the Blaskets
Cole Moreton
Currach Press, €14.99
The prospect of a book about the Blasket islands will doubtless evoke, for many readers of this newspaper, the haggard spectre of Peig Sayers and the barbaric tediousness of her memoirs. English journalist Cole Moreton's engrossing portrait of the people of the Great Blasket should therefore come as a pleasant surprise. It is an engagingly odd mixture of social history and travelogue. Moreton's vivid evocation of island life is interspersed with accounts of his own journey from the Dingle peninsula to Springfield, Massachusetts, where many of the last generation of Blasket dwellers settled after the island was finally abandoned in the 1950s. Despite their resilience in the face of considerable hardship, the author, to his credit, refuses to beatify his subjects. The result is an intriguing tapestry of interwoven narratives about community and isolation. Mark O'Connell
Lost Paradise
Cees Nooteboom
Vintage, £7.99
Alma knows, as the plane touches down, that her idea of Australia is a "fiction, an escape". The Brazilian girl and her best friend, Almut, go in search of adventure across their "secret" continent after Alma is attacked in a favela in Sao Paolo. Their fascination with the dreamings, culture and land of the Aborigine, however, is challenged by the reality they discover there. Alma has a brief but lonely affair with an Aborigine artist and the two girls end up volunteering as actors for the strangely moving Angel Project in Perth, where they hide as angels around the city. Separate narrative strands briefly follow a writer on a plane and a weary, somewhat cynical critic, on an enforced break to an Alpine spa. It all comes together, Nooteboom bringing a subtle, playful brilliance to this exceptional story of escape, loss and identity. Sorcha Hamilton
The Ghost
Robert Harris
Arrow Books, £7.99
The plot is simple but powerful: a professional ghostwriter is hired to complete the memoirs of a controversial former prime minister after the first author turns up dead. At the same time, the International Criminal Court is investigating the politician for war crimes related to the illegal rendition of British Muslims into the bloody hands of the CIA. What the unnamed "ghost" uncovers in the PM's past sends him running. The charismatic politician and his brainy wife are called Adam and Ruth Lang, but they're so thinly disguised they could be doppelgangers for Tony and Cherie Blair. Robert Harris's bitter roman à clef, fuelled by his disillusionment with Blair over the Iraq war, tells the frankly preposterous tale in a fast, muckraking style, with one or two fairly startling twists. Kevin Sweeney
The Himmler Brothers: A German Family History
Katrin Himmler
Pan, £7.99
In this searingly honest memoir, the great-niece of Heinrich Himmler, Hitler's notorious SS Reichsführer, confronts her family history. Katrin's grandfather, Ernst, was Heinrich Himmler's younger brother. Katrin tells how the three Himmler brothers grew up during the first World War and adopted national socialism as the creed best reflecting their passionate German nationalism. It is the story of a strictly moral, bourgeois, Catholic German family. Heinrich Himmler was a sickly, short-sighted boy, hopeless at sport, who found a role in life organising for Hitler's emerging Nazi party. Details are significant: his obsessive diary-keeping, his patronising view of women and, at the age of 14, his description of Russians as "vermin". Katrin is unflinching in facing the guilt of her family. She herself married an Israeli Jew and is happy their son does not have to carry the Himmler name. Tom Moriarty