Irish Times writers review the latest paperbacks
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah Harper Perennial, £7.99
Beah recounts a Sierra Leone childhood deformed by war: from orphan to child soldier, to refugee. The book seems to him to be both moral duty and therapy - this burning need to impart is one of the things which carry the reader along. Another is the desperate tenacity we see in his childhood self: a drive too dark to be called "hope", but still life-affirming. Though a grim read, it is not one of unrelenting bleakness. His story offers us, not war on its epic - sometimes inaccessible - scale, but something personal, apolitical, and largely without moral commentary. As we read of a boy who turned from loving son to ruthless killer and back again, this refusal to dwell can feel like either a relief or a disappointment. As an exposé of the realities of war, particularly the psychological devastation it wields, it is a chilling and moving read. Claire Anderson-Wheeler
Certainty by Madeleine Thein Faber, £7.99
From her prize-winning debut, the short-story collection Simple Recipes, Madeleine Thein has gone on to create a gentle and affecting novel. With parallel narratives of a father's childhood in Japanese-
occupied Borneo in the early 1940s and his daughter's middle years played out in Vancouver, and told in turn from the perspective of a handful of characters, the layered story is somehow seamless. True to her short-fiction roots, Thein pursues a handful of stories, which her characters explore across all media. Gail Lim, a radio producer, creates her final documentary; Ani, the childhood sweetheart of Gail's father, marries a photojournalist; and Gail decodes a POW's journal revealing untold stories about her parents' life during the first World War. Certainty examines an extraordinary family across five decades, shedding light on a fascinating and brutal front of the war in the Pacific. Nora Mahony
The Life of Kingsley Amis by Zachary Leader Vintage, £11.99
Leader observes that his subject was "a compelling person, a man of alarming appetites and energies, the funniest man most people had ever met, or the cleverest, or the rudest", which is fascinating and which should whet our appetite for more, and yet this book never quite holds us. Undoubtedly one of Britain's most interesting and controversial 20th-century literary figures, Amis is probably best remembered for his wonderful comic classic, Lucky Jim. A prolific writer (of more than 40 books), he was also a most complex man. He loved the good life, enjoyed a flamboyant career, was a notorious womaniser and boozer, yet Leader somehow can't quite carry us along on Amis's wild ride through life. Perhaps the problem lies in the author's obsessive attention to detail. This is a big book (900 pages) and though Amis fans may wallow in the minutiae, for others, less - much less - would definitely have been more. Owen Dawson
A Hedonist in the Cellar by Jay McInerney Bloomsbury, £8.99
US novelist Jay McInerney takes wine-writing to another level in this foray into non-fiction. His colourful descriptions of tastes, sights, and aromas leave the senses hankering and evoke sensations never (or not yet) experienced. Who couldn't imagine the scent of a mature Haut-Brion, after reading it is "like a cigar box containing a Montecristo, a black truffle, and a hot brick, sitting on top of an old saddle"? Unassuming and unpretentious, this journey through the world's wine regions is written with an acute eye and a light heart. McInerney's advice ranges from food and wine pairings to impressing your sommelier, and his witty anecdotes reveal a world steeped in history and culture. If read in one stretch, it could be overwhelming, but it goes down smoothly when sipped slowly, meditated upon, and enjoyed with a glass of one of its many recommendations. Rebecca McAdam
Silverland: A Winter Journey Beyond the Urals by Dervla Murphy John Murray, £8.99
In these days, when real adventure is usually tied to the shoelaces of youth, it is remarkable and fascinating to read about an Irish septuagenarian journeying alone - save for her faithful suitcase, The Dog - across modern Russia beyond the Urals to the Pacific, vividly recounting, with quick wit and opinionated discourse, how the world lives beyond Moscow. What's even more astonishing is that the narrative is autobiographical. Murphy, one of travel writing's greatest exponents, and an honorary Babushka to boot, comfortably brings to life the many peoples, towns and cities - deserted in the post-Soviet vacuum, left to their own devices in the ruin of communism and the false-dawn of capitalism - she encounters along the way. There's eating, drinking and medicine in such writings to keep us all alive. Paul O'Doherty
A Great Feast of Light: Growing Up Irish in the Television Age by John Doyle Aurum, £7.99
The former Fine Gael politician and self-appointed protector of the nation's morals Oliver J Flanagan once opined that "there was no sex in Ireland before television", his way of saying the box was having a negative influence on a changing Ireland. The humour continues here in John Doyle's affectionate reflection on growing up in Ireland at the dawning of the television age. Doyle spent his formative years, in a "town full of religion" - Nenagh, Co Tipperary. He's now the television critic with the Globe and Mail newspaper in Toronto. Daithi Lacha was an early influence, until the womanising gambler Bat Masterson broadened his horizons. Monty Python might have been the ultimate in subversion, but when sex came out of the closet after the nation watched Gay Byrne's Late Late Shows, Ireland would never be the same again. Martin Noonan