A selection of paperbacks reviewed
Digging to America Anne Tyler Vintage, £7.99
Another Baltimore-set novel from Anne Tyler and another treat for fans of this superb storyteller. It begins in an airport lounge in 1997 where two families, the perky, all-American Donaldsons, Bitsy and Brad, and Iranian-born Sami and Ziba Yazdan, await the arrival of their adopted babies from Korea. As the little girls, Jin-Ho and Susan, settle into their new lives, Tyler explores with great comic twists and brilliantly observed detail the internal dynamics of families, the struggle for "outsiders" to fit in and the escalating "competitive unease" between the two sets of parents. She has most fun with the Donaldsons ("They were such easy targets after all, especially Bitsy with her burlap dresses and her more-organic-than-thou airs"), but her study of the extended Yazdan family and their efforts to cope with the "do your own thing American culture" is more complex. A terrific read. - Bernice Harrison
So He Takes the Dog Jonathan Buckley Harper Perennial, £7.99
As its shrug of a title suggests, Jonathan Buckley's "anti-narrative" detective novel is an exercise in understatement. Woven cleverly around the central story of Henry, a homeless eccentric whose murdered body is found by a dog on the beach, its many threads gradually form a tapestry of life in a superficially cosy but sometimes explosively violent coastal backwater in the south of England. While it is the precise observation and quiet humour of the writing that hold the attention, the tale does have its twists, and the narrator, a policeman trying to unearth the identity and motives of the mysterious victim, is one of several characters who find their lives taking unexpected directions as a result of the investigation. If Henry's case is not solved to the satisfaction of all, that is partly the point - and the book's unsettling atmosphere lingers in the mind. - Giles Newington
Mirrors of the Unseen: Journeys in Iran Jason Elliot Picador, £8.99
This engrossing book, based on the three years Jason Elliot spent travelling through Iran, sheds light on a country that, despite all the headlines, the western world knows precious little about. As he travels from its modern capital, Tehran, to ancient Persian cities such as Shiraz and Persepolis, Elliot finds the vast majority of western stereotypes about Iran to be inaccurate.
The author focuses on the alluring Persian and Islamic art and architecture in each place he visits. He also recounts key aspects of Iran's history, from the accession of the founding king of Persia, Cyrus the Great, in 559BC to Ayatollah Khomeini and the Islamic revolution in the 20th century. His often humorous descriptions of everyday life lend colour, and his experiences with characters along the way, many of whom lead double lives post-revolution, further highlight the complexity of Iranian society. - Mark Rodden
Daughter of the Desert: The Remarkable Life of Gertrude Bell Georgina Howell Pan, £7.99
Gertrude Bell, indomitable traveller, archaeologist and Arabist, played a major role in the setting up of an independent Iraq after the first World War; fluent in Arabic, she was unique among the British for her knowledge and appreciation of local tribes and customs. She set up the renowned Iraq Museum in Baghdad, looted and closed in the 2003 invasion.
Howell's painstaking research does justice to Bell's political achievements but it is her detailed account of the young Gertrude, careering through the Arabian deserts, bearding sheikhs in their tents and bravely enduring the most extreme of conditions which enthrals.The love of Bell's life, war-hero Dick Doughty-Wylie, died at Gallipoli. When her diplomatic work was complete, she felt her loneliness deeply: "The afternoons, after tea, hang rather heavy on my hands." - Tom Moriarty
Scotland's Books: The Penguin History of Scottish Literature Robert Crawford Penguin, £15.99
With a minimum of fuss, Crawford escorts us through 15 centuries of "polylingual" Scottish prose and verse, from early Christian poems in Latin to the wintry novellas of Dame Muriel Spark. This is "the first book to present to the general reader the extended history of Scottish literature in a single volume", and the canonical figures are dispatched with respectful efficiency (Robert Burns is "the greatest bard of human brotherhood"; Walter Scott "the single most influential writer in the worldwide history of the novel"). Crawford's approach is admirably unsnobbish: he includes the policiers of Ian Rankin and the space operas of Iain M Banks, as well as the strenuous formal experiments of James Kelman and Alasdair Gray. In the main this is a plain and useful book, sensibly organised and critically astute. - Kevin Power
Last Curtsey: The End of the Debutantes Fiona MacCarthy Faber, £9.99
In 1958, the last, very large, group of 18-year-old girls curtsied to the Queen of England, bringing to an end the arcane ritual of "coming out". Fiona MacCarthy was among that giggly group of upper-class virgins whose passage into society heralded their marriageable status, and she has spent her life becoming everything a Deb was not supposed to be - a respected journalist, design writer and biographer of Lord Byron and William Morris among others, even marrying her own working-class hero, silversmith David Mellor. Despite the perceived glamour of gowns and parties, MacCarthy describes the whole experience as "a cattle market", and an anachronism and sheds not a tear that the practice has never been revived. It is great fun to wander safely through the Debs' final soiree, and breathe a sigh of relief for the modern woman. - Claire Looby