A selection of paperbacks reviewed.
According to Luke, Gerard Stembridge, Penguin, £ 6.99
Why did we love Scrap Saturday? Because the satirical radio show observed the Irish socio-political scene with pinpoint accuracy? Sure. But also, maybe, because it wasn't cruel. Sharp as it was, it understood our all-too-human underbelly. Scrap writer Stembridge brings those qualities of insight and empathy to his debut novel about a well-heeled Dublin family that teeters on the brink of disaster, then falls right in. There's the eponymous Luke - the sensitive, arty one - his dad, a big-shot in Fianna Fáil who has been disgraced by a public investigation into his financial affairs, and his sister, who just adores her dad. There's a perfectly-coiffed mum and a young brother who's wired to an iPod. This short book is an uncanny portrait of Ireland in transition (to what? we're not sure yet, and neither is Stembridge). It's also a page-turner of the highest order. Arminta Wallace
Ireland Since 1939, Henry Patterson, Penguin, £8.99
Patterson's Ireland Since 1939 is an engaging political history which confronts cliched interpretations of the two Irish states. His treatment of the great events - "the Emergency", the O'Neill-Lemass era, the Arms Trial and the "Peace Process" are particularly informative, but his apparent asides are no less significant. Dessie O'Malley's expulsion from Fianna Fáil (1985) is a case in point, when analysed within the context of the contraceptive debate and his spirited defence of the concept of a secular republic. Patterson offers an iconoclastic perspective which will challenge readers of all political persuasions. Daire Keogh
I Was Vermeer: The Forger Who Swindled The Nazis, Frank Wynne, Bloomsbury, £7.99
Despite the art and untrustworthiness of the compulsive liar and immeasurable cheat at the centre of this ream of a good yarn, one is left wondering right up to the end of Wynne's intriguing detective-story-cum- biography of Han van Meegeren (he, the forger who swindled the Nazis and Vermeer's one-time doppelgänger) if the master forger and so-so painter was indeed the author of Vermeer's missing oeuvre or just another irascible fake looking for some loving recognition. This is a well-researched and convincing illumination of a lovable cad, artful dodger, opportunistic womaniser and wannabe Dutch master, who might or might not have filled the vacuum between Vermeer's early and later collection, manipulating the theory that craved a missing religious link. The book also explores the vicissitudes, vulnerability and vanity of the many art historians whose culpability allowed a man with a penchant for hard graft, a knowledge of chemistry and a technician's eye to make free with another artist's catalogue raisonné. Paul O'Doherty
Zoli, Colum McCann, Phoenix, £7.99
In his last book, Dancer, Colum McCann plunged into the inner world of Russian ballet star Rudolf Nureyev: this time he ventures under the skin of a Slovak gypsy singer. Zoli is based on the real-life story of the gypsy poet, Papusza, and it's not a pretty tale. The book opens with the heroine's entire family - apart from her grandfather - being drowned in a lake by fascist guards. The girl discovers her talent for song, which first raises her to the heights of Roma and Slovak society, then precipitates a calamitous fall. The point of view in this book is always "other": here, it says, is a world you settled folks know little and have cared less about. It's a tough world and McCann's exploration is neither squeamish nor sentimental. And at the end of it all the eponymous Zoli remains an enigma - but a memorable one. Arminta Wallace
Against The Tide, Noël Browne, Gill and Macmillan, €14.99
Against the Tide broke all records as the bestselling biography in Irish publishing history when it appeared in 1986. Throughout his career, Noël Browne occupied an unassailable role as the critical conscience of the Oireachtas; the passionate outsider whose ambitious plan for medical reform had been cruelly defeated in the "Mother and Child" controversy (1950-1951). This evasive autobiography confirmed that characterisation; its contents and cover illustration, Ballagh's cruciform portrait, present Browne as a martyr to the callous collusion of the church and self-interest. Subsequent scholarship has challenged this cliche so that an introduction to this reprint would have been instructive. Against the Tide, however, remains a vital commentary on the period, not least the neglected early chapters, which constitute a compelling social narrative of independent Ireland. Daire Keogh
Ava Gardner: Love is Nothing, Lee Server, Bloomsbury, £8.99
The rags-to-riches story of Ava Gardner, the Scots-Irish girl from North Carolina, considered by beautiful women to be the most beautiful woman in the world, reads like a Hollywood script. She moved to the movie capital when she was 19 and made an immediate impact. Within five years she had married and divorced Mickey Rooney and bandleader Artie Shaw, and had rearranged the teeth of an over-amorous Howard Hughes. All before her first starring role in The Killers (1946), opposite Burt Lancaster. In 1951, she married Frank Sinatra, and was dubbed a femme fatale because of his acrimonious divorce. Her career blossomed, his declined. By 1956 they too had divorced. In Spain, Hemingway shared his love of bullfighting. She fell for the bullfighters. In Rome, she became the founding mother of la dolce vita. A legend, given the full Hollywood razzle-dazzle in Lee Server's brassy treat. Martin Noonan