YOU would hardly expect a book about a boxing event to read like a thriller.

Depends, I suppose, on whether you know the outcome. Those who don't are in for an enthralling read. St Patrick's Day 1923, and Clareman Mike McTigue, who had the courage of a sick rabbit, took on world champion Battling Siki from Senegal, who had just "hopped from the branches of a cocoanut tree" as the scribes of the day put it, though not to his face. There wasn't just blood on the canvas. As the fans emerged from the Prince's Street venue, a gun battle broke out between Anti-Treaty and Pro-Treaty factions. Sounds a lively place. A bomb had gone off during the fight. No, I'm sworn to secrecy about the fight's outcome.

Written Lives By Javier Marias Canongate �8.00 193pps

A CHARMING little dipper of a book.

Short biographies of 21 writers whittled down to some exotic details about their overwhelming passions. For example, what James Joyce got up to with poor Nora Barnacle. The details of which we will skip. Wilde's lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, is introduced as a beauty who "was long on ringlets and short on intelligence. He lost the ringlets and never gained any intelligence." Other biogs include E Bronte, Nabokov, Turgenev etc. Of them all, Malcolm Lowry was the most calamitous. And that's saying something.

He wrote his own gravestone epitaph: 'Malcolm Lowry / Late of the Bowery/ His Prose was Flowery / And often Glowery / He lived nightly and drank Daily / And died playing the Ukulele'. His wife refused to have his gravestone thus inscribed.

In My Skin By Kate Holden Canongate 7.00 286pps

ANOTHER one of life's dreadful vistas.

This tells how a young middle-class girl with a degree in classics ended up on the streets of Melbourne being abused by men. She did it because she had junk in her veins. It is an emotionally honest read, down to its last grimy detail, which rather flaws this extremely well written account. After a provocative opening the book descends to mere prurience. There has to be some mental chink to Holden as she claims she never felt degraded by her experiences. She claims she gained self-esteem because she felt needed, "knowing myself to be desired". A strangely unsettling claim coming from a classics scholar. Incidentally, the press release bills this as fiction. Now, why should that be?

Closer to Home By Erin Kaye Poolbeg Press 10 562pps

AS SO often happens in romances, the man loved by the heroine turns out to be a swine. Kath O'Connor is without a husband and she is close to 40. So she proposes to the swinish Carl who immediately goes all shifty. He does that because he is already married. Never invited her to office parties, never introduced her to his friends, always away on weekends, and never, not for a moment, does Kate SUSPECT! All of this takes place in Boston.

So it's home, Mavourneen, home to Ireland where her friends try to fix her up with Mr Cool, Charming, Cute, Caring and Wrong.