She is interned in various Irish gulags for 30 years. Rare oul' times, eh?

The problem here is that Rodgers uses licence to create dialogue and scenes, not always to good effect. The rape scene, for example, is worthy of a Victorian bodice-ripper: "?she tried half-heartedly to push him away? his strong arms began to explore her body? she savoured his hungry searching lips? she cried aloud, Stop! Stop!" But neither rapist nor author does.

The Rooms By Declan Lynch Hot Press �10 215pp WHEN dry alcoholic Neil passes well-known Dublin watering holes - McDaids, O'Neills, Grogans - they provoke a vortex of memories, memories of hazy alcohol-dazed days, recollected now through a haze of bitterness and envy. Envy of those who can drink heavily and get away with it. But they will never have a love affair, Neil consoles himself, with a beauty like Jamaica, Neil's latest lover, because they prefer drink.

Lynch's novel is a raw insight into the mind of the alcoholic. There is the presentiment of early death - the great temptation you have to fight daily because you know it will kill you if you yield to it. One thing I couldn't figure: the erotically charged Jamaica is a martyr for vodka and Coke.

She slurps them back and immediately supplies Neil with endless sloppy kisses. How come this doesn't get him back on the hooch?

Johnny Come Home By Jake Arnott Sceptre �8 278pp IN THIS richly detailed period piece set in London in the early 1970s, anger and glam rock has supplanted the optimism of flower power advocates of the '60s. An anarchist and squatter, O'Connell, who was involved on the periphery of the Angry Brigade, tops himself. His fellow squatters, lesbian feminist Nina and painter Pearson, are devastated by O'Connell's death. Nina is in for more devastation when Pearson arrives home with Sweet Thing, a rent boy obsessed with self - "not bent. Rent!

Expensive!" Sweet Thing is Johnny Chrome's lover, Johnny is a refugee from the '60s gone to flab. He gets a new lease of life with glam rock. See him squeeze into a silver jacket, have his thinning hair permed, gold necklace vanishing into the folds of his double chin. Into the action steps Detective Walker of the Bomb Squad and the story flares up even more colourfully.

12 Books That Changed the World By Melvyn Bragg Sceptre �9 342pp WHAT the effortlessly knowledgeable Bragg serves up here is a masterpiece of compression.

Twelve books that altered society, their essence boiled down to digestible pieces: Darwin on evolution, Wollstonecraft on women's rights, Arkwright spinning off the Industrial Revolution, Newton on mathematics, Stopes on married love, Wilberforce on slavery, the rules of football, the Magna Carta, the King James Bible, Faraday on electricity, Smith on the wealth of nations, Shakespeare (First Folio). All right, so you won't be taking it to the beach this summer, but it is still an impressive achievement.