THE images and recollections of 25 women from the Dingle Gaeltacht evoke a past that is indeed a foreign country. It's an unlamented past and Ni Shuilleabhain's ear is perfectly tuned to catch their local patois, some of it worthy of Synge. One woman, an enthusiastic dancer, recalls her husband's delicate footwork:

"He would dance on a plate." Another woman, also a dance enthusiast, recalls how, once she was married, her husband refused to allow her go to a dance: "It broke my heart. . . The way we used to be was senseless." One strong conclusion to be reached is that they calmly accepted their lot because they were largely immobile and did not know of any other life. One pathetic example of this is the seriously ill boy who was taken to a Dublin hospital and died alone because his parents had no money for the train fare. This is classic oral history.

DIamonds and Holes in my Shoes A memoir by Deirdre Purcell Hodder Ireland, 11, 356pps MEDIA memoirs will usually attract the general public, especially so if the memoirist has interviewed those we want to know more about and later fills in the background to those successful, unsuccessful and those 'take-a-hike' refusals. We can take it that she is scrupulously honest in her accounts of her time as an RTE newsreader, an Abbey actress, etc because those sections of the book that have a personal resonance for this reviewer . . . her years at this paper . . . are not only honest, but scathingly self-effacing. Humour was in short supply in Deirdre's prose. And when it came it was usually unintended. For example, one interviewee, the chanteuse Eartha Kitt, asked to meet some "real Irish people" at a dinner Deirdre was to organise. Who did Deirdre invite as her main guests? Pat Kenny and David Norris.

The Claude Glass
By Tom Bullough
Sort of Books, �7, 201pps

BULLOUGH'S novel will not endear him to the Welsh tourist board. Derelict farmhouses, psychotics, drunks, semi-feral waifs, abandoned tractors, mud and filth predominate the landscape. It's grim stuff but a great read. Seven-year-old Robin lives with his hippyish parents on a floundering hill farm. The farm has a doomed air, as has the marriage. Let's just say that the hippy couple have more dreams than brains. Flanking their farm is another semi-derelict farm, occupied by a psychotic brute and his psychosomatic wife. The child of this brutish alliance is Andrew, a lonely boy called the "werewolf" by the local children and who spends most of his time with the farm animals.

That is, until he meets Robin and the entire story comes to a grim closure.

Shalimar the Clown By Salman Rushdie Random House, 12, 398pps NO ONE is better qualified than Rushdie to write on sectarian violence, racial conflict and fundamentalist intolerance, and how these hatreds can scar beautiful landscapes like Kashmir or 15thcentury Andalucia. He did this with startling results when a Muslim fatwa was placed on his head when he showed disrespect to the Muslim religion. The disrespect was alleged when Rushdie was merely doing his job as a writer by questioning orthodoxy in Midnight's Children, a book worthy of attention. This book is a load of old magic realist tosh, straining for effect by creating the bizarre. People can see sounds, taste feelings, hear colours. Me? I can feel me leg being pulled.

Sweetwater
By Paul Charles
Brandon Books, 9.99, 284pps

HUGELY under-rated among thriller writers, this is Charles's eighth book in the Christy Kennedy series. Kennedy is an unlikely Ulster detective in that he drinks tea, is self-effacing, quiet. He argues, if he is not noticeable, he will be left in peace to notice everything.

Good thinkin' Batman. The slaying of a fellow top cop takes Christy away from a missing persons case. Strange thing is, a certain Fr Vincent O'Connor is involved with personnel from both cases. The priest knows a thing or two, but the confidentiality of the confessional binds him to silence.

One for that long air journey.