Where's Your Mama Gone? A True Story

By Kay O'Gorman

Gill & Macmillan, €15, 397pp

BE WARNED, this is not easy reading. Set in the Irish midlands in the 1950s, the disaster for 16-year-old Kay announces itself with the arrival of a baby. Within three years she had three babies. Two more followed. Five in all by the time she was 25. All booze babies because the husband spent every night in the pub. He could afford to because he never gave her a cent.

What started out as love has now curdled to revulsion. She begins an affair with John; a good man. One night she is driving her husband home from the pub, the car skids on ice and her head goes through the windscreen. "You can have her now," her husband announces to John, "her face is gone." She escapes – rather than leaves – home, with John to London, with a view to returning for her children. She is informed that she can't take the children out of Ireland without her husband's consent. She returns. Departs again without the children. She writes convincingly that, had she stayed, she would have turned insane. The whole book is a lesson in how we should be slow to accuse and never judge. I hope her estranged children read it.

The Beatles and Ireland

By Michael Lynch and Damien Smyth

Collins Press, €19, 218pp

AT THE time, November 1963, the Evening Press wrote that the arrival of the Beatles in Dublin had all the teenagers in "a state of euphoria". That's true, because we didn't have much else to be euphoric about. The Swinging Sixties was still years away, Dublin was dismal; a place to endure and escape rather than enjoy. That said, though, not everyone was euphoric. Trouble began at the airport where Frank Hall (great satirist, poor reporter because of his huge ego), sniffily interviewed the lads. Hall was a big RTÉ personality at the time, so you could say it was Beatlemania v Egomania. Hall: "You didn't have time to get your hair cut." It is to both authors' credit that the 'interview' is included here. Had Hall homed in on the quality of the music, 'She Loves You, Yeh, Yeh, Yeh', stone age rock 'n' roll at its crudest, he would have been on to something, especially when you compare that to how much they progressed to the Schubertian 'Eleanor Rigby'. Rich in period atmosphere.

Condemned: Letters From Death Row

By 'Ray' and Sean Ó Riain

Liberties Press, €13, 223pp

BEST value of the week, this. There are recorded accounts of women writing to killers on death row. It would be their thrilling brush with danger without the attendant risks. To date, I have never heard of a man taking on the same role and responsibility until now. And responsibility it is. Before he began, Corkman Sean Ó Riain was warned not to begin unless he intended continuing. There is a chilling note in the book when we are told that those on death row "do not exist without those on the outside." Ó Riain's correspondent 'Ray' is capable of anything if contact ceases with the outside world. He spends 23 hours each day holed up in an 8ft by 5ft cell while he waits for the chair. The waiting, the fear, the psychological effect on mental health. It's all here. Read it and it will take your mind off your everyday trifles.

Do Polar Bears Get Lonely?

From the New Scientist Magazine

Profile Books, €7.99, 232pp

MORE humorous than scientific, this collection of ques­tions sent by readers to the New Scientist is not comprehensive, but it does have wonderful laughs. For example, how many years would it take for all the cows in the world to fill the Grand Canyon with milk? 20,000 years. That's an awful lot of sour milk. Apologies to animal rights people, but we read that 210 hamsters lashing around in a hamster wheel will power a 60 watt bulb. And no, polar bears don't get lonely, they prefer being alone because they are greedy creatures who don't like sharing their grub.

People of the Book

By Geraldine Brooks

Harper £8 372pp

RANGING over around 750 years, Brooks's fictionalised account of the history of an ancient Jewish codex, the Sarajevo Haggadah and the people with whom it came into contact, is packed with suspense. The book was first saved from the book-burnings of the Inquisition 1609; next came the Nazis' 'interest' in Jewish affairs; finally it came under fire when the Serbs began shelling libraries of Sarajevo. Against this backdrop, a book restorer, Hannah Heath, is employed to restore the damaged book. There is an awful lot going on here, so your full concentration will be called on.