You By Nuala Ní Chonchúir

You
By Nuala Ní Chonchúir
New Island €12.99, 186pps

NÍ CHONCHÚIR'S debut novel opens in a valley, the Liffey, darkly, and ends in bright uplands. At the start, the narrator, an unnamed 10-year-old, is facing a desolate future. She is saddled with a huge amount of responsibility; getting her younger brother out of bed, then fed and off to school. Her mother is an alcoholic who has attempted suicide. The narrator and her brother are farmed out to live with neighbours Cora and Noel, a move that takes us to a brighter place. Noel, with his geniality and bay-window belly, brings great warmth to the book. Ní Chonchúir is excellent on the shifting allegiances between children, as when the narrator's best pal Gwen returns to her native Wales. It is not without flaws – this 10-year-old is far too precocious – other than that, this would not have been taken for a debut.

Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks
By John Curran
Harper £8, 490pps

WHAT emerges from Curran's highly informative biography – he was given access to Christie's 'secret' notebooks – is a somewhat disorganised way of living. The notebooks are chaotic; offering maps, lines of dialogue, shopping lists, reminders of appointments with hairdressers. With such a gruelling output of sometimes four books a year, it's surprising she had time to sit for hours in a hair salon. If there was a criticism to be made of her whodunits, it would be that she created types rather than characters, and usually from the same strata of society. They are a slice of British life at a particular time of a particular people: middle-class Ms Marples or Poirots rarely venture among the working class. But her works have endured. Fans will learn a lot from ­Curran's account.