Maggie Hartford offers a selection of good reads in paperback

SORE SITES

Will Self

(Ellipsis, 10)

Journalist Will Self has adapted Betjeman's "Come, friendly bombs and fall on Slough" and wants to blitz the twee Cotswold village of Broadway, which is all very well - but he then moves on to harmless, real places like Chipping Norton. He has got hold of a property developer's description of the Bliss Tweed Mill luxury flats, which is admittedly a fair target. His article Smart Bomb in a Teashop argues that the luxury flats pastiche of English "country house" style is consistent with the ethos of late 19th-century factory building, which in turn imitated palatial traditions in architecture. The Cotswolds piece is one of 60 articles written for an audience of architects in the magazine Building Design, many of them equally provocative.

PETER SMART'S CONFESSIONS

Paul Bailey

(Fourth Estate, 6.99)

Peter Smart, an unhappy husband and none-too-successful actor, is writing after a suicide attempt. Peter's mother, as an actor friend enthusiastically points out, is a comic monster: 'If you put her in a book as they say no one would believe her... Only Wagner could do her justice.' She's matched by the larger-than-life eccentric, F. Leonard Cottle, randy retired doctor and author of With Stethoscope and Scalpel, who employs Peter's mother as housekeeper after her husband dies. Cottle introduces Peter to the facts of life.

FATHER! FATHER! BURNING BRIGHT

Alan Bennett

(Profile, 3.99)

Bennett is a master at conveying the emotions of properly behaved buttoned-up English people, who would rather die than say what they feel. You can hear Bennett's voice as you read his account of Mr Midgely, a 39-year-old teacher, who is disturbed in a parents' evening with the news that his father is dying. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

THE ASTROLOGICAL DIARY OF GOD

Bo Fowler

(Vintage, 5.99)

The killing of Time is a pretty serious crime - so serious, in fact, that God, otherwise known as Japs Eye Fontanelle, is being held in a large vault in Fort Knox, Kentucky, while he awaits trial by the UN Cosmology Commission. Writer Bo Fowler is imaginative, to say the least, but he keeps us reading, despite some initial distaste for the narcissism of his protagonist, if only by confusing and intriguing readers to such an extent that stopping is simply not an option. Is astrology mankind's only hope? One certainly hopes not, but Fowler and God have their own - bizarre and intriguing - answers.

THE GODFATHER

Owen Whittaker

(Orion, 9.99)

This is a story of how a family can be created from apparently unpromising beginnings, confusing relationships and twisted loyalties. Max Patterson is a bestselling horror writer: self-sufficient and perfectly content with his image as the man in black, living alone in a big Gothic house in Ireland. Or so he thinks. His wallowing is forced to an abrupt end when Max inherits his best friend's two teenage children after their parents are killed in a boating accident.

WHEN DREAMS TRAVEL

Githa Hariharan

(Picador, 5.99)

This retelling of the Scheherazade tale from the female viewpoint comes endorsed by J. M. Coetzee. The sequel to this story of power, lust and cruelty tells what happened after the sultan lifted his threat of beheading and the sultana started to tell the 1,001 stories that would save her life.

**This article first appeared in The Oxford Times Weekend secton, May 5