The Run of the Country, by Shane Connaughton (Penguin, £5.99 in UK)

We have been here before - notably in McGahern's early novel The Barracks, but in a good many novels since then as well, and you are likely to visit it again until some newer convention (not to say cliche) takes over in its turn. Yet another would-be Bildungsroman of a sensitive, unsure young Irish male growing from adolescence to doubtful maturity with all the stock ingredients of a devoted, put-upon mother and a police-sergeant father. Almost needless to say, the novel has been made into a film and appears ideally suited to the export market. A native, Irish person may be left wondering just when and where people ever spoke such unlikely-sounding dialogue even in this mistily described Ireland of forty years ago.