HISTORICAL

NIGHT WATCH by Jayne Anne Phillips (Fleet €23.80, 304pp)

PHILLIPS’ disquieting, uneven fifth novel, set in the aftermath of the US Civil War, is an uneasy mix of abject horror and fatalistic hopefulness.

It hones in on the lives of 12year-old ConaLee and her brutalised mother Eliza, who hasn’t spoken for a year. Phillips’ prose and plot see-saws between the wistfully graceful, when describing their hardscrabble selfsufficient existence in the Virginian Mountains, and the horrifically grim, after their world was wrecked by ‘Papa’ — a sociopathic renegade who inveigled his way into their lives, with dire consequences.

Abandoned at the TransAllegheny Lunatic Asylum, the duo attempt to rebuild their lives, as does the titular Night Watch, an ex-soldier who can’t remember his past or his connection to Eliza and her child. In this war-torn world, it’s the emotional devastation that leaves lasting scars as families and minds are broken.

THE GALLOPERS by Jon Ransom (Muswell Press £14.99, 208pp)

THERE is so much yearning in this second novel from Ransom. It’s a book packed with explosive secrets and deception, but it’s the hard-to-express emotions and the longing for love that lends this poignant tale its momentum. For the most part, the setting is rural 1950s Norfolk, and the story is told by Eli, who’s painfully aware of his outsider status.

In a destructive sexual relationship with workmate Shane (whose unfulfilled ambition is to pose in homo-erotic muscle magazines), it’s the arrival of older fairground worker Jimmy Smart, all Woodbine cigarettes and awkward tenderness, that sees Eli begin to dream of a different kind of life for himself.

LOOT by Tania James (Harvill Secker €19.60, 304pp)

THERE’S a striking automaton on display in London’s V&A museum; carved from wood, it shows a British redcoat being mauled by a growling tiger.

It was commissioned by the ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, in 1794 and it’s this intriguing mechanical beast that is the centrepiece of James’ epic sweep of a novel, which travels from India to Europe in the company of a fascinating range of characters.

Here, we meet 17-year-old Abbas, a talented but poor wood carver; a dissolute French clockmaker; a young seafarer struck down with scurvy; the marvellously eccentric Lady Selwyn and the resolute Jehanne, who takes over her father’s business, much to the dismay of her aunt.

Niftily constructed, the novel packs in doomed romance, the horrors of colonialism and palace plots.