MUSTREADS

Out now in paperback

WHEN IN FRENCH by Lauren Collins

(4th Estate £8.99) IF YOU marry a Frenchman and speak only English, you have a problem. If you then move to Switzerland, where there are four official languages — German, French, Italian and Romansh — you have a bigger problem. When the American journalist Lauren Collins met her future husband, Olivier, at a party in London, ‘it was probably the first time I had ever spoken more than a few words to a French person’.

Fortunately, Olivier spoke excellent English and their courtship flourished. Still, she admits: ‘I knew that a membrane, however delicate, would separate me from my family . . .’

Her foreboding was confirmed one morning when Olivier said sadly: ‘Talking to you in English is like touching you with gloves.’

Tender, witty and intelligent, this account of learning to love in a foreign language rises effortlessly above the ordinary run of expatriate memoirs.

ARE WE SMART ENOUGH TO KNOW HOW SMART ANIMALS ARE? by Frans de Waal

(Granta £9.99) WE all know that animals greet their fellow creatures, often very enthusiastically: the internet is awash with tearjerking videos of dogs hysterical with joy at the return of their soldier owners from a tour of duty.

But what about saying goodbye? For humans, a farewell is heart-wrenching because we know that it marks a period of absence.

Have animals the ability to envisage a future separation? In his elegant and persuasive study of animal intelligence, Frans de Waal argues that animals are capable of many behaviours once considered exclusively human.

For much of the past century, science was reluctant to attribute intentions and emotions to animals.

But now scientific opinion has changed: ‘Nothing is off-limits any more, not even the rationality that was once considered humanity’s trademark.’

BERYL BAINBRIDGE by Brendan King

(Bloomsbury £10.99) ALL novelists fabricate things, that is their job. So it is strange that Brendan King — who worked as Beryl Bainbridge’s assistant for 23 years until her death in 2010 — should begin his biography of the writer with a plaintive account of her inveterate habit of making up things about her own life.

She was born in 1932, not 1934. She didn’t, as she claimed, meet the great pianist Paderewski in Stockport in 1945. He died in 1941.

Her habit of embroidering her anecdotes may have made his role as her biographer harder, but affection and enthusiasm for the truth shine from every page.

There is more emphasis on Beryl’s notably rackety personal life than her writing, and her whiskysoaked final years make melancholy reading.

But one ends the book filled with admiration for Beryl’s astonishing resilience, as well as her talent.