WENDY HOLDEN

MRS GULLIVER by Valerie Martin (Serpent’s Tail €21, 304pp)

A 20TH-CENTURY Romeo and Juliet, set on a tropical island. The eponymous narrator runs a high-end brothel at which Carita presents herself, looking for work. Beautiful but blind, she proves a hit with the clients, among whom is rich-boy Ian, a romantic hot-head.

He and Carita marry secretly and escape, but a gun-battle in which Ian’s friend dies triggers (as it were) lethal local rivalries.

Will the star-crossed lovers survive? Will Mrs Gulliver’s own unexpected late-life romance endure? Like Shakespeare’s play, this dryly written, utterly brilliant novel considers love at first sight and the predicament of being female in what is always a man’s world.

MANIA by Lionel Shriver (Borough Press €17.40, 288pp)

WE’RE in 2010s America, where intelligence is an elitist concept and clever people are enemies of the state. Groupthink, virtue-signalling and social-media pile-ons are rife. Pearson, a lowly university lecturer, is trying to navigate the fastchanging social and professional landscape while hanging on to her sanity and educating her brilliant children.

Ranged against Pearson is best friend Emory, a professional polemicist riding the anti-elitism wave, and (in a 1984-ish touch) Pearson’s snitchy youngest daughter. But then, in a dramatic twist, Pearson gets the upper hand. This culture wars satire is funny, moving and horribly believable.

YOU ARE HERE by David Nicholls (Sceptre €16.99, 368pp)

THE king of middle-class romance has done it again with this lovely, touching story, cleverly set on a coastal walking path. Stunning countryside, pretty villages and quirky B&Bs are the backdrop for the budding relationship between lonely metropolitan Marnie and shy York-based Michael, pushed together by a matchmaking friend. As M&M navigate hill and dale, they reveal to each other their painful pasts. But can they have a future?

Nicholls’s knack for warm characters, funny dialogue and superb scene-setting is as spot-on as ever. You’ll want to pull on your hiking boots at the first opportunity.