BOOK REVIEW / In brief: Lost Footsteps - Bel Mooney: Viking, pounds 14.99

The story is enormously readable - Ceausescu's Romania; a quietly dissident mother's sacrifice to send her adored only child to the West; her subsequent search for him - but potentially ripe for the worst sort of wringing-wet liberal self-indulgence. But Bel Mooney neatly sidesteps sentimentality and simplification and presents instead a restrained and thoughtful picture of a life so unremittingly grim that even the most desperate measures seem preferable to enduring more of the same.