Paperbacks

Leaving Patrick

by Prue Leith

Penguin, pounds 5.99, 408pp

LEAVING NICKY Clarke might be a better title for food guru Prue Leith's first foray into the soft-lit world of aspirational fiction. Jane is a 36-year old shipping lawyer with a wardrobe full of designer clothes and a posh flat in NW1. Over the course of the novel, she swaps her restaurateur husband, law firm partnership, and Nicky's Mayfair salon, for an Oxfordshire cottage, a pony, and the attentions of a local mobile beautician.

Leith's heroine is no slouch, and her downshifting is a calculated affair. When her marriage to the sweet but stuffy Patrick flounders, she decamps to India, and promptly falls for her handsome Indian tour guide (albeit a rather light-skinned one with a degree in Sanskrit). Meanwhile, back in Blighty, Patrick gets it together with a food critic called Stella - a young American with her aquamarine eyes fixed on Patrick's Michelin star.

"Trite beyond belief, like a Mills and Boon" novel, says Jane about her passion for Rajiv and his low-slung hips. Always better that the author says that kind of thing first, and Prue Leith, like her heroine, is rather good at pre-empting the worst. The acknowledgements page is a study in well-placed thanks (to her agent, editor, and the Literary Consultancy - it is rumoured the novel was re-written 12 times).

As recipes for a beach-read go, Leith's novel is pukka fare. The food is tempting (lamb korma, lemon-curd tarts); the plot page-turning (Jane brings Rajiv back to England, but meets a floppy-haired Sloane); and the sex wholesome (pert bottoms for boys, Kama Sutra for girls). Not as engaging a read as that other recent celebrity turned novelist Alan Titchmarsh - with his sweetly egomaniacal sex scenes - Leith's book has only two major faux pas: Freudian twaddle about daddy figures, and a half-baked feminism which leaves Jane slaving over a hot Aga.

Closing Time

by Joseph Heller

Scribner, pounds 7.99, 326pp

JOSEPH HELLER'S Catch-22 sold 10 million copies and added a new phrase to the English language. After several more fat novels, the author finally completed this sequel 30 years later, in 1994. Narrated by two Coney Island crooks and by Catch-22 vet Major John "Yo-yo" Yossarian, the novel purports to be the swansong of a generation. American has gone to hell, in particular New York and its Port Authority, and the most anyone can hope for is a insured hospital bed and a big-breasted nurse.

The Archivist

by Martha Cooley

Abacus, pounds 6.99, 328pp

AS YOU might expect from a story about the inner lives of a reclusive librarian, a suicidal wife and a serious-minded graduate student, Martha Cooley's first novel is an accomplished exercise in stylish prose and elegantly gloomy thoughts (about the Holocaust, religion and mental breakdown). When New England archivist Matthias Lane turns down a request for access to the T S Eliot correspondence, he enters a dialogue with a woman who reminds him of his dead wife - and sees parallels between his life and that of the poet.

Zarafa

by Michael Allin

Review,

pounds 6.99, 215pp

WE DERIVE "giraffe" from the Arabic for "charming". Allin adopts "Zarafa" for his tender, scrupulous account of the beguiling creature sent as a political sweetener from Egypt to France in 1827. After crossing the Med, she strode the 550 miles from Marseilles to Paris; 60,000 people saw her in three weeks and the giraffe motif dominated fashion. The "Beautiful Egyptian" lived on for 18 years. Allin notes that a second giraffe was sent to London. Scoffed at by the press, it died days later.

The Incomparable Rex

by Patrick Garland

Pan, pounds 6.99, 259pp

FROM GARLAND'S hilarious first meeting with Harrison, when he brought chaos to Provence by steering his Bentley on the left, this memoir is sheer bliss. The great charmer was more than a bit of a monster. A valet's murder while collecting headwear elicited the reaction: "I suppose I'll never get my hats." His final words, to son Noel, are a classic: "I could never stand the sound of your fucking guitar." This portrait is affectionate, but it is a relief not to have met the subject.