Rambling Man: A Life on the Road by Billy Connolly (Two Roads, £10.99)
Billy Connolly is a musician, TV presenter, author of two best-sellers, actor and arguably the world’s most entertaining comedian. But his personal passion is to travel. To ramble (his word) here, there and everywhere. And he’s not fussy whether it’s by foot, bike, ship, sleigh or plane. When on the road he’s filled with the elation of a “medieval troubadour”. In this, his third book, he and we meet many strange people leading strange lives. We learn of the weird and wonderful places he’s visited, such as the top of the Sydney Opera House (a rare privilege, apparently). All of which is written in a lighthearted, humorous, if (appropriately) rambling style, laced occasionally with a laugh-out-loud joke. Entertaining his audience is his priority. Here he wins hands down. Owen Dawson
The Price of Silence by Phyl Herbert (Menma Books, €17.50)
“My mother once told me that all our years were numbered inside us, like the rings inside a tree trunk.” The Price of Silence is a memoir about the heartache of loving. In 1960s Ireland, Herbert, an unmarried woman in her early 20s, became pregnant the first time she had sex. This event dropped the author into a well of silence where she was driven to conceal her pregnancy, her affair and the time she spent at a mother and baby home, before her daughter was given up for adoption. The Price of Silence is as much social history as it is memoir. The scars of loss imprinted deeply upon the author’s heart, but it is also testament to her tenacity and writing ability, that this sombre story leaves the reader with a sense of hope. Brigid O’Dea
Leonard Cohen: A Novel by Jeffrey Lewis (Haus Publishing, £14.99)
[ Leonard Cohen obituary: Revered poet, novelist, musicianOpens in new window ]
“You want it darker,” Leonard Cohen crooned, as we savoured Laughing Len killing the flame. Leonard Cohen: A Novel reaches for the dark, too, based on the Greek myth of Daphne and Apollo (who in today’s money would be a sex-pest stalker). Apollo’s role here is a guy with the same name as the singer. He is also a wannabe songwriter visiting a Greek island at the fag-end of the 1960s where he falls for local lass Daphne. A neat idea with all the modern morality to be found in a classical fable. But episodic chapters punctuated by letters from drippy Leonard to the real Leonard, and fairly lifeless, formulaic writing from Lewis (an award-winning TV producer) turns darkness into dullness. A short story might have sufficed. NJ McGarrigle
