IN BRIEF

Stone Kingdoms by David Park, Phoenix House pounds 14.99. Guilty at her own helplessness in the face of sectarian violence, forced to confront her own failures and the uncertain circumstances surrounding her father's death, Naomi is finally spurred to leave Ireland after the killing of two soldiers at an IRA funeral in Belfast. She believes her conscience will be eased by working in an African refugee camp, but on arrival she and her colleagues are warned: "If you've brought feelings out here then I advise you to go bury them in the nearest latrine." When the civil war closes in, she elects to stay with the refugees, thereby endangering herself and them. Park cuts to the heart of two widely contrasting cultures to find that in both "people kill each other because they belong to a different tribe". This is a cry from the heart for Ireland: a powerful novel about guilt, absolution and the need to swim against the tide.

Animal Planet by Scott Bradfield, Picador pounds 14.99. Charlie the Crow is perched above London Zoo where he incites the animals to riot: "You guys want to say something? Then say it in words, man, not grunts and roars ...You either learn to make sense of your lives, or somebody else makes sense of them for you." With animals rising up everywhere to take control of their lives, Charlie becomes a celebrity, the book, film and merchandising rights to his life fought over by media moguls. Inevitably, the tale begs comparison with Animal Farm but its target is less sharply drawn. Are we to see these animals as oppressed humanity or is Bradfield's satire the jokier one of trying to expose the absurdity of animal lib? Where the two themes coincide this remains a dark, anarchic take on American capitalist society.