Short takes

Francesca Marciano: Casa Rossa

The Casa Rossa is a large farmhouse in Puglia, in the south of Italy, where three generations of the same family have lived, or at least passed through. It becomes a device for examining the history of Italy in the 20th century - Italy's "dirty conscience", as one character puts it - through the lives of an unusually beautiful, artistic and privileged family. The story opens with Alina packing up the contents of the house. The objects she discovers lead her back in time, to her grandfather's short-lived marriage to her grandmother, a beautiful enigma who left him for a woman and fled to Germany; to her own parents' meeting and tumultuous marriage, which also ended in betrayal and death; to the lives of herself and her sister, which revolve around betrayals of one kind or another, not least her sister's involvement in the terrorist Red Brigades on the 1970s. Thoughtful and stylish.

Vintage, $26.95

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Robert Hough : The Final Confession of Mabel Stark

Mabel Stark was the most famous tiger-trainer in history, and in the 1910s and 1920s was a major attraction at the Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey circus. Her career lasted all the way up to 1968 when she committed suicide. Married five times and with much sadness, loss and adventure in her life, she is an irresistible subject, and in this "fictional autobiography" Hough easily transforms his research into compelling fiction. He probes deeply into his subject's memories and imagination, and the relationships that spill out, especially with the tigers, seem so real and solid you can almost feel those warm, dangerous growling beasts. The way Hough tells it, there wasn't a lot of difference between men and tigers. Mauled by both, she generally came off better with the tigers.

Hodder, $39.99

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Alice Hoffman: The Probable Future

The sparrow women have an unusual attribute: on their 13th birthdays they magically develop a unique ability, which differs from woman to woman. In our heroine Stella's case, this turns out to be the ability to see a person's probable future. The Sparrows have always lived in the Cake House in Unity, Massachusetts, and it is to this house that Stella and her mother return after Stella's gift for prophecy backfires and gets her father implicated in a murder. I didn't like this book: the characters were all so unappealing that I couldn't care what befell them, and I disliked the over-comfortable, long-winded descriptions, reiterations and illogicalities. However, this is Hoffman's 16th novel and she has many fans. Other reviewers have raved about her beautiful language and perceptiveness.

Chatto and Windus, $34.95

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Janice Graham: Safe Harbour

Crispin Wakefield is an almost saint-like dean of a Parisian cathedral. His wife is a dreadful social-climber and his three daughters are unbearably materialistic. Enter a woman from Crispin's past: Julia Kramer, a movie star with troubles of her own, not least her over-controlling lover. Crispin and Julia are too decent to even think romantically about each other, but no one else is as innocently minded. The corruption and vulnerability of others will tear apart the lives of these two kind-hearted characters. It's a slight story, yet Graham does write with insight into relationships and states of mind and heart, and her characters are carefully (painstakingly) devised.

Timewarner, $34.95

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Joe David Brown: Paper Moon

Narrated by 11-year-old Addie Pray, the sidekick of conman "Long Boy", who may or may not be her father, this is a rollicking bunch of yarns set in the American South of 1935. It's enjoyable and full of hokey philosophy and observations, set around the adventure of living life on the fringes, while always coming up with hopeful new schemes for making money.

Atlantic, $32.95