Paperbacks reviewed by William Leith

Another Great Day at Sea by Geoff Dyer (Canongate, £8.99)

Geoff Dyer, who really notices things and is seriously attentive to detail, spends time on an American aircraft carrier. What a superb prospect. You already know you will never read anything more pointed or revealing about one of these vast ships, which can be half a mile long. When a jet — a huge, plummeting beast — lands, it must be snagged, using a wire. As it comes down, it must also accelerate in case the wire contraption doesn’t work. Dyer captures the strange seriousness of this world perfectly. And the noise! “It wasn’t even white noise, more like dark grey shading into black.”

How To Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran (Ebury, £7.99)

A novel about a teenage girl called Johanna Morrigan. She lives on a council estate in Wolverhampton. She doesn’t fit in. She has four siblings. Her father is a pop star but only in his own head. He drinks a lot. One day Johanna says something that might damage her family, terribly, in a financial sense. She’s mortified. “In truth, I am basically going mad,” she tells us. Still, she has a lot going for her. She’s a superb storyteller, with a touch of the Holden Caulfields. “I wish I was Bill Murray,” she muses. “I hope everything I’ve read about evolution is wrong, and I eventually evolve into him.” Sharp and very funny.

The Rise and Fall of Great Powers by Tom Rachman (Sceptre, £7.99)

We are drawn into this story from three perspectives: one person’s life at the ages of nine, 20 and 30. It sounds complicated but it works incredibly well. The person is Tooly, an unusual woman. At nine, she travels the world with Paul, a sort of supernerd in the world of diplomacy. At 20, she’s living in a shabby warehouse in Brooklyn, a waif with mismatched shoes and a Russian tramp for a flatmate. At 30, she runs a failing bookshop on the Welsh border with England. The way the three stories mesh is a wonderful thing — suspense and intrigue in equal measure. Every so often, it reminded me of Donna Tartt.