Paperbacks reviewed by William Leith

Jeeves and the Wedding Bells by Sebastian Faulks (Arrow, £7.99)

This, says the author, is intended as a “tribute” to PG Wodehouse rather than an “imitation”. Actually, it’s beautifully done. You find yourself doubly happy to read it — because Bertie Wooster is such a good character, and because Faulks has brought him to life so well. What he captures is the way Bertie’s world exists because everything outside it — most of normality, in fact — is so alien to him. In this story Faulks does something clever: he creates a reversal of fortune in which Bertie must pose as a servant, while Jeeves pretends to be an aristocrat. This unfamiliarity etches their characters very neatly. A great pleasure.

Ukraine Diaries by Andrey Kurkov (Harvill Secker, £9.99)

Andrey Kurkov, a writer living in the middle of Kiev with his family, finds himself living in interesting times. So he writes a diary. The first thing he says is that, when you live in what he calls a “hot spot”, your experience of time is different. You no longer think of your life in terms of, for instance, “career changes” or “the purchases of new houses or cars”. In a hot spot, every day is full of lots of important events. You seem to be on the brink of major life changes all the time. Here, starting on November 8, 2013, Kurkov relates every detail of his life as two forces fight over his country, Ukraine. His world quickly becomes sinister. And frightening. Recorded with brisk aplomb.

Cat Sense by John Bradshaw (Penguin, £8.99)

I’m not a cat person. But this is a book about the world’s favourite pet, by John Bradshaw, a world expert. So I picked it up. What I dreaded, I realised, was sentimentality. But this is clear and scientific. It’s a book about the evolution of the mammal we’re most familiar with. Bradshaw tells us that all cats, including lions, are descended from “a medium-sized cat-like animal”, called Pseudaelurus, which lived in central Asia 11 million years ago. After this came a cat diaspora — this Asian cat spread to Africa, where it evolved into the caracal and the serval, and to North America, where it became “the bobcat, lynx and puma”. And now look.