Paperbacks reviewed by William Leith

Goat Mountain by David Vann (Windmill, £8.99)

David Vann writes intense novels about intimate relationships bursting with violence and brutality. His characters are beasts dragging around the burden of human emotion; they are psychos and they are deeply pitiful. The writing is superb. Here, a grandfather, a father, a son and a family friend go on a hunting trip. Just the description of the journey to the lodge had me sweating. When they arrive there is a shocking and violent event. Then things get really horrible. We see the savagery. We hear the inner voice of it. Vann reminds me a lot of William Faulkner, with an extra century of murderous history to call on.

Stasiland by Anna Funder (Granta, £9.99)

The Berlin Wall fell a quarter of a century ago. Then we began to find out what had been happening in East Germany. This book, which won the Samuel Johnson prize in 2004, has been re-released; it might be the best account of the strange, secretive place on the other side of the wall. Anna Funder has described East Germany, and its secret police force the Stasi, in an accessible way. She tells us about her own feelings and gets people to tell their stories. This is about what it feels like when anybody might be a spy and everybody feels spied on. Could it ever happen again? Oh dear, you keep thinking.

Breakfast at Sotheby’s by Philip Hook (Penguin, £9.99)

What is this, exactly? It’s a witty book about art. But it’s also sharp and clever. Philip Hook, an art specialist at Sotheby’s, has created a sort of dictionary of the art world. What is bohemianism? It’s an attitude: think of Paris or Berlin a century ago, or New York more recently. But can bohemianism exist in England? The answer is possibly not. He also compares the market for art with the market for footballers; Gareth Bale’s record £86 million fee was soon trumped by the £89 million paid for a triptych by Francis Bacon. Hook is very good on what makes a portrait expensive. “Pretty women... sell better than gloomy old men.”