Paperbacks: Green Man Running, by Georgina Hammick<br></br>The Hunters, by Claire Messud<br></br>That They May Face the Rising Sun, by John McGahern<br></br>SweetMeat, by Luke Sutherland<br></br>Wrong Rooms, by Mark Sanderson

Green Man Running by Georgina Hammick (Vintage, £6.99, 296pp)

As good on divorcees as Helen Simpson is on mothers, Georgina Hammick writes the kind of fiction that triggers yelps of recognition. Told largely from the viewpoint of a 41-year-old divorced father, her latest novel opens with a flashback to a rural childhood. As a boy, Desmond Bucknell was partly responsible for an accident which left a local farm-hand in a wheelchair. Fast-forward 30 years and Desmond, now re-named Dexter, is living with his two young sons and newish girlfriend, Moy, in a small terraced house in Bethnal Green. Beset by financial worries – having given up a high-powered job in publishing after the desertion of his wife Hyacinth – he now works in the womanly world of freelance copy-editing. Not only is money tight, but his mother's health is in decline, and his relationship with Moy on the wane.

The author of one previous novel and two short-story collections, Hammick lives up to her reputation for funny, alert and nourishing prose. Whether describing children glued to PlayStation, or the rustic chaos of a farmyard gone to pot, she pins the moment with comic exactitude. Her dialogue between Dexter and Moy is particularly well done, simultaneously conveying what's said, and what's not, in a way that explains the unravelling of the lovers' once-promising future. The eponymous Green Man is the ever-torn Dexter: urban Dexter chasing the stick figure to the nearest exit, and the folkloric one, pining for his Shropshire roots and a chance to start over.

The Hunters, by Claire Messud (Picador, £6.99, 181pp)

Claire Messud's two novellas are very different beasts – the first, a substantial and beautifully written story of super-human endurance, the second, a diverting helping of neurotic suspense. "A Simple Tale" is the story of Toronto cleaning lady Maria Poniatowski, a Ukrainian war refugee who for 40 years has worked for the smart, and catty, Mrs Ellington. How she re-figures her dreadful past to fit the present makes for a gripping read. An American academic is the narrator of the second novella, a black little tale involving rabbit husbandry and Rear Window-style suspicions.

That They May Face the Rising Sun, by John McGahern (Faber & Faber, £7.99, 314pp)

It probably helps to be Irish to appreciate John McGahern's sombre and mellifluous brand of storytelling. His first novel in 12 years is set on home territory: a remote corner of County Leitrim. Here, by a lake and a bog, live two couples, the Ruttledges, who have lived and worked in England, and the home-grown local Murphys. At first it's hard to tell who is related to whom, and in which decade their conversations take place. Not much happens, but when it does it's to be relished, from the farmhouse fry-ups to the uncertain weather.

SweetMeat, by Luke Sutherland (Black Swan, £6.99, 443pp)

Luke Sutherland's début, Jelly Roll, shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel award, was set in chilly Scotland, and his second embraces the froideur of the London restaurant scene. Bohemond is black, French, a talented chef in a top metropolitan eaterie and in love with a woman about to marry an arch-seducer. Punch-drunk with language and unguents, particularly olive oil and lavender, Sutherland's gleefully outlandish novel trips over into the surreal. Bohemond concocts the perfect wedding meal for his soon-to-be-duped best friend. Think Peter Greenaway revisited.

Wrong Rooms, by Mark Sanderson Scribner, £7.99, 297pp

This astonishingly brave, and almost unbearably moving, memoir amounts to a confession in every sense – from the spiritual to the criminal. Journalist Mark Sanderson met, loved, and lived with his Australian partner Drew through the (beautifully drawn) gay-bohemian scene of early-1990s London. Then Drew developed an inoperable tumour; his cancer dragged the pair through the hellish "wrong rooms" of treatment and terror; and he died – or, rather, Mark found the courage to limit his suffering. Read this book even – especially – if you distrust the genre of "SickLit". It scars, sears, uplifts – and will linger forever.