JANE LYTHELL: I AM WRITING: Ten Books I Love

I’ve been a passionate reader all my life. As a child I read my favourite books again and again and knowing the plot did not spoil my pleasure at all. Here are two favourite books from childhood.

The Borrowers Mary Norton

This stimulated my imagination so much. I loved the idea of a little people borrowing, not stealing, the things they need. They had their own code of honour and were never wasteful. Their names: Arrietty, Homily and Pod Clock are inspired because they are just different enough to be non-human. It is a wistful book too because I seem to remember that the Borrowers had once been taller but got smaller and smaller because of their fear. Now that is a powerful idea.

Anne of Green Gables series L.M. Montgomery

I read the entire series of Anne books. She is such a spirited character and I relished how Anne sparred with Gilbert Blythe. This was the first love story I encountered in fiction and it followed the familiar pattern of initial antagonism blossoming into love. I remember so well the scene in the classroom where Gilbert picks up one of Anne’s plaits and declares:

"Carrots…"

"You mean, hateful boy!" she exclaimed passionately. "How dare you!"

And then - thwack! Anne had brought her slate down on Gilbert's head and cracked it - slate not head - clear across.

Gone with the Wind Margaret Mitchell

Your taste changes when you reach your teens and I read Gone with the Wind when I was 14 and I was consumed by all one thousand pages of it. I had borrowed it from Sheringham library and read it at every available opportunity. I remember vividly lying on my bed on my stomach as I read the last page where Rhett Butler leaves Scarlett O’Hara saying:
'My dear,I don't give a damn.'
I was devastated. I must have lain sobbing on my bed for an age until my mum came in and said:
'Oh well having a cry does you good.’

Charles Dickens

I had to include Charles Dickens because he has given me so much pleasure and so much to think about my entire life. I try to read or re-read a Dickens novel once a year and he continues to amaze and enthrall me.

My all-time favourite is Great Expectations though I also adore Bleak House and David Copperfield. Dickens is the great storyteller and the great populariser. Who can ever forget Miss Havisham, Abel Magwitch, Lady Dedlock, the Artful Dodger, Ebenezer Scrooge, Uriah Heep and his hundreds of flawed and funny and poignant characters?

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I studied English Literature at University College London and was introduced to the poetry of Coleridge. He remains one of my favourite poets and I must mention Frost at Midnight and The Pains of Sleep. However it is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to which I return again and again for its powerful imagery and its moral message.

The Stand Stephen King

This book grabbed me by the throat and thoroughly terrified me and I had to keep the light on all night after I had finished reading it! I think Stephen King should get far more praise for the master storyteller he is. He is something of a modern day Dickens in the way he creates so many memorable characters and such compelling storylines.

The Shipping News Annie Proulx

This is my favourite contemporary novel and my respect for Annie Proulx as a writer is huge. The Shipping News has everything I love in a book: a despised and hapless hero in Quoyle; a wonderful sense of place in her depiction of Newfoundland, the land of Quoyle’s forefathers and a journey of redemption for Quoyle. I do not like hopeless books. I like there to be some light at the end.

As a writer you go on learning all the time and the best way to learn about writing is to read long and deep. I came late to John le Carre and spent last summer reading his novels, eight of them, one after the other.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People John le Carre

I enjoyed them all because le Carre is a brilliant writer. However the George Smiley trilogy blew me away. George Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a wonderfully achieved character:

'Small, podgy and at best middle-aged, he was by appearance one of London's meek who do not inherit the earth.'
Underneath that meek exterior is a brilliant mind and George Smiley sets out to unearth the mole at the heart of the UK’s secret services. The book kept me entranced.

I was even more enthralled by the third book in the trilogy Smiley's People. This charts the culmination of Smiley's duel with Russian super spy Karla. It has an elegance and spareness about the writing and the plotting to which I can only say Bravo John le Carre.

This Thing of Darkness Harry Thompson

This is a majestic doorstep of a book that vividly brings to life Robert FitzRoy the Captain of the Beagle and his five year voyage with Charles Darwin to Tierra del Fuego, the Galapagos and beyond. The two men became close during the voyage but differences in their beliefs later started as a crack and widened to a chasm. There are some marvellous discussions between the two men on whether the Biblical Flood ever happened and whether species can transmute. The book has two descriptions of sea storms that left me in awe of Thompson's writing. It is his only novel as Harry Thompson died shortly after completing it. Do try to read it.

There is a strong theme of the sea and sailing with my selection: The Ancient Mariner, The Shipping News and This Thing of Darkness and of course I wrote my own sailing book set on an old wooden sailing boat in the Caribbean Sea: After The Storm.

My three novels are published by Head of Zeus.

WOMAN OF THE HOUR