Decades: Compiling The Ultimate Library with Helen FitzGerald

My Decades Library grows. Each week I am joined by a booklover (authors, pubishers, bloggers or journalists) and I ask them to nominate five new books which they think should be included in my Ultimate Library. I started this challenge back in January 2021 and since then over 70 guest curators have joined me and selected some of their favourite reads which they feel the very best library should have available for readers to enjoy.

My guests don’t quite get to choose their five “favourite” books as I impose a couple of rules on their selections which means some books just don’t get to be included – I am told this can cause a bit of heartache and I do sometimes feel bad about this.

The reason I describe my Library as the Decades Library is beacuse of the rules governing selections:

1 – Choose Any Five Books
2 – You May Only Choose One Book Per Decade from Five Consecutive Decades.

So it’s selections from a fifty year publication span and means the fans of Tom Clancy can’t just pick all the Jack Ryan books – I initially hoped these rules would bring a broader range of reads to choose from and this seems to have been the case. Incidentally – in 18 months of Decades selections I haven’t had a single Tom Clancy book nominated.

Today I am delighted to be joined by Helen FitzGerald. Helen’s latest book, Keep Her Sweet, is published by Orenda Books (who also made five Decades selections). You can order a copy of Keep Her Sweet here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Keep-Her-Sweet-Helen-FitzGerald/dp/1914585100/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1650564375&sr=8-1

Helen FitzGerald is the bestselling author of ten adult and young adult thrillers, including The Donor (2011) and The Cry (2013), which was longlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, and adapted for a major BBC drama. Her 2019 dark-comedy thriller Worst Case Scenario was a Book of the Year in the Literary Review, Herald Scotland, Guardian and Daily Telegraph, shortlisted for the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, and won the CrimeFest Last Laugh Award. Helen worked as a criminal justice social worker for over fifteen years. She grew up in Victoria, Australia, and now lives in Glasgow with her husband. Follow Helen on Twitter @FitzHelen

DECADES

Published 1979 – Flowers in the Attic, V.C Andrews (smuggled this into the house!)

Up in the attic, four secrets are hidden. Four blonde, beautiful, innocent little secrets, struggling to stay alive…

Chris, Cathy, Cory and Carrie have perfect lives – until a tragic accident changes everything. Now they must wait, hidden from view in their grandparents’ attic, as their mother tries to figure out what to do next. But as days turn into weeks and weeks into months, the siblings endure unspeakable horrors and face the terrifying realisation that they might not be let out of the attic after all.

Helen shared with me that she read this when she was 13 (which may explain why she smuggled the book into the house). It’s definately a book which resonates with Decades Curators, Susi Holliday also made this choice when she picked her five and also suggested that she read it at an impressionable age.

Twice adapted for film, Flowers in the Attic was the first in a series which saw seven sequels follow over the years.

Published 1980 – The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco

The year is 1327.

Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate.

When his delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths, Brother William turns detective. He collects evidence, deciphers secret symbols and coded manuscripts, and digs into the eerie labyrinth of the abbey where extraordinary things are happening under the over of night.

A spectacular popular and critical success, The Name of the Rose is not only a narrative of a murder investigation but an astonishing chronicle of the Middle Ages.

Selling over 50 million copies worldwide, no doubt boosted by the film of the same name which starred Sean Connery and Christian Slater, this biblical crime thriller was ranked 14 in Le Monde’s top 100 books of the century.

Published 1997 – Oscar and Lucinda, Peter Carey

Peter Carey’s novel of the undeclared love between clergyman Oscar Hopkins and the heiress Lucinda Leplastrier is both a moving and beautiful love story and a historical tour de force set in Victorian times.

Made for each other, the two are gamblers – one obsessive, the other compulsive – incapable of winning at the game of love.

Winner of the 1998 Booker Prize the book was also adapted into a film which starred Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett.

Published 2008 – The Slap, Christos Tsiolkas

At a suburban barbecue one afternoon, a man slaps an unruly boy.

The boy is not his son.

It is a single act of violence, but the slap reverberates through the lives of everyone who witnesses it happen.

Christos Tsiolkas presents the impact of this apparently minor domestic incident through the eyes of eight of those who witness it. The result is an unflinching interrogation of the life of the modern family, a deeply thought-provoking novel about boundaries and their limits…

The story is told through the voices of eight characters, in third person and each in a chapter of their own. Events after the incident are outlined chronologically through each character’s story.

The Slap won the Commonwealth Writers Prize in 2009 and has twice been adapted into a mini-series.

Published 2016 – A Dark Matter (The Skelfs), Doug Johnstone

Three generations of women from the Skelfs family take over the family funeral home and PI businesses in the first book of a taut, gripping page-turning and darkly funny new series.

Meet the Skelfs: well-known Edinburgh family, proprietors of a long-established funeral-home business, and private investigators…

When patriarch Jim dies, it’s left to his wife Dorothy, daughter Jenny and granddaughter Hannah to take charge of both businesses, kicking off an unexpected series of events. Dorothy discovers mysterious payments to another woman, suggesting that Jim wasn’t the husband she thought he was. Hannah’s best friend Mel has vanished from university, and the simple adultery case that Jenny takes on leads to something stranger and far darker than any of them could have imagined.

As the women struggle to come to terms with their grief, and the demands of the business threaten to overwhelm them, secrets from the past emerge, which change everything…

Shotlisted for the 2020 McIlvanney Prize (Scottish Crime Book of the Year) A Dark Matter introduced readers to The Skelfs – a much loved Edinburgh Family who have subsequently appeared in two further novels and will return later this year for a fourth outing in Black Hearts.

HONORARY MENTION: Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner (1894, watched on TV 1973). I was the second youngest of 13; Mum was step-mum to the older eight children; dad was a strict ex military man; we lived in rural Victoria – so this really hit home. The only time we were ever allowed to miss mass was to watch the final episode when it was adapted for television.

My thanks to Helen for these wonderful selections. I can only include the five official selections in the Library but I do love an honorary mention as it lets me see which books almost made the cut.

DECADES WILL RETURN

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April 1

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with David Monteath

The second quarter of 2022 is upon us. As this latest Decades selection goes live it will be April and Decades will be in its sixteenth month of guests. I am grateful to each and every contributor and to you for returning, week on week, to see the latest books which are being added to my Decades Library.

The Decades Library I hear you ask? I am compiling a list of the very best books which my guests think would deserve a place in the Ulitmate Library. I started this project in January 2021 with zero books and each week I ask a guest to nominate five new books which they would want to see included in a collection of the finest writing.

When making their selections my guests are asked to follow two rules.

1 – Choose Any Five Books
2 – You May Only Select One Book Per Decade From Five Consecutive Decades.

This week I am delighted to be joined my someone who reads my books for me. Or is that to me? David Monteath (@joxvox) will be a familiar voice to many audiobook fans and I am always fascinated to know which books stand out to someone who spends most of his waking hours focused entirely on the written word.

One of Scotland’s most popular voiceovers, David Monteath was born in Glasgow and started acting while at high school, he trained as an actor at Webber Douglas in London and has been an actor and voiceover for 25 years.

David’s early life was split between homes on the outskirts of Glasgow and the beautiful Spey Valley in the Highlands of Scotland. He also lived in central Perthshire near the popular tourist destination of Pitlochry with its world-famous Festival Theatre.

While training at the prestigious Webber Douglas Academy in London, David met his future wife Lindsay. They have three children and all five of them have worked as voiceovers for clients across Europe, Asia, North America and the Middle East.

David has put his voice to good use over the years and has vast experience of most aspects of being a voiceover from advertising for television and radio, ADR and dubbing on film and television, language tapes for learners of English, telephony and on-hold messages, character animation through to narration, commentary and audiobooks.

He has also produced and co-presented a weekly request show on Stoke Mandeville Hospital Radio

DECADES

Most of my choices are made from books I have read for work, one of the downside of being an audiobook narrator is that I rarely have time now to read for pleasure, so in many ways my reading choices are dictated by my clients. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing, this work has introduced me to many writers I would never have found otherwise.

The High Girders – John Prebble – 1956

This is an absolute classic and the first John Prebble I have read. It follows the story of the building of the Tay Railway bridge and its eventual collapse on 28^th December 1879. The story follows in detail the events of the night, and wherever the blame is felt to lie for the errors which caused the disaster and 75 deaths, Prebble’s book is a fascinating account of a terrible night and a compassionate recounting of so many very human losses.

The Game of Kings (The Lymond Chronicles) Dorothy Dunnett – 1961

Ok, there is a tale behind this one…where else would tails be?…I was recording a quiet story of a country doctor when the producer asked if I would be interested in narrating another book for him, ‘it’s a bit longer than this one’ he said. ‘Of course I would.’ Now cut forward a few days and I was sent the pdf, most audiobook narrators work from iPads, it makes it much quieter as you don’t hear the dreaded page-turn noises that audio editors hate. Also making notes on character and scene etc are simpler on a screen. So, I opened the pdf and found a place at random a good few pages in. I read a rather lovely scene between our hero Lymond and a very young Mary Queen of Scots, set on an island in the middle of the Lake of Menteith, my area of Scotland…but more importantly where I was married. Of course I was completely drawn in and contacted the producer who said…’Um, this has changed slightly, you might have noticed that the book is a biggie, we think it’ll be around 26 hours when you’ve finished recording. Is that still ok?’. Oh definitely good for me. Then he muttered quietly as the phone was going down…’just one more thing…there are six of them, all pretty much the same length!!’ So, this quiet chat turned into 1.3 million words read, 146 hours of finished audiobooks and over 300 hours recording in my tiny studio during the very hot summer of 2018…it was HUGE…and I would do it all again in a heartbeat.

I’m not going to try to precis the book or the series, if you’ve read or listened to them you know why…if you haven’t, the please, please do, you absolutely wont regret it. They are glorious.

The General Danced at Dawn – George MacDonald Fraser – 1970

IN the early 1990s, when I was on tour with the Oscar Wilde play ‘A Woman of No Importance’, I shared dressing rooms around the country with an actor called Stuart Hutchison, who was also a regular face on Westward Television in the Plymouth area. Stuart and I spent hours talking about books, art, music and pretty much anything but football which we both dislike. He bought me a copy of The General Danced at Dawn as I’d never read the stories and he wanted someone else to be able to laugh at them and love them as much as he did. I’ve been very fortunte in my career to work with some really kind, generous people and that was Stuart.

The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco – 1980

Hmmm, I’m beginning to sense a bit of a history theme in my reading. This book sort of crosses all of my working genres, history (albeit fictional) and crime. It’s a complicated disturbing romp through murders in a 16^th Century monastry in middle Europe, probably modern day Germany. The descriptions of ecclesiastical life and the conflicts in the church at that time are great, although if you saw the film first, I defy you not to hear Sean Connery every time Brother William speaks.

Iain Banks – Complicity – 1993

Right then, back to me again…this is a revenge story, brilliantly written by the always brilliant Iain Banks. Someone once asked me, if given a choice what books would you like to have narrated? Any of the Iain Banks would have been my choice. It’s even more annoying that the reader is a friend and a very good reader.

I worked in a bookshop in the early 1990’s and without exception all these authors were selling in great numbers in Inverness bookshops – I know this as I was selling them. Pure nostalgia for me and I loved these choices.

And not just those choices as David gave me two extras. I have taken an executive decision to move Montrose out of the 1970s and Morningstar out of the 1990s selections. I don’t mind the fact Montrose was originally written in the 1920s but it would mean dropping George MacDonald Fraser so rather than flex the rules I opted for the clear cut entry. I am being hard on David Gemmell by moving him to the subs bench but only one book per decade is the rule so I flipped a coin!

But I don’t hide the alternates so here are David’s thoughts:

Montrose – John Buchan – 1979 (from 1928)?

This might be a bit of a cheeky one as the book was originally published in 1928, but reissued in 1979. This was another audiobook project, but one far closer to my heart. My clan are the Graham from Stirlingshire and this book tells the story of the first James Graham, 1^st Duke of Montrose. My father was passionately interested in Scottish history, so this exploration of a turbulent time in Scotland was a particular favourite of his.

Morningstar – David Gemmell – 1992

OK, yes, actually I just like a good historical epic, this one was a thumping good read, glorious descriptions and a suitably complicated fantasy world. Its beautifully written and a great adventure.

A country in desperate need of heroes . . .

Angostin invaders surge through the Highlands, laying waste to everything in their path. Darkness follows in their wake as a mad necromancer resurrects the eons-dead Vampyre Kings.

Only the bandit Jarek Mace, and the magicker and bard Owen Odell, have the courage to fight the Angostins and the undead. Whispers soon spread that Mace is the legendary Morningstar, a saviour who will protect his country in its hour of need. Yet Mace seems nothing more than a thief and a liar.

As the final battle approaches, Odell wonders which of the two Maces will triumph: the self-serving rogue or the saviour of his people, the Morningstar.

DECADES WILL RETURN

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November 5

Decades: Compiling the Ultimate Library with Eamonn Griffin

Back in January I began my Decades challenge. I imagined the dilemma I would face if I was a librarian and was presented with a brand new library but there were absolutely no books on the shelves. Which books would I pick to add to my library if I wanted it to be representative of the very best books which had been published?

I realised I couldn’t possibly pick all the books so each week I have been inviting guests to join me and I have asked them to select the books they believe I should add to my Decades Library.

Why is it a Decades Library? Well that’s because I ask my guests to follow two rules when they nominate books

1 – Select ANY five books

2 – You can only choose one book per decade from any five consecutive decades

This week it is my pleasure to welcome Eamonn Griffin to Grab This Book. Eamonn has picked five wonderful selections and I say this because he has chosen my favourite mix of titles. A couple which I immediately recognise (he has picked one of my favourites) and then some entirely unexpected books which sound utterly fascinating and he makes me want to read them.

Enough from me though – shall we get to these brilliant reading recommendations? I will get the books added to the Library, you can enjoy Eamonn’s choices and consider which five books you would choose.

Eamonn Griffin lives in North Wales. He writes stuff, sometimes for money. His most recent book is East of England (Unbound, 2019), a revenge noir set in 1980s Lincolnshire. Sequels featuring protagonist Dan Matlock have long been threatened, and may yet emerge.

Other books by Eamonn include T he Prospect of this City (set at the outset of the Great Fire of London), Torc (a timeslip novel set both in contemporary and in Roman-era Wester Ross in Scotland), Juggernaut (a direct sequel to RL Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) and Benches of Louth, a personal geography of the Lincolnshire market town in which he grew up.

Online, Eamonn’s ill-maintained website is Eamonn Griffin Writing. He’s on Twitter at @eamonngriffin. He keeps a running reading diary at 255bookreview and contributes capsule movie reviews to 255review (his are the ones tagged ‘Eamonn’). Occasionally, he blogs about his adopted home town at Benches of Llangollen.

The photo’s about five years old, but you’d be able to use it to make a positive ID.

DECADES

1960s: Elidor, by Alan Garner (Collins, 1965)

I could have chosen any of Garner’s grounded fantasies, as they’re uniformly excellent and properly weird. This is in part becuase they each meld folk traditions, ordinary lives, and relationships between place and person. While Red Shift is another favourite, I’ve gone for Elidor. This is because the fantastic elements are secured in an everyday context – a wet, drab 60s Manchester where the most fun the children at the centre of the drama can come up with is riding the lifts in John Lewis – and because at the same time there’s engagement with all manner of Celtic myth and legend while exploring the consequences of poor decision-making. This is a book I read loads of times growing up: I should really go back to it again.

1970s: Religion and the Decline of Magic, by Keith Thomas (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971)

While its value as a history book has lessened over time because of advances in the field, new writings, and changed perspectives, Keith Thomas’s book is nevertheless a terrific entry point for anyone with an interest in the seventeenth century. The focus is on exploring how and why the British Isles shifted from faith to secularity in a century. That’s a bit of an over-simplification, but the ways in which Thomas brings together a huge array of sources into a single accessible narrative that’s impressive, stimulating, and clear are great. Also, the book’s loads of fun: it’s an immersion in religion, folk beliefs, hedge magic, and superstition while also illustrating ways in which the contexts of your life inform its nature and experience. If you’re interested in this sort of thing – and why wouldn’t you be? – then Michael Hunter’s 2020 The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment is a very useful updating / revision / riposte to Thomas’s work.

1980s: The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco (Pan Books, 1984)

My favourite novel of all time to date. Simple as that. The Name of the Rose is the book equivalent of something like Scorsese’s GoodFellas: it does everything with brio and panache. Storywise, it’s straightforward: a monk and his apprentice are commissioned to investigate a series of murders in an abbey which both threaten an upcoming religious debate, and which also may be a portent of the end times. The book riffs on Sherlock Holmes, on medieval philosophy, on sign systems, on maze design, on the influence of Jorge Luis Borges, and on the importance of books, as well as on the folly of locking knowledge away. Ah, plus it’s a love story, a superb depiction of friendship, and a deathbed confession.

1990s: Nymphomation, by Jeff Noon (Doubleday, 1997)

Nymphomation acts as a prequel to Noon’s earlier novels Vurt, Pollen and Automated Alice, and is also a terrific National Lottery satire. Set in a near-future Manchester, the book not only sets up the universe in which the later books are set, but works brilliantly as a stand-alone novel. It does that thing that good SF can do so well: give you a new perspective on the present. It’s perhaps not easy to recall what a big thing the National Lottery was in the UK when it began in the mid-90s: Nymphomation gets right to the heart of that, while exploring the prboems inherent in any system designed to extract money from ordinary people for the benefit of those already-rich, while promising a better future as a distraction from the bleakness of the everyday.

2000s: Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel (Fourth Estate, 2009)

Mantel’s three-novel sequence charting the rise and fall of Henry VIII’s consiligere Thomas Cromwell is the great achievement of contemporary British fiction, historical or otherwise. It’s that good. If I’d had another decade to play with, I’d have picked the second book – Bring Up The Bodies – over this first novel (and I’d have popped Cormac McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men into this slot) but Wolf Hall is great in its own right, plus sets up themes and tensions that pay off over the next two books, so it more than earns its place here.

Mantel’s gift is in getting convincingly inside Cromwell, so we experience first-hand what it feels like to rise towards power, and to have to work in situations where you’re constantly being judged by your background. As a treatise on office politics it’s great, and as a detailed depiction of what court life might have been like for those serving a capricious king, it’s unparalleled. Wolf Hall deals with Cromwell’s finding favour and his working to secure the Boleyn marriage: Bring Up The Bodies addresses the collapse of that union, and Cromwell’s dedication to purging the Boleyn influence from court. Part three – The Mirror and the Light – details the crumbling of Cromwell’s place, and his struggling with the inevitability of the axe.

Anyway, these are my choices for the library. Another day, and each might well have been different!

DECADES WILL RETURN

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