Dot Granville’s Desert Island Books

Eight ‘desert island’ books seemed a daunting task and it has been hard, but for all the right reasons. It has been such a pleasure to think about books that I hadn’t thought about in years and that have now come back to me. But how to choose? I decided to keep my choices mainly, but not exclusively, to ones I had read in the past 30 years and where I had an emotional response. Some of my choices will be familiar to you, while hopefully some may not, or they might even be ones that you just haven’t got round to reading. In the first instance, I have included a few books I have enjoyed in the past year. I also scanned my bookcase for the ‘keepers’, the ones I don’t lend out, so have included some of those. After that, the books seemed to take on a life of their own popping into my head like old friends, and they all wanted to be included. So be assured, the books I have listed are there after a great deal of thought. 

Possession by A. S. Byatt (Chatto and Windus: 1990)

I loved this book when I first read it and it remains one that I cherish. I would imagine it is familiar to most members of the Suffolk Book League, as A. S Byatt won the Booker Prize with it. Set in (what was then) the present day and the Victorian era, two modern day academics research the lives and love between two Victorian poets. It turns out to have links with one of the present day researchers. I will admit I did tend to gloss over most of the ‘Victorian’ poetry, but perhaps if I read it again and included the poetry I would add another dimension, understanding and enjoyment? 

The Things That We Lost by Jyoti Patel (Penguin: 2024)

Jyoti won the Merky Books New Writers’ Prize in 2021 for this book. Having heard Joyti speak about the book, and how it came to be written with feedback from her tutors and students from UEA’s MA Creative writing Prose Fiction, I had to read it. I was not disappointed. Her original aim was to write it just from the point of view of Nik, who is 18. But she was encouraged to bring in the perspective of his mother Avani. This is a British Indian family living in Harrow. Nik’s white English father died before he was born, and the novel is very much concerned with Nik trying to find out more about the circumstances of his death. Perhaps it is because I am entering my 70th decade, but the character I most resonated with was his grandfather, who had a great influence on Nik. A wonderful, tender and poignant book about families, secrets, grief and love.

The Birds and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier (Penguin: 1963)

The original short story ‘The Birds’ is much bleaker, and I think far scarier, than the famous Hitchcock film. She was a wonderful story teller and set this in her beloved Cornwall at the end of the Second World War. It is a prescient tale of nature taking revenge on humankind, as we abuse our planet. The other stories are ‘Monte Verita’; ‘The Little Photographer’, ‘The Apple Tree’, ‘The Old Man’ and ‘Kiss Me Again Stranger’. All are beautifully written and unsettling in that inimitable Du Maurier style. 

Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (Doubleday: 2022)

I was surprised that I enjoyed this book so much, as I don’t usually like books set in USA, nor am I in anyway scientific. I loved the off-beat humour although it was also at times heartbreaking. The main protagonist is Elizabeth Zott, a chemist who suffers sexual assault and subsequent discrimination from the scientific world and by accident ends up as the popular presenter of a cookery programme, which she interprets and delivers through her knowledge of chemistry. There is much more to the story and I will admit part of my appreciation was the sympathetic and insightful way she portrayed Elizabeth’s dog, ‘Six-Thirty’, who seemed much more intelligent and perceptive than most humans.

The Road  by Cormac McCarthy (Alfred A. Knopf: 2026) 

An American author and another prize winner, this time the Pulitzer Prize. This is definitely not a humorous book. It is a post apocalyptic novel which portrays the desperate and gruelling journey of a father and his young son, after a cataclysm that has destroyed industrial civilization, resulting in few survivors and the breakdown of society. In one sense it is a hard read, as there are many distressing and violent events, but it is so beautifully written that the prose is more like poetry. His punctuation is sparse and his vocabulary is simple and restrained. I read this book as part of a book group. I still don’t know how I managed to read it but I am glad I did, as it is a masterpiece. 

Erewhon by Samuel Butler (first published 1872, my copy is Penguin English Library: 1976) 

Back to the Victorian era, with a book written and published at that time. I read this when I was in my twenties (so over 30 years ago but not in the Victorian era) and as one of my ‘keepers’ it has travelled with me. I came to this book via the dystopian novels: Huxley’s Brave New World, Orwell’s 1984 and Zamyatin’s We. Erewhon, an anagram of ‘nowhere’, is a Utopian novel set in a fictional country and is a satire on the norms, beliefs and institutions of Victorian England. Butler was inspired to write it after reading Darwin’s The Origin of Species. I wonder if the book will have a resurgence, given that three chapters, ‘The Book of the Machines’, deal with the danger of over-reliance on machines, and machines taking control. Sounding familiar? 

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon (Weidenfeld & Nicholson & Orion Books: 2021)

I did wonder whether it is too obvious to include a world-wide bestseller? However, it does fit my criteria of being a book I had such an emotional response to. How could any reader and lover of books not be moved by the ‘Cemetery of Forgotten Books’, a secret library housing rare and banned books? In particular a book called The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax, a novelist who has gone missing along with every copy of this book except one. It is a long novel with many sub-plots. It is atmospheric and features a mystery and doomed love. 

The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable (Bloomsbury 2024)

A more recent book, and another that I found very emotional. A fascinating and vivid tale set in the Venice of the late 17^th century, and a tale based on fact. Vivaldi was the violin director of an orphanage in Venice, the Ospedale della Pieta. This was run by nuns and unwanted girl babies would be posted through a hole in the wall. They were given a musical education and made to do hard domestic work. The more talented ones joined Vivaldi’s highly regarded Figlie di Coro orchestra, including our heroine Anna Maria, a prodigy at the age of eight, who eventually threatens to eclipse Vivaldi. Anna Maria is talented, ambitious and outspoken and certainly does not fulfil the ideal of womanhood at the time. A well-researched book that conveys the passion of good music. 

Dot Granville