#6Degrees of Separation From Western Lane to The Well of Saint Nobody

It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for 6 Degrees of Separation!

Here’s how it works: a book is chosen as a starting point by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate says: Books can be linked in obvious ways – for example, books by the same authors, from the same era or genre, or books with similar themes or settings. Or, you may choose to link them in more personal or esoteric ways: books you read on the same holiday, books given to you by a particular friend, books that remind you of a particular time in your life, or books you read for an online challenge. Join in by posting your own six degrees chain on your blog and adding the link in the comments section of each month’s post.   You can also check out links to posts on Twitter using the hashtag #6Degrees.

This month’s starting book is Western Lane by Chetna Maroo which is on the shortlist for the Booker Prize 2023, the winner of which will be announced on 26th November. As usual, it’s a book I haven’t read but the publishers describe it as ‘a novel about grief, sisterhood, and a young athlete‘s struggle to transcend herself’.

I’m going to take a very literal route for my first link – the word ‘western’. As it happens, The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey was also shortlisted for a literary prize, in this case the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2019.

The eventual winner of the prize was The Long Take by Robin Robertson which tells the story – in a combination of prose and free verse – of a Canadian war veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder who feels unable to return and instead walks the streets of Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York.

In Lillian Boxfish Takes a Walk by Kathleen Rooney, 85-year-old Lillian wanders through 1980s Manhattan on New Year’s Eve recalling her eventful life and encountering people from different walks of life. The character of Lillian is inspired by a real person – Margaret Fishback – who, like her fictional counterpart, was an advertising copywriter. In fact Fishback was the highest-paid female copywriter in the world in the 1930s.

The death of an advertising executive is the starting point for Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers, the eighth book in her series featuring aristocratic detective, Lord Peter Wimsey.

An advertisement in a local paper – “A murder is announced and will take place on Friday, October 29th, at Little Paddocks at 6.30 p.m.” – is the starting point for a crime novel featuring another famous fictional detective. In A Murder Is Announced by Agatha Christie, Jane Marple investigates what seems at first to be a hoax but which turns deadly serious.

An advertisement in a local shop in a small village in West Cork – “Wanted. Housekeeper.” – features in The Well of Saint Nobody by Neil Jordan. Tara answers the advertisement placed by internationally renowned pianist William Barrow, a man it turns out she has met three times before. The encounters have changed her life but he recalls nothing of them.

My chain has taken me from London to Ireland via New York.  Where did your chain take you this month?