#6Degrees of Separation – A book chain from The Correspondent to The Shout

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 #6Degrees 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 X using the hashtag #6Degrees.

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This month’s starting book is The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. It’s a book I haven’t read but I know it’s an epistolary novel and has been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Links from each title will take you to my review or the book description on Goodreads.

In Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson, a Danish professor and an English farmer’s wife begin a correspondence about an exhibit in Silkeborg Museum, the mummified corpse of a 5th century man known as the Tollund Man, found preserved in a peat bog.

Things in Jars might be something you’d find in a museum but in this case it’s the title of Jess Kidd’s 2019 novel in which a 19th century female detective searches for a stolen child, entering a world of fanatical anatomists, crooked surgeons and mercenary showmen.

In The Small Museum by Jody Cooksley, newly married Madeleine Brewster makes some unsavoury discoveries about her husband’s collection of anatomical curiosities.

From small museums to small people. In The Smallest Man by Frances Quinn, Nat Davy is taken off to London to become court dwarf to Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I. He makes his first entrance hidden in a pie which could have taken me in a whole different direction.

However sticking with small people, in The Tin Drum by Günter Grass Oskar Matzerath decides at the age of three that he will stop growing. As well as the toy drum that is his constant companion he possesses a piercing scream capable of shattering glass.

‘The Shout’ is a short story by Robert Graves featuring a character with supernatural powers which includes the ability to produce a shout that can kill all those around him. (It was made into a film in 1978 starring Alan Bates, John Hurt and Susannah York.)

It’s turned out to be rather a ghoulish chain this month involving mummified corpses and homicidal maniacs. Where did your chain take you? Somewhere more pleasant, I hope.