Here’s how it works: on the first Saturday of every month, 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 Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin. Click on the title to read the book description on Goodreads or my review, as appropriate.
Tales of the City is not a book I’ve read, although I’ve heard a lot about it. It follows the lives of a diverse group of colourful characters in 1970s San Francisco. My literary brain made a connection to a book I read (and loved) last year – These Dividing Walls by debut novelist Fran Cooper. OK, it’s set in Paris not San Francisco but it tells the stories of the occupants of an apartment block during one long, hot Parisian summer. ‘Within its walls, people talk and kiss, laugh and cry; some are glad to sit alone, while others wish they did not. A woman with silver-blonde hair opens her bookshop downstairs, an old man feeds the sparrows on his windowsill, and a young mother wills the morning to hold itself at bay. Though each of their walls touches someone else’s, the neighbours they pass in the courtyard remain strangers.’
In my review of These Dividing Walls, I remarked that I felt a bit like James Stewart’s character in Hitchcock’s Rear Window, eavesdropping on the residents of the neighbouring apartments. Therefore, it was an easy hop to my next connection, namely the short story on which the film was based – Rear Window by Cornell Woolrich. In Woolrich’s short story, Hal Jeffries, trapped in his apartment because of a broken leg, takes to watching his neighbours through his rear window, and becomes certain that one of those neighbours is a murderer.
Of course, Hitchcock made many famous films based on books and, being something of a John Buchan fanatic, I simply had to go for The Thirty-Nine Steps as my next connection. Its hero, Richard Hannay, is drawn into the investigation of an assassination plot and towards the end of the book the action moves to a cliff-top house in the fictional seaside town of Bradgate. Bradgate stands in for Broadstairs in Kent where Buchan was holidaying with his wife, Susan, and their family in August 1914 and where he started writing the book. Buchan’s biographer, Janet Adam Smith, writes: ‘They took lodgings at St Ronan’s, Stone Road; not far away were Susan’s cousin Mrs Arthur Grenfell and her children, in a house with steps down to a private beach.’
Buchan was not the only author fond of Broadstairs. Charles Dickens was a frequent visitor in the 1850s and 1860s staying at Fort House, a house above the harbour, later dubbed and still known locally as Bleak House. It was while staying at Fort House that Dickens wrote David Copperfield. However, I’m going to focus on the real life exploits of Charles Dickens rather than his fictional creations. In Catherine Dickens: Outside the Magic Circle, Heera Datta tells the troubling story of Charles Dickens’ wife, Catherine, whom he separated from after twenty-two years of marriage and having ten children together when he became enamoured of a young actress.
Well, talk of magic circles makes me think of sleight of hand, clever tricks and spellbinding illusions. There are plenty of those in Illusion by Stephanie Elmas, an engaging mix of atmospheric period detail, intricate mystery and sprinkling of magic set in 1870s London.
In my review of Illusion, I noted that the main character, Walter Balanchine, is like a young Sherlock Holmes with his acute powers of observation, mastery of disguise and gift for turning up at exactly the right moment. So my last connection really has to be to Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective. To echo the theme of our starting point – ‘a diverse group of colourful characters’ – I’m going for The Sign of Four. Not only does it feature exotic locations, a complex mystery and some amazing deductions by Holmes but it has a marvellous cast of characters, including the Sholto brothers, Jonathan Small and his singular accomplice. It also features an always to be welcomed appearance by the Baker Street Irregulars.
This month we’ve travelled from lively San Francisco, to sweltering Paris, to a sleepy seaside report and the dark and dangerous streets of Victorian London.
Next month’s starting book is Atonement by Ian McEwan.
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