Category: 6Degrees

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.

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This month’s starting book is Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life by Gail Sheehy. First published in 1976, it’s a self-help book I’ve never heard of let alone read. Judging by the blurb, it’s not one I’m likely to read either.

Picking up the theme of adult life crises, my first link is to Train Man by Andrew Mulligan in which Martin’s meticulously prepared plan to throw himself under a high-speed train is disrupted by a twelve-minute delay.

A railway station is also the starting point for The Ends of the Earth by Abbie Greaves. It’s the story of Mary O’Connor who, for the past seven years, has waited every evening at Ealing Broadway station with a sign which says: ‘Come Home Jim’.

A missing person is also the focus of End of Summer by Anders de la Motte in which a woman returns home to try to solve the mystery of her brother’s disappearance many years before.

Moving from summer to the opposite season, A Winter Grave by Peter May is a futuristic thriller set in Scotland.

Taking the previous author’s surname provides me with a link to Only May by Carol Lovekin whose main character – May – is a young girl who can’t be fooled by a lie.

Staying with untruths, Liar by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen concerns the unforeseen consequences of a lie told by a teenage girl.

My chain has taken me from the predictable to the unpredictable. Where did your chain take you?

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.

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This month’s starting book is Trust by Hernan Diaz which was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2022. As is often the case, it’s a book I haven’t read but I know it’s set in 1920s New York.

Also set in New York, but at the end of the 18th century, is historical crime mystery The Devil’s Half-Mile by Paddy Hirsch.

Staying in New York, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith is the story of the Nolans, a family of first-generation immigrants to the United States.

Colm Tóibín, the author of the 2009 novel Brooklyn, also wrote House of Names which is a retelling of the myth of Clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon and mother of Orestes, Electra and Iphigenia.

The Trojan War is also the setting for The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker which focuses on Briseis, wife of King Mynes, who is captured and awarded to the warrior Achilles as a prize of war.

Achilles is also the name of a character in The Echo Chamber by John Boyne which also features a well-travelled tortoise named after a Ukranian folk hero. The book’s epigraph includes a quote by Umberto Eco, best known for The Name of the Rose but also the author of How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays.

My chain has taken me on a journey from New York to a satirical look at modern day living.  Where did your chain take you?