#6Degrees of Separation – A book chain from Intermezzo by Sally Rooney to Killing Thatcher by Rory Carroll

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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.

IntermezzoThis month’s starting book is Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. Can there be anyone in the book world who hasn’t seen the publicity blitz for this, the author’s second novel?

Links from each title in the chain will take you to my review or the book description on Goodreads.

Intermezzo is a musical term applied to a short piece serving as an interlude between two larger sections of a work. Staying with the musical theme, a key (excuse the pun) – or even a major (excuse another pun) – character in The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable is violinist and composer Antonio Vivaldi, probably most famous for The Four Seasons. The book suggests he had a little a help with it…

Continuing the musical theme, Notes of Change by Susan Grossey is the seventh in her historical crime series featuring Constable Sam Plank. (Have a bonus link to the previous author’s surname.) The plot of Notes of Change centres on the ‘uttering’ [the putting into circulation] of counterfeit notes, a capital offence at the time.

Another illegal practice associated with currency is central to The Gallows Pole by Benjamin Myers, which won The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2018.  Set in Calderdale, West Yorkshire in the 1760s it tells the story of a gang known as the ‘Cragg Vale Coiners’. ‘Coining’ was the illegal practice of removing shavings of gold from the edges of genuine coins, milling the edges of those coins smooth again and then using the shavings to produce counterfeit coins. Like uttering, it was a capital offence.

Linda Green, the author of In Little Stars, taught creative writing classes for the Workers Educational Association in Calderdale, the setting for The Gallows Pole. In Little Stars involves two women whose families are on different sides of the bitter Brexit debate. Unbeknown to them, their children (echoing Romeo and Juliet) are destined to fall in love.

Another novel which tackles the divisions caused by the Brexit referendum is Middle England by Jonathan Coe. One of Coe’s previous novels, What A Carve-Up!, is a satire on life under the government of Margaret Thatcher.

Killing Thatcher by Rory Carroll describes the background to the IRA’s attempt to assassinate Margaret Thatcher during the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton in 1984, and the manhunt for the bomber that followed.

My chain has taken me from a musical interlude to political division. Where did your chain take you this month?

 

Book Review – Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd

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About the Book

Book cover of Gabriel's Moon by William Boyd

Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing the changing landscapes in the grip of the Cold War. When he’s offered the chance to interview a political figure, his ambition leads him unwittingly into a web of duplicities and betrayals.

As Gabriel’s reluctant initiation takes hold, he is drawn deeper into the shadows. Falling under the spell of Faith Green, an enigmatic and ruthless MI6 handler, he becomes ‘her spy’, unable to resist her demands. But amid the peril, paranoia and passion consuming Gabriel’s new covert life, it will be the revelations closer to home that change the rest of his story. . .

Format: Hardcover (320 pages) Publisher: Viking
Publication date: 5th September 2024 Genre: Historical Fiction

Find Gabriel’s Moon on Goodreads

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My Review

Gabriel Dax (a name that could surely have come out of a James Bond novel) is a drifter who makes his living as a travel writer. It’s an occupation that suits his unwillingness to get tied down and it’s brought him moderate success, enough at least to keep him in Scotch. He’s also been able to combine it with doing small clandestine errands for his elder brother, Sefton, who does something connected with the security services, although Gabriel doesn’t know quite what.

There are three women in Gabriel’s life. The first is his girlfriend, Lorraine, whom he finds sexually exciting but is less keen for their relationship to become a long-term commitment than she is.

The second woman is his therapist, Dr Katrina Haas, whom he consults because of his insomnia and the nightmares about the fire that killed his mother when he was six years old. His memories of that night differ from the official verdict about the cause of the fire – a moon-shaped nightlight in his bedroom (the ‘Gabriel’s moon’ of the book’s title.) Dr Haas convinces him the key to curing his insomnia is to discover the truth of what happened that night which enables the author to introduce a secondary storyline.

The third and, as it turns out, the most influential woman in his life is the mysterious Faith Green who draws Gabriel deeper and deeper into a web of intrigue. She knows just how to play him, starting from their very first encounter. ‘Was it that she understood him better than he understood himself? Maybe.’ Gabriel finds her alluring but it’s only very much later he realises how deep he’s become immersed in a dangerous conspiracy through his attraction to her. ‘Perhaps that was how she managed to make him do her bidding, keeping him wandering in the special labyrinth she’d constructed, baffling and tormenting – and where there were no exits’. The author creates a brilliantly intriguing relationship between Gabriel and Faith. At one point, he describes her as ‘the sorceress, the puppet-mistress of his life’. Later she’s both ‘his tormentor and his solace’.

Gabriel may consider himself a good liar – the essential gift of a good spy – but it turns out he’s an amateur compared with those around him, even people he believed he could trust. And situations in which he considers himself safe are often fraught with hidden dangers.

For lovers of espionage thrillers there’s plenty of spycraft: counter-surveillence techniques, coded messages, safe houses and clandestine meetings. You really get a sense of the Cold War era, a time of global tension epitomised by the Cuban missile crisis. And the various locations to which Gabriel travels, such as pre-unification Germany, are skilfully evoked. I also loved the author gives us an opaque ending and the neat little conceit at the end.

Gabriel’s Moon is an absorbing and assured spy thriller, highly recommended if you’re a fan of the novels of John le Carre.

I received an advance reader copy courtesy of Viking via NetGalley.

In three words: Suspenseful, intriguing, engrossing
Try something similar: The Scarlet Papers by Matthew Richardson

About the Author

William Boyd was born in 1952 in Accra, Ghana, and grew up there and in Nigeria. He is the author of sixteen highly acclaimed, bestselling novels and five collections of stories. Any Human Heart was longlisted for the Booker Prize and adapted into a TV series with Channel 4. In 2005, Boyd was awarded the CBE.

He is married and divides his time between London and south-west France. (Photo: Goodreads author page/Bio: Publisher author page)

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