6Degrees – Page 20 – What Cathy Read Next…

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 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?

background book stack books close up — Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Pexels.com

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

This month’s starting book is Beach Read by Emily Henry. As is often the case, it’s a book I haven’t read or, to be honest, am likely to read as it doesn’t really sound my thing.

But picking up on the ‘beach’ element of the title, my first link is to The Beach at Doonshean by Penny Feeny. It tells the story of Julia, a widow, who decides to return to a wild corner of Ireland, the site of a tragedy thirty years before, in an attempt to lay to rest the past.

The Truth Must Dazzle Gradually by Helen Cullen is also set in a remote part of Ireland. It tells the story of married couple, Maeve and Murtagh, and the impact a tragic event has on the members of their family.

Strains in a relationship form the basis for The House of Birds by Morgan McCarthy. Oliver’s girlfriend, Kate, inherits a derelict house. She wants to strip it, sell it and move on but the house holds a mysterious allure for Oliver, as well as a secret.

There’s another house with a mystery associated with it in The House at Helygen by Victoria Hawthorne. When Henry Fox is found dead in his ancestral home in Cornwall the police rule it a suicide but his pregnant wife, Josie, believes it was murder and embarks on a quest to learn the truth.

Staying in Cornwall and the theme of family secrets, in The Birdcage by Eve Chase three half-sisters gather at Rock Point, the Cornish cliff house where they once sat for their father’s most celebrated painting, ‘Girls with Birdcage’.

A painting is also the focus of Molly & The Captain by Anthony Quinn. The portrait of his two daughters – a painting known as ‘Molly & The Captain’ – by famous artist William Merrymount forms a connection between the lives of characters separated by over three hundred years.

My chain has taken me on a journey from a beach house on Lake Michigan to Georgian Bath. Where did your chain take you?