Tag: 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 Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller, a book I read many years ago before I started my blog. It involves the unsettling relationship that forms between Sheba, a young pottery teacher, and her colleague, Barbara, an elderly history teacher at the same school.

Young Women by Jessica Moor also involves a connection that forms between two women: Emily, whose life is in a rut, and Tamsin, an actress who lives a much more exciting lifestyle. As more is revealed about their pasts the situation becomes increasingly complicated.

A similar dynamic is at the heart of Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner. Helen, finally pregnant after years of tragedy, meets Rachel at her first antenatal class.  What starts out as an unlikely friendship formed entirely by chance turns into something more sinister as Rachel’s true motive – the uncovering of a secret – becomes apparent.

All the Broken Places by John Boyne also involves a secret, this one long-buried and involving horrific actions carried out by the Nazi regime during World War 2. Ninety-year-old Gretel has spent her life hiding her connection to those events, and her feelings of guilt and complicity.

The events leading up to World War 2 form the backdrop to People Like Us by Louise Fein. It is the story of Hetty Heinrich – the ‘perfect German child’ – whose father is an SS officer and brother is in the Luftwaffe. Gradually Hetty begins to question Nazi dogma, especially when she witnesses the violent events of ‘Kristallnacht’.

The opening chapter of The Women of the Castle by Jessica Shattuck takes place on exactly the same night. The book tells the story of three women, the wives of men involved in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler. With their husbands gone they must survive alone.

The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave features a small Norwegian community in which all the menfolk have been wiped out in a storm, leaving the women to fend for themselves.

My very female dominated chain has taken me from suburban classroom to 17th century Norway. 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 we’re starting with the book that finished our chain last month, so in my case that’s The Quiet People by Paul Cleave.  In the book a husband and wife crime-writing team find themselves suspected of involvement in the disappearance of their young son.

A real life husband and wife team, writing under the pen name Ambrose Parry, is behind the Raven, Fisher and Simpson historical mystery series, the latest instalment of which is A Corruption of Blood.  In the book, Sarah Fisher has her sights set on becoming a doctor but just about everyone seems intent on putting obstacles in her way.

In That Bonesetter Woman by Frances Quinn, Endurance ‘Durie’ Proudfoot has a similar ambition – to follow her father and grandfather into the family business of bonesetting. However it’s not thought a suitable job for a woman.

Another woman whose medical ambitions seem doomed to failure features in The Physician’s Daughter by Martha Conway. Vita Tenney has harboured a lifelong dream of becoming a country doctor like her father but he believes marriage and motherhood should be her chosen path.

The Language of Food by Annabel Abbs features another woman whose ambitions fall outside expected social norms. Eliza Acton dreams of seeing her poetry in print but when she takes a manuscript to a publisher, she’s told that ‘poetry is not the business of a lady’ and instead is asked to write a cookery book. As it turns out, it’s a recipe for success.

A woman who defied society’s expectations in order to achieve success in her chosen career is the subject of The Improbable Adventures of Miss Emily Soldene by Helen Batten. Subtitled ‘Actress, Writer and Rebel Victorian’, the book tells the true story of a woman who rose from humble beginnings to become a leading lady of the London stage and an impresario with her own opera company.

Staying with the theatre, in the historical novel The Illumination of Ursula Flight by Anne-Marie Crowhurst the eponymous heorine embarks on a  quest to become a playwright in Restoration England but finds her ambitions thwarted when she is promised in marriage to a rich nobleman.

My chain has taken me from present day New Zealand to Restoration England. Where did your chain take you?