6Degrees – Page 36 – 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 Normal People by Sally Rooney which I’ve not read (I must be the last person in the world not to have done so) but have heard a lot about, not least because of the recent TV adaptation. It’s about two people who meet at Trinity College Dublin.

The mention of Dublin takes me to Shadowplay by Joseph O’Connor, shortlisted for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2020. The novel is a fictionalized account of the life of Bram Stoker, author of Dracula. Along the way Stoker encounters a number of famous figures, including Oscar Wilde whom he first meets in Dublin.

Also set in the Irish capital is The Secrets of Primrose Square by Claudia Carroll. The book takes the reader inside the lives of a number of characters living in a small square in Dublin.

Another book which focuses on a community living in close proximity is These Dividing Walls by Fran Cooper. The setting this time is a Paris apartment block during a long hot summer of unrest in the capital.

Unsurprisingly, Paris is also the location for Paris Echo by Sebastian Faulks. In the book, one of the main characters has returned to the French capital to research the experiences of women who lived through the Nazi occupation of Paris during World War 2.

A Countess in Limbo: Diaries in War & Revolution by Olga Hendrikoff chronicles her experiences of living in Russia at the outbreak of World War 1 and in occupied Paris during World War 2.

Finally, Chanel’s Riviera by Anne de Courcy also depicts the experiences of people in World War 2 but this time those, such as designer Coco Chanel, whose previously privileged and glamorous lives were transformed in an instant following the fall of France.

Paris and Dublin have been our locations this time. Where did your chain take you this month?

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

This month’s starting book is The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a book I’ve heard of but not read. I know it involves a father and son walking alone through a burned, post-apocalyptic America. That seems way too sombre a route to follow (if you pardon the pun) in the current circumstances, so I’m taking a more literal approach for my first link.

A road features prominently in A Long Way From Home by Peter Carey, which was shortlisted for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2019. The book features a couple who take part in the Redex trial, a motor race around Australia. Along the way, their navigator learns more about his aboriginal roots.

A growing awareness of the shocking treatment of aboriginal people also features in The Philosopher’s Daughters by Alison Booth in which two sisters, Harriet and Sarah, travel to the Australian outback at the end of the 19th century.

My Sister, Myself by Jill Treseder also involves two sisters, Katalin and Marika, who escape from Budapest to London in 1956 as Russian tanks brutally crush the revolution against the Communist regime.

Burning Cold by Lisa Lieberman is also set in Hungary in 1956. It involves the search by brother and sister, Gray and Cara, for a newly discovered member of their family – another brother, Zoltán – who has disappeared in the middle of the Hungarian revolution.

The disappearance of a family member is also the focus of The Missing Girl by Jenny Quintana. The book involves Anna’s search for the truth about what happened to her older sister, who went missing as a teenager thirty years before.

Finally, in The Storyteller by Pierre Jarawan, Samir leaves the safety of his family’s adopted home in Germany to travel to Beirut in an attempt to find his missing father. His only clues are an old photo and the bedtime stories his father used to tell him.

Where did your chain take you this month?