One book leads to another. Six Degrees of Separation comes via Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Readers start with the same book and see where their connections take them by the first Saturday of the month. The starting point for January 2021 is Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (2020).
Follow the hashtag #6degrees on Twitter to check out the chains!
Hamnet just arrived yesterday so I’ve really only just got started but it’s a page-turner. The title character is based on Shakespeare’s son. So the link to Michael Cunningham’s The Hours (1998) is historical characters used in fiction.
Cunningham draws on the life and work of Virginia Woolf. There’s a suicide in Mrs. Dalloway and, of course, Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse in 1941.
Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir Fun Home (2006) tells her family story and the suggestion is that her father killed himself by stepping in front of a bread truck. He was the director of a funeral parlor that his children call Fun Home. He was also an English teacher.
One of the most notable teachers in all fiction is the character in Muriel Spark’s title The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), made immortal of course by the incomparable Maggie Smith. “Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life.”
Jessica Vye is very impressionable. She the narrator of Jane Gardam’s wonderful A Long Way From Verona (1971). “I ought to tell you at the beginning that I am not quite normal having had a violent experience at the age of nine.”
The experience has to do with an encounter with an author. This book is often shelved as “young adult”. Ignore the label. This is just a great story of childhood and growing up set in wartime Yorkshire.
Gardam’s Yorkshire is a long way from Verona and Verona is in Italy and Mongibello is the fictitious Italian setting of much of the action of The Talented Mr. Ripley (Patricia Highsmith 1955).
Ripley’s trip to Italy has been paid for and his job is to persuade Dickie Greenleaf to return to New York and the family business. Dickie, however, is enjoying being a wealthy playboy and Ripley falls in love with that lifestyle. The book is about how he acquires – and then seeks to maintain – that status. Ripley is indeed the murdering sociopath you hate to like.
Ripley takes on another’s identity and there’s death on the water. The Water Dancer – Ta-Nehisi Coates’ 2019 novel of the Underground Railroad – has much to do with identity and there’s also drowning and death on the water. I wrote about The Water Dancer here.
So from Stratford upon Avon in the late 16th century:
Degree One:: England in the early 1920s; Los Angeles, California in the late 1940s; and, finally, New York City’s West Village in the 1990s.
Degree Two: Beech Creek, Pennsylvania in the 1960s and 1970s
Degree Three: 1930s Edinburgh
Degree Four: 1940s Yorkshire
Degree Five: 1950s Italy
Degree Six: 19th century pre-Civil War Virginia and Philadelphia.
I live this chain, because it has given me some new boks to check out.
Good job! The Hours & Miss Brodie!!
You really have covered a lot of places and time settings – a lovely chain!
A great chain. I’m a Gardam fan but haven’t come across this one. It’ll go on the TBR.
I loved reading your chain of links and am now going to try to find a copy of the Jane Gardam book as I haven’t come across it before but I have very much enjoyed other books she’s written. Thank you 😊
It’s often consigned to the YA section where it probably languishes. It was Gardam’s first novel and feels like it’s somewhat autobiographical. Terrific book from an excellent writer
I enjoy reading these chains from various blogs. While I don’t participate myself, I do learn of books I never would have run across otherwise. When I hear about a book three times I know I need to read it. Now I must find “Hamnet,” since it passed the test.
I’m really enjoying it.
Ooh, wonderful. I’ve not read the books, but I have seen the movie versions for Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Talented Mr. Ripley and The Hours. I really like how you’ve drawn the chain through those, so much history, each a different period of its own. And I’ve read Bechdel’s other work (Are You My Mother), and of course, sometimes use her Bechdel Test on books. It’s the first #6Degrees for 2021, happy new year!
~Lex
~Six Degrees Post @Lexlingua
Those were three really good films that did justice to the novels. And the Bechdel test is always useful! And a very happy new year to you too.
Excellent chain! I loved the Hours and Mrs Dalloway, I must admit the latter took 2-3 attempts before I finally managed to get through. But it was worth the effort!
Very clever chain! I’ve seen the movie of The Talented Mr Ripley, but never read the book. The Water Dancer is on my TBR though.
My chain is very boring this month. I just went with first letter, first title.
Happy New Year!
Elza Reads
Not boring at all! You do yourself an injustice. The key thing is to get it done and you did!
Great chain! I haven’t read Fun Home yet but my sisters and nieces all saw the musical in NYC and read it, probably in that order. I’ve read The Hours and Mrs. Dalloway but they have not become favorites.
I remember receiving A Long Way from Verona for Christmas when it was new. It took me a while to appreciate Jane Gardam but then I became a big fan.
The blue Hamnet cover is more attractive than the somber one used in the US. Someone asked me what my favorite cover was of the year! I did #6Degrees instead of my Best Of post so I still need to think about this!
I’m a fan of Gardam too. And Verona has to be my favorite. I agree on the cover issue. The edition I am reading has the US cover which is certainly attractive and appealing but not as striking as the Cally Conway artwork for the UK edition.
What an interesting journey, Josie. I like your thinking.
Really great chain… interesting links here. I don’t know any of these books but I have heard of The Water Dancer. Here’s mine https://tcl-bookreviews.com/2021/01/02/6degrees-of-separation-for-january-2-2021/
Sorry, I meant to say that I don’t know only a couple of these books.
I really enjoyed all of the books on this list and some are among my all-time favorites.
The Water Dancer is excellent. I wrote about it here: https://www.josieholford.com/harriet-tubman/
It may not be the greatest novel but it’s an extraordinary story and Ta-Nehisi Coates is a terrific writer.
I loved your list btw.
Such an elegant chain 🙂
I only read Fun Home last year but it left an impression (and I’m thinking it might make an excellent starting book for future chains….)
Thanks. I think “Fun Home “would make for an excellent starting point. So many potential directions and connections. Rich and yeasty both!
Great chain, Josie! (I admit I have a soft spot for anything that includes reference to The Talented Mr. Ripley.)
All the Ripley books are an enduring guilty pleasure! Thank you, Patricia Highsmith,