I love doing Six Degrees of Separation, a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. Each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the other books on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.
This month the chain begins with The Arsonist by Chloe Hooper, a book I haven’t read. In fact, it isn’t to be published in the UK until May 2019. It’s non fiction about the scorching February day in 2009 that became known as Black Saturday, when a man lit two fires in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley. It is also the story of fire in Australia, and of a community that owed its existence to that very element.
My chain begins by using the word ‘Saturday‘ as the link. It’s Saturday by Ian McEwan which follows one day in the life of a neurosurgeon, Henry Perowne as his life takes an unexpected turn of events. A minor car accident brings him into confrontation with Baxter, a man on the edge of violence.
Also following the life of one person in one day is Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, in which Clarissa Dalloway is preoccupied with the last-minute details of party she is to give that evening. Elsewhere in London, Septimus Smith is suffering from shell-shock and on the brink of madness. Mrs Dalloway first appeared in Virginia Woolf’s short story, Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street published in The Dial magazine in 1923.
The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie was also published in 1923, her second book featuring Hercule Poirot. She had the idea for the book after reading newspaper reports of a murder in France, in which masked men had broken into a house, killed the owner and left his wife bound and gagged. From these facts she then invented her plot, setting the book in the fictional French town of Merlinville next to a golf course and overlooking the sea.
The Chalk Circle Man by Fred Vargas is also set in France, her first book featuring Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg. Strange blue chalk circles start appearing on the pavements of Paris and increasingly bizarre objects are found within them, including the body of a woman with her throat savagely cut. Like Poirot, Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg is a detective who works on intuition.
Vargas’s books are full of eccentric characters as is Titus Groan by Mervyn Peake, the first of his Gormenghast books. It begins with the birth of Titus, soon to be the 77th Earl of Gormenghast. His father, Lord Sepulchrave has endured despair and then madness after his beloved library was burnt down and Steerpike, a disrespectful youth, has clawed his way out of the castle’s kitchen to a position of some power, by manipulation and deceit.
This brings me full circle to a book about fire, or rather the aftermath of a fire in The Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor as people set about rebuilding London after the Great Fire had reduced a large part of it to ashes and rubble. Interwoven with a murder mystery, and the hunt for the regicides responsible for the execution of Charles I, it brings home the reality of being homeless – a refugee in your own country. I could hear the noise of the fire, smell the smoke and almost feel the heat and the pain of the victims of the fire.
So, the last link in my chain takes it back to the start of the chain, but to the results of a fire started by accident rather than arson. This month my chain has travelled from Australia to the United Kingdom, via France and the fantasy world of Gormenghast, connected by names, dates of publication, settings and eccentric characters.
Next month (April 6, 2019), the chain will begin with Ali Smith’s award-winning novel, How to be Both.
What a super chain – I love the circle! and I also really like the sound of The Ashes of London. 🙂
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Thanks, Liz – it was satisfying to make the chain a circle! And The Ashes of London is very good.
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Great links Margaret. I particularly love your link to McEwan’s Saturday, and then to Mrs Dalloway. Excellent. My first link was more obvious – to another book inspired by major fires in Australia (but, short stories.)
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Thanks! I was very tempted to make all the links to ‘fire’.
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Great links and book choices. Saturday is another of the few McEwans I have yet to read, and inclusion of Vargas reminds me that I have several of hers on my shelves.
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Thanks, Annabel. I hope you enjoy Saturday – I liked it more than a lot of other people!
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How very clever, Margaret! Not only is each link related, but the first and last titles are linked, too. Impressive! And you’ve reminded me of a few books I’d like to read…
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Thanks, Margot – I struggled a bit to start the chain but then it just flowed! 🙂
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Neat that you end up with fire! I have devoured Fred Vargas’s 2 series, and am looking forward to next book with Adamsberg. My chain is here, with some unusual result: https://wordsandpeace.com/2019/03/02/six-degrees-of-separation-from-hooper-to-hooper/
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I was pleased to be able to link back to the starting book!
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Great collection of authors you managed to include in your chain!
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ethat was clever to get from arson to ashes……. Saturday is the book that turned me of McEwan
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Thanks – I liked finishing with a book to complete the circle 🙂
I know a lot of people criticised Saturday – I’m probably in the minority in liking it. I’ve found his books very variable, Sweet Tooth for example was disappointing, better than Solar but not as good as Atonement.
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I liked Saturday too Margaret, and can’t quite understand those who don’t. I have Sweet tooth, but haven’t read it. While Solar has a couple of funny scenes, overall it is low if not bottom of my McEwan list, and I’ve read most of them from Enduring love on. Enduring love is one of my favourites, along with Atonement (of course!)
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Enduring Love was the first of his I read – I loved it. I think it could be time for a re-read.
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I loved it too.
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I’m always impressed when anyone manages to turn the chain into a circle! I haven’t read Saturday for some reason, though I’ve read most of his other books. But I have read the Agatha Christie of course! And I’ll preserve a tactful silence over Mrs Dalloway… 😉
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Thanks, I impressed my self when I remembered the fire in Titus Groan!! It’s been years since I read it.
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I’ve missed Six Degrees, maybe I’ll get back to it eventually. This is a great chain, Margaret, and very clever.
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Thanks, Sandra . I hope you do get back into Six Degrees – it’s one of my favourite memes.
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That’s a great chain, especially as you managed to bring it full circle. I love the Gormenghast books and have been meaning to re-read them for ages. Maybe I’ll get round to it later in the year.
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I think I probably enjoy reading your posts and seeing the connections you make as much as you enjoy creating them!
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Such a neatly turned circle there!
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I haven’t thought of Titus Groan since the late 70s! Well done!
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It’s fun when you can link your last book back to the first, creating a circle! The only one of these I’ve read is The Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie. I don’t think of Poirot as an intuitive detective, though; he prizes logic above all things.
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A very creative chain, Margaret! I especially love the first “Saturday” link and the way you came full circle back to a fire at the end. I’ve only read Mrs. Dalloway, but several others here are on my TBR list.
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