Six Degrees of Separation from Rapture to Persuasion

Published on by Margaret

It’s time again for 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 we start with Rapture by Emily Maguire. The motherless child of an English priest living in ninth-century Mainz, Agnes is a wild and brilliant girl with a deep, visceral love of God. At eighteen, to avoid a future as a wife or nun, Agnes enlists the help of a lovesick Benedictine monk to disguise herself as a man and secure a place at the revered Fulda monastery.

I haven’t read it and hadn’t heard of the author. According to a review in The Guardian she writes fiction and nonfiction and was shortlisted for the Stella prize, the Miles Franklin and book of the year at the Australian Book Industry awards for An Isolated Incident her 2016 novel. ‘In Rapture, her seventh novel, she turns her hand to historical fiction. Drawing inspiration from the life of Pope Joan, the woman who (according to legend) disguised herself as a man and served as pope for two years during the middle ages, Maguire examines questions of faith using the language of the body.’

I’ve had several false starts with this month’s chain, none of which I could complete. In the end I decided to start with another book about a pope, especially as the Roman Catholic Cardinals will start the procedure to elect a new pope on May 7.

It’s Conclave by Robert Harris. I always learn a lot from reading Harris’s books. In this one he describes the procedure to elect a new pope. Cardinal Lomeli, the Dean of the College of Cardinals leads the 118 Cardinals through the voting stages. I felt as though I was a fly on the wall watching it throughout as the Cardinals are locked inside the Sistine Chapel, isolated from contact with the outside world. Harris has thoroughly researched the subject and seamlessly woven the facts into the novel. He visited the locations used during a Conclave that are permanently closed to the public and interviewed a number of prominent Catholics including a cardinal who had taken part in a Conclave, as well as consulting many reports and books.

The next book is another one by Robert Harris The Fear Index , a fast-paced story set in the world of high finance and computer technology, which is way out of my comfort zone. It’s about scientist Dr Alex Hoffman, who together with his partner Hugo Quarry, an investment banker, runs a hedge fund based in Geneva, that makes billions. Alex has developed a revolutionary form of artificial intelligence that tracks human emotions, enabling it to predict movements in the financial markets. It’s built around the standard measure of market volatility: the VIX or ‘Fear Index’. But I learnt a bit about hedge funds and how they operate, although I got lost in the computer technology details. 

My third link is A Climate of Fear by Fred Vargas, 9th Commissaire Adamsberg book. I like Adamsberg; he’s original, a thinker, who doesn’t like to express his feelings, but mulls things over. He’s an expert at untangling mysteries, an invaluable skill in this, one of the most complicated and intricate mysteries I’ve read, involving a woman found bleeding to death in her bath, having apparently committed suicide, a strange symbol that appears at subsequent death scenes, and a secretive society studying and re-enacting scenes from the French Revolution.

My fourth link is The Potter’s Hand by A N Wilson. it begins in 1768 and roughly follows the fortunes of the Wedgwood family until 1805, 10 years after the death of Josiah Wedgwood, an English potter and the founder of the Wedgwood company. For me it really did convey what it must have been like to live in that period – whilst the American War of Independence, and the French Revolution, were taking place. It’s full of ideas about colonialism, the abolition of slavery, working conditions, and women’s rights. There are many characters who come in and out of the narrative along the way, both fictional and historical, including Voltaire, George Stubbs (who painted the Wedgwood family portrait) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

My fifth link is Voltaire’s Candide or Optimism, a small book I read many years ago. Candide was the most brilliant challenge to the idea endemic in Voltaire’s day, that ‘all is for the best in the best possible worlds‘.In Candide he whisks his young hero and friends through a ludicrious variety of tortures, tragedies and reversals of fortune, in the company of Pangloss, a ‘matapysico-theologo-cosmolo-nigologist’ of unflinching optimism. The result is one of the glories of the eighteenth-century satire. (Taken from the description on the back cover.)

And my final link is Persuasion by Jane Austen. I read this first at school, when I was 17 for A Level GCE. It’s her last novel of missed opportunities and second chances centred on Anne Elliot, no longer young and with few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she was persuaded by others to break off her engagement to poor, handsome naval Captain Frederick Wentworth. ‘Set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath, Persuasion is a brilliant satire of vanity and pretension, and a mature, tender love story tinged with heartache.’ (Amazon) I’ll be re-reading it later in the year taking part with Brona at This Reading Life in her Austen 2025 project to reread her books, along with the Classics Club’s Sync Read (or readalong).

I certainly never thought I’d end my chain with Persuasion – but here it is! From Rapture to Persuasion in six moves. The links are the pope, books by Robert Harris, fear, the French Revolution, Voltaire and satire.

What is in your chain, I wonder?

Next month (June 7, 2025), we’ll start with Kate’s pick the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction All Fours by Miranda July.

27 thoughts on “Six Degrees of Separation from Rapture to Persuasion”

    1. Harris is one of my favourite authors. The latest one I’ve just bought is Precipice about the passion, intrigue, and betrayal set in England in the months leading to the Great War in the Summer of 1914.

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  2. Oh, that The Potter’s Hand sounds interesting. As for Candide… remember too that eventually he says “all is for the worst in this worst of all possible worlds” which says that’s just so much optimism you can take until it is beaten out of you… sigh! Great chain here.

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    1. Thanks, Davida. The Potter’s Hand is long – over 500 pages. I knew very little about Wedgwood’s life or that Charles Darwin was his grandson. It contains such a variety of information and it kept me wanting to read it each time I had to stop reading. As for Candide, I don’t have a very clear picture of it, but I do remember I thought it was very funny and that as you say it shows all is not always for the best. No comfort in that then.

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  3. Conclave is timely, although I’m more likely to read The Fear Index. The Potter’s Hand sounds immersive, and has that immediate connection since Wedgewood is still relevant today. I’m hoping it is available from my library.

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  5. This is a juicy chain. I’ve read your last two, and several Vargas’ in my time, though not this one. Time to give her another go I think. The only one that doesn’t hook my interest is your second Harris choice. He’d have difficulty engaging my mind with the world of finance. Just as well to find one to leave off the TBR!

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    1. Thanks you Joanne! No I haven’t seen the film, but I’ve read there are several changes from the book, so I’m not sure it’s for me. I usually prefer books to the films of them – but you say it’s excellent, so maybe I’ll chance watching it.

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      2. I greatly enjoyed the film but I think I’m like you in that if I’ve read a book I’m not usually in a rush to see an adaptation. It seems these days that I’d prefer to see films and read books and not cross them over – though there are exceptions where it just happens that I see a film of a book I want to read because it comes out and friends want to see it etc.

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    1. Thanks. I hope you’ll enjoy The Fear Index. It’s a page turner with plenty of suspense as the story races to a conclusion.

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  8. my chain also took me to Jane Austen this month, but to Emma which I think is her funniest novel.

    Would you recommend Conclave? I’ve seen the movie has come out but I have been considering whether it’s worth reading the book before I see the movie.

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    1. I enjoy Harris’s books so yes I do recommend Conclave. I always want to read a book before I watch a film or TV adaptation, but that’s what I like to do. I guess it’s up to you really.

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  9. I think we all thought of Conclave, whether we linked it or not, because of the recent death of the Pope. I love your mention of Fred Vargas – love her work and quirky style, and, having lived in the village right next to Voltaire’s chateau in Ferney, obviously Voltaire is a big love of mine. The kids did a version of Candide as a school play.

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    1. Fred Vargas is one of my favourite authors – she is so original. I know so little about Voltaire. And only discovered he lived in a chateau recently. Ferney must be a lovely place to live.

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    1. Thanks, Marianne! Persuasion is one of my favourite books too. I’m going to re-read it later this year. Some years ago I watched a TV series Pilgrimage about a group of people walking the Camino de Santiago – it was fascinating!

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  11. I’ve seen a few chains start with Conclave but they all went in different directions. I’ve heard of all of your authors but have only read the Voltaire and the Austen both of which I love, although I’ve only read Candide once. I often think of reading it again.

    Of the other books, the one I am most interested in reading is Wilson‘s on Wedgewood because I like pottery and Wedgewood was such a thing in my youth, with many of us receiving pieces of Wedgewood for our 21sts! I moved on my coffee table book about Wedgewood in my recent downsize.

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  12. I did two chains this month. On the one that I chose not to use Conclave was right up the top.

    I am interested in taking a look at the AN Wilson book about Wedgewood. That sounds really interesting! I have read one of his books before but don’t remember much about it!

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  13. Very interesting chain.. and I think I will enjoy reading The Fear Index.. The Potter’s Hand sounds like another I will be adding to my TBR… my chain is here.

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  14. Not sure I follow your logic from Voltaire to Austen but I love Austen’s Persuasion so much I am just glad to see it on a list!

    Late to the party but finally got my chain up.

    Rapture

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