Six Degrees of Separation is a meme hosted by Kate over at Books Are My Favourite and Best. It works like this: each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six others to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the titles on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.
This month we’re starting with Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo which I’ve yet to read but I know it follows two brothers who deal with the loss of their father in very different and uncharacteristic ways.
I’m linking to Antoine Laurain’s French Rhapsody, another novel which features a musical term, this one about missed chances.
Laurain’s story begins with the delivery of a letter leading me to Denis Thériault’s The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman about lovestruck Bildo who likes to read other people’s letters before delivering them.
A habit shared by Albert in J. Robert Lennon’s Mailman.
Lennon is the author of The Funnies based on a comic strip leading me to Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay about a couple of comic book artists.
Chabon is married to Aylet Waldman who wrote about microdosing LSD to ease her bipolarity in A Really Good Day.
Leaning me Vesna Main’s Good Day? which recounts a daily conversation between a Writer and her Reader, who is also her husband, describing the progress of her novel about a couple whose marriage is strained to breaking point.
This month’s Six Degrees has taken me from a novel about grief to one about a wife writing a novel about her husband which he finds increasing uncomfortable. Part of the fun of this meme is comparing the very different routes other bloggers take from each month’s starting point. If you’re interested, you can follow it on Twitter with the hashtag #6Degrees, check out the links over at Kate’s blog or perhaps even join in.
