Six Degrees of Separation: After Story

First Saturday of the month, time for the super monthly tag Six Degrees of Separation, which is hosted by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest, Six Degrees of Separation #6degrees picks a starting book for participants to go wherever it takes them in six more steps. Links to my reviews are in the titles of the books chosen.

This month our starting book is… 

After Story by Larissa Behrendt

A novel I’ve not read, but I gather it takes place in Hampstead, North London where the protagonist and her mother stay on a literary trip to the UK. So Hampstead will be my first link to another novel sent there:

The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly

Best friends Frank and Lal live in next door houses in the exclusive ‘Vale of Health’ enclave on Hampstead Heath, houses bought by Frank from the proceeds of his bestselling illustrated treasure hunt book, The Golden Bones. 50 years ago, seven golden bones were buried making up the skeleton Elinore, and the clues to find them were in the pictures, just the hipbone remains unfound, and Frank will reveal it in a documentary being made to celebrate the book’s longevity. A cult has built up around it, with Frank’s daughter Eleanor at the centre, believed to be a physical Elinore. Add in many, many family secrets built up over 50 years and more, ‘bonehunter’ obsessives and more in a thrilling twisty drama, that is worth its 500 pages. Another book with events on Hampstead Heath is:

The Other Half by Charlotte Vassell

The body of the nearly-ex-girlfriend of Bullingdon Club type Rupert Achilles Courtney Beauchamp (pronounced Beecham) is found on the Heath on the night of his 30th birthday party taking over the Kentish Town McDonalds (BYOC – C being coke!). Rupert was planning to dump Clemmie, and persuade Nell that she was the one for him. Nell, with Alex in tow – doesn’t want this – for many reasons which become clear later! Enter Detective Caius Beauchamp (said as it reads) who, alongside his team, is the most brilliant creation. What was so enjoyable about this novel was its sense of fun and satire, again unusual for a crime story, there’s a lovely informality to Vassell’s writing that fair breezes along. Recommended. Yet another novel set in Hampstead is:

Meeting the English by Kate Clanchy

Clanchy’s only novel so far was shortlisted for the Costa in 2013. It is a delightful comedy, in which a young Scot, Struan, comes down to London to be a gap year carer for a stroke-stricken literary giant. A Welsh genius playwright who lives in a large Hampstead villa with his third wife and various offspring from his first marriage to Myfanwy, who on hearing of his stroke sees an opportunity to meddle. There’s a little of everything plotwise in this comedy as well as some truly memorable characters. Struan’s coming of age, plenty of mistaken identity, poking fun at the Hampstead set and the nouveau riche and of course all the varieties of love, found, thwarted and re-found that you might hope for. And yet another novel set in Hampstead is:

I Saw a Man by Owen Sheers

Although primarily known as a poet and playwright, Sheers has written a few novels too, I Saw a Man was published in 2015. It follows the story of Michael and opens with a teasing cliffhanger that actually happens halfway through the novel. Michael is a biographer and is married to Caroline, a documentary maker. They move to the country, and then Caroline is offered a new job and flies off to make her film in a war zone – she won’t come back. Michael returns to London, Hampstead, and sets about making a new life, making friends with his neighbours – when something happens… I can’t say more. Sheers’s style of writing owes much to his poetry. Lots of short sentences, careful choice of vocabulary and metaphor. He builds his characters gradually, thoroughly. Not everyone will like this, but I did. Now next door to Hampstead is Highgate:

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

Niffenegger’s 2009 novel is set in and next door to Highgate Cemetery and involves two sets of twins. Elspeth and Edie, who are estranged, and Edie’s daughters Julia and Valentina, who are left Elspeth’s worldly goods in her will – with a proviso that the twins must inhabit her flat next door to the cemetery for a year with no parental ingress. Elspeth dies in the novel’s opening lines – but lives on as a ghost – looking in on the twins, and her old lover Robert, who lives in one of the other flats. it is full of thrills, both pleasant and rather nasty with some just desserts meted out. It is really Robert and Elspeth’s novel. The twins are almost like a ‘MacGuffin’ – there to drive the plot which gets more and more complex. A good read, but not up to The Time Traveller’s Wife.  And finally, another novel with houses near Highgate Cemetery is:

Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier

I thought I’d read this one by Chevalier, but it’s not on my spreadsheet and I don’t recall it, so I probably haven’t read it after all. Her third novel, it was published in 2001 and is set in Edwardian England, beginning on the day after Queen Victoria died. Two local families with different outlooks, meet in Highgate Cemetery, and the young daughters strike up a friendship, much to both sets of parents’ concern. Women’s suffrage and class divisions drive the plot, which is set in a developing world, as the girls grow up. I think I do need to read this one after all.

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So this month I’ve stayed totally inside the parliamentary constituency of Hampstead and Highgate, not venturing out at all.

And I had two other books I could have added – Beeswing by Richard Thompson who went to school in Hampstead, and a YA novel, Ministry of Pandemonium by Chris Westwood feat Highgate Cemetery, plus a whole host of Camden-set books should I have needed to venture next door.

Where will your Six Degrees take you?