Six Degrees of Separation: Flashlight by Susan Choi

It’s 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. The starter book this month is:

Flashlight by Susan Choi

The premise of this novel sounds gripping and grim as a mother and daughter navigate their grief over their missing family patriarch. I haven’t read it, so I shall go with a title-based link, namely another beam of light comes from a lighthouse in:

Muckle Flugga by Michael Pedersen

This was my Book of the Year for 2025! It’s a coming of age story set on the titular island in the Shetlands, occupied only by the stern and emotionally repressed lighthousekeeper and his sensitive son. When they take on an artist/bird-watcher as a lodger in the island’s spare cottage, his presence threatens the father and son bond. The debut novel from Scotland’s Makar (poet laureate), this is beautifully told, poetic, emotional, funny, moving and very quirky and Scottish! Another book set in the Shetlands is:

Raven Black by Anne Cleeves

This is the first in her Shetland murder series featuring DI Jimmy Perez, who hails from Fairisle, but has Meditterranean heritage. Set in winter, they must solve the murder of a girl before all the tourists descend for Up Helly Aa. Really good, but I never got around to reading the others in the series, which I should remedy. Another black book is:

Black Roses by Jane Thynne

This is the first in the series by Thynne featuring Clara Vine, a young actress who goes to Berlin to pursue a film career and ends up as a British spy and confidante of Magda Goebbels, the infamous First Lady of the Third Reich. Magda was appointed by Hitler to head the Reich Fashion Bureau was ironic because she was addicted to French haute couture, This novel gives a fascinating glimpse into the lives of these women in the approaching WWII.  Also set in 1930s Berlin is

The Artificial Silk Girl by Irmgard Keun

Told as Doris’ journals, from the dying days of the Weimar Republic, after a bit part acting success, Doris steals a fur coat and runs away to Berlin with a hope of getting into the movie industry after getting sacked from her day job as a very bad secretary. Once there, she has a series of flings with unsuitable men, doesn’t succeed in films other than bit parts, and becomes a kept mistress. Artificial silk is a…

Man Made Fibre by Francine Stock

Set during the early 60s, former BBC newsreader Stock’s second novel from 2002 has the same attention to detail as Mad Men, and is a thoughtful exploration of the disintegration of a family. I couldn’t help but see Alan and Patsy as Don and Betty Draper (but English). Alan is a textile scientist, working for a British company absorbed into US giant Lavenirre (based on DuPont). This is a thoughtful and well-observed novel. Another Francine is a character in

All That Follows by Jim Crace

Jazz saxophonist Lennie will be 50 tomorrow. Tonight on the telly, he sees a news report on a siege happening in a nearby town, and then he sees a photo of the hostage-taker; it’s a figure from his past. It’s Maxie – Maxim Lermontov! Leonard used to aspire to be  radical like Maxie, back in their student days but he never went through with it. Rather than ring the police, Leonard sets off to visit the siege and bumps into Maxie’s estranged daughter; this is the start of getting himself into some serious hot water, which is compounded by him not being truthful with his own wife Francine. Less of a thriller and more a relationship drama suffused with jazz, this 2010 novel by Crace is one I’d like to revisit. 

My six degrees have travelled from the extremities of the UK to 1930s Berlin and thence to the US in the 1960s and 2000s. Where will yours take you?