Six Degrees of Separation: I Want Every Thing

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:

I Want Every Thing by Dominic Amerena

The tale of a missing Australian author, rediscovered in her old age, and a young author determined to find out what she did in her missing years. Not a book I’ve encountered so my first link through Everything to:

The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy

This is a playful novel, slipping through time in a sense of déjà vu for its very unreliable narrator. Saul’s search for love and truth, his questioning about how we sometimes live a lie make him a fascinating narrator, unreliable but loveable. His world’s eye view contrasts with those of his lovers; Jennifer’s in which she seeks truth through a lens and her art, and Walter’s repressed one. As always, Levy leaves a lot unsaid in this novel; indeed, she said she wanted readers to have multiple interpretations of this book. One of the pivotal moments is when Saul is knocked down on the Abbey Road zebra crossing – immortalised by The Beatles – not once but twice! Abbey Road also features in:

She’s Leaving Home aka A Song for Dead Lips by William Shaw

The first of Shaw’s ‘Breen and Tozer’ series set in the late 1960s begins with a body found in St John’s Wood. In a memorable scene where a uniformed nanny’s young charge is desperate for a wee, she sends the boy into an alley – cue scream! It’s just around the corner from Abbey Road studios, where they’ll be talking to all the girls who camp outside Abbey Road studios in the hope of meeting The Beatles. As with all his police procedurals, Shaw builds social issues into his plot including politics, the Biafran war, and different aspects of racism. Breen and Tozer are an engaging pairing too with four more to come. Another cop pairing is in:

Spider Trap by Barry Maitland (Brock & Kolla 9)

Surprisingly perhaps, for a Brit who relocated to Australia in the mid 1980s, Maitland’s series is set in and around London. Returning to the area where he grew up for his novels, Spider Trap is set south of the river in Lambeth. Scotland Yard’s Brock and Kolla are a classic police pairing – David Brock is the mature and experienced DCI, and DS Kathy Kolla is his insightful younger colleague, working in the Serious Crime Squad (SCI). It begins with two bodies, and then three more are found – but they’d been murdered twenty years ago – by the same weapon. This is a solid and enjoyable novel with a likeable pairing with a kind of uncle and favoured niece type relationship! Brixton where this takes place also features in:

Brixton Beach by Roma Tearne

Roma Tearne is Sri Lankan, and fled the country aged ten to live in England, where she qualified as an artist. All her novels are set against the backdrop of the Sri Lankan Civil War from 1983 onwards, and this, her third, tells the story of Alice, who has a Singhalese mother and Tamil father; she is just nine when the war starts. It’s increasingly hard for a mixed family to live in Colombo, so her father applies for British passports for them and Alice and her mother travel to London. The heat and humidity of the troubled paradise contrasts keenly with the bleak urban strangeness of London, and I found this deeply affecting novel better than Brick Lane. Another novel taking plan during a civil war is:

Waiting for Robert Capa by Susanna Fortes

This novel is a fictionalised account of the true story of Gerda Taro and Robert Capa, two of the foremost photojournalists who reported on the Spanish Civil War. The story begins in Paris though, when young Jewish German refugee Gerta meets handsome Hungarian photographer André. This is very much a novel of two contrasting halves, or rather locations.  Gerta & André /Gerda & Robert in Paris as part of the intellectual left-leaning café society, and then Gerda & Robert in Spain at the sharp end. I loved both – the burgeoning love story and the obsession with work in a field that once experienced, would never make normal life seem the same again. My final link takes us to a contemporary novel that references the Spanish Civil War.

Black Storms by Teresa Solana

This delightful novel set in Barcelona combines murder with family drama for detective Norma Forester, who is trying to avoid being called in on the evening of her 38th birthday. The whole family is there, but it’s to no avail, the murder of an aged professor who was writing on the Spanish Civil War will take her away. However, the crime(s) aren’t the main feature of this novel, the characters are. Solana has drawn some superb characters in Norma’s family: some loveable especially Aunt Margarida, some surprising like the classic fussy grandmother Mimi who embraces Margarida’s techie hobbies, some easy-going like husband Octavi, some highly strung like Norma and Violeta – who have a classic mother vs. daughter vibe. Very enjoyable indeed.

This month, I’ve gone from North London to South, then headed off to Spain for a mixture of relationship and family drama with some crimes thrown in. Where will your six degrees take you?