Six Degrees of Separation: Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

First Saturday of the month and 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… 

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

I gave in to buying a copy, but haven’t read it yet. It’s the story of two brothers who are opposite in character but share their grief and chess is obviously a metaphor for something I’ve yet to discover. However, given that an intermezzo is a short piece often linking or between other parts of something longer, I’m going to use the title to go with musical links all the way today…

The Bradshaw Variations by Rachel Cusk

Variations being more short musical pieces but this time all linked by a theme. Cusk gives us a set of three in her 2009 novel following a year in the life of the Bradshaws – three brothers, their ageing parents and their families. Middle brother Thomas has taken a year’s sabbatical to learn the piano, his wife Tonie who has been promoted and back at work full-time, and daughter Alexa. Older brother Howard is successful and impulsive, wife Claudia likes to be busy which keeps her in excuses for not going into her studio cum shed to paint. Then there’s Leo, the youngest who’s rather insecure, and his heavy-drinking wife Susie. Behind them are their parents who constantly bicker. I felt the book was trying too hard to be clever, and ended up rather suffering in its detachment, but there are some hilariously awful moments!

Invitation to the Waltz by Rosamund Lehmann

This was Lehmann’s third novel. Set in the 1920s, it is seventeen-year-old Olivia’s first dance. Written in three parts: the lead up to the dance and getting her dress, the day of the dance and getting ready, then the dance itself, the latter being the longest part of the novel. It is full of Olivia’s internal monologues: she discusses everything with herself, analysing, trying to understand her observations, but she’s also a romantic and wants to believe the best of everyone and everything. Lehmann captures the workings of Olivia’s innocent teenage brain so well.

The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain

This novel, set in Switzerland after WWII, is the story of childhood friends Gustav, and Anton, a concert pianist manqué, who fall in love. It follows them over several decades of indecision and other paths followed, and stage fright for Anton which is why he ended up a teacher. This is a lovely understated novel which I enjoyed very much, especially after reading Tremain’s afterword in which she explains how she wrote it in ‘Sonata form’ which having studied that at school all became clear! Moving on from musical forms now, to musicians …

Take Nothing With You by Patrick Gale

For Eustace, growing up in Weston Super Mare is proving difficult. If it wasn’t for his cello lessons, he wouldn’t know what to do. It’s not until his teacher moves to Bristol, and Eustace encounters life there, that he realises he’s gay and finds his place in the world. There is a lot of cello playing in this novel – Gale plays himself – and what he does so brilliantly is write about how the act of playing affects the player. They say that playing an instrument is like a work-out for the brain, firing up more areas of the cortex than virtually any other activity, and that comes through in this novel, especially in the cello school chapters. A brilliant coming of age story, lovingly told with much humour and sensitivity. Adding composers into the musical mix now…

The Instrumentalist by Harriet Constable

Based on the few fragments known of the life of violinist and composer Anna Maria della Pietà, who grew up in the Ospedale della Pietà orphanage for girls in Venice in the late 1690s which was famed for its orchestra, Constable’s Anna is a violin prodigy, tutored by Vivaldi, who did direct the figlie di coro as the orchestra was called. Anna is ambitious to become a composer as well as to lead the orchestra and is rather ruthless in how she achieves her aims, although Vivaldi is not painted in a positive light.

The Point of Distraction by Will Eaves

Eaves won the 2019 Wellcome Book Prize for Murmur – his impressionistic novel/narrative nf about the life of Alan Turing. In this new short nf book, he discusses how he returned to the piano after many years away, old manuscript books and notes, to compose a series of eight piano pieces during lockdown. This will be one of my first reads for Nonfiction November and #NovNov.

My choices this month have concentrated on musical form, musicians and composers from Dublin to Switzerland to Venice with stops in the UK inbetween – where will your six degrees take you?