I’m a day late to the first Saturday of the month, but there’s still 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…
Long Island by Colm Tóibín
I’ve not read Brooklyn which this is the sequel to, (but have seen the film of Brooklyn), so unlikely to read this novel. So I shall move straight to my link which is a Long Island one, but I avoided the most famous book set there, instead plumping for …
Orient by Christopher Bollen
This is a crime thriller of small town secrets and lies set in the small town of Orient, located at the tip of Long Island’s north fork. A sofa-hopping young junkie trying his luck in NYC, our narrator Mills Chevern is rescued by New York architect Paul Benchley when he finds him sprawled in the hallway in front of his neighbour’s appartment. When Paul offers to save him by taking him out to his late parents’ house in Orient to help clear it, nothing more expected other than hard work and some company, Mills jumps at the chance to clean up his act, but a murder puts him under the spotlight. Over 600 pages of complexity – but a page-turning read. The opposite of orient is the occident, ie the west which leads to…
The Spirit Engineer by A J West
To discover that this book was narrative non-fiction was a surprise. Based on a true story set in Belfast, 1914, it follows the exploits of one William Crawford, who set out to debunk spiritualism, when he discovers that his highly strung wife had been going to seances, when he thought she was going to church. All this is at the expense of William’s sanity, as you may imagine. The novel gets darker and darker, more and more Gothic. With William as our narrator, he obviously becomes more and more unreliable too, growing into the role of mad scientist, taking the reader on a dark journey into his mind. Another novel featuring an engineer narrator is:
The Edge by James Smythe
The third volume in Smythe’s Anomaly quartet is narrated by space station engineer, Ali, as the skeleton crew on board tracks the ever closer ‘Anomaly’ discovered and explored (ie ships disappeared into) in the first two volumes, The Explorer and The Echo. You need to read them first. My link is via U2 (geddit) to …
Zoo Station by David Downing
A book I’ve been meaning to read for ages – it’s been on my TBR shelves for some years. ‘Zoo station’ is the first track off U2’s Achtung Baby, but is also the title of the first in Downing’s WWII spy series set in Berlin. A simple zoo link takes me to…
A Man in the Zoo by David Garnett
This strange novella about a man who makes himself an exhibit in a zoo is indeed thought-provoking. Often paired with another novella by Garnett, Lady into Fox, both do as their titles suggest taking opposite approaches towards animals, but they share a lot about what it is to be human rather than an animal. In one a human sees what is like to be treated as an animal, in the other a human actually becomes an animal and we’re shown that anthropomorphism is merely fantasy. Meanwhile another book in which humans become exhibits is:
Wild Song by Candy Gourlay
Gourlay is a Filipino children’s & YA author, now living in the UK. Her latest novel, Wild Song was shorlisted for the Jhalak C&YA Prize. It is the story of Luki, a Filipino girl, whose tribe are offered the opportunity to appear at the St Louis world fair in 1904 and find their time in America very different indeed! We took a load of pupils to see an author talk given by Candy and she was truly inspirational and made me want to read this novel although I read very little YA these days, I must remember to read it now.
This month, I’ve been from the USA to space and back, via Belfast, Berlin, London and the Philippines. Where will your six degrees take you?
Ha, ha, sly swipe at me for choosing the most obvious book set on Long Island… thank you!
That U2 link is absolute genius!
It wasn’t intended that way – honest! I’m very pleased with the U2 link too!
I think your chain has travelled further than any other I’ve read thus month!
Good work–even better because I haven’t heard of most of these books. I love learning of new-to-me books.
Some very inspiring links here. Brava!
Goodness, I know none of these. Which makes your chain a very interesting one!