Six Degrees of Separation: The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

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:

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, this novel is an epistolary one. The UK cover has a postbox on it, so that’ll be my link to:

Burley Cross Postbox Theft by Nicola Barker

This is Nicola Barker’s 2010 biting satire on village life as seen through a cache of letters stolen from the Yorkshire village postbox, written from disgruntled villager to disgruntled villager. There are some splendid comedic moments, but the villagers are mostly an unlikeable lot, and given that it’s set at a time when the internet was already well-established, doesn’t work as well as it could. But Barker is still a brilliant story-teller with an anarchic, comedic touch. My last epistolary link is to:

Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson

This novel told in letters took me pleasantly by surprise. Within pages I was hooked and I read it in one extended sitting, shedding a tear along the way as I followed the story of the developing friendship between two lonely middle-aged people.  Tina and Anders are separated by the North Sea, she in Norfolk, he in Denmark – but they are linked by their long interest in the Tollund Man, an iron age mummified body found in the peat in Jutland decades ago. They make their acquaintance by letter when Tina writes, never expecting a reply, to the museum where the body is housed. Anders is the curator who replies. With Anders in Denmark, the novel is partly set in Copenhagen, as is:

This Should be Written in the Present Tense by Helle Helle

This excellent novella is by one of Denmark’s foremost authors, and what an odd book this is. Our narrator, Dorte, chronicles her everyday life for us and remembers previous relationships – that’s it. It is simple, yet hypnotically compelling. The events within its covers may be mostly mundane, but the way Dorte recounts them to us give them an aura of strangeness, as if she is observing her life from outside. Dorte is theoretically a student at university in Copenhagen, but doesn’t appear to go to her lectures. She lives in a little bungalow outside the capital, opposite a train station where she watches the comings and goings and the stationmaster and his girlfriend. She finds she can’t sleep at night, and life seems a bit perplexing to her at the moment. There was something about Dorte that made me want to mother her, and I hoped she would find her way out of her limbo state. It was translated by Martin Aitken, as was:

The Employees by Olga Ravn

Even odder, this is the most unconventionally structured book I’ve read in a while, and my first from Lolli Editions. The Employees is set in the next century in a spaceship which has recently visited a new planet and taken on board some found objects, which are displayed as if in a sculpture gallery on board ship. The crew is a mixture of humans and humanoids – ‘those who were born, and those who were made’. The novel consists of a series of ‘statements’ made by members of the crew – the employees. The ship’s dynamics have changed since the objects arrived; things have happened. Through reading these vignettes, we gradually start to piece together a portrait of life on board ship, people’s jobs and functions, plus the interactions between humans and humanoid in particular. Another, but very different, novel about being an employee is:

Service by Sarah Gilmartin

The setting is a top-end restaurant in Dublin, ‘T’, later renamed after its Head Chef Daniel Costello, who has worked his way up from a disadvantaged childhood to two Michelin stars. Hannah went for a job there, being taken on as a waitress; she had only intended to work the summer until going up to Trinity as a student. Daniel rather takes to Hannah, educating her palate between services, but also being a bit handy… We know from the start that something happened later with someone there. When several former employees bring accusations of sexual assault. Daniel declares he is innocent, but is forced to close the restaurant temporarily. Mel, who had been the lead waitress, is one of his accusers. We hear from three voices: Mel, Daniel, and Daniel’s wife. In between we learn about the cameraderie between employees, which is also the case for:

Children of Paradise by Camilla Grudova

The Canadian author’s first novel, after an acclaimed set of short stories, follows Holly, who joins the crew of the Paradise, one of the unnamed city’s oldest independent cinemas. The films the cinema programmes are mainly arthouse, foreign, or retro, and the cinema itself is in need of doing up. Its staff are a team of oddballs, steeped in film school lore – or not, and Holly will have to earn their respect to be accepted as a colleague, and admitted to the after work scene. As is so often the case these days, the future of the Paradise is not assured, and drama will ensue. Punchy and rather brilliant.

My six degrees, three epistolary, three about employees have taken me from Yorkshire to Copenhagen into space and down to Earth in Dublin and an unnamed city. where will yours take you this month?