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:
We Have Always LIved in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
Merricat, as she is known, lives with her sister Constance, and her ageing Uncle Julian in a crumbling mansion. They keep themselves to themselves, they’re not welcome in the village – every time Merricat has to go and get supplies, she has to run the gauntlet of the villagers. This is because, despite being proven innocent, they all believe that Constance is a murderer, they believe it was she who put arsenic in the sugar bowl that killed the girl’s family. Merricat, who appears younger than her eighteen years, keeps their boundaries safe, burying talismans to protect against incursions. Uncle Julian, who has signs of dementia, is still working on his magnum opus, an account of that fateful day. Everything carries on as normal, until one day, cousin Charles arrives and stirs everything up. He is after his share of the inheritance. Someone else who has has boundary talismans of a sort is in:
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
Banks was always been brilliant at beginnings, and the first line of his first novel is a cracker.
I had been making the rounds of the Sacrifice Poles the day we heard my brother had escaped.
When I first read this novel, I was stunned; it made an instant fan of me. It was so dark and twisted, yet had a strong vein of black humour running through it. Between Frank’s cruel experiments, Eric’s deranged rantings on the phone, and the father’s secretive behaviour, it’s clear that what is left of this family has real problems. Banks’ prose still has the power to shock, even knowing what was to come. This is definitely still not a book for the squeamish. Another prisoner escapee is in
Point Blank aka The Hunter by Richard Stark
We meet Parker, the antihero of Stark’s novel as he stumbles over the George Washington Bridge into NYC after escaping from prison. As series of small cons later, he’s amassed enough money to get a new suit and a new identity by theft. He’s a career criminal, newly escaped from jail, where he was serving six months being picked up as a ‘vag’, a vagrant, after being left for dead when his so-called partner in crime, Mal, shot him and ran with all $83K from a heist, and Lynn, his wife. Parker is out for revenge… First published as The Hunter, this book became known by an alternate title, Point Blank. Another book published under two titles is:
The Sun Also Rises aka Fiesta by Ernest Hemingway
Bulls also feature in my next link
Tomorrow Pamplona by Jan van Mersbergen
There’s no mistaking it – Tomorrow Pamplona is a very masculine novella. It combines boxing and bull-running with two men on a road-trip; but thankfully, there is much more to it than just those testosterone-fuelled scenarios. Themes of love and obsession, running away and, finding oneself have equal measure in this novella. Danny is a promising young boxer; he’s landed a contract with a big promoter to go and fight in Germany. It’s complicated for he’s in love with Ragna, who belongs to the promoter, and at the start of the novel something appears to have gone wrong, for Danny is running away, fleeing the town. Robert is on his way to Pamplona. A family man, he makes the annual pilgrimage to reclaim his self in the bull-run, this most dangerous of events. He often picks up hitch-hikers on the way, and this year it’s Danny who is soaking wet in the rain. It’s written and translated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson in a somewhat Hemingwayesque style, with short sentences that drive the complex emotions that bubble underneath. Another Dutch novella involving cars is
Monte Carlo by Peter Terrin
Take yourself back to the early 1960s. Just imagine the buzz in Monte Carlo on Grand Prix day. Final preparations are being made to the cars on the grid. The drivers are getting ready. There’s some time before the race starts. the Monaco Royal Family, Prince Rainier and his American wife Grace Kelly are in the grandstand. This is the scene that starts Terrin’s novel – however from the very first words, we know that something will go wrong.
The fire is not yet fire. Not quite. But the high-grade fuel that has just leaked from the Sutton is no longer liquid. It is, at this instant, changing form, a brutal transition accompanied by what some will describe as a roar – a cliché, as in fact it is the sound of a creature gasping for oxygen, an immense beast. Not yet fire but a colourless cloud of heat, invisible for now in the bright sunlight of this unseasonably warm spring day in Monte Carlo.
Jack Preston is a mechanic on the Sutton team and is the man in the wrong place at the right time, also the right place at the wrong time. It is customary for celebrities to appear on the grid – and here she is – the young Bardot-like starlet everyone adores; DeeDee. As she passes, the fire that is not yet fire, finally becomes fire. Jack shields DeeDee and they’re thrown against a hoarding. A woman in the crowd captures it on a photo. Jack is badly burned, all down his back. DeeDee escaped without a scratch. In his hospital bed in Nice, he believes that DeeDee will get in touch – which of course doesn’t happen, and Jack slides into a deep depression. There is a beautiful simplicity to the text which captures the complexity of Jack’s emotions perfectly. An exquisite (and sad) novella.
Monte Carlo is also famous for its Casino, and my favourite casino quote is in:
Casino Royal by Ian Fleming
The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning.
It is the first line of the first in possibly the most fun series of novels ever written – Casino Royale by Ian Fleming; the 1953 novel that introduced us to James Bond. It features a rather different Bond to later incarnations. Here we see the moulding of him into the suave, chauvinistic, killer spy we grow to expect. He already has his licence to kill before this novel starts, but he was just a hitman from a distance. In Casino Royale it gets personal – partly with the infamous torture scene that threatens his potency, but the real catalyst is love. He falls for Vesper Lynd big-time – he names a cocktail after her! Then she betrays him and dies and it is this that hardens his soul.
My six degrees today have included three great first lines, troubled teens and escaped prisoners, Spanish bulls and Dutch driving before ending in a casino. Where will your six degrees take you?
