6 Degrees of Separation: From Intermezzo to Paula

Melinda Tognini November 2, 2024 2 Comments

Welcome back to 6 Degrees of Separation where book lovers all start with the same title (supplied by Kate from booksaremyfavouriteandbest). We then link it to six other books in whatever way our brains make connections.

This month’s starting book is Intermezzo, Sally Rooney’s latest novel.

Intermezzo is an interlude between acts of a play or opera (and is the Italian word for interlude). The book is set in Dublin and about two brothers in the aftermath of their father’s death.

I have recently finished reading the young adult novel White Noise by Raelke Grimmer. It is set in Darwin and also delves into the loss of a parent. Fifteen-year-old Emma lost her mother about three years before the start of the story. Grimmer explores the different ways that Emma and her dad deal with their grief, but it’s also a novel about friendship and growing up in the tropics and neurodivergence. Grimmer was in the process of being diagnosed as autistic when she was writing White Noise, and so she writes the character of Emma with a nuance and insight that cannot necessarily happen simply with good research.

Another novel that draws on lived experience is Hopeless Kingdom by Kgshak Akec. Akita and her family have been on the move in order to survive – from Sudan to Cairo to Sydney to Geelong. Told through the alternating perspectives of Akita and her mother, Taresai, Hopeless Kingdom is about the complexity of family, intergenerational relationships and the impact of trauma as well as searching for a place to belong in a world filled with racism and judgement based on the colour of your skin. It’s also about resilience, transcending expectations and unconditional love.

Tess Woods also uses multiple perspectives in her latest novel The Venice Hotel. The four main characters all find themselves at Hotel Il Cuore in Venice at Christmas time, with secrets that will inevitably unravel. There is both romance and heartbreak, and the exploration of more serious themes including family violence, and the detrimental impact of day tourists and climate change on the beautiful, historical city of Venice and its long-term residents.

Best, First and Last by Amy T. Matthews (which isn’t out until March 2025) is also about people travelling to another country, this time Peru. Heather is meeting up with her mother and grandmother to walk the Machu Picchu trail. Like The Venice Hotel there will be spilled secrets and romantic entanglements. I was lucky enough to win an uncorrected proof and I can already imagine it being adapted for the screen.

I have never been to Peru, but I have been to Chile, another country in South America. I was fortunate to travel with a Chilean friend, so I got to stay with her family and see a side of the country that tourists rarely see. While there, I finally read Isabel Allende’s novel The House of the Spirits.

However, I had already read Allende’s memoir Paula, which interweaves the story of caring for her daughter during a life-threatening illness and her own family story, including bearing witness to the Pinochet coup and dictatorship.

This month, 6 Degrees of Separation involved a fair amount of travel (without leaving my reading chair of course): Dublin and Darwin followed by a long journey between Sudan and Geelong via Cairo and Sydney. Then overseas again to Venice, Peru and Chile. Amazing the places books can take you.