6 Degrees of Separation: From I Want Everything to Devotions

It’s been a while since I participated in Six Degrees of Separation, in which Kate from booksaremyfavouriteandbest offers the name of the book and fellow readers link it to six other titles in any way our mind makes connections. But it’s always fun, and I enjoy reading the chains of other participants, so I’ve been drawn back to it with the book I Want Everything by Dominic Amerena.

The story centres on a protagonist who dreams of being the next great Australian writer. He realises his way to success may be to unravel the story behind a reclusive author who disappeared from the public eye after a plagiarism scandal. Amerena’s debut has been described as “full of delicious twists and wicked insights” and a novel of “desire and deception, authorship and authenticity, and the costs of creative ambition”.

I haven’t read this, but I am intrigued by it, and I’m curious to hear from other readers as to whether they would recommend it.

With the promise of critiquing the writing community and publishing industry, the most obvious link is one many will know, but which I have also not read, so instead, I’m going to connect to another recent Australian debut, which I have read and loved: The Daughter’s of Batavia by Stefanie Koens.

The Daughter’s of Batavia introduces readers to three protagonists, two (Saskia and Aris) who are passengers aboard the Batavia on its ill-fated maiden voyage in 1629, and the third (Tess) who visits the remote Abrolhos Islands of Western Australia’s coast in 2018.

Also writing about the Batavia is Kathryn Heyman, whose 2003 novel is The Accomplice.

More recently Heyman published a memoir, Fury, which interestingly also has a nautical narrative thread after she accepts a job as a cook on a fishing boat.

I’ve read a lot of memoir over the past few years, with a particular focus on essay collections, as part of my PhD research. One that I have been re-reading closely is The World Was Whole by Fiona Wright. Wright explores themes of home and belonging, routine and ritual, while also conveying her experience of living with a chronic illness. I now want to read her earlier collection, Small Acts of Disappearance.

In the past few days, I have dived into another essay collection, Silence is My Habitat: Ecobiographical Essays by Jessica White. So much to love about this book too.

The back cover blurb of Silence of My Habitat reads, in part, that White “considers how deafness encouraged and moulded her relationship to the natural world”, and so my last link in this chain will be to another author who writes a lot about her observations of and relationship to the natural world: Mary Oliver. In particular, I’ve been delving into Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver.

This month, my six degrees of Separation remained mostly in Australia, but traversed a variety of genres and forms: contemporary and historical fiction, memoir and essay collections, and even poetry.

If you’re interested in seeing the diversity of connections other readers made after starting with I Want Everything, then head over to booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

Next month, the starting title is the novella, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson.

Where might six degrees of (bookish) separation lead you?