6 Degrees of Separation: From Kairos to Beneath a Scarlett Sky

Each month, I join other book lovers who all start with the same title (thanks to Kate from booksaremyfavouriteandbest), create links to six other books and see where we end up.

It’s easy and it’s fun, so feel free to join in wherever you are!

This month’s starting book is the 2024 Booker Prize winner, Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck (and translated by Michael Hofmann).

Kairos has been described as a “love story, or rather a story about the loss of love” set against the disintegration of East Germany. It is also the story about a relationship between a young woman and a much older man, who becomes violent as the affair continues.

Domenicana by Angie Cruz, which was shortlisted for the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction, also involves a relationship between a young girl and an older man during another tumultuous era of history. Set during the 1960s, fifteen-year-old Ana’s marriage to a man twice her age is seen as a bridge of hope for her family in the Domenican Republic, who long to escape the unrest and poverty in their own country and immigrate to the United States. Inspired partly on the experiences of the author’s mother, Domenicana offers an empathetic insight into the life of those who move to a new country in search of a better life.

Simone Lazaroo has also based her novel Between Water and the Night Sky on her mother’s – and father’s – story. Elspeth, who grew up in rural Western Australia, meets Francis, who is an international student from Singapore, just after the Second World War when they are both at university in Perth. Told through the eyes of their daughter, Eva, the story is partly set against a backdrop of the White Australia Policy and exposes both the overt and covert racism Francis must endure after his move to Australia (I wrote a short review for Writing WA in June 2023).

Although Khin Myint grew up in the same city several decades later, his memoir Fragile Creatures reveals the impact of similar racist attitudes and actions as he was growing up (but it’s also much more).

Myint’s memoir employs a dual timeline (childhood past and recent past), which is very effective in creating both tension and forward momentum.

Natasha Lester is a well-known author of historical fiction that also utilises a dual timeline, or even three, as is the case with her most recent novel, The Disappearance of Astrid Bricard.

My current read is The Golden Doves by Martha Hall Kelly. Like many of Natasha Lester’s novels, The Golden Doves is set during and after the Second World War, much of it in France. The two main characters, Arlette LaRue and Josie Anderson, join the resistance, not entirely willingly at first. It was recommended and loaned by a friend and I’m so glad she did!

While many novels about the Resistance, such as The Golden Doves, has been set in France, I’m fascinated by those who joined the Resistance in Italy, primarily because my husband’s Nonno was one of those who did. One novel that explores this is Beneath a Scarlet Sky by Mark Sullivan.

I never know where I will end up when I start each 6 Degrees of Separation. This month, I began in 1980s Berlin, traveled to the Domenican Repulic and New York in the 1960s and onto Western Australia in both the 1950s and 1980s before visiting France and Italy during the Second World War.

Over to You

Books really can allow you to experience the world from a multitude of perspectives.

Where will 6 degrees of reading take you?

If you want to see where it took other book lovers, head over to booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

Next month (3 August 2024), the starting book is The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose. Would love you to join in!