6 Degrees of Separation: From Orbital to Imperfect

Welcome back to a new year of 6 Degrees of Separation, where book lovers across the world start with the same title (thanks to Kate from booksaremyfavouriteandbest). We then create links to six other books and see where we all end up.

The first book of the year is the 2024 Booker Prize winning novel, Orbital by Samantha Harvey.

In Orbital, we experience the earth in all its beauty through the eyes of a team of astronauts in the International Space Station. (You can listen to an interview with Samantha Harvey on Radio National’s The Book Show, as well as an episode that interviews each of the shortlisted authors.

Although it’s a very different sort of book, having a story set in space reminded me of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

Long before I read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as an adult, I watched a 1970s adaptation as a child.

Another book adapted for television around the same time was All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot. It’s probably what caused me to dream of being a vet – until I realised that I didn’t want to study science at university …

A much more recently-published novel with a protagonist who is a vet is The Vet’s Country Holiday by Lily Malone, which is a rural romance novel set in south-west Western Australia.

Another rural romance I finished recently is Rachael John’s latest novel, Outback Reunion, whose main character, Gabriela Jiminez, is a circus performer.

As the title suggests, Haxby’s Circus by Katharine Susannah Prichard is also set in a circus. I won a copy of Haxby’s Circus as a subject prize for English in year 11, and it was my first introduction to her work.

Many years later, I was fortunate enough to be invited to be an emerging writer-in-residence at the KSP Writers’ Centre in the Perth hills, which was once the home of Katharine Susannah Prichard.

Lee Kofman has also spent time at the KSP Writers’ Centre. While she was there, she ran a memoir workshop I attended, mainly because I loved her book Imperfect. Imperfect is part memoir, part biography, part cultural critique that centres around ideas of physical perfection and imperfection. (Kofman has also written a wonderful book about writing called The Writer Laid Bare – it doesn’t quite fit into the chain, but I highly recommend it, so I’m mentioning it as an added bonus.)

This month, we started out in space before returning to earth, particularly in rural communities, and then finally exploring the map of our own bodies.

Over to You

Where will 6 degrees of separation take you?

You can also discover where it took other readers this month by heading over to booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

And more importantly – where will you travel in the pages of your next book?