Welcome back to Six Degrees of Separation (it’s been a few months for me). We all start with the same book title (thanks to Kate from booksaremyfavouriteandbest) and then link that to six others in whatever random ways our brains make connections. See where you, and other readers end up!
This month’s starting book is Tom Lake by Ann Patchett.
Someone recently recommended this title to me, although Kate didn’t review it particularly favourably (she loved Patchett’s previous novels however). Have you read it? Would you recommend it?
Kate’s review did mention that there were multiple references to cherry pie, as does The School Teacher of Saint Michel by Sarah Steele, a book set in occupied France during the Second World War. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this book before, but the cherry connection was just to good to ignore.
The main character in Snapshots from Home by Sasha Wasley is also a school teacher, and the book is also historical fiction, although set in Western Australia during the First World War.
Sasha Wasley was on a panel at the Perth Writers Weekend recently as was Amal Awad. The bookshop had sold out of Awad’s latest novel, Bitter & Sweet, so I bought her previous book, The Things We See in the Light, which moves between Sydney and Jordan. I loved the main character, Sahar, and the mystery of why she has returned to Sydney after almost a decade in Jordan. I found myself so immersed in her world and invested in what happened to her (both past and present) that I finished the book in three days.
I also read Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran as a result of the Perth Writers Weekend. Chai Time won the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2023, and deserves every accolade it is given. As Caroline Overington said in the Weekend Australian this weekend, Chandran ‘is funny. She is warm. She has a point of view, and she’ s not afraid to share it, in a way that doesn’t make you feel like you’ve been hit over the head with a wet mop’. (This is both on and off the page.) Needless to say, Chandran has quickly become one of my favourite authors, and I have now bought her earlier novels The Barrier and Song of the Sun God; her upcoming release Safe Haven, out in May, is on pre-order.
The Labyrinth by Amanda Lohrey also won the Miles Franklin Literary Award (2021). Erica is a woman whose son is in prison. Cutting off ties to family and friends, she moves to the south coast and bought a run-down shack to be near him.
The main character of 7 1/2 by Christos Tsiolkas is also separated from those he knows after heading to a house on the coast to write a book. This one is next on my TBR pile.
This month, it feels as though I’ve been on a round the world trip: from a cherry farm in the north of Michigan to wartime France and Western Australia, then on to Sydney, rural New South Wales and Victoria, as well as Jordan and Sri Lanka.
Over to You
Where will Six Degrees of Separation take you?
Check out where it took other readers over on booksaremyfavouriteandbest.
Next month, Kate is asking us to look at our bookshelf for a Lonely Planet, Eyewitness Travel or other travel guide. Use that as the starting book.
Interesting chain here. I don’t know any of these books.