Welcome to Six Degrees of Separation, where authors Emma Chapman and Annabel Smith provide the name of a book and invite us to link it to six other books in any way we choose. This month’s chain begins with The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flannagan, which won the Man Booker prize this year.
I’m a little unsure how I will cope with it given the subject matter. At the same time I’m keen to read it as several women whose stories I have been writing are the widows of prisoners-of-war.
Another book on my To Read list is A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists by Jane Rawson, which recently won the Most Underrated Book Award. This novel is set in a futuristic Australia that is difficult and brutal, as is Annabel Smith’s latest novel The Ark. Both books could be classified as dystopian fiction, which has become increasingly popular, especially among teens.
In that case, I can’t go past the Tomorrow When the War Began series by John Marsden, which was perhaps ahead of its time when it was first published 20 years ago. A group of teenagers return from a camping trip to discover that Australia has been invaded by a foreign country. They go to extraordinary lengths to not only survive but to fight back against the enemy.
In Claire Zorn’s The Sky so Heavy, the teenage protagonists are fighting for survival too, this time after a nuclear fallout. The narrator, Fin, hopes they will reach safety by locating his mother, but things don’t turn out quite as he hopes. In On Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta, Taylor is also searching for her mother, and for the answers as to why she was abandoned on the Jellicoe Road.
Another character on a journey to find her mother after being abandoned is seven-year-old Millie in Lost and Found by Brooke Davis. When she meets Agatha Pantha and Karl the Touch Typist, the three set out together, and what began as a story of loss becomes one about what it means to belong.
As you can see, I very quickly moved from war in our past to imagined conflict and war in our future to loss and abandonment, which are also stories about friendship and belonging. Thank goodness for that – it was all sounding pretty grim there for a while.
I’d love to hear where your Six Degrees of Separation led you. And be sure to check out where it led Annabel Smith and Emma Chapman.
Great links Melinda. I LOVED Tomorrow When the War Began. Binge read the whole series in a week.
I also loved Tomorrow When the War Began! I read the first one soon after it came out, just after I began teaching. And I would have binge read the entire series, except I had to WAIT for each new book to be released! At that stage it was THE book/series I was able to encourage reluctant readers to engage with.
Ugh, the agony of waiting for sequels! I have been waiting a couple of years for the final part of Justin Cronin’s The Passage trilogy. Grinding my teeth!
I love how varied your chain is! I’ve wanted to read Lost and Found for ages and you’ve reminded me. I’ve also heard wonderful things about Annabel’s new book.
I really enjoyed both Lost and Found, and The Ark. Am about to write a brief review of both in my next post.
Hi Melinda, Thanks for stopping by Pen and Paper. Loving your connections though I also despair of them as as is usually the case with this meme I come away having made a list of books that I simply have to read.
Same here!
Love the way you’ve linked such amazingly discrepant books so cleverly, Melinda. Well done!
Thank you! And thanks for stopping by my blog. Was lovely to meet up with you again yesterday. Hope it won’t be the last.
I’ve only read Lost & Found on your list but of course The Ark is in my very near reading future 🙂 Great links.
Here’s my chain: https://booksaremyfavouriteandbest.wordpress.com/2014/12/10/six-degrees-of-separation-from-the-narrow-road-to-the-deep-north-to/
Hope you enjoy The Ark, Kate. I’m including a brief review of it in my next post, too.