Six Degrees of Separation: from Intermezzo to The Patient

On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

Kate: Books are my Favourite and Best

This month’s starter book, Intermezzo, is by Sally Rooney and I have no immediate plans to read it. It’s -apparently – a moving story about grief, love and family. Which seems to leave the field wide open.

Maybe Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood hovers round the edges of all these themes. I was somewhat unsettled by this book, which reads somewhat as auto-fiction. It presents as a sort of diary of a woman who has abandoned both her marriage and her job, and thrown her lot with a community of nuns, despite having no religious belief. She takes comfort in the daily rhythms of the convent, and its hard physical work. Events arrive, in the form of the bones of a former member of the convent, murdered in Thailand and transported there by Helen Parry, assured climate activist whom the writer had, with others, bullied dreadfully at school. Even worse is the cataclysmic arrival in the convent of an infestation in their thousands of mice, of over a long period. The writer muses on her past, on her relationships, paying great attention to detail. I’ve a feeling this book may stay with me, though I can’t say I enjoyed the experience of reading it.

Here’s another woman who’s just made big changes in her life, in The Arsonist, by Sue Miller. It’s an engaging book, whose central character is Frankie, home on extended leave – or is it forever? – from her post as an Aid Worker in Africa. She goes to her parents’ summer house, which on retirement is where they plan to live permanently. And then her father shows increasing signs of Alzheimer’s disease … Frankie’s adjusting to life back in America when a series of arson attacks sweeps the town – just the homes of those who come here only for the summer months. This book is a slow burn in a thoroughly satisfactory way as Frankie starts to find her feet in the community and falls in love. I particularly liked the ending as it (sort of) slowly resolved the mystery surrounding the arson attacks, the changed situation of her parents, her own career plans – and the love affair.

It’s every character who undergoes change in my third book, Catherine Chidgey‘s Remote Sympathy. This is a cleverly constructed narrative, set mainly in and around Buchenwald Concentration Camp, and the nearest town, Weimar. The voices are those of Dr. Weber, a doctor with Jewish ancestors, who is a camp inmate. He has previously invented a cancer-curing machine, only recently found to be ineffective: Frau Hahn, who has reluctantly move to the area with her son, following her husband’s appointment as camp administrator: SS Sturmbannfuhrer Dietrich Hann himself: and a 1000 voces from Weimar – the collective voice of the town’s citizens. The narrative cleverly contrasts the opulence and ease of the Hahn’s lifestyle with that of the camp inmates’. The terrible lies believed by the town’s citizens, and by everyone outside the camp itself are exposed as the plot develops to allow Frau Hahn and Dr. Weber to meet in uncomfortable and deeply painful circumstances. This exhaustively researched novel depicts the holocaust anew. It’s sensitive yet powerful in its exploration of human feelings and emotions, and is both moving and involving.

Family relationships as seen through the prism of politics and power is the theme of Annie Garthwaite‘s The King’s Mother. A fine sequel to Garthwaite’s first book, Cecily. This narrative about the troubled reigns of her sons Edward (IV) and Richard (III) is brought to life in the story told from the perspective of their redoubtable mother. It offers a rounded perspective of life as it must have been at that time. Being rich, powerful and influential was no passport to an easy life, with allies becoming sworn enemies , and enemies friends, for a whole variety of reasons both good and bad. Richard in particular is sensitively portrayed, and is a different one from his image in popular mythology. I paid attention to the genealogical tables and the notes, because the strong list of characters is not always easy to get a handle on. Not Garthwaite’s fault. That’s the way it was. An involving and powerful story from a troubled period of history.

Dani Shapiro‘s Signal Fires also explores relationships. Here is a book about two families living in the same comfortable urban neighbourhood. Their situation – well off, cultured families, one with 2 almost-adult children, the other with one – can’t take away the fact that all is not well. In the doctor’s family, one child was driving the car when an accident they caused resulted in the death of a passenger. The other family’s highly intelligent son disappoints the father, because he’s not following the track his father had mapped for him. The narrative slips back and forth between various decades, allowing each of the principal characters a voice each time. This tender and moving novel with several sub-plots looks at different family dynamics, exploring guilt, penitence and loneliness.

Just to add something completely different to the mix, let’s go off piste and meet someone who’s rubbish at relationships, in Tim Sullivan‘s The Patient. George Cross is an unusual detective, in that he is neuro-diverse. His autism however, is what gives him focus, and an unusually fine attention to detail that others miss. His logical brain stands him in good stead. But he’s often awkward, rude and therefore misunderstood. His single-mindedness means that he determines to follow a case involving a woman who’s died, even though it’s already been decided by the Crime Unit that it’s a suicide. His obstinacy pays dividends, and what had appeared a fairly simply if tragic circumstance is revealed to be something much more complex and wide-ranging. My first George Cross read, but definitely not my last. An absorbing read.

One way or another, this month’s books have all been about relationships. As is next month’s starter book, Catherine Newman‘s Sandwich, which I’ve already read – and enjoyed: perhaps best described as a beach read with a difference.

Photo no. 1 is by Vladimir Šoić on Unsplash. Photo no. 3 is my own, but is an accommodation block from Auschwitz, not Buchenwald. Photo no 4 is also my own, of Alnwick Castle: the next nearest castle to Raby where Cecily Neville was born. Photo no 6 is by Gerda on Unsplash. Photos 2 & 5 are also my own.

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Author: margaret21

I'm retired and live in North Yorkshire, where I walk , write, volunteer and travel as often as I can.

44 thoughts on “Six Degrees of Separation: from Intermezzo to The Patient”

    1. I hadn’t either. I was in the library and … jusged a book by its cover. So glad you’ve commented, as I can now tell you what I tried to say on yours. WP didn’t let me. ‘As ever, a thoughtfully constructed chain. I don’t think I’d chuck a single one of these off my bookshelf – but I’ve yet to read any of them.’

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  6. an interesting selection, Margaret. I must try the George Cross when I’m through Brunetti, and have ordered the Catherine Chidgey on Audible. …

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  7. Delighted to see a mention of Sue Miller! I’m not a crime reader but I do like the sound of The Patient. A neuro-diverse detective puts me in mind of Saga from The Bridge.

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  9. I enjoyed The King’s Mother. I liked the way Cecily’s relationship with Richard was portrayed, especially as it was so different from her relationship with Edward. The other books in your chain are all new to me!

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    1. If you ever get the chance to hear Annie Garthwaite speak, do go along. She’s an effective and interesting speaker about the whole Cecily ‘thing’.

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  11. You are reminding me that I really need to start reading in a different way. I tend to get through books the like watching TV – something to fill in time (actually, I mostly hate TV so often read while my other half is watching). But I rarely remember titles and authors, never mind the plots. I have read a couple of George Cross novels though not sure if this was one of them. If you hadn’t mentioned neuro-diverse, I wouldn’t have remembered it at all. I must try harder.

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    1. You’re very hard on yourself Annie! No exams loom on the horizon. I only ‘remember’ all this stuff because I record it on Goodreads. And in each case this month, they were recent reads.

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      1. But if you’re recording it on Goodreads, you are interacting with it. I sometimes feel it is going in through my eyes and out through the back of my head! I can read the same book a few months or years later and suddenly think ‘I’ve read that paragraph before’ but still not have a clue how the story proceeds or ends, even if I’m half way through it. I ought to at least keep a list of authors and titles. Some things were much easier with physical books than with Kindle.

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      2. Ah! I see! You’re a Kindle reader. I’m still a physical books person. I don’t get on with Kindle, and that’s partly because the words go in one ear and out the other, as it were. I definitely don’t engage brain in the same way as I do with a book. It sounds like this may be your problem too. Interesting! Perhaps experimenting with both might be a good idea? Life’s complicated!

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  12. I always find a book or several to tempt me in your recommendations. This time it’s The Arsonist that most appeals as well as Remote Sympathy. By the way, I’m currently enjoying Mr Mac and Me, another of your recommendations 🙂

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  13. A really interesting set of links here, Margaret. I might want to pick up Stone Yard Devotional at some point just to see what made her choose the course that she did–simple escape or something further. The Patient sounds like something I’d enjoy too!

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  14. Aren’t most (male) detectives somewhat ‘different’? I haven’t come across the D S Cross books so I shall have a look in the library.

    I’ve recently been enjoying Val McDermid’s Karen Pirie books (I seem to have become fond of Scottish crime writers) and I do recommend Lin Anderson as well as Alex Gray.

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  15. Thanks for your reviews. Family problems are in as one could notice at the Frankfurt Bookfair just last week. We love Commissario Brunetti as well.
    Happy weekend
    The Fab Four of Cley
    🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

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      1. Dear Margaret
        Unfortunately, I didn’t meet him there.
        For two days I was going around seeing friends and the rest of the time I sat at my publisher’s stall and talked to booksellers, readers and agents. The Frankfurt Bookfair is THE place for selling foreign rights.
        Klausbernd 🙂

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  17. Oh Margaret – you always surprise me with your Six Degrees of Separation. I had a great month of reading during my blog break with my family. “The Life She Was Given” by Ellen Marie Wiseman, “The White Lady by Jacqueline Winspear, The Square of Severn by Laura Shepard Robinson and Bluff by Jane Stanton Hitchcock. I haven’t read so many novels at one time for a long time. I’m usually working on Non-fiction. You have inspired me!! I am back to “Vincent and Theo” by Deborah Heiligman which is based on the letters between Vincent and Theo. I understand Vincent paintings so much better with this knowledge.

    It’s great to be back from my blog break and connect again. Hugs!

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    1. And hugs to you too. My NF reading comes in phases, and I am not in such a phase now. But you fiction authors are unknown to me. Heigh ho! More authors to discover and enjoy ….

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  19. Count me in for The Patient – always looking for good new detective stories! I’m sure you’ve read and reviewed it already but have you done The Frozen River? One of the best books I’ve read in a long time.

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