Six Degrees of Separation: The Safekeep to Pachinko

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

Thank you so much for putting Yael van der Wouden‘s The Safekeep on my reading list Kate. It’s a book which delivered so much, and also invites any number of ways the Six Degrees contributor could go.

I settled for looking at those parts of WWII little known about here, as far as the German perspective goes. and begin with We Germans, by Alexander Storritt. ‘What did you do in the war?’ a young British man asks his German Grandad. And is told, in the form of a long letter found after his death. In 1944, Meissner, a German artillery soldier, had been fighting with his unit in Russia, in Ukraine. But in Poland, he and a few others somehow got separated when detailed to look for a rumoured food depot. They see Polish villagers hung by unidentified men from a single tree ‘in bunches, like swollen plums.’ They witness rape and crucifixion. They steal a tank and use it against the Russians. They squabble bitterly with each other. They kill enemy soldiers without compunction. This is a well-drawn book, a deft exploration of the moral contradictions inherent in saving one’s own life at the cost of the lives of others. Though fiction, it’s clearly deeply rooted in the reality of the helpless, pointess horror of the last period of the war for those often starving people, both army and hapless civilians who found themselves marooned on the Eastern Front.

A book in a similar vein is Hubert Mingarelli‘s A Meal in Winter (translated by Sam Taylor). An account of three German soldiers whose task on a bitterly cold winter day is to hunt down Jews in hiding and bring them back to the Polish concentration camp where they are based, for an inevitable end. This unenviable task is better than the alternative: staying in camp to shoot those who were found the previous day. They talk – about the teenage son of one of them – and they find just one Jew. Is he their enemy, deserving his fate, or is he just like them, a young man doing his best to survive? What if they return to camp with nobody to show for their day’s hunting? As the men retreat to an abandoned cottage to prepare a meagre meal, their hatred and fear jostle with their well-submerged more humane feelings to provide the rest of the drama for this short, thought provoking book.

This reminds me of a book about the seige of Leningrad, which I read many years ago, but which made a lasting impression on me: Helen Dunmore‘s The Siege. The novel revolves around five interwoven lives during the war when Leningrad was completely surrounded by the Germans. Winter came and there was no food or coal, it was a brutal winter and one half of the population of the city perished. What energy the citizens had was devoted to the constant struggle to stay alive. Some of the strategies they employed will stay with me forever. Soaking leather bookmarks to get some nourishment from the resulting ‘stock’, for instance.

Let’s leave war behind, but looks at another struggle for survival in Cormac McCarthy‘s The Road: another book I read a long time ago. The tale of a father and son trudging through post-Apocalypse America. This is a land where nothing grows, no small animals are there for the hunting: where communities and dwellings are deserted and long-since looted for anything that might sustain life a few more days: where other humans might prove peaceable, but might instead be evil and dangerous. This book is bleakly, sparely written. Conversations between father and son are clipped, necessary. No speech marks. Sometimes little punctuation. Every ounce of energy is needed for the business of staying alive. This book, in which nobody lives happily-ever-after has stayed with me.

Oh dear, back to war, but staying with relationships within a family. V.V. Ganeshananthan‘s Brotherless Night. This book plunged me right into a war that had previously been an ongoing news item from somewhere very far away. The ethnic conflict in 1980s Sri Lanka between the Sinhalese dominant state and several separatist Tamil separatist groups is brought to life by the Tamil narator, Sashi. She’s 16 when we meet her, and an aspiring doctor. She has 4 brothers, 3 older, one younger. We follow the family’s fortunes as an ethic-inspired war breaks out, and daily life becomes more difficult, disrupting her education and resulting in her older brothers and their friend K joining the fray at the expense of their own education. Loyalty to a movement rather than family is alien to their parents. Tensions arise. Tragedy strikes. Normally conforming Sashi is moved to become a medic at a field hospital for the Tigers, because what is more important than relieving suffering, saving lives, whoever needs that help? As the war becomes ever more destructive, her personal conflicts and the family’s day to day arrangements become ever more complex. Years go by as the story unfolds. This story is impeccably and compassionately researched. It is urgent, intimate, written with striking imagery and immediacy. A distant conflict, several decades old is brought right into our homes and becomes alive once more.

Another book I read ages ago is Min Jin Lee‘s Pachinko. This too is about not civil war, but about two nations – Korea and Japan -who historically have a less than happy relationship, and how this conflict plays out in the life of a single family, throughout the twentieth century. Some stayed in Korea (South Korea in due course), and others tried for a new life in Japan. None found it easy. This is a book about resilience and emotional conflict passing down through the generations. It’s about well-drawn characters making their way in the world, sometimes with great success, but rarely able to escape from the shadow of their past. It’s a real page turner, from which I learnt much about this period of Korea’s history. Highly recommended.

I seem to have wandered rather far from the intimately domestic scale of The Safekeep, and spent a lot of time dwelling on war. I wonder what my next chain will make of August’s book: Ghost Cities, by Siang Lu?

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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.

46 thoughts on “Six Degrees of Separation: The Safekeep to Pachinko”

  1. Well, it’s always an entertaining read, if grim in parts- like life, Margaret. I have actually read Pachinko, but have no memory of it. I’d have to pick the book up again and revisit a few pages to make it come back. One very good reason why I would never take part in this challenge, but very much enjoy wandering our planet with you. War and human relationships are never ending sources of material. xx

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    1. It’s an astonishing piece of history, an Dunmore does a great job of telling the story from the point of view of a small group of people. I read it 20 years ago, and remember it still.

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  6. I’m glad you liked The Safekeep – I was hoping to read it in time for this month’s Six Degrees but still haven’t got round to it. I’m afraid I haven’t read any of the other books in your chain either, but I do at least have a copy of Brotherless Night.

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  9. As always there are several here to tempt me, in particular Brotherless Night (because we’re thinking of a trip to Sri Lanka next year) and Pachinko, having been to both North Korea (where there are also families with relatives who opted for Japan) and to Japan. 

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  13. A rather bleak chain this month. I don’t read about war. And although I recorded the film ‘The Road’ I only watched about five minutes before deleting it. Seems I don’t do dystopia either! I do however admire the way you put a link together.

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    1. I definiely don’t do dystopia in the normal way. But The Road has a real down-to-earth feel about it which seems to secure it into the real world. I see what you mean about Bleak. But Pachinko isn’t bleak. Honest!

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  15. Your choices this month are all too harrowing for me, but The Safekeep is on my list and I will get round to that eventually. I should probably read The Siege having viewed the Leningrad Album in Glasgow’s Mitchell Library. Some women in Scotland sent an album of support, and amazingly they got an album back from the women of Leningrad. Not sure anyone knows how they were smuggled in and out.

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  16. I enjoyed your war theme. A meal in winter interests me in particular because of the moral issues it sounds like the protagonists confront. Love that sort of war book. I’ve read two in your chain … The road and Pachinko.

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    1. A Meal in Winter and We Germans both confront similar themes. Because we get to ‘know’ the main protagonist in We Germans better, this book hit me harder I think. Though it’s quite a long time since I read A Meal in Winter.

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  19. Your chain cover some heavy topics this month. I’ve only read The Road (made a huge impression) and Brotherless Night (gripping and educational). Both of which are excellent books. I am not drawn to war books at the moment, even if you’ve included some interesting-sounding choices. The Safekeep has been on my radar for a while due to all the prize attention.

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    1. I did read your interesting post, but ended up having to comment via your comment on Kate’s! I have commented on other Blogger posts, but yours seems to insist I go via by own defunct Blogger blog, which I can’t do. Who knows why? Both WordPress and Blogger seem to like to make it hard for The Average Blogger!

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  22. Six Degrees of Separation, I always enjoy reading these posts…….Three books about WWII. That’s what got me started as a reader so many years ago. Recently spent some time wondering and wandering thinking about soldiers on both sides who were simply doing what their leaders told them to do. I even visited a German WWI cemetery not more than a half mile from an American Cemetery in France. So much to understand, to learn, and to reflect upon. I hope you have a great week and those hot July days give way to a milder August. Peace.

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    1. When thinking about the World Wars, I often remember the tale of the German and British soldiers who on WWI on Christmas Day in 1914, met in No Man’s Land, had a game of football, exchanged small gifts like a cigarette … and then were obliged to go back to fighting the next day. But we never seem to do without war, do we?

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  23. The Safekeep was added to my list as soon as I read the first chain this month. And Pachinko has been on said list for a long time. You always create a thought-provoking chain, Margaret.

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