Six Degrees of Separation: from Yesteryear to Prophet Song.

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, Yesteryear, by  Caro Claire Burke attracts me not at all. Here’s what Google’s AI Overview has to say about it: ‘Yesteryear is a darkly satirical thriller about Natalie Heller Mills, a high-profile ‘tradwife’ influencer who glorifies a romanticised, 19th century farm life. Behind her curated, cottagecore Instagram feed lie hidden modern appliances, paid nannies, and a crumbling, fame-obsessed marriage.’ 

I thought I’d run away immediately to a group of women whose young lives could hardly be more different from our own Instagram-able days. The Eights, by Joanna Miller, follows the fortunes of 4 young women admitted to Oxford University in the very year – 1920 – in which they would be able to study towards a degree, a possibility until then denied to female students. They face petty and strict rules about their day-to-day lives, prejudice and family difficulties. This is their story.

Two women , in Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave show how women’s possibilities change during the twentieth century. English (bi-sexual) Erica comes across French (lesbian) Laure one summer morning in 1978, on the steps of Sacré Coeur when Erica smiles at Laure after spotting they’re reading the same book. They become lovers then part – often. Erica is in her mid 30s as the story reaches its climax, and the social change that characterises both French and British society between the 70s and the very early 2000s is subtly yet vividly made a living part of the narrative.

In Vaseem Khan‘s Edge of Darkness, another female is treading new paths for women. We’re in just-post-partition India, and Persis Wadia is India’s first female detective. She faces the same kind of prejudice and condescension faced by the Oxford students. Persis is determined, principled and awkward. She thinks outside the box, but has very little support, with the possible exception of her new second-in-command. Solving the murder of a prominent politican isn’t something you should leave in the hands of a mere woman. Or is it? This is the sixth book In which Persis is Our Heroine, and I’ve loved every single one of them.

We’ll stay on the Indian sub-continent, but change the mood completely, and look at a real door-stopper: High: A Journey across the Himalayas, through Pakistan, India, Bhutan, Nepal and China: by Erika Fatland (translated by Kari Dickson). Erika Fatland is a Norwegian anthropologist. She’s undertaken here quite a journey: the one outlined in the title of her book. She observes the sights and sounds of – often very remote -cities, towns and villages on her travels, describing her meetings with locals. These can be the inhabitants of these communities, or religious leaders, nuns, bureaucrats, countryside rangers – even a king: even the dispossessed. In particular, women’s lives are still on the whole greatly impacted by tradition and custom. A big chunk of a book, this is nevertheless highly readable and accessible, and engagingly translated.

Travel in unfamiliar places always brings challenges of one kind or another. None more so than when you are deliberately abandoned on a deserted and inhospitable island in the South Pacific. This was the fate, in the early 18th century, of Alexander Selkirk. His misadvenures have already been imagined by Daniel Defoe, in Robinson Crusoe. Now Francesca de Tores has done it again, in Castaway. I’m reading it now. And it’s no swashbuckling adventure, I can tell you. Think rats, mosquitos, and not a single mod con, 18th century style, to help you along. (For ‘mod con’, read eating or drinking vessel, knife, axe, change of clothing, blanket ….).  Over time, Selkirk’s back story is trickled into the story. Our task as readers is to observe this man reveal himself as he comes to understand himself better.

Paul Lynch greatly enjoyed Francesca de Tores‘ previous book, Saltblood, and as I got a lot from reading his Prophet Song, I’ll end my chain with it. It was one of my winning reads of 2024.  It’s set in Ireland in the near future, after a fascist government has been elected to power. Long breathless paragraphs, light on punctuation, drive the story on as everyday wife, mother and daughter Eilish ‘s decision making and relationship with her children and family gradually becomes increasingly erratic, as the government increases its stranglehold on everyday life, as violence and the impossibility of everyday living increases. It’s a deeply uncomfortable read. Perhaps even more so now than when I first read it.

One way or another, I’ve wandered pretty far from the starting point this month. What will happen next month, I wonder, when our starting point is a book already on my TBR list:  Maggie O’Farrell‘s Land?



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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.

63 thoughts on “Six Degrees of Separation: from Yesteryear to Prophet Song.”

  4. I read The Eights last year and really enjoyed it. I would love a sequel! Of the other books in your chain, I like the sound of the Persis Wadia series.

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    1. I can recommend prickly Persis! Yes, we discussed The Eights in my book group, and several people wanted a sequel. I’m not so sure. But I’ll read it if there is one!

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  6. I’ve often thought that High would be up my alley, and you’ve confirmed it, but why oh why does it have to be such a doorstopper!!

    Love the final link in your chain too, an insider link if you like 🙂

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  7. Yesteryear doesn’t hold much appeal for me either. I saw a newspaper comment piece recently about the trend on Instagram/Tik Tok for young women living as if they were in the 1950s. Why, I wondered????

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    1. Excellent! So pleased. The interest for me was that my mother was offered a scholarship place at Oxford only eight years later – a triumph for a Leeds lass, and couldn’t take it up when her father unexpectedly died. A story perhaps that I should tell …

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      2. Indeed. It was still unusual for girls to choose that path, But her father wasn’t going to put up with any of that ‘housewife’ nonsense! (though that’s what his wife was)

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      3. Yes, it is a story worth sharing. My question is: did she continue her desire to learn, or did she put that energy into encouraging her children to choose higher education?

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      4. She actually went to University in Leeds, her home town. So she did alright, but never forgave her mother (it’s a long story). I was her only child, but yes, I had high expectations placed on me.

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  11. Another interesting bundle, Margaret. Social ‘norms’ and women’s roles seem to have come so far in the timescale of these books. Yes to The Eights, I guess. And prickly Persis. Donna Leon with the boot on the other foot, so to speak? xx

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    1. Comparing the Persis books with those about Brunetti is inspired, Jo. I think these two would either hate or love one another, but the readers of either would enjoy the other too, I think.

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  13. I added The Eights to my TBR — thanks! That sounds like one I would enjoy. I’m also intrigued by the stories about India’s first detective.

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    2. Well, don’t leave it too long. I find books I’ve bought get a Free Pass to wait till later, compared with library books, and then I go and forget about them.

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    1. High is excellent. And because it’s not a novel, you can pick it up and leave it whenever you want. It’ll be ready for you again when you’re ready fotr another journey.

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      2. As ever, because of my previous association with Blogger, it’s not letting me comment any other way, and I don’t want to link back to my defunct blog. But I do like the clever way you’ve dealt with making use of a book that I too have no desire to read.

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      3. So sorry that we can’t work out that problem, Margaret. But in any case, I always try to find some sort of connection to a book I read or use the title (which isn’t always easy, either). But this worked for me. After reading some of the other lists, I thought that I might have read it had I come across it, but it is not as interesting that I am going out of my way trying to find it.
        Anyway, thanks for your comment here.

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  22. You have some really interesting links here, Margaret, and I particularly like your first one to a book that I’m sure would appeal to me. I am undecided about Yesteryear. The subject matter does interest me because I think if we are interested in what is happening in women’s lives at the moment this trend – tradwives, other influencing along lines that don’t accord with traditional feminist principles – is worthy subject matter for fiction. I’d read it if my reading group scheduled it, but otherwise I probably won’t prioritise it! My daughter really liked it, and I approved her taste (even if I don’t follow her love of fantasy!)

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    1. It was the apparent focus on social media that put me off reading this book. But as you say, its subject is interesting, and perhaps I shouldn’t refuse a copy that came my way. Like you, I don’t do fantasy though. Yes, give the Oxford pioneers a go! Thanks for your comment.

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      1. That’s interesting Margaret. For me I really want to read fiction that is confronting these real world things. I use social media a bit – after all, blogging is social media – but I manage to keep away from unpleasant stuff and most of the pure influencers,
        so reading about the things we are hearing about is how I hope to understand.

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      2. That is a very fair point, actually. I hope I do try to read about things I understand poorly or feel ‘anti’ for some reason, but the premise of this one had failed to reel me in. And you’re right that blogging is a form of social media. I tend not to think of it that way.

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      3. I think blogging – or the sort we do – is probably one of the “safest” forms of social media isn’t it. People writing about reading mostly fiction don’t tend to attract much ire fortunately!

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