Six Degrees of Separation – from After Story to A Springtime Affair

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place as other readers, add six books, and see where it ends up. This month’s starting point is After Story by Larissa Behrendt. It sounds like something I would enjoy: When Indigenous lawyer Jasmine decides to take her mother Della on a tour of England's most revered literary sites, Jasmine hopes it will bring them closer together and help them reconcile the past.

First Degree

Jasmine’s tour is a link to Literary Trails, British Writers in Their Landscapes by Christina Hardyment (2000), which my British Studies professor recommended two years ago. This is an enjoyable coffee table book.  My review.

Second Degree

I went on several literary pilgrimages while I was studying in London in 2022, including Green Knowe and Wells, but I was particularly excited to visit Bletchley Park, which I suppose was more of a historical pilgrimage, as I had just read The Secret Lives of Codebreakers: The Men and Women Who Cracked the Enigma Code at Bletchley Park by Sinclair McKay (2012). My review.

Third Degree

Another book involving secret codes (if not on the scale of Enigma) is Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett (2004). When a Vermeer is stolen on its way to the Art Institute of Chicago, Petra and Calder try to use their problem-solving skills and their knowledge of art to decipher a crime that has left even the FBI baffled. This is the sort of book that I would have liked more as a child – as an adult, I thought there too many coincidences although the codes and illustrations and art aspects were fun.

Fourth Degree

In Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers (1932), Lord Peter and Harriet Vane find a coded message on a dead body, which they have to read to solve a murder. The cipher is the Playfair cipher, originally created by Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1854.

Fifth Degree

Another book where the main characters find a dead body is Do Not Disturb by Claire Douglas (2020). Kirsty and Adrian have just opened a B&B in Wales when they find a dead body. Frankly, I think dealing with all the rude customers who show up and write bad reviews online about their hard work is more stressful than coping with murder! My review.

Sixth Degree

Gilly in A Springtime Affair by Katie Fforde (2020) also runs an B&B from her family home, which she doesn’t want to part with – at any price. No dead bodies, but she has to cope with a selfish adult son who wants her to sell the house to subsidize a fancy property for his family. I prefer her early books but Gilly was an appealing character.

Not much geographic variety this month!  I connected a novel set in England by an Australian writer with various books set in Great Britain leaving only once for Chicago.  Is there a connection between After Story and A Springtime Affair?  Only in that both involve mothers and daughters developing a closer connection.

Next month (October 5, 2024), the starting point will be Colm Tóibín’s Long Island, which I recently reviewed.