Six Degrees of Separation - from Long Island to Patriot Hearts

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 Colm Tóibín’s Long Island (2024), which I recently enjoyed (my review).  My book group read Brooklyn, the earlier book about Eilis, and I think we saw the movie together as well.

My first link is also set on Long Island, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925). For many readers it has enduring appeal, past high school assignments, due to its portrayal of human desires and flaws and of those trying to break into the world of the elite. Last summer, my sister, brother-in-law, and niece went to a musical version put on at the American Repertory Theater. It was too dark for us but still fascinating.

I am actually a bigger fan of a different book set on Long Island, The Gold Coast by Nelson DeMille (1990), who died a week or so ago. The Gold Coast is the name for the wealthiest part of Long Island. The plot involves John Sutter, a lawyer who lives there with his wife Susan, and how their lives change when a famous mafia don moves in next door.  I wonder why no one ever made a movie of this book?

My third link is DeMille, who was so generous about blurbing other writers’ books that when I worked in publishing we called him (affectionately) a quote whore. So I was amused to see writer Joseph Finder’s appreciation for a quote DeMille gave him for his thriller, The Moscow Club (1991).

Another book with a Moscow connection is The Second Lady by Irving Wallace (1980), which I just finished. I don’t remember who recommended this but I am a big fan of impersonation stories. This is a very unusual one: the KGB decides to substitute an actress (using plastic surgery and years of training) for the US President’s wife while she is visiting Russia. It’s somewhat explicit about the details undertaken to fool the president once the imposter is in place. How will she fool the President?  Will anyone realize the real First Lady is missing?

In First Lady by Susan Elizabeth Phillips (2000), the widowed first lady also disappears – but this time those around her know she is missing! She has gone on the run to escape her responsibilities and live an ordinary life, so is disguising herself with an attractive stranger and two little girls he is escorting cross-country.

My final link is more First Ladies: Patriot Hearts: A Novel of the Founding Mothers by Barbara Hambly (2007) (my review), covers the lives of Dolley Madison, Martha Washington, Abigail Adams and Sally Hemings from the 1770s through 1814. Of course, Sally Hemings was Thomas Jefferson’s slave, not his wife.

So I connected Long Island, set mostly in Ireland, with books that take place in NY’s Long Island, Washington, DC, Moscow, and back to DC. Have you read any of these? Next month (November 2, 2024), we’ll start with Sally Rooney’s latest release, Intermezzo.