Six Degrees of Separation - from The Post-Office Girl to Happy Landings

 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.  June’s starting point is The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig (1982).  It’s about a lowly postal worker and Ursula LeGuin described it as “a dark fairytale of Austria in 1926.”

First Degree

I haven’t read that book but I do like letters (if not post offices)!  One of the lesser-known Elswyth Thanes is Letter to a Stranger (1954) in which bestselling author Eve Endicott is intrigued by a fan letter she receives from a dedicated reader and sets out to meet the young woman. She then gets drawn into a complicated situation with the girl's father, Beau Marshall, a talented but domineering artist, and with their neighbor Richie, a recent widower.

Second Degree

In Letters from Skye by Jessica Brockmole (2013), set just before WWI, Elspeth, who has never left the Isle of Skye, falls in love long distance with letter-writing American.  Is their love doomed?  This was a very enjoyable dual timeline book.

Third Degree

In The Vicarage Children in Skye by Lorna Hill (1966), back before it was a thing, the King family does a vacation house switch – their house in Northumberland in exchange for a minister’s home on the Isle of Skye.  Hill was a minister’s wife in a town called Matfen and I always wonder if her family did this.  I had a friend who used to do house exchanges but getting your home ready for strangers must be a real ordeal.

Fourth Degree

Noel Streatfeild did not enjoy growing up in a vicarage as the daughter of a minister (1963).  A Vicarage Family is the first of her fictionalized three-book memoir which starts before WWI.  Fans do not want to miss this.

Fifth Degree

In Swift Water by Emilie Loring (1929), a handsome new minister comes to town and sets the single women in a flutter.  All except lovely Jean Randolph who swears that if she ever enters a church for a man, she will forfeit her convertible to her best friend.  That was tempting fate, Jean!  I read every Loring my library had one summer when I was about 14.

Sixth Degree

Another fan of Loring’s books, Patti Bender, spent many years researching and writing Happy Landings: Emilie Loring's Life, Writing, and Wisdom (2023).  I enjoyed meeting Patti when her book tour brought her to Boston several years ago.  My review.  

So my book journey this month took me from Austria to Connecticut to Scotland to Sussex, England to New Hampshire and finally back to Boston!  Next month, Kate has chosen Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, which I have begun but am not enjoying.  I gave my copy to my sister but I will probably read by July.