Six Degrees of Separation – from Pride and Prejudice to Under the Visible Life #6Degrees

By / Random thoughts, Six Degrees of Separation / / 28 Comments

Six Degrees of Separation is a meme hosted by Kate over at Books Are My Favourite and Best. It works like this: each month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the others on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.

This month we’re starting with Pride and Prejudice. It would have taken a very determined person to avoid Jane Austen’s sharply observed, elegantly expressed novel on love and marriage among the English bourgeoisie over the last couple of decades. There have been a multitude of tributes paid to it, not least the BBC TV series featuring a wet-shirted Colin Firth emerging from a lake after a swim. Not sure what Austen would have made of that.

Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones’s Diary is surely the best known of those tributes, all about a young woman’s trials trying to find the man of her dreams when he’s practically under her nose. He’s even called Darcy which might have given her a clue. In a clever bit of casting, the much-ogled Firth played Darcy in the Bridget Jones films which may even have eclipsed the books in terms of their success.

Bridget Jones began life in a newspaper column in the now defunct print version of the Independent which leads me to Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series, originally a San Francisco Chronicle column, also all about relationships with a good deal of product placement and outlandish adventure thrown in. I loved them but not the TV adaptation which failed to capture the charm of the books for me.

Which leads me to another TV adaptation, this time a successful one. I posted an entry in my Blasts from the Past series recently on Jake Arnott’s tale of 1960s East End gangsterism, The Long Firm, which prompted me to seek out the DVD of the BBC’s excellent dramatisation, It turned out to be just as good as I remembered – Mark Strong fits the part of Arnott’s complex Harry Starks perfectly.

When I passed Arnott’s novel onto H, my resident contemporary historian, he was struck by the accuracy of its period detail. The only other novel I can think of that fits this exacting bill is Jonathan Coe’s The Rotters’ Club, so good H included it on his undergraduate reading list for the period. It’s about four school friends growing up ’70s Birmingham and facing strikes, IRA bombs and appalling fashion trends.

Coe wrote a book called Expo ’58 set in the same year as Roddy Doyle, author of The Commitments, was born. Doyle’ s funny, touching novel is set in working class Dublin and follows a group of disparate people who form a band, belting out classic soul numbers. While some of the members are there for lack of anything else to do its the camaraderie of making music that keeps them together despite their many falling outs.

Which brings me to my last book, one which I’ll grab any chance to write about – Kim Echlin’s Under the Visible Life about two very different women bound together by their love of music in a friendship that endures through love lost and won; marriage, arranged and otherwise; and raising children in the most difficult circumstances. Music is the breath of life to Katherine and Mahsa, running through their story like a constant yet ever-changing refrain. A memorable, beautifully written novel

This month’s Six Degrees of Separation has taken me from an early nineteenth century classic about love and marriage to a novel about friendship and a shared love of music. Part of the fun of this meme is comparing the very different routes other bloggers take from each month’s starting point. If you’re interested, you can follow it on Twitter with the hashtag #6Degrees, check out the links over at Kate’s blog or perhaps even join in.

28 thoughts on “Six Degrees of Separation – from Pride and Prejudice to Under the Visible Life #6Degrees”

  1. Annabel (gaskella)

    What a lovely set of imaginative links. Glad to see Jonathan Coe there – I’m a huge fan. (And Arnott too). I haven’t done mine yet, have been so busy doing blog maintenance, I forgot.

    Reply
  2. MarinaSofia

    Oooh, is it that time of the month again? Well, I will certainly have to take part, if it’s P&P as a starter…
    I was getting a bit worried when you veered off to Bridget Jones’s Diary, but then it took an interesting detour.

    Reply
    1. Susan Osborne

      Ha! I haven’t actually read BJ although I’ve sold a multitude of copies, and I’m afraid I had to get that infamous scene in somehow. Looking forward to seeing which direction you wander off in.

      Reply
  3. madamebibilophile

    A great selection Susan! I remember you mentioning the accuracy of Arnott before, I really must read The Long Firm, I thought the adaptation with Mark strong was excellent. I’ve not read Under the Visible Life either, I’ll look out for it!

    Reply
    1. Susan Osborne

      Thank you, Janet. I hope you do. It’s such an enjoyable post to write and then there’s the fun of following the diverse routes everyone takes from the jumping off point.

      Reply
  10. bookbii

    Fascinating list Susan, and it looks like it was fun to do. It’s always interesting to see how easy and yet how different the step from one book to another can be.

    Reply
  13. Melinda Tognini

    I haven’t read The Commitments, but loved the music in the film version. I love the premise of your last book, Under the Visible Life – might have to add that one to my TBR pile, which is growing exponentially after reading all the 6 Degrees posts each month!

    Reply

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