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 others to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the titles on the list, only to the one next to it in the chain.
This month, in what feels like an entirely different world from the one we were living in last month, we’re starting with Stasiland, Anna Funder’s clear-eyed, empathetic testament to the dreadful consequences of totalitarianism in which people tell their stories of life in the GDR and the opening of the Stasi’s files.
Which leads me to Red Love, Maxim Leo’s memoir of his years growing up in East Berlin. A fascinating portrait of a privileged family, well-connected within the GDR establishment.
Kapka Kassakova’s riveting Border explores the border zone between Bulgaria, Turkey and Greece, rumoured to be an easier crossing point into the West than the Berlin Wall in the Cold War years.
Set in the same area Miroslav Penkov’s sprawling Stork Mountain is narrated by a young man who left Bulgaria, aged eight, a couple of years after the Wall fell, returning to Klisura whose roofs are home to many storks’ nests.
Plenty of birds, although no storks, in Eva Meijer’s delightful Bird Cottage, a fictionalised biography of Len Howard who threw up her life as a violinist in London and took herself off to Sussex to pursue her lifelong passion for birds.
Jill Dawson’s novels often take the form of fictionalised biography, including The Crime Writer about Patricia Highsmith’s sojourn in a Suffolk cottage, hoping her lover will join her.
John Malkovich played a suitably chilling Ripley in the film adaptation of Highsmith’s Ripley’s Game. He turned up, slightly disconcertingly, as Poirot in the BBC’s 2018 adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The A B C Murders which features a murderer whose victims’ names follow an alphabetic sequence, an early outing for contemporary crime fiction’s staple character – the serial killer.
This month’s Six Degrees of Separation has taken me from an investigation of the Stasi’s files after they were opened to the public to a crime fiction classic set in the South East of England. 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.
Fantastic! You know, I didn’t realize that serial killers weren’t very popular in murder mystery books until more recently. Now that I think about it, it is probably true that historically, most murder mystery books were to solve just one death, or one crime scene that has more than one death. Christie did seem to be an outlier as far as that’s concerned with ABC Murders and of course, And Then There Were None.
Thank you! It’s surprising given the popular fascination with Jack the Ripper that it took so long to catch on in fiction.
Love the John Malkovich link…very clever!
Thank you! He was much better as Ripley but his Poirot stuck with me, too.
I’m interested in four of your middle links (I’ve only read Stasiland and The Crime Writer). I read my first-ever Poirot novel recently for the #1920Club. Perfect light reading for a time of distraction.
*Whisper it* I’ve not read a Christie. That link was based on Mr Malkovich! But I suspect you’re right about diverting us from our current predicament
Thanks for the reminder about the Dawson. I meant to read that when it came out and somehow are another it’s slipped down the list.
I think you’d like it, Ann, and you’d get all the allusions I missed.
Generally I’m not a fan of fictionalised biography but you’ve reminded me that I was very tempted by both the ones you mention here! I really enjoy this meme, its so clever and everyone’s chains are so different.
Bird Cottage would make a lovely comfort read during our current troubles. I’m not a keen meme blogger but I love the challenge of this one and seeing the very differnt routes others take.
You’ve reminded me about Dawson too. I also love the sound of Bird Cottage and Red Love.
I very nearly included Bird Cottage in my comfort read post. It would fit that bill very well.
It is always interesting to see the different directions people go in from the same starting point.
It’s all part of the fun, isn’t it.
‘Clear-eyed’ and ’empathetic’ is the perfect description of Stasiland – I was fascinated from start to finish and I very much enjoyed Funders personal elements in the story (eg. about her flat in Berlin). I have had Red Love on my shelf for so long. I really MUST get to it.
I think you’d like it, Kate. I’m sure you’ve seen The Lies of Others which makes a neat companion to Stasiland.
‘Disconcerting’ is the perfect word for JM in that Christie adaptation! I started Bird Cottage a while back and got distracted, so thanks for the nudge. And your other titles are very compelling too, thank you!
Thanks, Liz. Such a strange bit of casting! Bird Cottage would be a nicely comforting read, right now.
ooh great advice, thank you!
An interesting chain, thanks for sharing.
Thank you!
Haha, after your first few interesting but rather heavy sounding books I wasn’t expecting your chain to end with Agatha Christie! Love seeing where everyone takes these chains… 😀
Nor was I! It was Mr Malkovich who I thought made a perfect Ripley but a somewhat surprising Poirot.
You’ve reminded me that I’ve meant to check out Jill Dawson’s books for awhile now (I think I read one nearly two decades ago but then lost track). This meme seems like it must be a lot of fun to do. Especially if you have a lovely book collection, over which you can allow your eyes to wander as you muse!
It’s both a monthly treat and a challenge for me. Dawson is so good at drawing lived lives into her fiction.
Good work! I love the sound of Bird Cottage.
Thank you. Bird Cottage is a little gem. Highly recommend it!
I love that you ended with an Agatha Christie mystery. I haven’t heard of The Crime Writer, but it sounds like something I would enjoy. Thank you for sharing!
If you are interested in seeing the direction my chain went: https://www.literaryfeline.com/2020/04/six-degrees-of-separation-stasiland-to.html
Not where I expected to end up at all but that’s all part of the Six Degrees fun!Thanks for the link – I’ll wander over and take a look.