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 we’re starting with Virginia Evans’s Women’s Prize for Fiction longlisted The Correspondent which I’ve yet to read but I gather it’s an epistolary novel.
As is an old favourite of mine: Jane Oliver and Ann Stafford’s Business as Usual whose setting is based on the long-gone book department at Selfridges.
Madeleine St John’s The Women in Black, which came highly recommended by both Karen at Booker Talk and Kim at Reading Matters, is set in in a 1950s Sydney department store.
I’m linking by title to Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black whose TV adaptation was filmed in Laycock not far from where I live.
Laycock is in Wiltshire as is Wolfhall, which becomes Wolf Hall in Hilary Mantel’s novel.
Leading me to Roland Schimmelpfennig’s One Clear Ice-cold January Morning at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century which follows a wolf from Poland to Berlin.
I could have plumped for any number of novels set in Berlin but instead I’m linking to another even longer, cumbersome title: Judy Chicurel’s If I Knew You Were Going to be This Beautiful, I Never Would Have Let You Go.
This month’s Six Degrees has taken me from a epistolary novel in which a woman faces her past to a 1970s-set coming-of-age novel with a very long title. 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.
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I like your wolf links.
Thank you!
I love that I have read and loved both the St John and the Mantel in your chain this month, and I enjoyed those really long titles!
So pleased to have picked up that St John recommendation from Karen and Kim. I bet both those titles were severely mangled at bookshop till points!
I’ve read two books from your chain this month – The Woman in Black and Wolf Hall – and enjoyed both. I like your long titles link!
Thank you! I needed to swerve that Berlin link.
Love the wolf and long title links. I’ve read the Hill and Schimmelpfennig (loved the latter in particular). I hear The Correspondent is actually rather good…
Thanks, Annabel. I’ve added The Correspondent to my list although I’m not wholeheartedly enthusiastic. Fingers crossed.
Great links. But I’m most intrigue by the premise of the Roland Schimmelpfennig. Just off to find out more.
Thank you. I loved that novel. Such a clever idea, and so well done.
The hunt begins!
What great links, Wiltshire and Wolves and long cumbersome titles, brilliant!
Thanks, Jane. I hope not to encounter any real wolves in Wiltshire!
Great links!
https://wordsandpeace.com/2026/04/04/six-degrees-of-separation-why/
Thank you!
Love the long titles!
Thank you!
Nice work! I’ve only read The Correspondent [reviewed it this week] and The Women in Black which I reviewed at the time. I liked both, but had a couple of little disagreements with The Correspondent–nothing to put anyone off reading, just from life experience. Women in Black is worth finding.
Women in Black is very enjoyable. I’ve seen references to a gratuitous incident with a cat in reviews of The Correspondent.
Yes it was appalling. I pointed it out in my review. I nearly threw it back
Very clever links here. I saw the film of Women in Black and loved it! Who knew it was so close to you?
Thank you. Laycock’s quite a favourite with filmmakers. It stood in for Cranford in the BBC adaptation.
Great linking of books although I haven’t read any of them. But did love Wolf Hall on tv. Happy Easter Susan.
Thanks, Lucy. Brilliant adaptations – I enjoyed them, too. Happy Easter!
That has to be one of the longest titles ever, surely! Can’t imagine even managing to fit it on a book cover…
Extraordinary, isn’t it. Imagine the poor booksellers who had to try and interpret customers’ requests for them.
Like Cathy, I too like your wolf links which made me realise how often wolve actually appear in fiction. Incidentally, Wolf Hall is the only one of your links I’ve read! An interesting chain, as always.
Thanks, Mallika. They certainly pop up in folk and fairy tales.
There of course, but I’m also thinking Joan Aiken, and a YA alternate history i read around Hitler, though there they were metaphorical, also a medieval murder mystery!