Six Degrees of Separation – Unravelling to Spill Simmer Falter Wither

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 either our current book club choice or the book we’re reading which for me is Estelle Birdy’s debut, Ravelling, set-in working-class Dublin.

Birdy’s writing reminds me of Kevin Barry’s whose That Old Country Music is one of my favourite short story collections.

Music leads me to Ben Shattuck’s The History of Sound, a beautiful, cleverly structured collection, bookended by a love story and its continuation.

The first and last stories of Shattuck’s collection were skilfully adapted for the screen as was Tove Jansson’s The Summer Book starring Glenn Close, almost outshone by young Emily Matthews.

Moving on a season, which some of us in the UK are happy to do this year, leads me to Lee Cole’s Groundskeeping, an unusual campus novel which begins in autumn with a new academic year.

Last year I read Kari Leibowitz’s How to Winter which offered advice on getting though my least favourite season.

Seasons again with Sara Baume’s wonderfully poetic Spill Simmer Falter Wither which takes us through the entire cycle.

This month’s Six Degrees has taken me from one Irish novel to another by way of two short story collections, a beloved classic and the four seasons. 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.