It’s the first Saturday of the month which means it’s time for another Six Degrees of Separation, hosted by Kate of Books are my Favourite and Best. The idea is that Kate chooses a book to use as a starting point and then we have to link it to six other books of our choice to form a chain. A book doesn’t have to be connected to all of the others on the list – only to the one next to it in the chain.
This month Kate has said that in recognition of Novellas in November, we should start with a novella that’s on our reading list. I have chosen one that I’m planning to read this month: Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet. It will be perfect for Reading Scotland Month as well. Here’s what it’s about:
On 9 July 1857, Angus MacPhee, a labourer from Liniclate on the island of Benbecula, murdered his father, mother and aunt. At trial in Inverness he was found to be criminally insane and confined in the Criminal Lunatic Department of Perth Prison.
Some years later, Angus’s older brother Malcolm recounts the events leading up to the murders while trying to keep a grip on his own sanity. Malcolm is living in isolation, ostracised by the community and haunted by this gruesome episode in his past.
From Graeme Macrae Burnet, the Booker-shortlisted author of His Bloody Project, comes a beguiling psychological novel set on a remote Scottish island. Based on a true story and drawing on the documentary evidence of the time, Burnet constructs a gripping narrative about madness, murder and the uncertain nature of the self.
Benbecula is an island in the Outer Hebrides. My first link is to another book set (at least partly) on a Hebridean island: Now We Shall Be Entirely Free by Andrew Miller (1). A wounded man returns home to England from the Peninsular War in 1809 and, after regaining his strength, travels to Scotland to finish his recuperation – followed by a soldier who believes he is guilty of a war crime. I thought this was a beautifully written novel.
My next book is written by an author who shares a surname with Andrew Miller. The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (2) is a retelling of the Trojan War written from the perspective of Patroclus, Achilles’ best friend and lover. When I read this in 2012 it was the first Greek mythology book I’d read for years, so was something different for me. I’ve read a lot more of them since then!
Next, a simple link to another novel with the word ‘song’ in the title. The Long Song by Andrea Levy (3) is set on a Jamaican sugar plantation and is narrated by July, a young girl who is born into slavery. July lives through the Christmas Rebellion of 1831, the abolition of slavery in Jamaica and the changes that come afterwards and we see all of this through her eyes. I enjoyed this one but preferred Levy’s Small Island.
July is a month and so is May – John May, one of the two octogenarian detectives who work for the Peculiar Crimes Unit in Christopher Fowler’s Bryant and May series. White Corridor (4) was the last one I read and follows Arthur Bryant and John May as they try to solve a mystery while stranded in their car during a blizzard. I’m hoping to read the next book in the series soon.
From a book with white in the title to one with black. The Black Lake by Hella S. Haasse (5), is a 1948 novella about the unnamed son of a Dutch plantation owner in West Java who forms a childhood friendship with the son of his father’s estate manager, an Indonesian boy called Oeroeg. I read it in an English translation by Ina Rilke. If you’re still deciding what to read for Novellas in November, you may want to consider this one.
In Ghostwritten by Isabel Wolff (6), a ghostwriter is helping to write the memoirs of an elderly Dutch woman who grew up on a rubber plantation in Java and was sent to a Japanese internment camp there during the war. This was a fascinating book, although obviously disturbing to read about the conditions in the camps.
And that’s my chain for November! My links include the Hebrides, the name Miller, the word ‘song’, months for names, black and white and Java. Is there a connection between my last book and my first? Well, they are both set on islands and both have a one-word title.
In December we’ll be starting with Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan.
