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 we’re starting with Wifedom by Anna Funder. I haven’t read this book, but here’s what it’s about:

Looking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, Anna Funder slips into the pages of her hero George Orwell. As she watches him create his writing self, she tries to remember her own…

When she uncovers his forgotten wife, it’s a revelation. Eileen O’Shaughnessy’s literary brilliance shaped Orwell’s work and her practical nous saved his life. But why – and how – was she written out of the story? Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder recreates the Orwells’ marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and WWII in London. As she rolls up the screen concealing Orwell’s private life, she is led to question what it takes to be a writer – and what it is to be a wife.

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First, I’m linking to another book about the ‘forgotten’ wife of a famous person. Mrs Engels by Gavin McCrea (1) is a fictional portrayal of Lizzie Burns, the lover and eventual wife of the German philosopher Friedrich Engels. There’s not a lot of information available on the real Lizzie, but we know that she was probably illiterate, which makes it all the more important that books like this are written to give a voice to people who were unable to tell their own story. The novel describes Lizzie’s early life in 19th century Manchester where she worked at a cotton mill, before moving on to her relationships with Engels and his friend, Karl Marx.

The setting provides the link to my next book. North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (2) is also set in a mill town in the north of England – the fictional Milton, thought to be based on Manchester. It’s the story of Margaret Hale, who moves from the south of England to the north after her father leaves his job as parson to take up a new position as a tutor in Milton. Here Margaret is exposed to new people and new ideas. This isn’t a favourite classic of mine, but I did find it interesting and have since gone on to read more of Gaskell’s books.

North and south are directions of the compass and so are east and west. The next book in my chain is The Western Wind by Samantha Harvey (3), a mystery set in a small English village in 1491. The novel is narrated by a priest, John Reve, who listens to the confessions of his parishioners and tries to piece together the truth about the disappearance of the wealthy Thomas Newman, who has been swept away by the river. Was it murder, suicide or a terrible accident? This is an unusual book, structured so that the story moves back in time rather than forwards, but it’s not one that I particularly liked due to feeling a lack of connection with the characters.

Another author who shares a surname with Samantha is W.F. Harvey, author of The Mysterious Mr Badman (4). This is a book from the excellent British Library Crime Classics series and one that I really enjoyed. Published in 1934, it’s described as a ‘bibliomystery’ and begins with Athelstan Digby helping out in his nephew’s village bookshop when three different people arrive one after the other, all asking for a copy of the same rare book. Although I found it more of a thriller than a traditional mystery, it’s very entertaining and a lot of fun to read.

Digby is not a common name, but it also appears in Beau Geste by P.C. Wren (5). Digby Geste, his twin brother Michael (nicknamed Beau) and their younger brother John are orphans living with a rich aunt when her valuable sapphire, the ‘Blue Water’, disappears. Each of them, for various reasons, decides to confess to the theft before running away to join the French Foreign Legion. Part adventure novel set in North Africa and part whodunnit with two separate mysteries to solve, I loved this book and still need to finish the trilogy.

With two of the Geste brothers being twins, I started to think about other books featuring twins. There are a few I could have chosen, but I decided on a novel I read earlier this year, The So Blue Marble by Dorothy B. Hughes (6). Although this isn’t the strongest of the Hughes novels I’ve read so far, it’s still very enjoyable. The twin characters, Danny and David Montefierrow, are a sinister pair who are searching for a mysterious blue marble and will stop at nothing to find it!

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And that’s my chain for September! My links have included: Forgotten wives, Manchester cotton mills, compass points, authors with the name Harvey, fictional Digbys and books featuring twins.

In October we’ll be starting with I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith – finally, a book I’ve actually read!

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 we’re starting with Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld. This is not a book I’ve read, but here’s what it’s about:

With a series of heartbreaks under her belt, Sally Milz – successful script writer for a legendary late-night TV comedy show – has long abandoned the search for love.

But when her friend and fellow writer begins to date a glamorous actress, he joins the growing club of interesting but average-looking men who get romantically involved with accomplished, beautiful women.

Sally channels her annoyance into a sketch, poking fun at this ‘social rule’. The reverse never happens for a woman.

Then Sally meets Noah, a pop idol with a reputation for dating models. But this isn’t a romantic comedy – it’s real life.

Would someone like him ever date someone like her?

Skewering all our certainties about why we fall in love, ROMANTIC COMEDY is a witty and probing tale of how the heart will follow itself, no matter what anyone says. It is Curtis Sittenfeld at her most sharp, daring and compassionate best.

Romantic Comedy doesn’t sound like my sort of book, although I did enjoy one of Curtis Sittenfeld’s earlier novels, Prep. I nearly used that for my first link but remembered that I’d already used Prep in a previous Six Degrees post, so instead I’ve gone with another book with Romantic in the title: The Romantic by William Boyd (1). This is the first – and still the only – book I’ve read by William Boyd, although I’m definitely planning to read more. It tells the story of Cashel Greville Ross, following him through his life from birth to death as he befriends the Romantic Poets in Italy, searches for the source of the Nile, joins the army in Sri Lanka and uncovers family secrets in Ireland.

The Romantic was longlisted for this year’s Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction but didn’t make the shortlist – a big mistake, in my opinion! Another book I had read from the longlist that didn’t get shortlisted was The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley by Sean Lusk (2). The novel follows Zachary Cloudesley, son of an 18th century clockmaker and inventor of automata, as he travels to Constantinople in search of his missing father.

Automata is the link to my next book, The Clockwork Girl by Anna Mazzola (3). Inspired by the real life scandal of ‘The Vanishing Children of Paris’ in 1750 and the technological advances in the creation of clockwork dolls and automata at that time, this is a fascinating novel set in Paris just a few decades before the French Revolution. It has a wonderful atmosphere, a beautiful cover and was one of my favourite books that I read last year.

Another book set in Paris is It Walks by Night by John Dickson Carr (4), part of the British Library Crime Classics series. This is one of five novels Carr wrote featuring the French detective and juge d’instruction (examining magistrate), Henri Bencolin. It’s a clever locked room mystery which I did find interesting – and couldn’t solve! – but I didn’t much like Bencolin as a character. I preferred The Black Spectacles, one of his Gideon Fell mysteries which I read earlier this year.

It Walks by Night was published in 1930 and so was The Mysterious Mr Quin by Agatha Christie (5). I really enjoyed this collection of short stories featuring Mr Satterthwaite, an elderly English gentleman, and his mysterious friend, Harley Quin, who comes and goes without warning and stays just long enough to help Satterthwaite solve the mystery. Much as I love Christie’s Poirot and Miss Marple novels, it’s always interesting to venture beyond those books and see what else she wrote.

The author of the final book in my chain shares a name with Harley Quin (although he spells it with two ‘n’s). The book is The Streets by Anthony Quinn (6), in which a young newspaper reporter in 1882 visits some of London’s poorest slums to report on the living conditions. The book is fictional but based on real nineteenth century sources. I found it fascinating from a social history perspective, but the plot and characters didn’t interest me much and I struggled to finish it.

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And that’s my chain for this month! My links have included the word ‘Romantic’, books longlisted but not shortlisted, automata, Paris, books published in 1930 and the name Quin or Quinn.

In September we’ll be starting with Wifedom by Anna Funder.