6 Degrees of Separation

It’s time for another adventure in Kate’s 6 Degrees of Separation Meme from her blog, Books Are My Favourite and Best. We are given a book to start with, and from there we free associate six books.

This month’s starting book is After Story by Larissa Behrendt. I haven’t read it, although it sounds like a book I would appreciate.

Here’s the description from Goodreads:

When Indigenous lawyer Jasmine decides to take her mother Della on a tour of England’s most revered literary sites, Jasmine hopes it will bring them closer together and help them reconcile the past.

Twenty-five years earlier the disappearance of Jasmine’s older sister devastated their tight-knit community. This tragedy returns to haunt Jasmine and Della when another child mysteriously goes missing on Hampstead Heath. As Jasmine immerses herself in the world of her literary idols – including Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters and Virginia Woolf – Della is inspired to rediscover the wisdom of her own culture and storytelling. But sometimes the stories that are not told can become too great to bear.

first degree

This story about the past and its secrets, especially as they play out intergenerationally, immediately made me think of Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson.

second degree

Another novel that unfolds as one member of the current generation goes searching for the buried family secrets of the past is Searching for Sylvie Lee by Jean Kwok.

third degree

Celeste Ng’s heart-wrenching novel Everything I Never Told You demonstrates how a family’s past can affect the present.

fourth degree

The repetition of a word in the title brings us to The Center of Everything. Laura Moriarty’s novel reveals the truth about where we grow up: it may feel like the middle of nowhere, but it truly is the center of everything we become.

fifth degree

Another keyword repetition leads to The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness by Elyn R. Saks. In this remarkable book Saks describes her journey of living with schizophrenia. Her descriptions of mental health treatments, especially the different ways she was treated in the U.S. and Great Britain, are eye opening.

sixth degree

Susannan Cahalan’s memoir Brain on Fire horrifyingly discusses her experience with a rare autoimmune disease of the brain that could have left her permanently disabled had she not found the right doctor.

This month’s 6 Degrees of Separation has taken us through four novels and two memoirs. I look forward to seeing where your 6 Degrees takes you this month.