Six Degrees of Separation: from The Snow Child to

I keep an eye on the 6 Degrees of Separation meme from Books Are My Favourite And Best, and was pleased to see it kicked off this month with a book I’ve read and loved – The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. As Kate says – ‘Start at the same place as other wonderful readers, add six books, and see where you end up.’

Starting book: As I said, the first book is Eowyn Ivey’s take on a fairy tale, The Snow Child, where a childless couple in 1920s Alaska discover a child living alone in the snowy wilderness. They want to take her in and she wants to remain wild, and a love story of sorts begins between these kind, hurt trio. I found it a deeply moving book – I had to put it down for a few months at first, because it is so piercingly poignant.

1st degree of separation: A very clear link with Edith Olivier’s 1927 novel The Love-Child, in which a childless woman so keenly yearns for a child – well, for friendship really – that she inadvertently brings her old childhood imaginary friend Clarissa to life. All goes well, but a power struggle evolves. It is a novella, but so perfectly and movingly done.

2nd degree of separation: I never tire of recommending Anna Thomasson’s wonderful biography of the friendship between the author of The Love-Child, Edith Olivier, and the artist Rex Whistler. Though from different generations, they had a beautiful meeting of minds in the 1920s – and Thomasson tracks how Olivier had a new lease of life in her middle-age, surrounded by these bright young things. It’s an absorbing, brilliant, and unusual biography.

3rd degree of separation: Let’s go for a book about an artist – one, like Rex Whistler, who was taken seriously for illustration when she would rather have been known for other artwork. I’m talking about Anna in Tove Jansson’s darkly brilliant The True Deceiver (trans. Thomas Teal). You can listen to Rachel and me talk about it on a recent ‘Tea or Books?’ episode.

4th degree of separation: Another brilliant book by a Finnish write – Selja Ahava’s Things That Fall From The Sky (trans. Emily and Fleur Jeremiah). It’s about people to whom very unusual things have happened – whether winning the lottery twice, being killed by a falling block of ice, or being struck by lightning repeatedly. Though really it’s about how people respond, and it’s told in a tone that seems to mix dream and reality.

5th degree of separation: I really wanted to pick a novel about something unusual that falls from the sky. Wouldn’t that be a good link? I couldn’t manage that, so let’s go with the falling connection – Jenn Ashworth’s memoir Notes Made While Falling. I say memoir, but it fuses so many genres and ideas that it is hard to categorise. It starts with an extremely traumatic birth that Ashworth experienced – the sound of her blood falling on the floor returns and echoes through the book. From there it covers an extraordinary amount of ground. It is such a special, ambitious book.

6th degree of separation: There is a chapter of Ashworth’s book that is ostensibly about why she doesn’t like King Lear, but is really about fathers and memories. I love the technique of using Shakespeare in interesting ways to discuss other cultural, historical or personal moments – and that’s what a book I’ve recently read is about: James Shapiro’s Shakespeare in a Divided America. A fascinating look at the unexpected significance of Shakespeare’s writings in many important moments/periods of America’s history – from Lincoln’s assassination to the anti-slavery movement to the affair of Bill Clinton.

There we go, what a journey – but starting and ending in America.