Six Degrees: Ghost Stories to A Brief History of Montmaray

Welcome to this month's edition of Six Degrees of Separation, which is a monthly meme hosted by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best. The idea is to start with a specific book and make a series of links from one book to the next using whatever link you can find and see where you end up after six links. I am also linking this post up with The Sunday Salon, hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz and A Good Book and a Cup of Tea hosted at Boondock Ramblings.

This month the starting point is Ghost Cities by Siang Lu which was recently announced as the winnter of the 2025 Mile Franklin Literary Award here in Australia. I haven't read it, and I don't think I am likely too, but that doesn't mean that I can't make a chain from it!

A book I read earlier this year that featured a house that was haunted by ghosts was Lauren Westwood's The House of Light and Shadows. (my review)

I do love it when a house is almost a character in a book. In The Briar Club by Kate Quinn Briarwood House is a character in it's own right, telling part of the story. I listened to this book on audio recently and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The next book I listened to on audio was Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby van Pelt which also featured an unusual character - a giant Pacific octopus named Marcellus. I loved the voice of Marcellus in the audiobook so I am really pleased to hear that the same actor is going to be the voice in the upcoming movie version too! 

There are remarkably few books with the word remarkably in the title (at least in my reading lists) but there is Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier which is about a woman who was a fossil collector.

Which leads me nicely to The Fossil Hunter by Tea Cooper.

Choosing the final book was actually a bit harder, as there were almost too many directions I could choose from but in the end I went with the surname of Cooper and chose A Brief History of Montmoray by Michelle Cooper

Next month, the starting point is Dominic Amerena’s novel about authors and publishing, I Want Everything.

Will you be joining us?

Six Degrees of Separation: The Museum of Modern Love to Hamnet

Welcome to this month's edition of Six Degrees of Separation, which is a monthly meme hosted by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best.  The idea is to start with a specific book and make a series of links from one book to the next using whatever link you can find and see where you end up after six links.  I am also linking this post up with The Sunday Salon, hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz. 

The starting point for this month is The Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose.

I am choosing to start by focusing on the word museum. Whenever I visit Perth, I love to visit the port city of Fremantle. Even thought I have been many times I love to visit the Shipwreck Museum and visit the wreck of the Batavia. This was a Dutch ship which sank off the cost of Western Australia. A book which tells the story of the Batavia is The Night Ship by Jess Kidd.

When we visited the Netherlands just under 2 years ago, we stayed with my brother and sister in law. It just so happens that they live in the town where there is a replica of the Batavia. So my next link is the most recent book I have read about Dutch history, Midnight Blue by Simone van der Vlugt

A famous name that made a cameo appearance in Midnight Blue was the artist Vermeer. He was also a character in Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

My next choice is using he word pearl as the key, so I am choosing the fourth book is the Seven Sisters series, The Pearl Sister by Lucinda Riley.

And then using the word sister as the link I am choosing a book I read not too long ago, The Shakespeare Sisters by Juliet Greenwood

My final choice is Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell which is all about Shakespeare and his family. As an aside...we are going to go to the Globe when we are in London soon. Looking forward to it.

Next month the starting point is After Story by Larissa Behrendt.

Where has your chain taken you this month?

Six Degrees of Separation - Wolfe Island to Girl with a Pearl Earring

Welcome to this month's edition of Six Degrees of Separation, which is a monthly meme hosted by Kate from Books Are My Favourite and Best.  The idea is to start with a specific book and make a series of links from one book to the next using whatever link you can find and see where you end up after six links. 

The book that we are starting with this month is Wolfe Island by Lucy Treloar, a book that I haven't yet read. I recently realised that  I actually have Salt Creek, this author's first book on my shelf. I was a bit surprised the other day to see that my husband had something against that book. No idea what, but it did appear as though it was being held at electric drill point. It must have paid the ransom though because it is now free to rest on the shelves no longer threatened!

I actually ended up doing two versions of this month's Six Degrees. The other one featured werewolves and dark fantasy but in the end I decided to go with an around the world feel.We start in Canada and end up in the Netherlands, but we do take the long way around.

So my first book is Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney which was a Costa prize winner for a first novel back in 2006. I read it years ago and like it without loving it. This was a book that made me feel cold just reading it. There  was lots of snow.

There was no snow in Christie Watson's Tiny Sunbirds Far Away because it was set in Nigeria. I did love this book, and it also won the Costa prize for a first novel in 2011.

For my next book I am sticking with an African theme and choosing the first book in The Number 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith which is set in Botswana. As an aside, I still love these early style covers in this series.

Another first book in a series featuring a lady detective is Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood which is set in Melbourne in the 1920s. This features the divine Miss Phryne Fisher and the same applies to these styles of covers!

I chose to look for a link to the colour blue for my next connection which led me to The Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland. In this book we follow a painting of a girl through it's various owners. I've read a number of this authors books over the years and find them fascinating.

My final connection is another book about a girl in a painting is The Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier. As I was preparing this post I was contemplating how hard it would be for the publisher to repackage this book with a completely different cover.

Next month's starting book is Stasiland by Anna Funder and I really have no idea how I am going to get that chain started. Lucky I have a while to think about it!

Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier

No. 13 Hercules Buildings, Lambeth, 1792. Poet, artist and printer William Blake - local eccentric and political radical - works anonymously amidst the raucous din of a teeming, jittery London. Across the Channel, revolution is imploding in France. Nearby, the renowned Astley's Circul is rehearsing its upcoming show, and next door the Kellaway family, recently arrived from the countryside, is moving in. Maggie Butterfield, the streetwise daughter of a local rogue, is looking for trouble - or at least a friend. When she and young Jem Kellaway are drawn into Blake's spell, the change meting of three unusual souls sets the stage for an impassioned journey. Jem and Maggie spark the imagination of the poet, influencing one of the greatest and most mystical works in English literature, Songs of Innocence and of Experience.

Burning Bright evokes the full pageantry of Georgian London; its circus spectacles, mustard factories, pubs and bawdy songs, the grandeur of Westminster Abbey and the secrets of Cut-Throat Lane. Behind these lie the greater movements of an era: the influence of a nearby revolution, the mustering of forces loyal to the Crown, and the agonies of being an independent thinker in an age suspicious of dissent.

As she did in the bestselling Girl With a Pearl Earring, Chevalier brilliantly captures an era and a sense of place, at the same time deftly evoing an artist's vision. Overflowing with energy, enterprise, and the power of creation, Burning Bright brings us a vivid story of the unpredictable, exhilarating passage toward adulthood.

Is it bad blogging to quote oneself? When I read Falling Angels by this author, this was my opening paragraph:

The only other Tracy Chevalier book I have read was Girl with a Pearl Earring, which I absolutely loved! When I read that one I picked it up with the intention of just reading the first couple of pages. Two and a half hours later, I had finished it and was blown away. This book never really grabbed my attention in the same way, although it was an entertaining enough read.

and I have to say that my feelings about this one are pretty much the same! Once again I wasn't dragged into the story, when I really, really wanted to have another one of those experiences where time just flies by, and everything around you doesn't matter at all!

I think that my first issue with this book is that there is an element of trying too hard to recreate the feel that made GWAPE such a huge hit. Instead of the painter, we have the poet William Blake, supposedly finding inspiration from a couple of young kids who are coming of age. Whilst I don't have any qualms with this as an approach, it kind of falls down when Blake is nothing more than a secondary character in the first two thirds of the book. If anything, the main character aside from the two teenagers, Maggie and Jem, for the first part of the book is Philip Astley, the larger than life circus owner, who provides the Kellaway family with the impetus to move to London, a home and employment, as well as entertainment. It is only in the last third of the book that Blake comes more to the fore, mainly in the role of political radical, in a time when it was dangerous to think outside of the square.

If anything, part of the issue I have with this book is that the author tried to cram so much into it. Without even thinking too long about it there are several themes that come to mind: coming of age (of Maggie, Jem and his sister Maisie), first love, political freedom or lack thereof, the effect of the industrial age on living conditions (specifically when Maggie is forced to get a job firstly at the mustard factory and then at the vinegar factory), the effects of grief and loss on the Kellaway family. In addition to these, Chevalier touches on the opulence of the lives of the haves compared to the have nots, the plight of young girls who go astray, the after effects of a violent attack, and also touching on a romantic note, not forgetting how to make Dorsetshire buttons and Windsor chairs! She also went to great lengths to portray London of 1792 with the grimy Thames, the dangerous and dodgy characters, the harlots, the glory of Westminster Abbey. London is in a way one of the characters.

Too much going on!

I realise I haven't focussed much on what actually happened in the book. Part of the reason for that is that for the most part it feels almost as though the storyline skims across the surface of what could have been a much deeper book.

All of this may make it sound as though I really disliked this book. I didn't. There were some really good elements to the book. It's just that it is like dreams unfulfilled - the capacity was there for something really good, but it just didn't eventuate.

I still have two more Chevalier books to read, and I will get to them eventually, but I will be trying hard to not raise my expectations too much before I start them.

Rating 3.5/5

Falling Angels by Tracy Chevalier

This book is the July Book of the Month in Historical Fiction Forum.

January 1901, the day after Queen Victoria's death: Two families visit neighbouring graves in a fashionable London cemetery. One is decorated with a sentimental angel, the other an elaborate urn. Separated by social class as well as taste, the Waterhouses cling to tradition while the Colemans look ahead to a more modern society. The families are inextricably linked when their two girls meet behind the tombstones and become friends - and worse become involved with the gravedigger's impetuous son.

As the girls grow up and the new century begins, as cars replace horses and electricity outshines gas lighting, the nation emergres from the shadows of oppressive Victorian values to a golden Edwardian summer. It is then that the beautiful frustrated Mrs Coleman makes a bid for greater personal freedom, with disastrous consequences, and the lives of the Colemans and the Waterhouses are changed forever.

The only other Tracy Chevalier book I have read was Girl with a Pearl Earring, which I absolutely loved! When I read that one I picked it up with the intention of just reading the first couple of pages. Two and a half hours later, I had finished it and was blown away. This book never really grabbed my attention in the same way, although it was an entertaining enough read.

On her website, Chevalier talks about wanting to write a book about the mourning etiquette and social restrictions in place in Victorian England, and the changes in society that started to take place during the reign of Edward VII, and whilst it is that, for me, it was also about the way that secrets can destroy families and relationships.

When the two young girls meet behind the headstones of their family gravestones, they are instant best friends. They also become instant friends with Simon, the gravedigger's son, a young boy who they would never have met during their normal day to day life as he is very definitely a working class boy.

The two girls don't see each other again until the Waterhouses move into the house behind the Colemans and they are reunited. Throughout their childhood they spend a lot of their time playing at the cemetery, firstly being accompanied by Jenny, the Colemans maid, and then later by Maude's mother, Mrs Coleman. Both Jenny and Mrs Coleman visit the cemetery for their own reasons, and have their own consequences, but for the Colemans those consequences are far reaching, when Mrs Coleman becomes ill.

As Mrs Coleman finally recovers from her malaise, she becomes heavily involved in the suffragette meeting following a chance meeting with a suffragette at the opening of the local library. Her husband has no idea who involved until she is arrested and ends up spending time in jail. Whilst this would be hard for a young girl to deal with, Maude has actually been coming second to the cause for quite some time, so whilst it is difficult it is not impossible for her to cope.

Once Mrs Coleman is released from jail, she throws herself into the cause almost with abandon, and with her focus on the cause there are tragic consequences for both families.

As a commentary on some of the major changes that started to happen in the 10 years between the death of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII this was very interesting. Some of the changes included the introduction of electricity to homes, the replacement of horses with cars, and of course the suffragette movement.

Overall, an entertaining enough read, although not as good as Girl with a Pearl Earring. I do plan to read her other books before her new book comes out early next year.

Rating 4/5