Six Degrees of Separation from Tales of the City to Gasa-Gasa Girl

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six other books, forming a chain. Every month she provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting point this month is Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City. I decided to read this book this month, it was even better than I expected and now I want to read other books in the series. It amazes me that I missed it when it came out in 1978, since I was living in California at the time. That was a transitional time in my life so I guess other things were on my mind. The book is set in San Francisco, California, and it was originally published in newspaper columns.

Another book set in San Francisco is The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan,  published in 1989, a story about four immigrant Chinese mothers and their American-born daughters. It is many years since I read that book, and what I remember about it was the exploration of the mother / daughter relationships. But the present day portions of each story are set in San Francisco, including Chinatown, and now I want to reread the book.

From there I move to a book set in another California city, Santa Barbara. Cutter and Bone by Newton Thornburg was a fantastic read but it was very, very bleak. The depiction of Santa Barbara is perfect and fits in well with the telling of the story of a Vietnam vet and his gigolo friend.

I don't read that many books that are dark and bleak, but even before I read Double Indemnity by James M. Cain, I knew it would be about greed and depravity and unhappy people. Even so, I enjoyed it; it is a  very short novel, almost closer to novella length. That book was also set in California, in Los Angeles.

Next I link to another book by James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce, set in Glendale, California, during the Great Depression. This one is about a single mother and her relationship with her selfish and narcissistic daughter.

Another mother / daughter relationship is the focus of Concrete Angel by Patricia Abbott. In this case it is the mother who is selfish and narcissistic and the daughter is victimized. The story is told from the daughter's point of view and is a mesmerizing read. A chilling story, dark but not depressing.

My last link is to a book whose theme is a difficult father / daughter relationship.  Gasa-Gasa Girl by Naomi Hirahara is the 2nd book in a series featuring Mas Arai, a Japanese-American gardener in Los Angeles. Mas is seventy years old and the book starts as he arrives in New York City on his first visit with his daughter and her family. They have not gotten along for many years, but now she is asking for his help.

This month I have read every book in my chain. I noticed that each one of the books, even Tales of the City, has elements of the effects of family relationships, although it isn't obvious in all of the descriptions. Next month the chain begins with Atonement by Ian Ewan. Another book I have not read, although I do have a copy in the TBR piles.