Six Degrees of Separation: From Prophet Song to Rachel's Holiday

  

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 books, forming a chain. The common points may be obvious, like a word in the title or a shared theme, or more personal. Every month Kate provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting book this month is the 2023 Booker Prize winner, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. I have not read that book, but from what I gather it is a dystopian novel set in Ireland and written by an Irish author. That novel follows one woman trying to keep her family together as the country moves towards totalitarianism. This sounds like a very good book and I may want to read it some day. 

The books that I have linked to for my Six Degrees chain are all set primarily in Ireland, and are written by Irish authors. 

1st degree:

My first link is to an Irish crime fiction book on my TBR pile – Winterland by Alan Glynn. From the book dust jacket: "The worlds of business, politics and crime collide in contemporary Dublin when two men with the same name, from the same family, die on the same night - one death is a gangland murder, the other, apparently, a road accident. Was it a coincidence? That's the official version of events. But when a family member, Gina Rafferty, starts asking questions, this notion quickly unravels."

2nd degree:

Winterland can be described as dark and gritty, and that leads me to The Guards, the first of the Jack Taylor novels written by Ken Bruen. The series is set in Galway, Ireland. Jack Taylor was in the Garda Síochána (the police force of the Republic of Ireland), and thrown out because of serious problems with alcohol. He becomes, almost accidentally, a finder, a sort of private detective. One element of the writing is frequent mentions of books, especially mystery novels, and quotes interspersed here and there, often with no apparent connection to the story.  The mystery portion of the plot is slight. The emphasis is more on Jack, his relationships, his life, his battle with alcohol. It isn't a happy book, but it isn't depressing either.

3rd degree:

Like The Guards, the The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black is more of a character study than a mystery. And beautifully written. Set in Ireland in the 1950s, it is the 2nd book about Quirke, a pathologist working in a hospital in Dublin. Deirdre Hunt died and the assumption is that it was suicide; Quirke suspects that this is not correct, so he spends some time looking into her death. Dierdre also went by the name Laura Swan and ran a beauty salon, The Silver Swan. In looking into Deirdre's death, Quirke discovers that his daughter Phoebe has some connections to that salon also, and he becomes more interested. After reading this book, I was hooked on the series.

4th degree:

Benjamin Black is a pseudonym used by John Banville for some of his crime fiction books. In 2020, John Banville published Snow, set in Ireland in 1957. The Catholic Church is powerful in Ireland at that time. Detective Inspector St. John Strafford has been sent to County Wexford to investigate the death of a priest, found dead in the home of a well-known Protestant family. DI Strafford is also Protestant, an unusual occurrence in the Garda. He finds himself in an uncomfortable position, isolated in the small community by the accumulating snow and getting little cooperation from the family or the townspeople. 

 

5th degree:

My next link also involves Garda detectives. The Secret Place is the 5th book in the Dublin Murder Squad series by Tana French. It is set in a girl's boarding school and the investigation takes place in one day. Holly Mackey, daughter of a policeman and student at St. Kilda's, brings a new piece of evidence related to the death of a teenage boy to Stephen Moran, a detective in the Cold Cases division who would really rather be in the Murder Squad. Stephen takes the information to Detective Antoinette Conway in the Murder Squad. They pursue the investigation. Tana French's mysteries are very good, but none end happily, and they usually leave me a bit down.

6th degree:

To be honest, most of the books in my chain are dark and bleak. For my last link, I am switching to the opposite. Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes is from my TBR pile. One Goodreads review described it as "dark, depressive, and sad" which is strange for a book categorized mainly as chick lit. Although the story is about a woman who returns to her home town of Dublin and goes into rehab for drug addiction, I believe this is handled with humor and wit. It is the 2nd book in the Walsh Family series; I read Watermelon and liked it, so I am expecting to like this one too, although it is close to 600 pages long.

In my Six Degrees I stayed in Ireland, although two of the books do go back to the 1950s.  If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your list take you?

Have you read any of these books or authors?

The next Six Degrees will be on April 5, 2025, and the starting book will be Salman Rushdie’s memoir, Knife.