Six Degrees of Separation: From The Post-Office Girl to Going Postal

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 Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zwieg. The book was published posthumously in 1982. Christine works in a post-office in Austria in 1926. Her mother is ill and they have little money. Christine has the opportunity to live with her aunt for a while and see how the rich live, then she has to return to the poverty of her previous life. I gathered all this from various reviews or summaries I read; I hope my description is reasonably accurate. 

1st degree:

My first link is to Rest in Pieces by Rita Mae Brown. The heroine of that book, Mary Minor Haristeen (nicknamed "Harry"), is the postmistress of the small town of Crozet, Virginia. She owns a farm, with horses, and has a grey tiger cat and a Welsh Corgi. Many of the residents of Crozet and the surrounding area are odd and quirky to say the least. In Crozet, everyone knows everyone and there is a lot of gossip.

The animals have a role in the story. They do not detect, but they do try to attract Harry's attention to clues, etc. They interact with other animals: Simon, the opossum; a barn owl; and Pewter, a neighbor's cat. The animals talk among themselves. At first I found that silly and distracting, but after a while, their conversations sounded much more intelligent that the humans.

2nd degree:

For my second link, I am sticking to the postal theme. My husband found this book for me: Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson. I found the best description of this book at Old Paper and Cats. S. Hargrave, who writes the posts on that blog, describes it as: "a trilogy of novels written by Flora Thompson about growing up in a remote English hamlet called Lark Rise and, later, her years working in a post office in the village of Candleford Green. These novels aren’t exactly ‘novels’ per se, in the sense that they are not traditionally structured narratives. Instead, they are more of a collection of stories about rural life in the later nineteenth century."

There are three short books in the series: Lark Rise (1939), Over to Candleford (1941), and Candleford Green (1943). Only the last book in the series covers the time that the main character was an assistant at the post office.

3rd degree:

I am staying with the mail theme, but moving on to those who deliver the mail. My next link is to Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home by Stephen Starring Grant.  In Mailman, Grant has written a memoir about delivering mail in Appalachia, after losing his job for a consulting firm. He moved back to his hometown of Blackburg, VA and got a job as a rural mail carrier because he needed to have health care and support his family. This major change in his life took place in the first few months of Covid. My husband read this book and enjoyed it a lot; the writing was good and the author comes across as a mellow person. I want to read Mailman later this year.

4th degree:

Another book about a letter carrier is The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Thériault, a Canadian author. The setting is Montreal.  

This description is in my Kindle edition:

Secretly steaming open envelopes and reading the letters inside, Bilodo has found an escape from his lonely and routine life as a postman. When one day he comes across a mysterious letter containing a single haiku, he finds himself avidly caught up in the relationship between a long-distance couple who write to each other using only beautiful poetry. He feasts on their words, vicariously living a life for which he longs. But it will only be a matter of time before his world comes crashing down around him.

This book sounds appealing and in the Kindle edition it is only 106 pages long.

5th degree:

My next link will be to another book with postman in the title: The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain. The book is a classic noir mystery and also very brief, only 120 pages long in this edition. James M. Cain is a well known author of noir fiction; this was his first novel. I did not really enjoy reading this book (too noir, too grim, too gritty), but it is very well written, with good pacing. The last 30 pages was the best part and pulled the book together without going for an unrealistic "happy" ending. But what does it have to do with the postal service? Nothing. The title is symbolic and there have been many conflicting explanations for why it was used.

6th degree:

My last link is very definitely about the postal system, but it is a postal system set in a fantasy world. Going Postal is the 33rd book in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. Most of the books in the series are humorous and satirical. The main character in this book is Moist von Lipwig, a swindler and a con man, who has been sentenced to hang for his offenses. But he has been given the alternative option to take over the ailing postal service of Ankh-Morpork, Discworld's city-state. Thus Moist von Lipwig accepts the position of Postmaster. He is also assigned a golem watchdog to keep him in line. It sounds like fun to me and I have a copy on my shelves.

My Six Degrees took me from the state of Virginia in the USA to the fictional fantasy world of the Discworld Series. Along the way I also stopped in Canada and the UK. Have you read any of these books? 

If you did this month's Six Degrees, where did your list take you?

The next Six Degrees will be on July 4, 2026, and the starting book will be Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke.