Six Degrees of Separation: From The Safekeep to Tales of the South Pacific

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 Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden. The book is set in 1961 Netherlands; Isabel is living in the family home alone, when her brother asks her to let his girlfriend Eva move in with her. This book won the 2025 Women's Prize for Fiction.

1st degree:

Using the title of the starting book, but inverting it in a way, I have chosen I'll Keep You Safe by Peter May as my first book in the chain. It is a crime fiction novel mostly set on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. Niamh and Ruairidh Macfarlane are on a business trip to Paris to promote their luxury brand of tweed, when Ruairidh is killed by a car bomb. After talking to the police, Niamh is allowed to return to Lewis. The story focuses on Niamh's life in Lewis following her husband's death, and the policewoman who is investigating the crime. I am a fan of Peter May's books but I have not read this one.

2nd degree:

I have read another book by Peter May set on the Isle of Lewis. It is the first book in the The Lewis Trilogy, The Blackhouse. In this book, Fin Macleod, a detective from Edinburgh, is sent to the Isle of Lewis because of previous connections to a similar crime. He does not want to return to the island because he grew up there. This was the first book I read by Peter May.

3rd degree:

For my third link, I am sticking with Peter May and another book he wrote which is set on two islands. Entry Island blends historical fiction with a present-day police procedural. Both stories come together in the end, as one would expect. The historical focus is on the Highland Clearances which take place on the Isle of Lewis and Harris in Scotland. The current investigation centers on a death on a small Canadian island, which is a part of the Magdalen Islands, in the province of Quebec. This was an unusual and compelling story.

4th degree:

I am liking the focus on islands, but I will move on to a different author. The next book is Mindful of Murder by Susan Juby, set at a spiritual retreat on one of British Columbia’s Gulf Islands. The island in the book is a fictionalized version of a real island. This is an unusual mystery with a unique sleuth and a different approach, sort of a cozy. The protagonist is a female butler, and I enjoyed learning about Buddhist beliefs and what today's butlers do in their jobs.

5th degree:

White Heat by M. J. McGrath is set on Ellesmere Island, Canada's northernmost and third largest island. The heroine is an Inuit hunter and guide, Edie Kiglatuk. When a man is shot and killed on an Arctic adventure that she is leading, the murder is investigated by police sergeant Derek Palliser. I enjoyed reading about this part of Canada, and the mystery was good too.

6th degree:

The last link is to Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener, a collection of short stories set during World War II, loosely connected to each other by recurring characters in the stories. The events take place on islands in the South Pacific, especially around the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, and the stories focus both on the people of the islands and the servicemen stationed there. I have not read this book, but we have a copy that I will be reading.

In my Six Degrees, I visited islands in different parts of the world, starting with Scotland, going next to Canada, and finally to islands in the South Pacific. 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 September 6, 2025 and the starting book will be the winner of the 2025 Miles Franklin Literary Award, Ghost Cities by Siang Lu.

Mount TBR Challenge Check-in: 2nd Quarter

In the first quarter of 2015, I read 20 books from my TBR shelves, stacks, and boxes. I was pretty happy with that. In April, May, and June, I have only read 8 books that count toward the 2015 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

My goal for the year is 48 books -- Mt. Ararat. So I am now at 58.33% of my goal. I will have to pay more attention to my reading choices in the next two quarters. The challenge is run by Bev at My Reader's Block. 

For this quarter's check-in, Bev asked us to write about one of three topics. This is the one I chose:

B. Tell us about a book on the list that was new to you in some way--new author, about a place you've never been, a genre you don't usually read...etc.

The most unusual book in my list of TBR books this quarter was White Heat by M. J. McGrath. The setting is what makes it unique. The story is set on Ellesmere Island, a location in Canada that I did not know existed. Ellesmere Island is considered part of the Queen Elizabeth Islands. The protagonist is Edie Kiglatuk, half-Inuit and a hunting guide and school teacher. In the first few chapters, I was put off a lot by the descriptions of the food (igunaq, fermented walrus gut; seal- blood soup; fried blubber). By the end of the book, I was getting used to that.

White Heat: M. J. McGrath

Introduction at the author's website:

Nothing on the tundra rotted . . . The whole history of human settlement lay exposed there, under that big northern sky. There was nowhere here for bones to hide.

On Craig Island, a vast landscape of ice north of the Arctic Circle, three travellers are hunting duck. Among them is expert Inuit hunter and guide, Edie Kiglatuk; a woman born of this harsh, beautiful terrain. The two men are tourists, experiencing Arctic life in the raw, but when one of the men is shot dead in mysterious circumstances, the local Council of Elders in the tiny settlement of Autisaq is keen to dismiss it as an accident.

Then two adventurers arrive in Autisaq hoping to search for the remains of the legendary Victorian explorer Sir James Fairfax. The men hire Edie – whose ancestor Welatok guided Fairfax – along with Edie’s stepson Joe, and two parties set off in different directions. Four days later, Joe returns to Autisaq frostbitten, hypothermic and disoriented, to report his man missing. And when things take an even darker turn, Edie finds herself heartbroken, and facing the greatest challenge of her life . . .

I will start off by saying I liked this book a lot. Initially I enjoyed it most for the setting and learning about Ellesmere Island, a location in Canada that I did not know existed. The story did start out slow for me. It took a long time to build up momentum, and then towards the end it almost turns into a thriller. I have been reading a lot of books with this tendency lately, and I am wondering if authors are encouraged to make their books more thrillerish.

I did not warm up to Edie or any of the characters immediately. I had very little understanding of the culture and it was hard to empathize and feel immersed in the story. I hate to say it, but I was put off a lot by the descriptions of the food (igunaq, fermented walrus gut; seal- blood soup; fried blubber) and it did affect my ability to enjoy the book at the beginning. All of these comments so far sound like I did not like this novel, but really I did.

Edie has problems dealing with others in the community because she doesn't fit in and she is outspoken but reluctant to cause trouble, a conflict she has to deal with throughout the story. At times this book seemed to cover so many issues about this Arctic area that I could not keep up with them: effects of global warming, corrupt officials, placid policemen, Russian oil men, energy companies attempting to gain a foothold in the area. Yet, in the end, I was pulled into the story and had adjusted to the cultural differences. Overall, I found the book interesting and an enriching experience.


As noted in the New York Journal of Books:

Ms. McGrath writes about the Arctic with authority. An award-winning journalist, she is also the author of The Long Exile: A Tale of Inuit Betrayal, a nonfiction work which tells how, in 1953, the Canadian government forcibly relocated three dozen Inuit from their flourishing home on the Hudson Bay to the barren, High Arctic desert of Ellesmere Island. 

That incident is mentioned in White Heat. It was the most interesting fact I gleaned from this book, and there were many.

Here is the opening paragraph of White Heat, setting the stage, and showing Edie's skill as a guide...

As she set a chip of iceberg on the stove for tea, Edie Kiglatuk  mulled over why it was that the hunting expedition she was leading had been so spectacularly unsuccessful. For one thing, the two men she was guiding were lousy shots. For another, Felix Wagner and his sidekick Andy Taylor hadn’t seemed to care if they made a kill nor not. Over the past couple of days they’d spent half their time gazing at maps and writing in notebooks. Maybe it was just the romance of the High Arctic they were after, the promise of living authentically in the wild with the Eskimo, like the expedition brochure promised. Still, she thought, they wouldn’t be living long if they couldn’t bring down something to eat. 

I will be reading any further books in the series, if only for the setting, and it will be interesting to see how Edie's story develops.

See reviews at The View from the Blue House, Ms. Wordopolis, It's a Crime, and Petrona. Some of them are very positive and some are negative.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   Penguin Books, 2012 (orig. pub. 2011)
Length:      381 pages
Format:      Trade Paperback
Series:       Edie Kiglatuk, #3
Setting:      Ellesmere Island,  Canada
Genre:        Mystery
Source:      I purchased my copy.