Six Degrees of Separation – From Wyld to…

Chain links…

Six Degrees of Separation is a monthly meme hosted by Books Are My Favourite and Best. The idea is to start with the book that Kate gives us and then create a chain of six books, each suggested by the one before. This month’s starting book is…

The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld. I haven’t read it but the blurb tells me…

Surging out of the sea, the Bass Rock has for centuries watched over the lives that pass under its shadow on the Scottish mainland. And across the centuries the fates of three women are linked: to this place, to each other. Each woman’s choices are circumscribed, in ways big and small, by the men in their lives. But in sisterhood there is the hope of survival and new life. Intricately crafted and compulsively readable, The Bass Rock burns bright with anger and love.

Not for me – I’m tired of misandry dressed up to look like feminism. Throw me out of the sisterhood by all means – I like men, so there!

The Bass Rock is the home of a famous rock lighthouse, which takes me to my first choice…

Seashaken Houses by Tom Nancollas

In this excellent and well written non-fiction, Nancollas shares his enthusiasm for some of the rock lighthouses around the shores of Britain and Ireland. A fascinating subject, brought wonderfully to life.

Bell Rock Lighthouse during a storm by John Horsburgh Illus. in: Robert Stevenson, An Account of the Bell Rock Lighthouse.

One of the lighthouses Nancollas discusses is the Bell Rock, above, which was built by the grandfather of the author of my second pick…

Thrawn Janet by Robert Louis Stevenson

This classic horror story, based solidly in the witchcraft superstitions that lasted well into the eighteenth century in Scotland, is mostly written in a broad Scots dialect, which I admit might make it hard work for non-Scots (or young Scots). But it’s worth the effort – it’s amazingly well written and really demands to be read aloud to get the full effect of the speech patterns and rhythms.

Syne she turned round, an’ shawed her face; Mr Soulis had the same cauld grue as twice that day afore, an’ it was borne in upon him what folk said, that Janet was deid lang syne, an’ this was a bogle in her clay-cauld flesh. He drew back a pickle and he scanned her narrowly. She was tramp-trampin’ in the cla’es, croonin’ to hersel’; and eh! Gude guide us, but it was a fearsome face.

My third selection also contains a good amount of Scots, although being more modern it’s not quite so difficult to understand…

Docherty by William McIlvanney

On a December night in 1903, Tam Docherty lifts his new-born son and declares that this one will never go down the pits – this child Conn, his youngest, will work with his brains, rise out of the poverty of his heritage. The book covers the next twenty years or so, telling the story of Conn and his family, and most of all of Tam himself, a man who may be “only five foot fower. But when yer hert goes fae yer heid tae yer taes, that’s a lot o’ hert.”

“Son, it’s easy tae be guid oan a fu’ belly. It’s when a man’s goat two bites an’ wan o’ them he’ll share, ye ken whit he’s made o’. Listen. In ony country in the world, who are the only folk that ken whit it’s like tae leeve in that country? The folk at the boattom. The rest can a’ kid themselves oan. They can afford to hiv fancy ideas. We canny, son. We loass the wan idea o’ who we are, we’re deid. We’re wan anither. Tae survive, we’ll respect wan anither. When the time comes, we’ll a’ move forward thegither, or nut at all.”

Getting away from the dialect now (did I hear you cheer?), my fourth book is also the story of a son of a miner…

Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence

This story of Lawrence’s alter-ego, Paul Morell, tells of his childhood and young manhood, and (being Lawrence) there’s a lot of concentration on his relationships with women. But the woman who figures largest in his young life is undoubtedly his mother…

On every side the immense dark silence seemed pressing him, so tiny a spark, into extinction, and yet, almost nothing, he could not be extinct. Night, in which everything was lost, went reaching out, beyond stars and sun. Stars and sun, a few bright grains, went spinning round for terror, and holding each other in embrace, there in a darkness that outpassed them all, and left them tiny and daunted. So much, and himself, infinitesimal, at the core a nothingness, and yet not nothing.
“Mother!” he whimpered—“mother!”

Another rather too intimate mother/son relationship is at the heart of my fifth choice…

Agostino by Alberto Moravia

Agostino and his widowed mother are staying at a Mediterranean beach resort for the summer. As we meet them, thirteen-year-old Agostino is still a child, devoted to his mother, rather infatuated by her and proud to bask in the admiration she attracts as they spend their days on the beach or swimming from the rowboat they take out each day. But when his mother becomes involved with a young man, Agostino’s feelings turn to a jealousy which he barely understands. All very Oedipal!

From the 1962 film of the novella

Moravia’s book was initially banned by the Italian Fascist government. The author of my sixth and last selection fared even worse – he fell foul of the regime by writing a number of anti-Fascist articles; and, after having been arrested and then released, died as a result of being beaten up by a Fascist thug in 1944.

The Murdered Banker by Augusto de Angelis

Written in 1935, this novella length story is the first appearance of Inspector De Vincenzi in a series that was apparently hugely popular in Italy and gained De Angelis a reputation as father of the Italian mystery novel. An entertaining mystery novel that veers often towards high melodrama…

“Tell me, commendatore, what’s in there? What’s happened?”
“There’s a dead body. What’s happened is that a man’s been killed.”
A tremor convulsed the little man. He clutched at Maccari’s arm, his terror rendering him pitiful.
“Oh my God! This house is cursed! Do they know that this house is cursed?”

* * * * *

So from Wyld to De Angelis via lighthouses, the builder of the Bell Rock lighthouse, Scottish dialect, sons of miners, Oedipus and Italian Fascists!

Hope you enjoyed the journey! 😀