Six Degrees of Separation: March 2021

 Six Degrees of Separation is hosted by Kate of booksaremyfavouriteandbest.com.

We begin this month with Phosphorescence by Julia Baird. I haven't read this book; Google describes it as;

 'a beautiful, intimate and inspiring investigation into how we can find and nurture within ourselves that essential quality of internal happiness - the 'light within' - which will sustain us even through the darkest times.'

I have to say this does not sound like my kind of thing at all, so instead of trying to connect to its deeper themes, I am sticking with the word 'light'; my next book is How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny. 

Penny writes a series of highly acclaimed mysteries about Inspector Gamache and the Quebecois village of Three Pines, which is itself a somewhat mysterious place, not found on any map. In each book Gamache and his team are called in to solve the murder of one or more of the characters, but the stories are more about friendship, love, and Canadian history than violent crime. The settings are idyllic, and the village itself is blessed with a bistro serving delicious food, a welcoming bookshop, and an altogether very cosy air - though these are not exactly 'cosy' mysteries, and there is much examination of people's secrets and motivations.

And in fact there are other connections with Phosphorescence, as Louise Penny herself has had many difficulties in her life, and during her earlier career in journalism had a long period of unhappiness, during which she struggled with alcoholism. She credited her later contentment to her husband Michael, who sadly died in 2016, having suffered from dementia for some time.

In the early 1990s I lived for a short time in Newfoundland - a province that did not become part of Canada until 1949. Forty years later some residents still used to talk about things happening  'over in Canada' and other Canadians 'coming from away', and in a 2003 survey 72% still saw themselves as Newfoundlanders first and foremost. 

In 1963 Claire Mowat published The Outport People, her memoir of the time she and her husband Farley spent living in one of the 'outport' Newfoundland coastal communities, These historic fishing villages and towns are inaccessible by road - one of the things I remember about my time in St John's (the capital) is hearing the daily ferry news on the radio, with the names of all the outports at which each boat would call. Mowat's detailed account of her early married life in Burgeo provides a fascinating record of times now largely past, when, without telephones, television or internet, the outports were entirely dependent on the ferries, and on themselves. 

Annie Proulx's second novel The Shipping News is also set largely in Newfoundland, and concerns a reporter called Quoyle who returns to his ancestral home in the province when his life in New York goes very badly wrong. With his two daughters in tow, Quoyle moves into his aunt's dilapidated old house and gets a job with the local paper, the Gammy News, at which one of his tasks is to report on the shipping news. 

There's a lot about the atrocious Newfoundland weather, which is certainly not for the faint-hearted (I remember my hair actually freezing and developing little icicles in the time it took to cross the car park after a visit to the swimming pool.) Proulx does not shy away from the various hardships of life in this very particular environment, but gradually Quoyle builds a new and better life for himself and his children. 

A journalist on a very different local paper is the main character in Clare Chambers' wonderful new novel Small Pleasures. It is 1957 and Jeanne is a features writer on the North Kent Echo. She is 39, unmarried, and living in the suburbs with her demanding mother. Accepting, as usual, one of the jobs everyone else thinks are beneath them, Jeanne is sent to investigate the claim of Mrs Gretchen Tilbury, who says that her 10 year old daughter Margaret was the result of a virgin birth, Gretchen's husband Howard having only met and married her after Margaret's arrival. Howard is happy to corroborate this account. 

Jeanne becomes increasingly involved with all three members of the Tilbury family, who welcome her into their home and their lives. As she continues to look into the validity of Gretchen's claim, however, Jeanne uncovers a very sad story. Whilst the author certainly keeps one guessing as to what really happened ten years ago, the depiction of life in 1950s suburbia is also one of the book's major attractions, and as someone brought up in the area I very much enjoyed it. (I heard the book read on BBC Radio 4 by the excellent Monica Dolan, whose voice was the perfect match for this story.)

Still in the 1950s, but further down into rural Kent, HE Bates created a family of a much more rumbustious nature. The Larkins first came to life in The Darling Buds of May. They are a large and largely amoral family, living an extremely jolly life at their farm/scrapyard. Head of the clan is Pop, a wheeler-dealer if ever there was one, and head of everything else is Ma, who cooks up endless huge meals, keeps Pa in check, and takes life very much as it comes. The oldest of their many children is the stunning Marietta. 

In this first book of the series, a tax inspector is sent to find out why Pa has never made a return to HMRC. Instead of sorting this out, Charlie is soon besotted by Marietta, and by the Larkins' happy-go-lucky lifestyle, and before long has married the former and adopted the latter. I recently re-read another of the Larkin books, and have to say that these days Pa would probably be locked up, and not just for tax evasion either - but if you can suspend judgement, these books are still great fun. 

I did wonder if I would be able to do anything with this month's starter book, but it worked in the end. I've lived in Scotland for over 30 years now, so it was interesting to revisit two places that formed part of my younger life.

Next month the chain will start with Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart.