Six Degrees of Separation: April 2021

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

The starter book this month is Douglas Stuart's Booker Prize winning novel Shuggie Bain. I know I will never read this book, good though I am sure it is (this is only the second time a Scottish author has won the Booker), as I simply can't cope with the misery these days. 

I did. however, note a news item about Shuggie Bain in The National on Friday: some Glasgow School of Art graduates, who together make up Cobalt Collective, have recently created a huge mural in honour of the book on one of the walls of the Barrowlands Ballroom, the city's iconic dance venue. The mural was commissioned by Stuart's publishers, Picador. If you would like to read more about it, you can do so here:

https://www.thenational.scot/news/19208084.shuggie-bain-mural-paints-booker-prize-winner-glasgow-city-culture/


Another book set in Glasgow that I have read is Theresa Breslin's Divided City.

It's about two football-mad schoolboys, Graham and Joe. Graham is from a middle-class Protestant family, Joe from a poorer Catholic one. In Glasgow sectarianism is still alive and well and football is at the centre of it, with 'Old Firm' games between Celtic (Catholic) and Rangers (Protestant) being a frequent source of trouble. The boys are both invited to play in a new team, one that will include the best players from all sectors of the city, and will have the chance to play top youth teams from all over the UK. 

The book explores the issues without being preachy and boring, and helps the reader to see the reasons behind the divisions, and the good and bad in both communities. Although Graham's parents have largely distanced themselves from the Orange Walks that take place throughout the summer, his Grandad is proud of his heritage, devoted to marching, and now wants Graham to take his place alongside him to celebrate Billy The King. Similarly Joe's Dad takes a philosophical view of religion, but other family members hold rather more entrenched opinions. Both boys know that a friendship with anyone from the 'other side' is not to be mentioned at home. 

Taking an unauthorised short cut after training, Graham comes upon an asylum seeker who's been stabbed by a group of racist thugs. Both he and Joe end up more involved in Kyoul's story than either of them would like.  Although this is essentially a children's/YA novel, I enjoyed it very much.

The late Alasdair Gray was born in Glasgow in 1934 and died there in 2019. He was a writer, an artist, a teacher, and much more. His most famous written work is probably Lanark. And in a further connection with Shuggie Bain, Gray also created two murals, one on the ceiling at Oran Mor and another at Hillhead station. Gray supported Scottish independence, and popularised a quote (originally by Canadian poet Dennis Leigh) that has now become a byline of the indy movement:

Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation.

I haven't read Lanark, though I do have a copy waiting on my shelves - but I did have the privilege of seeing Gray at the Edinburgh International Book Festival two years before he died. The occasion was a hastily arranged celebration of the life of the late Stephanie Wolfe Murray, founder of Canongate Books. 

Many authors were asked to speak, and many did; Wolfe was immensely popular. Time constraints meant that each speaker was allocated a two minute slot. When his turn came, Gray was wheeled onto the stage looking very frail.. One did wonder whether he would be able to cope. One might, however, have known that he would; he launched into a wonderful speech about Stephanie, complete with quotes from his and other books, and ran way over his time. Jamie Byng, Canongate's current Managing Director, could not get him to stop, despite increasingly frantic arm waving. No-one cared; Gray was mesmerising. 

The EIBF event was organised by one of Stephanie's sons, Rupert Wolfe Murray. I had previously met Rupert when he came to speak at the Edinburgh Steiner School - where my daughter was a pupil at the time, and where Rupert had been one some years earlier, though he happily admitted that he hated all the schools he went to, and avoided them as often as he could. Rupert gave a wonderful talk about the joys of independent travel, encouraging the pupils to face their fears and try it.  He himself had travelled alone, across country, to Tibet.  He had neither lots of money, nor friends in high places; he was hopeless at languages, and had no expertise in anything; he was terrified, but he just took his chances and hoped for the best. His four guiding principles are:

Observe, absorb, adapt and work.

All you need are an open mind, a sense of trust and a thirst for discovering some of the mysteries in this world.

Many things went wrong, some things went right, and when he came back Rupert wrote a book about his experiences.  He promoted 9 Months in Tibet by going on a tour of northern Scotland on a Moulton foldable bike with a tent; he had no PR firm, no formal itinerary, no back-up – he raised a bit of money via Kickstarter then simply gave talks where he could, chatted to everyone he met, and managed to shift quite a few books, sometimes to the unlikeliest of people. 9 Months in Tibet is a great book; my review of it is here.

Twenty-three years earlier, another intrepid solo traveller set off to ride her bicycle from Ireland to India. Full Tilt is the story of Dervla Murphy's first long distance trip, crossing Europe in the worst winter for years, and passing through Afghanistan before arriving in Delhi, where she worked for a time in a refugee camp before going on to Tibet. My Irish friend and I were both in our impressionable twenties when we read Full Tilt; we were so impressed with Murphy's courage (my friend was almost as intrepid and later undertook many solo trips herself, I most certainly wasn't and didn't...) that when we saw her walking in Lismore (where she has lived her entire life) we drove round in circles three times to catch further glimpses of our hero. 

Now 89, Murphy has completed numerous journeys all over the world - some with her daughter Rachel, whom she took with her from the age of five - and written twenty six books about her travels, nuclear power, globalisation, climate change, AIDS, the Handsworth riots, the Northern Ireland Troubles, apartheid, and the displacement of tribal peoples. She is some woman.

Dervla Murphy is one of the authors featured in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl, which I recently dug out for Reading Ireland Month 2021. In 1985 the journalist John Quinn spoke with nine writers for RTE Radio; he wanted to ask them about their childhoods, which he felt were so important to their later development as authors, but so often ignored or skimmed over in standard interviews. As well as Dervla, Quinn talked with Maeve Binchy, Mary Lavin, Molly Keane, Clare Boylan, Polly Devlin, Jennifer Johnston, Joan Lingard and Edna O'Brien, and the book has a foreword by none other than Seamus Heany. 

These women's memories of their early lives are fascinating - from Keane's isolated Anglo-Irish childhood on her father's vast estates (their house was eventually burned to the ground after the 1916 Rebellion) and Joan Lingard's experiences of taking shopping trips from dreary post-war Belfast to the bright lights of Dublin, her mother sewing their small purchases into their coat linings, and dusting their new clothes with talc to evade the customs checks on the way back, to Edna O'Brien's bookless village home and her excitement at finally escaping to Dublin:

It was like being in Mecca - with all the lights, and a flashing Bovril sign.

My review of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl is here.

So this time I have started and ended with childhood, and travelled from Glasgow to Dublin, Belfast, India and Tibet. I struggled to start this chain, but in the end it came together; unlike so much in life just now, books never really let you down.

May's chain will begin with Beverly Cleary's Beezus and Ramona. I haven't read it but it appears to be about sisters. I'm an only child, but I can already think of a fair few books on this subject, so here's to next month's challenge!