Last Six Degrees chain of the year, so let’s make it a memorable one. This is my favourite bookish meme, as hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best, and this month it starts with Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome. A book I have read, but such a long time ago (when I was about 16), that I would need to reread it to be able to say anything intelligent about it.
So my first link is to another book that I read a very, very long time ago, loved back then but haven’t reread since, namely The Wings of the Dove by Henry James. I found my teenage diary and this is what I had to say about it when I was 15: ‘He so calms me, this man. He is quiet, takes such small steps, little by little he lets us advance into the story. To fully appreciate him, you must read slowly, tasting every word, chewing, swallowing, and then digesting his ideas as well. Although he moves so slowly, as if he had all the time in the world, you are never bored.’ 😂
The book is about a rich but ill heiress, who is treated rather badly by a self-interested couple. My next link is to a rich heir with a disability (rather than a terminal illness) who is loved by someone who is not interested in his huge wealth: the huge bestseller Me Before You by Jojo Moyes.
I haven’t read the book, merely seen the film, and that is my next link: Millenium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson. I am currently watching the Swedish language version of the three films on BBC4 (half a film every week), but I gave up reading the books after finishing the first one The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I thought them violent, overlong and quite frankly dull at times, could have done with some stringent editing. The films are pretty violent too, it has to be said.
Lisbeth Salander is a pretty enigmatic sort of character, so for my next link I have chosen another young woman who is so enigmatic that she gives the book its title: Enigma Otiliei (The Enigma/Riddle of Otilia) by George Calinescu. It is a classic Romanian novel about the young Felix Sima who comes to Bucharest to study medicine and falls in love with his tutor’s daughter, Otilia, who seems to behave in a rather capricious way. In fact, it might be that Felix never actually gets to see the real Otilia, that he develops this ideal image of her, or makes her into what he would like a girl to be. As a not exactly flattering portrait of the early 20th century bourgeois society in Bucharest, and as an attempt for Romanian literature to catch up with the great 19th century Balzac-style novels, it is quite a landmark achievement.
I will next turn to another author whose name was George (or at least her pseudonym was): the first book by George Sand I ever read was A Winter in Majorca, which I bought when visiting Valdemosssa on a summer holiday with my father on the island (I must have been in my very early teens and was quite a Chopin fan at the time). It is a sort of memoir and travel journal, describing their stay on the island in the forlorn hope that Chopin’s health would improve.
My final book is simply called An Island by Karen Jennings, a recent book which was a surprise apparition on the Booker Prize longlist. I am always glad to see a South African writer there (and of course a South African won it this year), and this is the kind of quiet, low-profile novel that might have gone unnoticed. I haven’t read it yet, but I have bought it and stored it safely on my shelves.
So my journey this month has taken us from London to Venice, from small-town Britain to Sweden, from Bucharest in the early 1900s, to Majorca in the late 1830s and, finally, a timeless unnamed place. I wonder where 2022 will take me – hopefully on some real journeys, not just imaginary ones!
When there is too much of a buzz around a book, I tend to wait for a few years before reading it (I will probably read 50 Shades of Grey when I am a grandmother, at this rate). I did that with Harry Potter, ‘Life of Pi’ and I am still waiting to read Hilary Mantel’s latest two. Because, with all due respect to reviewers, online chat forums and book clubs, no one can read a book for you. Tastes are so different, that only you can make up your own mind! (Thank goodness.)
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