I’ve missed the past couple of #sixdegreesofseparation for a variety of reasons that are too boring to relate. But I’m glad to be back, as it’s something I enjoy doing every month - taking a book then linking six others - each book only has to be linked to the previous one on the chain.

The starting book this month is one that I haven’t read; Notes from a scandal, by Zoe Heller. After reading the synopsis and reviews from fellow six degrees contributors, I’ll be adding it to my reading list. The story concerns an art teacher having an illicit affair with a student, which results in a media circus. One book I have read this year that is also based around an affair with a teacher was…..

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy a book that I have been shouting about from the rooftops as one of my favourites of the year. Set during a war torn Belfast in the seventies, it’s about a young teacher who gets involved with a much older barrister. It’s a book that's incisive and that gets under your skin, building to a devastating crescendo. There’s a rich seam of black humour to it as well, which was apparent when I went to see Louise speaking at the recent John Hewitt festival. When I was listening to Louise, I spotted another local author in the audience…..

Jan Carson, author of The Raptures, a book about a mysterious illness which affects a group of children living in a community in the north of Ireland in the nineties. It’s a book about a traumatised community that looks at belief and family and is incredibly readable, as all of Carson’s books are. The narrator, Hannah, is from an evangelical Protestant family. This leads me onto a book I read about another religious family……

….the Hidebrandt clan in Jonathan Frantzen’s ‘Crossroads’, a book I thoroughly enjoyed last year. It’s a warm and funny book about family dynamics and the choices made by the characters in their lives and in their relationship to God. Crossroads and roads and families leads me to….

‘Hidden Valley Road by Robert Kolker, about a family of twelve in Colorado, where six of the children turn out to have schizophrenia. It’s about the devastating impact this has on the family, and how studying the children lead to an increase in an understanding of the disease. Mental illness, this time in the form a drug induced psychosis, plays a part in….

Bad Relations by Cressida Connolly, a multi generational epic that starts on the battlefields of Crimea in the 1870’s before moving to Cornwall in the seventies and modern day. And my most recent read was also set in Cornwall, which was…

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, which I finally got around to reading and now fully understand its classic status. I read it whilst suffering from Covid and Manderley and Mrs Danvers haunted my dreams.

That’s it for another month, have you read any of these books or taken part in #6degrees? Please comment below!