Well, it's the first Saturday again, so that means its Six Degrees of Separation Day, hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. She chooses the starting book, then you think of six other titles that you have read that are related to the starting book in some way. Once again, I haven't read the starting book Butter - haven't even heard of it- so where to go now?
Well, Butter is nearly Butterfly which is yet another Sonya Hartnett book about brutal places where damaged children are lacerated by cruelty and neglect. Actually, I didn't enjoy it at all (my review here)
There's any number of books about damaged children, but one that I enjoyed more was Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stewart. It's about a little boy growing up with his alcoholic mother, and Stewart catches well the emotional nuances of a child's sense of obligation and persistence in keeping on hoping, and trying to keep a parent sober. My review is here.
Shuggie Bain was set in Scotland, which made me think of Don Watson's Caledonia Australis, an excellent early (1984) book about the Highland Clearances in Scotland, and their contribution to emigration to Australia where similar hardships were being imposed on the indigenous people, often by Scots themselves. My review here.
I've read several historical and political books by Don Watson, but in Chloe Hooper's Bedtime Story, Watson himself IS the story. Hooper is his wife, and she writes beautifully about his struggle with a rare and aggressive form of leukemia, and how to negotiate this territory with her six- and four- year old sons. I wanted to keep reading it, to acknowledge her humanity and generosity in sharing, such a vulnerable and intimate time, but I did feel as if I were intruding. My review here.
The idea of story leads me on to Catherine McKinnon's Storyland. In this book each separate story builds chronologically onto the next one, with a link between each story until it reaches an apex, then goes back down again, revisiting each story in descending order. The stories are all set in the same geographical location: around Lake Illawarra (south of Sydney Cove and Botany Bay, near Wollongong). As the title and subtitle ('the land is a book, waiting to be read') suggest, the land is the unifying feature, although birds and a stone axe are also literary talismans that appear in each story. It's a reflection on land, history, truth and omission. My review here.
Structurally, it was very similar to David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, which I felt was much better done and much less earnest. I loved Cloud Atlas, but I read it before I started blogging. So there's no link to my review, but even the fact that I can still remember it suggests that it made quite an impression on me!
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