It’s time for #6Degrees – join in! Link up!
We begin the chain with an international best-selling debut that thrilled fans of historical fiction (and everyone else) when it was published in 2001 – Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks.
Brooks acted as a mentor to an author whose debut also became an international best-seller – Hannah Kent. Kent’s much-anticipated second novel, The Good People, is due for release in September. Can’t wait.
The main character in The Good People is Irish widow, Nora Leahy. The obvious link here is to another Irish widow, Nora Webster (by Colm Toibin).
Nora Webster is what I call ‘Irish-misery-porn’. A Goodreads friend credits me with coining this phrase (I’m quite sure I didn’t) but anyway, I was reminded of it this week when I was reading Dominic Smith’s The Last Painting of Sara de Vos and wondering if ‘art thriller’ was a genre. I like niche genres.
The Last Painting of Sara de Vos features two important historical events – the Plague (note the link back to Year of Wonders) and the ‘tulip fever’ that took over The Netherlands. Many years ago, I read a fascinating book about the tulip trade, Tulipmania by Mike Dash.
Tulipmania is focused on Amsterdam in the seventeenth century, as is Jessie Burton’s charming and insanely successful debut, The Miniaturist.
Burton’s second book, The Muse, has just been released. I can’t wait to read it, particularly because it appears to be an ‘art thriller’…
Best-selling debuts and much-anticipated sophomore novels, Amsterdam, the Plague, widows and art-thrillers – it’s more like a web this month than a chain! I wonder where other chains will lead?
Next month (September 3rd, 2016) the chain will begin with the controversial best-seller by V. C. Andrews, Flowers in the Attic*
*thanks to Rory for this suggestion. I’m confident that everyone who was reading during the eighties read Flowers in the Attic!