It’s time for #6degrees. Start at the same place as other wonderful readers, add six books, and see where you end up.
This month we begin with Virginia Evans’s epistolary novel, The Correspondent.
The main character in the book writes to Joan Didion – she writes about various things but one thing Didion and the imaginary Sybil have in common is adoption. Sybil is adopted, as is Joan’s daughter, Quintanna. In her memoir, Notes to John, Didion writes memorably about the shared fear of both the adopted child and the adopted parents – that the other could be taken away at any moment.
I think my favourite story about a child that is adopted is The Heart’s Invisible Furies by John Boyne. The novel focuses on Cyril, a child growing up in unusual circumstances. I recently read Before the Leaves Fall by Clare O’Dea, about a man called Ruedi, who also had an unusual childhood, spent with a family that was not his biological family.
Before the Leaves Fall is set in Switzerland, yet the author is Irish. Coincidentally, the next book I picked up was also set in Switzerland… and not by a Swiss author – On Not Climbing Mountains by Australian author, Claire Thomas.
On Not Climbing Mountains is studded with literary references (this is absolutely a novel for readers), one of which is to Elizabeth von Arnim’s novel, Elizabeth and her German Garden. Von Arnim lived in Switzerland for many years and during that time, she employed a tutor for her children, Morgan Forster, who later published under the name, E. M. Forster.
So my final link is to my favourite of Forster’s novels, A Room with a View. There’s a nice extra link back to On Not Climbing Mountains – the main character in that book, Beatrice, explores Switzerland without modern technologies, relying instead on a very old Baedeker. A Baedeker plays an important part in Lucy Honeychurch’s visit to Florence in A Room with a View.
Next month (May 2, 2026), we’ll start with a book that is currently on two prize longlists (the Women’s Prize and the Stella) – Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy.
