SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet
This link-up is hosted by Books Are My Favourite and Best, and was inspired by Hungarian writer and poet Frigyes Karinthy. In his 1929 short story, “Chains”, Karinthy coined the phrase ‘six degrees of separation’. The phrase was popularized by a 1990 play written by John Guare, which was later made into a film starring Stockard Channing.
On the first Saturday of every month, Kate chooses a book as a starting point and links that book to six others forming a chain. Bloggers and readers are invited to join in and the beauty of this mini-challenge is that I can decide how and why I make the links in my chain.
June’s starting book is Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare. Is there anyone who doesn’t know this story, even if they haven’t read the play or seen it performed? It’s the classic “love-tragedy” that is so poignant over 400 years after its writing that I find myself still, upon seeing it performed, wanting to call out loud to the players: “Turn around!” or “No! Wait!”
1. Its connection to my first link Juliet in August by Dianne Warren is in title only. This cool and still story (also published as Cool Water) of a priairie town in summer won the Canadian Governor-General’s Award for Fiction in 2010.
2. The book that is my next link, The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt won the same award, the following year. Both books are Canadian and both are very good but deWitt’s ‘noir western’ about two cowboys whose last name is Sisters and who are hired to kill a man, is in no other way similar to Warren’s book, nor to my third link (by a title word only),
3. The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussen, which tells the story of two elderly spinster sisters who nurse injured birds back to health. The birds lead me to my fourth link,
4. Nicholas Drayson’s A Guide to the Birds of East Africa , a gentle love story of the courtship between two middle-aged bird-watchers in almost-modern-day Kenya. This was a charming book which connects in two ways (love and Africa) to my fifth link in the chain.
5. African Love Stories, edited by Ama Ata Aidoo, is an anthology of short stories, not so gentle, about love relationships, mostly in West Africa, expecially Nigeria. My last link also connects to Africa and love.
6. Adé: A Love Story by Rebecca Walker is a love story in the tradition of Romeo and Juliet: haunting and heart-breaking. This tale, set in modern-day Kenya, deserves to be a classic of 21st century literature. I have not been as touched by a book in a long time as I was by Adé.
So that’s my chain of six degrees: from a classic love tragedy of the 16th century to an equalling heart-rending love tragedy of the 21st century. What do you think? Does love ever change?
Why not visit Kate’s blog and see how she made the final connection to The Last Painting of Sarah de Vos.
P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.
Great chain. I love the variety in links made and how different all our chains are.
I agree, Maria Helena: the variety in the chains is amazing. I find this to be the most challenging linkup that I do and, I think, the most satisfying.
Glad you took the leap away from star-crossed lovers to get a chain going in a unique direction (but then pulled it back to the beginning for your last selection – clever!).
Have heard so many good things about The Sisters Brothers (and from all sorts of readers) – I really must check it out.
The Sisters Brothers is just unlike anything you’ve read, Kate – I guarantee it. And I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll like it, too.
This is a very interesting concept, and a great way to expose your readers to new books! Thanks for sharing. I was an English major and of course I read Romeo and Juliet, but I’ve not heard of these other stories. My teenage daughter recently read R & J, and we’ve had interesting conversations about why people are drawn to tragic love stories (Like a modern day R & J, The Fault In Our Stars).
Julia, I think we’re drawn to tragic love stories because, more often than not, the loves in our own lives feel tragic, although not to the level of R&J tragedy. 😉
I like reading yours. I am still wrapping my head around how to do this.
It’s a matter of brainstorming, Judy. I usually jot down 6 or 8 things about the starting book that could be carried forward to the next item: eg word in the title, prizes won, theme, setting, name of a character, trope, and on and on, and then scan my list of Books I’ve Read for the last 2 or 3 years, looking for connections. Often I find more than one and have to decide which one to use based on the same exercise with each – that is, what gives me more choices going forward. It’s not a quick post but, as I’ve said, it’s satisfying.