Daylight savings started in my jurisdiction last week, and I am so happy. I love the longer end of days in summer, and not being woken so early in the morning. I am not so looking forward though to what this forecasted hot, dry summer might bring, but let us be hopeful… meanwhile let’s get to Six Degrees. If you don’t know how this meme works, please check host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.
The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book. In October it’s finally a book I have read, but long before blogging, Dodie Smith’s work of historical fiction, I capture the castle. I loved it when I read it as a teenager – who didn’t, really – but I’m going to share the Goodreads description: “Through six turbulent months of 1934, 17-year-old Cassandra Mortmain keeps a journal, filling three notebooks with sharply funny yet poignant entries about her home, a ruined Suffolk castle, and her eccentric and penniless family”. So, a lively coming-of-age story set in a castle.
For my first link I am, as last month, going obvious, again in deference to commenter MR, who wants logical links. (But it won’t last MR!) So, the link is another work with castle in the title, Jane Austen’s work of juvenilia, Lesley Castle (my review). Written when Austen was 16, it’s a comic novella that starts with letters sent by Margaret Lesley, from her Lesley Castle abode, complaining about her brother’s adulterous wife and her roué father running amok in London. It gets sillier from there!
My next link is on the juvenilia angle, and it’s to Eleanor Dark’s Juvenilia (my review) which was published by Juvenilia Press as part of their inspired program which uses juvenilia to teach the skills of “editing, annotating, designing and illustrating” a scholarly publication, thereby killing two birds with one stone (to use a cliché). I have reviewed several of their books, and have a few more to go – and they are still publishing.
Keeping to obvious links, my next one is on author’s first name. I have reviewed books by a few Eleanors but I want to leave Australia, so it’s to New Zealand author, Eleanor Catton’s The luminaries (my review) that I’m taking you next.
Catton’s novel is a work of historical fiction that won the Booker Prize in 2013. Another work of historical fiction won the Booker Prize the year before in 2012, Hilary Mantel’s Bring up the bodies (my review), so that is my next link. As I recollect, some naysayers didn’t like the emphasis on historical fiction in the shortlist when the first book in Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy, Wolf Hall, won in 2009, but clearly the judges took little notice of them!
As I’ve implied already, Bring up the bodies is the second book in Mantel’s Cromwell trilogy. My next link is another second book in an historical fiction trilogy, Pat Barker’s The women of Troy (my review). Just as an aside, the third book in Barker’s historical fiction Regeneration trilogy, The ghost road, also won the Booker, back in 1995.
And now, you know, to be a bit tricksy, my next link is to Peter Carey’s Amnesia (my review). Why, do you ask? Well, Pat Barker was born on 8 May 1943, and Peter Carey was born the day before, on 7 May 1943. Both have had stellar literary careers. But, one of the reasons I thought to end with this book is because I wrote in my review that I believed Carey wanted us to “maintain the rage”, to remain aware and vigilant of what is happening, and of whose fingers are in which pie. This is still relevant as politics becomes increasingly polarised and mired in misinformation. I’m not a conspiracist, but that doesn’t mean it’s not sensible to think about who is arguing what, and why, as well as about the argument itself.
We’ve rambled quite a bit this month across time and place, but hmmm, I have been rather one-sided in author gender this post, with just one male author bringing up the rear!
FINALLY: A little shout-out on Love Your Bookshop Day to my new (because I’ve moved) neighbourhood independent bookshop, The Book Cow. Not only is it friendly and helpful but it actively supports writers, especially our local ones. And not far down the road from there is the lovely Muse which I’ve written about several times here before and which also regularly runs literary events involving local and other authors.
Now, the usual: Have you read I capture the castle? And, regardless, what would you link to?
Whispering Gums 
Dear WG, I Capture the Castle must have been part of the cosmos lately…a friend of mine visited Scoatney Castle in Kent, which reminded me to recommend ICTC – she hadn’t heard of it. But what a wonderful book, and so much better than various screen versions over the years! An elegant Six Degrees as always.
Thanks Judy … it’s one of those true classics isn’t it? It’s hard to imagine any English-languge reader not having heard of it, but I guess like all classics it comes and goes!
I hope you are well?
‘ Pat Barker was born on 8 May 1943’ EXACTLY two months before me ! I didn’t realise I had a (sort of) link to Barker !! 🙂
You’re doing pretty well, ST; but I am alarmed about your bracketed warning. I stand ready to become puzzled, then confused, then grumpy. [grin]
Twas a very good year then MR! I’m glad you noticed my warning – you have been warned, haha! I promise to give you an opportunity to be grumpy again soon.
Using a theme of fortifications:
1. The Life of Sir Thomas More by William Roper, which quotes More as saying in his days of favor with Henry VIII that “if my head could win him a castle in France (for there was then war between us) it should not fail to go.”
2. The Autobiography by Benvenuto Cellini, since he served as an artillerist in the defense of the Castel St. Angelo.
3. Simplicissimus by Grimmelshausen, since the eponymous hero brings a castle to surrender at very little expense in ammunition and none in blood.
4. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, which takes in the capture of Fort William Henry by French and Indian forces.
5. Don Juan, Canto VII by Byron, which tells of the Russian capture of Ismail–in a tone quite different from Cooper’s.
6. Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, a man less poetical than Byron, far better at prose than Cooper, and who captured among other places Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, and Petersburg.
I have not read I Capture the Castle. I have read Bring Up the Bodies, which I thought good enough. I have also read Women of Troy, of which I will mention here only my main complaint: the narrator of a story may have a sea nymph for her child’s grandmother; or she may have an understanding of modern epidemiology; but she may not have both.
Thanks George. I like your fortifications theme, and I have read or heard of your last three. Oh, actually, I have heard of Cellini too.
I’m interested that you praise Grant’s prose over Cooper’s.
I first heard of Grant’s memoirs long ago, in an essay by someone who had followed up Gertrude Stein’s praise of them. He found that she wasn’t wrong, and I eventually found out that he wasn’t either.
Love that journey of discovery George.
Do you know, I’ve had Amnesia for years, and never got round to reading it.
‘My bad’, as they say…
I know the feeling exactly … I have a couple of Careys on my TBR that I haven’t read too (but not this one obviously!)
Not much of a fan of Carey, but this sounds powerful. Pssst… the link on the link page points to your January post, not this one.
Oh my, thanks Davida … I will check that. Not sure why.
You are not the only one who’s not a fan of Carey but overall I like him. You never quite know what he will do next.
I’ve only read the Mantel from your interesting-looking chain. I’m not minded to read the Catton, as I didn’t get in with Birnam Wood one bit. Somehow I’ve dodged both this Carey and this Austen, so I have some catching up to do!
I haven’t read Birnam Wood Margaret and probably won’t, but The illuminaries had a lot to offer I thought. It’s not surprising you haven’t read the Austen as it’s a small work of juvenilia.
Yes, I thought I hadn’t ever spotted that particular Jane Austen. I gather The Illuminaries gets a better press than Birnam Wood, so I should try it.
Hard for me to say not having read BN but The illuminaries is fascinating.
I’ll maybe try it soon then.
Love that link between Pat Barker and Peter Carey – very well done!
Haha, thanks Cathy … I enjoyed finding it.
Fun link with date of birth!!
I have only read Mantel’s – amazing trilogy by the way
That’s a start! I haven’t read the third one.
Fun linking as usual! So I have to ask, how did you know Pat Barker and Peter Carey were born within a day of each other? Do you just somehow carry this information around in your head? And if not, how would you even know to look it up? Inquiring minds want to know 🙂
Yes, in my head of course Stefanie. I’m a wunderkind – NOT! No, sometimes I think “dates” and go fossicking. I think what I did in this case was to go to Wikipedia’s 1943 literature page, after seeing Barker’s birth date, to see what I could find.
Absolutely loved that last link with the almost shared birthdays! Great chain.
Thanks Mallika .. I’m glad some like the trickier links.
It must be an interesting challenge to approach this more logically than thematically for a time. I loved I Capture the Castle but no longer have my copy unfortunately. I also admired The Luminaries a great deal (the logistics of plotting and presenting the story, such a long one); I read Birnham Wood earlier this year and found it quite different and, though I felt initially excluded from the story (for more than half of it), I ended up really enjoying it.
Oh, I think I missed this Marcie. I had a busy weekend of meetings and volunteering, and preparing for our trip to Melbourne where I am now. I think it’s fun to mix up my approaches to this challenge, which is probably why I keep doing it, more than other memes.
The Luminaries was quite a feat, I agree. I enjoyed watching it play out too.