Six degrees of separation, FROM Long Island TO …

/ Whispering Gums

When last month’s Six Degrees went to air, I was on holiday in outback Queensland. I have since returned from that wonderful trip, but am now in Melbourne for two weeks, catching up with family, including of course our two gorgeous grandchildren. I could do the grandmotherly thing and wax lyrical about what fun they are, but if you have grandchildren, yours will be just as much fun, and if you don’t, then, my stories will bore you very quickly, so let’s get straight to this month’s Six Degrees. As always, if you don’t know how the #SixDegrees meme works, please check host Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book. This month we are back to books I haven’t read, this one being Colm Tóibín’s Long Island. I’ve seen (and loved) the movie of the first novel, Brooklyn, but haven’t read it or this sequel. I’d like to though!

Louise Mack, Girls together

I considered many ways to take this chain but in the end, I decided to go with the idea of a sequel. My link is an old Australian novel, Louise Mack’s Girls together (my review), which was published in 1898 and was the sequel to her novel Teens.

Girls together is about two friends, 16-year-old Lennie, who is at a point of transition in her life, and 18-year-old Mabel, who returns in the opening chapters from Paris and is training to be an artist. My next link draws on the idea of friendship between two young women. Nell Pierce’s A place near Eden (my review) is very different to Girls together, but the main friends here, Tilly and Celeste, are, like Lennie and Mabel, two years apart in age, meaning that from the start, Tilly is less experienced than Celeste – and she feels it. For the main part of the story, they are 19 and 21, and something happens, near Eden, for which Tilly is blamed.

Flynn Tiger in Eden

My next link is simple, obvious, so MR at least is sure to love it! I am linking, in other words, on title. The book is Chris Flynn’s A tiger in Eden (my review). It’s about Billy, “a thug-on-the run” in Thailand from his violent past in Belfast. He is, of course, the “tiger” in Eden, but there are more tigers to the story than just this.

A tiger also appears in my next novel, Fiona McFarlane’s The night guest (my review) which is about an older woman living on her own, the carer her children organise for her, and a tiger which starts to visit at night. As in Chris Flynn’s novel, there are layers here to the idea of the tiger.

The older woman in my next link has far more agency than McFarlane’s Frida who is, admittedly, in the early stages of dementia. The woman is the narrator of Sigrid Nunez’s essay-novel cum autofiction work, The vulnerables (my review). It’s the story of a woman who, in the early days of COVID and lockdown, takes on the task of pet-sitting a miniature macaw in a classy New York apartment, but finds herself sharing this role with a disaffected, opinionated Gen Z son of friends of the apartment owner.  An uneasy relationship develops between these two strong-minded people.

My last link is about another older woman and a younger man living in the same apartment complex. They become friends when he is locked out of his apartment, but their friendship happens rather more easily than Nunez’s pair because they quickly find points of connection. The novel is Michael Fitzgerald’s Late (my review). It is a “what if” story about Marilyn Munro spun through a story about Sydney’s 1980s gay murders. Late encourages us to think about who Marilyn might have been had she been allowed to be herself, and who her young gay neighbour might be if allowed to be himself!

So, we started with Kate’s book in greater New York, but moved very quickly to Australia, before popping over to Thailand, back to Australia, and then to New York again, before finally ending up in Australia. We’ve met tigers and thugs (not to mention a macaw), older women and younger men, and we’ve come across some interesting girl friends. We’ve met people to be trusted and some not so much. I hope you’ve been intrigued!

Now, the usual: have you read Long Island and, regardless, what would you link to?

20 thoughts on “Six degrees of separation, FROM Long Island TO …”

  1. I’ve only read The Night Guest out of all of these – my book group loved it, as did I – but I’m intrigued by the Marilyn Monroe one!

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    • For some reason your two comments – I’m guessing you tried twice – went into Spam Teresa. Who knows why? Maybe Marilyn Monroe is suss!! Anyhow, I’m glad you all loved The night guest. I need to read more of her books, but still haven’t, because that was such a good read.

      I think you would be intrigued by Late. It has a heart, but had you entertained and thinking all the time too.

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  2. It used to stop me for a moment when The New York Times would append “L.I” to place names, as for example Hicksville or Rockville Center. Long Island is large enough that knowing that a town is somewhere on the island offers only so much help in locating it. Anyway, I will take as the theme “suburbs”, American suburbs, moving northeast to southwest.

    Degree one will be Binocular Vision by Edith Perlman, a collection of short stories, many set in the fictional Boston suburb Godolphin, which sounds to me very much like Brookline, Massachusetts.

    Degree two will be V by Thomas Pynchon, which if nothing else includes characters from Long Island, e.g. the Five Towns.

    Degree three will be Goodbye, Columbus, which takes place almost entirely in New Jersey, if not exactly in the New York suburbs then certainly with New York’s gravitational field, Newark and thereabouts. (For what it’s worth, Columbus is in Ohio–the girlfriend’s brother played on the Ohio State basketball team.)

    Degree four will be A Thread of Years by John Lukacs, not really a novel, more a series of historical fictions and sketches, set mostly in and around Philadelphia, enough of it in the suburbs to qualify.

    Degree four will be The Man Who Loved Children. It begins in Washington, DC, and Baltimore, but winds up in the Eastport area of Annapolis, Maryland–by now a suburb if not in the 1930s.

    Degree six will by The Underground Man by Ross MacDonald, set around Los Angeles, (which is largely a suburb itself).

    I have not read Long Island, or anything by Toibin. I suppose that I should.

    Reply

    • Love your theme of suburbs George. I know some of these books, but haven’t read any though I SHOULD have read The man who loved children. It’s a shame though that she moved the setting from where it was based! I have only read one by Tóibín, The master, which I found interesting as I recollect. Have always intended to read more. I’m not sure there are any shoulds about it, though I’m probably interested in Long Island.

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  5. Such an enjoyable chain! Girls Together sounds very appealing and I remember enjoying The Night Guest which had a very striking tigerish cover when it was first published here in the UK. Loved The Vulnerables, too.

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    • Thanks Susan. I’m glad you read and liked The night guest. I recollect it had some interesting covers. And, I like that you’ve also read and liked The vulnerables. Girls together is particularly interesting because of when it was written. (Louise Mack spent some time in England too, which makes her interesting for her times.)

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  7. Hi Sue, I have read both Brooklyn and Long Island. I enjoyed both and liked the film Brooklyn. My links are Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strouth; Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawagudi; Us by David Nicholls, The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarity; Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan and Tom Lake by Ann Patchett.

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  8. Such the traveler of late! And of course your links are fun as always.

    I’ve not read the book, but I think my first link would be to The City We Became by N.K. Jemison. In it when cities reach a critical point, they become alive in the form of chosen human avatars. New York is trying to be born and instead of one avatar, there is one for each borough, including Long Island. Tokyo is already alive and makes an appearance, so I would next link to a book I am currently reading by a Japanese author called Butter that takes place in Tokyo. Butter is about so many things, including food, so from there, who knows? 🙂

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