Winter has started down under, and don’t we know it. Well, not the way many of you know winter, of course, but it’s been cold and grey where I am over the last few days, and I don’t like it. The only positive thing I can say is that the sooner it starts the sooner it will be over. Yes, irrational I know, but it’s how I get through the dark months. Another way to get through them is to read books and write posts, so on with the show. And today the show is Six Degrees. If you don’t know it and how it works, please check Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book. This month, she nominated another book I haven’t read, though I wish I had. The book is Stefan Zweig’s The Post Office Girl. Kate chose to honour this year’s Eurovision which took place in Vienna, because Zweig is Austrian, born in Vienna in fact.

I had many ideas for my starting link, including Eudora Welty’s short story, “Why I live at the P.O.” but I read it before blogging and I like to link to books I’ve posted on. So, after more thought, I decided to go with the Vienna link, and choose a novel set – at least partly – in Vienna, Murray Bail’s The voyage (my review). It tells the story of a 46-year-old piano-inventor Frank Delage who goes to Vienna to sell his new piano. It’s an audacious thing to do, to try to sell a piano from the New World in one of the great homes of music.

I love books about music, so I am staying with music for my second book, and linking to Diana Blackwood’s Cold War era set novel, Chaconne (my review). It’s a coming-of-age novel about a young woman who follows the man she loves to Paris, only to find he’s not as interested in her as she thought. She ends up in a German village with another young man. She struggles however to find herself, but is grounded by a choir she finds there. Eleanor, in fact, loves music and a resentment she carries with her is that her mother stopped her piano lessons!

Unlike the fictional Eleanor, the real life Anna Goldsworthy’s parents encouraged her piano talents and made sure she had lessons – with a good teacher. Goldsworthy is now a concert pianist, among other things. So, my next link is to Anna Goldworthy’s memoir, Piano lessons (my review). This piano teacher, Mrs Sivan, is described in the book as “less a character than a force”.

This idea of a teacher being “less a character than a force” reminded me of the teacher Elizabeth Finch in Julian Barnes’ novel Elizabeth Finch (my review). Barnes’ character Neil maintains contact with his teacher long after he has graduated. But, this is not your straightforward novel, as it has quite a quirky form. It has three parts, with the middle one comprising Neil’s “essay” on Julian the Apostate (who was significant to EF’s ideas). The novel is partly about EF and Neil’s thoughts on what we believe and who we rely on, when it comes to history. 

In my post on Barnes’ novel, I said it reminded me a little of J.M. Coetzee’s tricksy books, like Elizabeth Costello and Diary of a bad year, because they also tread this strange fiction/nonfiction, novel/philosophy ground. So, my next link is to J.M. Coetzee’s Diary of a bad year (my review). It is even quirkier in form, because its three parts are presented as three concurrent strands running across the top, middle and bottom of the page – and one of those parts comprises essays.

For my final link, I am referencing the idea of diaries, and linking to Helen Garner’s diaries, specifically to Volume 2, to One day I’ll remember this: Diaries, Volume 2, 1987-1995 (my review). There are some hidden links here though which tickle me: Helen Garner wrote a gorgeous novella The children’s Bach; Coetzee refers to his love of Bach in his novel; Bach was famous for a chaconne (the fifth movement of his Partita in D minor for solo violin); and, most significantly, volume 2 of Garner’s diaries chronicles the tortuous development of her relationship with Murray Bail (her husband at the time).

So, my books have crisscrossed the seas between Australia, Europe and England and have considered some of the big questions in life. We have also spent a bit of time with music, one way or another. My gender split this month has been even.

Have you read The Post Office girl? And, whether or not you have, what would you link to?