When this SixDegrees goes live, I will be travelling from southern Germany to the Austrian Tyrol, a week into a five-week holiday that will see us travelling through Germany, Austria, Italy and Switzerland to France, returning home in early October. My blog commenting will be severely impacted though I have scheduled a few posts over the five weeks to keep things moving! Now, let’s get onto the main business, Six Degrees. As I always say, if you don’t know what #SixDegrees is and how it works, please check Kate’s blog – booksaremyfavouriteandbest.

The first rule is that Kate sets our starting book, and this month she did something tricksy, as she occasionally does. Her challenge was to “start with your book group’s current selection (if you’re not in a book group, start with the book that you’re currently reading)”. But, how do I define “current”? The book my reading group read at the end of August or the one scheduled for September. I have gone with the former, partly because it was one I suggested after several bloggers I follow had recommended it (including Brona, JacquiWine, Rach). It’s Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection, though I haven’t got my review up yet. It’s about a millennial couple seeking for purpose in their seemingly lovely lives.

My first link is to another novel in which millennials (or perhaps Gen Z-ers) want to live a life of purpose, One did start out as a corporate high-flyer while the other stuck to his ideals from the start, but neither option is simple. The book is Jessy Wu’s Good intentions. I am breaking my rule that I only link to books I’ve read and reviewed – the starting book doesn’t count because technically it’s Kate’s choice! – but I did attend an author conversation, so I’m hyperlinking that post.

My next link is to another novel in which two millennials – one a whistleblower and the other an activist/eco-warrior – have decided to live an ethical life, aka a life of purpose. But, it’s not easy and, indeed, is putting them at serious risk. The book is Donna M. Cameron’s The rewilding (my review)  

My third book is another recent work of eco-literature, George Kemp’s Soft serve (my review). It takes place in a MacDonalds on a day when a bushfire is threatening. It is also a coming-of-age story as well as one about grief. The environmental issue isn’t laboured, but as I have heard said, every modern book is a climate change book! That’s a stretch, really, but it would certainly be understood by readers of this book!

In addition to being a cli-fi novel, a coming-of-age novel, a novel about grief, not to mention also bein about challenged rural towns, Kemp’s novel is one of those novels set in a day. So that is going to be my next link, and the particular novel set in a day that I am choosing is Samantha Harvey’s Orbital (my review).

Now how to define this novel in another way that will provide me with a good link? Perhaps I could go with the – can I call it – cosmic structure? Orbital is structured by the 16 orbits the International Space Station makes around the earth in a 24-hour period, while Eleanor Catton’s The luminaries (my review) also has a specific cosmic structure which is based on both the zodiac and the lunar cycle. And, if you don’t buy that, then both won the Booker Prize!

For my final link, I am choosing setting. The luminaries is historical fiction set in New Zealand’s goldfields, 1860s Hokitika to be exact. My link is set in a fictional town in contemporary Victoria, but it was once a successful goldfields town (from Victoria’s mid-19th century gold-mining boom), and a new gold-mine is coming. The book is Carmel Bird’s Field of poppies (my review). In it, she exposes the area’s violent past – including the violence associated with colonial dispossession – and the threats posed by the planned new goldmine.

Does the Field of poppies link back to Perfection? I think we could argue it does, because while Perfection is about a millennial couple seeking purpose, Field of poppies is about older tree-changers looking for peace and beauty. In other words, both books interrogate, in different ways, that age-old question, how are we to live.

Have you read Perfection? And, whether or not you have, what would you link to?