Six Degrees of Separation, from Western Lane to The Unfinished Clue

Six Degrees of Separation is a monthly meme, now hosted by Kate @ books are my favorite and best.

On the first Saturday of every month, a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six other books to form a chain. Readers and bloggers are invited to join in by creating their own ‘chain’ leading from the selected book.

This month we start from yet another book I haven't read:


0. Western Lane by Chetna Maroo

A coming-of-age novel about an eleven-year-old girl who was shaped by her father to be a sport machine.

"Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo.

But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a thirteen-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe.

An indelible coming-of-age story, Chetna Maroo’s first novel captures the ordinary and annihilates it with beauty. Western Lane is a valentine to innocence, to the closeness of sisterhood, to the strange ways we come to know ourselves and each other." ~Goodreads

The main character has lost her mother, and that would be the link to my first chain, a girl whose mother has just passed away in a book I've read very recently:

1. The Weather at Tregulla by Stella Gibbons

My review

Una Beaumont lost her chance of studying acting in London after her mother's death, and she saw her chance of freedom in a self-centered painter who regards his painting above anything else.

This reminded me of another book with a self-centered painter I've read lately:

2. Five Little Pigs by Agatha Christie

My review

Hercule Poirot investigates a murder which happened sixteen years ago. He classified the five suspects as five little Pigs, following a nursery rhyme.

Agatha Christie loved to title her books with nursery rhymes. Another of these is one of her famous books:

3. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

My review

And Then There Were None was originally published as Ten Little Indians, and the order of the murders were also following the nursery rhyme. I read it in junior high school and it was the first book I've read set in Devon.

Another Golden Age murder mystery set in Devon:

4. Murder in the Mill Race by E.C.R. Lorac

My review

A quiet little village was disturbed by the murder of its prominent figure, Sister Monica, whose body was found drowning near the mill.

The mill here instantly reminded me of another book, also with 'the mill' in the title:

5. The Mill in the Floss by George Eliot

My review

I read this book many years ago, so I had to read my own review to find any thing to link with the next chain. And I got it! There's a minor character in this story called Stephen Guest. And that reminds me of another Stephen Guest on another book I've read recently:

6. The Unfinished Clue by Georgette Heyer

My review 

It's a perfect Golden Age detective story with a charming detective, wonderful plot with surprising twist,  proportionate writing with decent pace, a tinge of efficient romance, pleasant and believable characters, set in an English countryside.


Have you read those books? If you do #sixdegree, how it worked out for you this time?