Six Degrees of Separation, from Flaslight to Little House in the Big Woods

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 have not read:

0. Flashlight by Susan Choi
A novel tracing a father’s disappearance across time, nations, and memory. One summer night, Louisa and her father take a walk on the breakwater. Her father is carrying a flashlight. He cannot swim. Later, Louisa is found on the beach, soaked to the skin, barely alive. Her father is gone. She is ten years old. Shifting perspectives across time and character and turning back again and again to that night by the sea, Flashlight chases the shock waves of one family’s catastrophe, even as they are swept up in the invisible currents of history. This book's theme reminds me of another book deals with disappearance or missing persons:

1. The Stranger's Companion by Mary Horlock

Excerpt from my review: The Stranger's Companion is a historical mystery and gothic thriller which is inspired by real events in Sark, a small island, part of the British Channel Islands, in 1933. The clothes of a man and a woman was found neatly folded on the edge of a cliff, but no one knew whom they belong to. And that's how this story also begins. Here's the complete review.
I won't spoil the whole story to you, but there is an element of children's amusement turned tragedy in the story. And it's that that reminds me of the next book, which has the same element, also as an important key to the whole story:

2. The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden

Excerpt from my review: The titular greengage summer is the summer when five siblings were staying at Hotel Les Oeilletes in a French seaside village. The complete review is here. To go to the fourth book of the chain, I choose the easiest part, by using the word "Summer" in the title. And it's another book I have just read recently, which, naturally, set in a summer.

3. The End of Summer by Rosamunde Pilcher

Excerpt from my review: Jane is a twenty one year old Scottish girl who has lost her mother in childhood. [...] One day in this titular summer, Jane has a lovely surprise - a family lawyer called David Stewart brings a summon from Jane's grandmother, for Jane to come home to Elvie. Here's the link to my complete review.
Again, I will take the easiest way, and pick the word "End" in the title.

4. Howards End by E.M. Forster

Excerpt from my review: Howards End is either Forster's dream or prophecy of what kind of people who should or would shape England as a nation in the turn-of-the-century (it was published in 1910). You can read the complete review here. In the story, Ruth Wilcox inherited a house (Howards End, that is) - "Ruth is the only Wilcox who loves the house as a home, cares for its lovely garden, trees, and all. She values the 'spirit' of the house; while the others only value Howards End as property; they care more about motors, business, money, and luxury." (excerpt from my review). This reminded me of another book, where another woman inherited a house.

5. The Woods in Winter by Stella Gibbons

Excerpt from my review: The story centers on Ivy Gover, a thrice-widowed char woman, who inherited a cottage in the countryside of Little Warby. Ivy's eccentric character is the backbone of the story. She has a gypsy-strand from her ancestors, and it reflects on her longing of freedom and solitude, now that she is in her fifties. And here's the complete review. For the last title, I'll go with another book with "woods" in the title, and so, here it is...

6. Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder

And so, from a rather sad book about missing person, my six degrees of separation brought me to a heart-warming children classic.


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