Six Degrees of Separation, from Post-Office Girl to Female Private Detective

 

Six Degrees of Separation is a monthly meme, currently 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 a German noir-fiction which I have not read:

0. The Post-Office Girl by Stefan Zweig Synopsis from Goodreads: The post-office girl is Christine, who looks after her ailing mother and toils in a provincial Austrian post office in the years just after the Great War. One afternoon, as she is dozing among the official forms and stamps, a telegraph arrives addressed to her. It is from her rich aunt, who lives in America and writes requesting that Christine join her and her husband in a Swiss Alpine resort. After a dizzying train ride, Christine finds herself at the top of the world, enjoying a life of privilege that she had never imagined. But Christine’s aunt drops her as abruptly as she picked her up, and soon the young woman is back at the provincial post office, consumed with disappointment and bitterness. Then she meets Ferdinand, a wounded but eloquent war veteran who is able to give voice to the disaffection of his generation. Christine’s and Ferdinand’s lives spiral downward, before Ferdinand comes up with a plan which will be either their salvation or their doom. For the first degree of separation, I would use "the post-office girl" aspect, and link it to another book, whose one of the main characters is a postmistress.

1. Wish You Were Here by Rita Mae Brown

I have read this one last year for #ReadingtheMeow2025, and loved it! A cat detective and her mistress (or her assistant, really) are investigating a murder in a small town. Excerpt from my review: Mrs. Murphy is the cat-detective; she's a tiger cat who lives with a divorced-postmistress named Mary Minor "Harry" Haristeen as her companion. To complete the household, there's a Welsh Corgi named Tucker. They all live in a small town, where everyone knows about everyone else, and there's not such thing as secret. Harry - as the postmistress - has a habit of reading postcards not addressed to her. In one of these, she found one postcard with Paris cemetery image, captioned "wish you were here". Few days later, a citizen was murdered - the one who'd received the postcard. Then another death, with similar "warning". It was then that Harry realized the significant of the anonymous postcards. There's a murderer among them, and most probably he/she knew that Harry knew more than she supposed to. Here's the full review. The cat is named Mrs. Murphy, and that instantly reminded me of another cat in fiction, named Mrs. Norris. Do you know who that is, or in what book it appears? ;)

2. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling

Mrs. Norris is the pet-cat of Mr. Filch, the caretaker of Hogwarts School in Harry Potter series. I needn't bother to say more of the series; no doubt you know all about it. But here I must ponder for some time, what would my third degree is about. There are a lot of aspects discussed throughout the seven books, yet the most interesting one in my opinion is about free-will. In 2020 I have blogged about Top Five Classics About Free Will [click the link to read the post], and one of the book featured there is Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Still on the subject of free will, another book that made it into the same list (and topped it) is...

3. East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Excerpt from my review: East of Eden is following the lives of two families in Salinas Valley: the Trasks and the Hamiltons; though along the way I felt that the Trasks were the center of this book, while the Hamiltons only its satellite. It was within the Trask dynasty that Steinbeck imitated the Book of Genesis, by naming its member (and drawing their destinies) following the symbol of good versus evil: Cain and Abel (C & A). And in case you want to read the full review, click here. This book has become one of my personal canon. I have even written a separate post discussing the free will aspect of the book, which I titled: On “Timshel” [East of Eden] | The Freedom of Choice [click the link to read]. 'Timshel' itself is brought up by the philosopher of this book: Lee (the old and wise Chinese servant of Adam and Cathy Trasks), an important figure in the saga. Now, while Chinese characters quite often appear in English canon, it is quite interesting that Steinbeck wrote another Chinese character in his other book, whose name is also Lee. Maybe he just didn't know any Chinese name except that?... 

4. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

Excerpt from my review: So Cannery Row is about a few blocks of fish canneries in the harbour city of Monterey, California, drawn from Steinbeck's memories when he stayed there. This is a tale about its remarkable inhabitants. Who are they? Mostly, a bunch of good-for-nothings. There's Mack and the boys, a gang of unemployed losers, whose only ambition was contentment without working. They occupy an empty building owned by a Chinese grocery store owner - whose 'wealth' mainly consists in the piles of tit bits in his shop, and in the debts of his customers - called Lee Chong. Here's the full review.

Although Lee Chong is a secondary character, he is quite memorable. Still on the Chinese secondary characters in English literature, this book instantly came to mind...

5. Murder in Williamstown by Kerry Greenwood

Excerpt from my review: Meanwhile, at the end of each chapter, we follow the fate of two girls - one of them called Peony - separated from the main events. From the snippets of their dialogues, we could feel that they are in misery. But of what kind, we are kept in the dark. Perhaps this would be the binding element of the whole mystery? Peony is a common name for Chinese girls, right? Chinese girls in misery, a Chinese man murdered, there's something in it, surely. To read the full review, just click this link. The sleuth of this series is a female private detective. Here's how I described her [excerpt from my review]: The Honorable Phryne Fisher is the most famous Australian female private detective. Live in St. Kilda, Melbourne in the 1920-1930s, she enjoys her aristocratic status, though never forgets her humble origin. And so, for the sixth and last degree of separation, here's another female private detective whom I have just been introduced to belatedly:

6. Grey Mask by Patricia Wentworth

Excerpt from my review: As a debut of a series, Grey Mask is a wonderful one. It has the right amount of actions, light-heartedness, mystery, and a pleasant twist with quite surprising villain at the end. My full review is here. Unlike The Honorable Phryne Fisher, Wentworth's Miss Silver is not at all a formidable figure, although she has a rare occupation at that time (the 1920s): a female private detective. On the contrary, I often felt her presence only on the background. Here's what I described her: She was portrayed as a lady with her knitting; a woman with brain, who does all the deduction needed, but throws the dirty work, so to speak, to men. She once asked Charles to follow a suspect; and imagining that a detective asking his/her client to do the work he/she supposed to do, was quite hilarious to me. And so, this time I began with a post-office girl, and ended with a female private detective. How about you, where did your #6degrees bring you to this time?