5 Oct 2015

6 DEGREES OF SEPARATION #16: A LITTLE LIFE.





A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is an immensely powerful and heartbreaking novel of brotherly love and the limits of human endurance.

When four graduates from a small Massachusetts college move to New York to make their way, they're broke, adrift and buoyed only by their friendship and ambition. 

- Full synopsis here on amazon.co.uk 

Not a book I have read but for me this brings to mind ...

#1 TWO BROTHERS. 'Two babies are born. Two brothers. United and indivisible, sharing everything. Twins in all but blood.' The story of two 'twins' one Aryan, the other Jewish. A 'Holocaust' novel with many threads - the political, the economics of that time, homosexuality amongst the ranks of the Nazi elite, education, its all there in what I found a real page- turner of a read.

#2 ASH. Not a thing I can remember being talked about a lot and I certainly can't remember homosexuality ever featuring in any novel I read as a teenager. How fantastic then to have books such as Ash. A re-telling of the traditional fairytale Cinderella but aimed at the young gay/lesbian market.

#3 THE LOLLIPOP SHOES. Hardly the traditional glass slippers. In this, the sequel to Chocolat, Vianne and Anouk (the former now known as Yanne, the latter as Annie ) seek refuge in the cobbled streets of Monmartre where the winds seemed to have stopped blowing until into their lives blows Zozie, the lady with the lollipop shoes.

#4 THE WIZARD OF OZ. Talking of slippers and winds (well, tornadoes to be precise) perhaps the most famous slippers of all are the ruby slippers which, worn by Dorothy when tapped together three times, the words 'There's no place like home' spoken, take her3 home to Aunty Em and Uncle Henry. 

#5 STORM FRONT. My favourite wizard? No, not Harry Potter. I love Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden, the only one of his kind to be found in the yellow pages. In this the first book in the series Harry is called in to consult on a gory murder committed with black magic.  

#6 THE RIVERS OF LONDON. A mix of crime and magic but alas PC Peter Grant (apprenticed to the last wizard-come-detective) is no Harry Dresden in the making in this very British novel.

A monthly meme hosted by Annabel and Emma who from now on will be taking it in turns to do the honours. 6 Degrees Of Separation invites readers to link six books according to whatever connections come to mind. Hosted by Emma this month you can see her chain here.

10 comments:

brandileigh2003 said...

Fun connections

Kelly said...

I love the directions you took as you worked your way through the meme this time!

I've not read any of them...no, not even The Wizard of Oz, despite the fact we had the entire set of Oz books in our home when I was a child. (how many folks knew Baum wrote other Oz books!?) Of course I've seen the film version a million times.

Unknown said...

harry is really awesome i love those books myself

Melissa (Books and Things) said...

I enjoyed Ash. I think it is a book you would enjoy as well. Have you read the Wizard of Oz books? They are so much more twisted than the movie. :)

Yvonne @ Fiction Books Reviews said...

Hi Tracy,

Some great links between your books this time, although I am sorry that I couldn't become enthused about any one of them in particular.

As you yourself have said in the past, I might grab one of those titles off the shelf in a charity shop, but I wouldn't put myself out to look for them on-line and I wouldn't want to be paying anything like full retail price!

Thanks for sharing your review links, I had fun reading back over them :)

Yvonne

Gina said...

Very creative. ^-^

Suko said...

You are so good at this, Tracy. I haven't read any of the books you feature here (although of course I've seen The Wizard of Oz), but I am now tempted to read some of them.

Barbara said...

Hi Tracy, excellent linkage… I’ve read a couple of these but have somehow managed to miss out on Harry Dresdon, I must remedy that without delay. I would also like to read Two brothers – so a couple more for my must-read list.

Trac~ said...

Thanks for all of the links. I can't wait to look into them more. I keep a running list of the "good" books. Maybe ONE day I will actually have the time to read them! HA! :)

Felicity Grace Terry said...

I did have a copy of all the books in the Wizard Of Oz series but an incredibly thick read with the tiniest print I've ever seen. Given that I tend to do most of my reading in bed as you can imagine this wasn't an ideal format so I'm still looking for a box-set.

I did indeed read Ash Melissa and whilst I loved the cover and overall enjoyed the book I found myself a little bit disappointed with the characterisation of Ash..