The Phone Box at the Edge of the World by Laura Imai Messina tells a fictionalised version of a real phone box, installed in a garden in Japan. There people travel to speak to their dead relatives, the unspoken words now spoken and carried off into the air. Yui on one of her visits meets Takeshi. Together they both learn to live again after the loss of loved ones. (I’ve already used this one in another Six Degrees of Separation but ran out of time to come up with a new one!)
The starter book this month is Postcards from the Edge by Carrie Fisher. In it, former actress Suzanne Vale is in rehab. There she meets Alex, a fellow patient, who makes her realise however close she is, there is always someone else closer to the edge.
After the Funeral by Agatha Christie, sees Cora convinced her brother Richard’s death was suspicious. She is murdered after voicing her suspicion at his funeral and Hercule Poirot has to use his little grey cells to work out the culprit.
A Single Rose by Muriel Barbery is also set in Japan. Botanist Rose has travelled from Paris to Kyoto to hear the reading of the will of her father, arriving after the funeral of a man she has never met. As she learns more about her father she discovers more about herself and the protective walls she has built up around her begin to crumble.
Another memoir of health and patients is This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay. The diary of a junior doctor, it tells the funny, harrowing and moving events in the life of an NHS doctor.
Poirot’s faithful friend Captain Hastings was played by Hugh Fraser. As well as narrating Agatha Christie’s audio books, he is also an author in his own right. Harm sees assassin Rina wake up next to the severed head of her boss and someone about to kill her.
In Do No Harm by Henry Marsh recounts patients who have come to the operating table of brain surgeon Henry and what he has learned holding life in his hands.
So there we go from Postcards on the Edge to This is Going to Hurt in six faltering steps. I’ve even read two of them (possibly three, I can’t remember if I’ve read After the Funeral or just seen it on TV many times). Have you read any of the books? Where would your degrees of separation take you? Do let me know.
Six Degrees of Separation is the brainchild of Kate from Books Are My Favourite and My Best. Each month there is a different starter book and through six books, with what can be, on my part, extremely tenuous links, you see which book you end up at.
