First Saturday of the month, and so it’s Six Degrees of Separation day. To find out how it works, please check out Booksaremyfavouriteandbest where Kate hosts this meme. Basically, Kate chooses a starting book, then you think of other books that lead off from it.
This month Kate leads with Evie Wyld’s Bass Rock, which won the Stella Prize this year.
As usual, I haven’t read it, although I did read All the Birds, Singing which is set on a farm on a dour, dank, unnamed British island, and has the motif of birds running through it as the narrative switches between the island and outback Australia.
Another book with a bird theme running alongside another narrative is Carrie Tiffany’s Mateship with Birds, which I enjoyed much more than Wyld’s book. It, too, is set on a farm but this time in Cohuna in the 1950s with a soundtrack of magpies and kookaburras accompanying a story about neighbours. I described it in my review as quirky and sly.
Another quirky and sly book based on a ‘nature’ motif is Murray Bail’s Eucalyptus, where an antipodean Scheherazade-like figure weaves stories from the landscape. Each story is named for one of the eucalyptus trees planted on a property. The first time I read it, I was underwhelmed: the second time I read it, I thought it was absolutely brilliant. Unfortunately, both reads took place before I started my blog.
Speaking of trees, there’s Sophie Cunningham’s collection of essays, City of Trees: Essays on Life, Death and the Need for a Forest. Each of the essays, many of which have been published elsewhere previously, is prefaced by a pencil sketch of a particular tree- the Coast Live Oak in America, the Giant Sequoia, the Ginkgo, Eucalyptus, Moreton Bay Fig, Coolibah etc. Then follows a short piece of writing about the tree, sometimes interwoven with personal reflection or historical anecdote. A more substantial essay then ensues, not necessarily closely related to the shorter preface.
Sophie Cunningham wrote about trees, but the mother in Shokoofeh Azar’s The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree climbed a tree instead, and there she received enlightenment, just as her son Sohrab was hanged under the instructions of the Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini. Set in Iran, the book combines historical detail, magic realism and a family story.
Greengages are plums and that leads me to another even grimmer book, set this time in Ceausescu’s Romania. I found Herta Muller’s The Land of Green Plums oppressive and disturbing and rather unfortunately- very memorable, which is why it ended up on this list.
I seem to have alternated between darkness and light a bit here, and travelled from Scotland, the outback, Iran and Romania.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 
Like you I haven’t read the Wyld (I tried 50 pages of All the Birds and loathed it) but I’ve read all your others, which almost never happens!
Here’s mine: https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/06/05/six-degrees-of-separation-from-the-bass-rock-to/
Great chain. You know, there’s nothing stopping us from reviewing a book we read before we started blogging. I’m actually thinking of doing that on mine.
Some of my favourites in your chain – I adored Mateship and still think about little Hazel years later. I was also charmed by Eucalyptus, a book I knew nothing about when I picked it up, and was surprised and thrilled by (I’ve since pushed it on quite a few people!).
I like this chain, from which I have only so far read – and enjoyed – Mateship with Birds. But you make a case for TBR-ing the lot!