Six Degrees of Separation: from ‘Intermezzo’ to …

First Saturday is Six Degrees Day, so once again I refer you to Kate’s page at BooksAreMyFavouriteandBest where she hosts this meme. It involves Kate choosing a starting book – in this case Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo and then you finding six other books that spring to mind. You can conceptually leap from one title to another, or you might have six books all joined thematically- it’s up to you.

I rarely have read the starting book, and this month is no exception. I haven’t read any Sally Rooney at all. So where to go? Well, ‘Intermezzo’ has a double z in it, and I’m rather fond of double-z because I have one in my surname. So… books with double z it is! The zz might be in the title, or in the author’s name.

1. Lizzie Siddal: The Tragedy of a Pre-Raphaelite Supermodel by Lucinda Hawksley. You’ve probably seen Lizzie Siddal because appears in many of the pre-Raphaelite paintings: thin, pale with long red hair. Working as a shop assistant in a hat shop, she was brought into the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of seven students who criticized the teaching of art in art schools, harking back to the rich colours and animated subject matter of Botticelli and other early Italian artists. She fell in love with Dante Rossetti, one of the original Brotherhood, but he had affairs with many other women and she became addicted to laudanum. This is a non-fiction book, written by historian Lucinda Hawsley, (Charles Dickens’ great great great grand-daughter), who often appears in British documentaries, especially about Victorian England. My review here.
2. The Nun of Monza by Mario Mazzucchelli I read this back in 2001, so I can’t remember all that much about it. It’s popular history, and it tells the story of Sister Virginia de Leyva, a nun in a convent in Spanish-controlled Milan in the 17th century. She has an 11-year affair with Gian Paolo Osio, the local rake. The one thing that stays with me (as a claustrophobe) is the horror of being ‘walled up’ as punishment for the affair.
3. The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard. It’s only her double z that gets her onto this list, because I really didn’t think much of this book at all, even won the Miles Franklin and the National Book Award for Fiction in 2004, and was short-listed for the Orange Prize. It’s set in post WWII Asia, and it captures the stiffness of colonial pretension but it was wordy and complex and I didn’t like it one bit. You can read my review here (if I haven’t already put you off)
4. Harlem Nights: the Secret History of Australia’s Jazz Age by Deirdre O’Connell On the 19th January 1928, the SS Sierra drew into Circular Quay. On board were seventeen members of the Colored Idea, an all-black Jazz revue comprising dancers, comedians, vocalists and musicians. They were deported from Australia less than three months later. Harlem Nights is the story of the Sydney and Melbourne legs of the Colored Idea’s Australian tour, but it is much more than that. It is the story of the international rise of African-American jazz; White Australia ; anxieties over the rise of the ‘girl’; media and celebrity; right-wing politics, and police corruption. It’s written by an academic historian, and it’s much more than just the story of a tour. You can read my review here.
5. Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens Another read from 2001. This is typical Dickens, with its tangled plot, a perceptive and satirical social and political eye, wonderful memorable characters who have become the stuff of English language itself (Sairy Gamp; Pecksniff) and a happy ending extolling the virtues of goodness and families. It was laugh-out-loud funny in places, and he really does get stuck into America and Americans.
6. The Hiding Place by Tezza Azzopardi. Two z’s is good; four is better. I read this about twenty years ago too. Despite the author’s z-laden name, it is actually set in Wales and it’s reminiscent of Angela’s Ashes in its depiction of poverty and childhood unhappiness. It was a Booker Prize finalist.

I’m quietly relieved that it’s only six degrees of separation, because I had come to the end of my list of books with zz. I hope I haven’t zzzz-d you to sleep!