#6Degrees of Separation from Passages by Gail Sheehy to Skylight by Jose Saramago

This meme is hosted by Kate from Books are my Favourite and Best, and this month starts with Passages by Gail Sheehy.

I read this book a long time ago and had planned on rereading it, but time got away from me. Sometimes, passages through life involve boats and can take people to dark places. So, my mind took me from the 1970s to a voyage in the 19^th century, to a book which moved me deeply when I read it back in 2006: This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson

In 1828, Robert FitzRoy is appointed as the commander of the Beagle after the suicide of a British naval captain while charting Tierra Del Feugo. FitzRoy advertises for a ship’s naturalist, and Charles Darwin is appointed.

I then take another journey, this time on land in Australia with Voss by Patrick White. This is my favourite of Patrick White’s novels: I first read it at high school in the early 1970s and have since reread it several times. The novel opens in Sydney, 1845, with the German explorer Voss preparing to cross the Australian continent. This physical aspect of the novel is loosely based on the ill-fated expedition of Ludwig Leichhardt.

Still moving, but this time to a game many of us played which has given its name to a disturbing novel: Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar.

‘Hopscotch’ is a series of journeys through interconnected lives. It is simultaneously a reminder that we each read the same words and form different conclusions. A different journey.

And now I’ll link to another South American novelist: Roberto Bolaño By Night in Chile was the first of his novels I read. This novel is narrated in the first person by the ill and ageing Father Sebastian Urrutia Lacroix over the course of a single evening. 

From one night in Chile to an apartment block in Lisbon.  From night to Skylight by Jose Saramago

‘Skylight’ is a novel returned from publishing limbo. It was submitted to a publisher by Jose Saramago in 1953: they neither accepted it nor rejected it. He did not hear from the publisher again until 1989 when, after rediscovering the manuscript, they wrote to Saramago saying it would be an honour to publish it. Saramago refused, and, according to his wife, vowed that it would not be published in his lifetime. Jose Saramago died in 2010, and ‘Skylight’ was published in 2011.

From Passages, mapping your own way through life to a number of different lives in an apartment block in Lisbon, via South America and Australia. Weird connections, but they worked for me.