Six Degrees of Separation

Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best, is hosting this interesting meme. This month we start with Ian MacEwan's  Atonement.  I am probably one of the few who have neither read the book nor watched the movie. It is a chronicle over a crime and its consequences over six decades.

That leads me to my first chain which is Kate Morton's The Secret Keeper. As in Atonement it is about a crime and how it effects the family. It is only fifty years later that everything is revealed.

Another family saga and hidden secrets I found in Habitaciones cerradas by Care Santos. Violeta Lax is the grand daughter of the famous, Spanish artist Amadeo Lax. When he died he left his house and art to the Catalonian state. Violeta comes back to have a look at the house a last time before the house will be turned into a museum. Once the renovations starts a hidden room is found.

The novel takes place in Barcelona and that takes me to one of my favourite author; Carlos Ruiz Zafon and The Shadow of the Wind. A book with secret libraries and houses and a search for a forgotten book, The Shadow of the Wind by an even more secret and forgotten writer, Julián Carax. A wonderful book of magic realism.

Magic realism takes me to Gabriel Garcia Marques and his Nobel Prize winning book One Hundred Years of Solitude. Another family saga in a world full of magic, realism and very special people.

Talking about special people (and a hundred years), I come to think of The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson. A hilarious story of a man where nothing is impossible. Through his last(?) adventure we have flash backs of his quite extraordinary life.

While in Sweden why not end with A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman. Another hilarious story about a grumpy old man who finally meets his faith in a young woman. From loneliness and grumpiness to be part of a neighbouring family sphere, showing that if you give a little bit of yourself you get something back.

The chain took me from tragic family sagas, from secrets and hidden rooms to a more easy-going, humorous ending. It took me over the world from England to Spain, on to Columbia and Sweden.