This book takes the 6 degrees of separation to a whole new level, and the connections made are not only highly hilarious they are also very moving. It begins with Adolf Hitler meeting John Scott-Ellis, and adds link to a chain that includes Laurence Olivier meeting J.D. Salinger, and so on until we come full circle and end with The Duchess of Windsor meeting Adolf Hitler.

The concept the Author had in mind for this book is very clever and witty, so it makes for some amazing stories, some more interesting than others, but you can skip around with no fear of losing the plot. Found in the author's note is one of the strange but true aspects of this book; each of the meetings is documented and nothing is made up; that there are 101 meetings related; each is told in exactly 1,001 words, which makes the book 101,101 words long, and the very author's note explaining this is 101 words.

Each story (meeting) is about 3 pages long and is marked as being a chapter. However, this is not the kind of book you want to read straight on from start to finish, and you need to stifle the urge to read aloud sections to anyone who will listen due to the many interesting and little known trivial facts about the famous people contained within its covers.

Regardless of whether or not the Author is writing recycled rumours and urban myths, they are interesting. After all, who doesn’t like to see that ‘celebrities’ are just ordinary folk with a bigger bank balance? This book reveals them warts and all, from bad behaviour and drug & alcohol abuse, to wanton sexual experimentation and anti-social behaviour. The author doesn’t make many moral judgements.

I enjoyed this book, but only as one I could dip in and out of, and one that was able to spark some kind of dinner table conversation. It doesn’t take up a lot of your time, and would therefore make a good travelling read or one to have on you when waiting for an appointment instead of locking into those ‘smart’ phones.
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A perfect circle of social connection.

“Hello Goodbye Hello” is a journey of social connections, one person meeting another person who encounters yet another, meeting, connecting, and circling back to the first person. The book chronicles 101 people meeting 101 other people, one person at a time, and each meeting is described in 101 words, a “six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon” with real people. The book is quick to read, and filled with interesting, funny, and thought-provoking meetings. Some encounters are well known; others are unfamiliar, but all are well documented, and the extensive source material is listed in the bibliography.

The people are diverse, yet connected. Music lovers find Peggy Lee who met Richard Nixon who met Elvis Presley who met Paul McCartney. Literary fans discover J.D. Salinger who met Ernest Hemmingway who met Ford Madox Ford who met Oscar Wild. Royal watchers find that Jackie Kennedy met HM Queen Elizabeth II who met The Duke of Windsor who met Elizabeth Taylor who met James Dean. Others might be surprised to find that Frank Lloyd Wright met Marilyn Monroe who met Nikita Khrushchev.

Readers can start anywhere in the book and eventually circle back to the starting person. Start with the first page, the last, or somewhere in the middle of the book; it makes no difference. The encounters eventually return to where the reader started, to the first person, in a perfect circle of social connection.

As we recover from “Covid Isolation” “Hello Goodbye Hello” by Craig reinforces the importance of making personal connections.

“Hello Goodbye Hello” By Craig Brown is available in print or as an eBook from independent bookstores, online booksellers, retail stores, public libraries, and anywhere books are sold. ( )

I greatly enjoyed the structure of this book, where A meets B, then B meets C, C meets D, and so on, until we work our way back to A. (The bit about having the entries the exact same number of words is nice, but you don't notice it.) As with a lot of books, there's great fun to be had in the footnotes. A big laugh, and warmly recommended. ( )

This book takes the 6 degrees of separation to a whole new level, and the connections made are not only highly hilarious they are also very moving. It begins with Adolf Hitler meeting John Scott-Ellis, and adds link to a chain that includes Laurence Olivier meeting J.D. Salinger, and so on until we come full circle and end with The Duchess of Windsor meeting Adolf Hitler.

The concept the Author had in mind for this book is very clever and witty, so it makes for some amazing stories, some more interesting than others, but you can skip around with no fear of losing the plot. Found in the author's note is one of the strange but true aspects of this book; each of the meetings is documented and nothing is made up; that there are 101 meetings related; each is told in exactly 1,001 words, which makes the book 101,101 words long, and the very author's note explaining this is 101 words.

Each story (meeting) is about 3 pages long and is marked as being a chapter. However, this is not the kind of book you want to read straight on from start to finish, and you need to stifle the urge to read aloud sections to anyone who will listen due to the many interesting and little known trivial facts about the famous people contained within its covers.

Regardless of whether or not the Author is writing recycled rumours and urban myths, they are interesting. After all, who doesn’t like to see that ‘celebrities’ are just ordinary folk with a bigger bank balance? This book reveals them warts and all, from bad behaviour and drug & alcohol abuse, to wanton sexual experimentation and anti-social behaviour. The author doesn’t make many moral judgements.

I enjoyed this book, but only as one I could dip in and out of, and one that was able to spark some kind of dinner table conversation. It doesn’t take up a lot of your time, and would therefore make a good travelling read or one to have on you when waiting for an appointment instead of locking into those ‘smart’ phones.
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Fascinating and well written! It's a little like 50 mini-biographies, each with revealing dialogue and fun gossipy details.

P.S. On the good and bad side, many of the people were 20th century British popular culture figures who are less familiar to most Americans. ( )