The connection is between Nadifa Mohamed’s Black Mamba Boy (Harper Collins, 2010)
and Rosie Alison’s The Very Thought of You (Alma Books, 2009) but these quotations contain
** SPOILERS **
so if you haven’t already read these novels and plan to do so, you might want to skip these bits.

“Jama looked up at the sky, beside the moon was a bright star he had never noticed before, it flickered and winked at him. As Jama squinted he saw a woman sitting on the star, her small feet swinging under her robe and her arm waving down at him. Jama waved to his mother and she smiled back, blowing shooting star kisses down on him.”

“Well-meaning people occasionally said to Anna that although her mother had died she would still be there for her, as a star in the sky. But whenever Anna looked up at the night sky, all she could see was blank space — a vastness which killed any hope of contact, or closeness of any kind. There was just you, and the universe beyond, and the two might never connect. All those school hymns of singing constellations, or the music of the spheres, meant little to her now. There was only cold dark space stretching on forever, split by the eerie whine of Hitler’s bombs.”

I can’t help but wish that Jama could meet up with Anna and give her some star-gazing pointers.

Has anyone else found any interesting connections in their reading lately?