WEBVTT - Allegra Goodman Wrote the Feminist “Cast Away” 0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:06.960 Hey, Bessie's Hello Sunshine Today on the bright Side. 0:00:07.040 --> 0:00:10.800 It's an all new shelf Life we're diving into. Isila, 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:14.000 the February pick for Ese's Book Club, written by acclaimed 0:00:14.040 --> 0:00:18.159 author Allegra Goodman. This gripping feminist survival story, set in 0:00:18.200 --> 0:00:21.479 the sixteenth century on a remote island in Quebec, is 0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:23.160 one you don't want to miss. 0:00:23.400 --> 0:00:25.079 It's Thursday, February twenty seven. 0:00:25.280 --> 0:00:28.159 I'm Simone Boyce, I'm Danielle Robe and this is the 0:00:28.160 --> 0:00:29.639 bright Side from Hello. 0:00:29.440 --> 0:00:34.280 Sunshine Today on shelf Life. Y'all, we are talking to 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:38.360 author Allegra Goodman. Her novel Isla is Reese's book Club 0:00:38.479 --> 0:00:42.640 selection for February. Allegra is a best selling author whose 0:00:42.920 --> 0:00:47.360 other books include Sam the Chalk Artist, Intuition, The Cookbook Collector, 0:00:47.560 --> 0:00:51.680 Paradise Park, and Catterskill Falls, which was a finalist for 0:00:51.720 --> 0:00:52.720 the National Book Award. 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:56.280 Her latest book, is Isla, is her first foray into 0:00:56.400 --> 0:01:00.120 historical fiction. It's actually based on a true story of 0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:04.200 a woman in sixteenth century France, Marguerite de la Roque. 0:01:04.400 --> 0:01:07.200 She's a real person who sailed to New France now 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:10.720 Canada in fifteen forty two. She was marooned on a 0:01:10.720 --> 0:01:13.560 Subarctic island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. And then 0:01:13.560 --> 0:01:16.760 the author, Aligra Goodman, took her story and just ran 0:01:16.840 --> 0:01:20.040 with it, creating a fictional account of what happened to 0:01:20.080 --> 0:01:21.440 her and how she survived. 0:01:22.120 --> 0:01:24.560 And honestly, what amazes me about this whole story is 0:01:24.560 --> 0:01:27.040 that this book has been twenty years in the making. 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:30.160 I mean that's when she first discovered Marguerite and her 0:01:30.200 --> 0:01:32.520 story and it kind of planted the seed of an 0:01:32.520 --> 0:01:35.399 idea in her mind. And now we get to talk 0:01:35.440 --> 0:01:38.440 to her all about the finished product Isila. So let's 0:01:38.440 --> 0:01:42.039 bring her in. Allegra, Welcome to the bright Side. Oh, 0:01:42.120 --> 0:01:45.920 thank you, We're so happy to have you. So, Isla, 0:01:46.280 --> 0:01:50.160 is this impressive work of historical fiction. And I'm so 0:01:50.280 --> 0:01:54.560 curious about the inspiration for this book, especially your protagonist Marguerite. 0:01:54.760 --> 0:01:58.200 So how did you originally come across her? And will 0:01:58.240 --> 0:02:00.560 you tell us a little bit about what fastd you 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:01.880 about Marguerite's life? 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:05.720 Yes, of course, So I came across her more than 0:02:05.760 --> 0:02:08.840 twenty years ago on a road trip that my family 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:12.760 took up from Cambridge up to Montreal. And we have 0:02:12.840 --> 0:02:15.960 four kids and at the time they were ten, seven, three, 0:02:16.080 --> 0:02:18.880 and zero. We have three boys, and then the zero 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:22.560 year old was our newborn daughter. I'm still not sure 0:02:22.600 --> 0:02:26.720 why I agreed to go on this trip. Our baby 0:02:26.840 --> 0:02:29.800 was literally six weeks old. I went to the library 0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:32.520 and took out a whole stack of books for children 0:02:32.639 --> 0:02:36.000 about Canadian history because we were going to Canada, which 0:02:36.040 --> 0:02:38.440 I thought I was going to read with the boys. 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:41.960 So we start driving. Needless to say, my sons have 0:02:42.200 --> 0:02:45.280 zero interest in the books about Canadian history and they 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:48.639 read none of them. But I ended up reading all 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:53.000 of them because I was up all night nursing the baby. 0:02:53.160 --> 0:02:55.880 So I would be like sitting up in bed, like 0:02:55.960 --> 0:02:58.600 one after another reading these books. And one night in 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:02.200 bed in this hotel room, I was reading a book 0:03:02.200 --> 0:03:05.960 about Jacques Cartier, the French explorer who sailed three times 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:08.679 to what they called New France in those days. And 0:03:09.040 --> 0:03:11.240 this book was about his explorations, and it was like 0:03:11.520 --> 0:03:15.400 his third exploration was in fifteen forty two, and there 0:03:15.440 --> 0:03:17.840 was this discussion of his exploration, and then it said 0:03:17.919 --> 0:03:21.200 accompanying him was a ship full of colonists who were 0:03:21.240 --> 0:03:24.360 going to settle in the New World. And on this 0:03:24.480 --> 0:03:28.720 ship was a young noblewoman named Marguerite Delaroche de Roberval, 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:33.440 who annoyed the commander so much that he marooned her 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:35.640 on an island and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and 0:03:35.880 --> 0:03:38.440 left her there. I should add this was in parentheses, 0:03:38.480 --> 0:03:40.640 so it was like then it was like closed parentheses, 0:03:40.680 --> 0:03:43.800 and then we went back to talking about Jacques Cartier's expedition. 0:03:44.200 --> 0:03:46.400 So it was just this little afterthought, like, no big deal, 0:03:47.000 --> 0:03:50.320 this girl got marooned on an island exactly, yeah, what so. 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:54.160 Often happens to women's history, I think literally in the parentheses. 0:03:54.720 --> 0:03:57.280 So I was like, wait, wait, who is Marguerite? 0:03:57.320 --> 0:03:57.520 Wait? 0:03:57.560 --> 0:04:00.480 Why was she on the ship? What do you mean 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:04.160 annoyed the commander? What does she do to deserve getting 0:04:04.200 --> 0:04:07.000 stuck on this deserted island in what I knew was 0:04:07.040 --> 0:04:10.920 a subarctic climate? Did she survive? What happened to her? 0:04:11.000 --> 0:04:13.280 And then but the author didn't come back to her. 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:16.240 He just went on. And at the time I thought, 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:19.360 I'm sitting there like holding this baby in bed with 0:04:19.400 --> 0:04:21.520 this book, and I thought, this is such a great 0:04:21.960 --> 0:04:26.080 topic or subject for a novel. This is fascinating. Did 0:04:26.080 --> 0:04:29.400 this really happen? Then I thought, wait, that would be 0:04:29.480 --> 0:04:32.520 really hard to write as historical novels in the sixteenth century, 0:04:32.800 --> 0:04:35.719 I write contemporary stuff. This isn't me. This is stressing 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:37.400 me out. This whole idea is stressing me out. So 0:04:37.440 --> 0:04:41.480 I put the idea aside for many years, and my 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:43.560 kids grew older, and I wrote a lot of other 0:04:43.600 --> 0:04:47.320 books set in mostly the twentieth century and the twenty 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:51.680 first century. And then as my kids grew older, my 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:54.919 daughter the newborn, finally went off to college and I 0:04:55.040 --> 0:04:58.880 finally had a lot more time. So I was working 0:04:58.920 --> 0:05:01.680 on this contemporary novel, well called Sam, about this young 0:05:01.680 --> 0:05:04.160 girl who's a boulderer in the twenty first century. And 0:05:04.360 --> 0:05:07.080 I kept writing about her trying to solve problems on 0:05:07.120 --> 0:05:10.520 these boulders where she was on the rock face, clawing 0:05:10.560 --> 0:05:12.960 her way up to the top. And I started thinking 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:16.560 about Marguerite and how she was alone on this rocky 0:05:16.640 --> 0:05:21.679 island and trying to survive, and writing about Sam actually 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:25.080 brought me back to my interest in Marguerite, and I 0:05:25.160 --> 0:05:29.600 started to try experimenting with telling her story at that point. 0:05:30.560 --> 0:05:34.360 Okay, so what happens next, because I know you dive 0:05:34.480 --> 0:05:38.239 headfirst into research on Marguerite, right, what did you find 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:39.760 in that research. 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:44.000 So she was fairly well known in her lifetime in 0:05:44.040 --> 0:05:47.360 France as a survivor. There are two accounts of her 0:05:47.440 --> 0:05:50.440 while she was alive, contemporary accounts. One is by the 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:53.520 Queen of Navarre, who collected what she said were true 0:05:53.560 --> 0:05:57.280 stories about people in a book which was published after 0:05:57.320 --> 0:06:01.440 she died, called the Heptamerin. And these are like many stories, 0:06:01.480 --> 0:06:04.080 and they're all pretty short. And the story of Marguerite 0:06:04.080 --> 0:06:06.200 on her island is this, I think the sixty ninth 0:06:06.240 --> 0:06:09.800 story in the collection, and she writes her account of 0:06:09.800 --> 0:06:12.919 what she thinks, how she thinks Marguerite prevailed in the 0:06:12.920 --> 0:06:16.280 wilderness and everything. But it's only about two pages long, 0:06:16.520 --> 0:06:18.720 I should say, so it's very very short. And then 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:22.479 there's another account from her lifetime by a priest who 0:06:22.520 --> 0:06:25.479 said that he interviewed her, but his account conflicts with 0:06:25.520 --> 0:06:28.400 the Queen's story, and his is also very short. So 0:06:28.440 --> 0:06:31.440 we got these two versions that don't match up, that 0:06:31.520 --> 0:06:34.080 are all, but they're both very short. So in some 0:06:34.120 --> 0:06:37.039 ways that's very challenging because there isn't a lot to 0:06:37.080 --> 0:06:39.760 go on, But in other ways it's really an opportunity 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:43.560 for a novelist to just get in there and imagine 0:06:43.600 --> 0:06:46.120 exactly what happened. So that's what I did well, Igrad. 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:49.800 The first line of any book is so important. It's 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:53.640 what draws people in. And I saw this great video 0:06:53.680 --> 0:06:56.480 of you on the Reese's Book Club Instagram account where 0:06:56.520 --> 0:07:01.040 you talked about writing thirty plus first sentences of this 0:07:01.080 --> 0:07:05.480 book before landing on this one. So your first line 0:07:05.520 --> 0:07:08.680 is I never knew my mother. She died the night 0:07:08.760 --> 0:07:11.240 that I was born, and so we passed each other 0:07:11.280 --> 0:07:14.680 in the dark. She left me her name Marguerite and 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:18.120 her ruby ring, but no memory of her. In that video, 0:07:18.480 --> 0:07:21.440 you said, once you landed on that perfect first sentence, 0:07:21.960 --> 0:07:24.600 you could hear the main character's voice in your head. 0:07:25.720 --> 0:07:28.920 I'm dying to know how crafting that one line helped 0:07:28.960 --> 0:07:32.120 with the character development. What did that set the stage for? 0:07:32.720 --> 0:07:35.320 So actually, I have my notebook here that I used 0:07:35.400 --> 0:07:38.440 to write these sentences, and they started out really clunky 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:41.040 and really wordy. You can I crossed out a ton 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:46.280 and there's pages of this. When I got to that sentence, 0:07:46.320 --> 0:07:49.120 it was sort of distilled, and the thing that I 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:51.520 heard was the way she spoke. It was like the 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:55.000 cadence and the rhythm of her speech. So that at 0:07:55.000 --> 0:07:57.480 the time, I was writing about this young girl who 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:01.200 lives now, and she talks like us, and her diction 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:04.880 is like us. Her word choice, her rhythms are like ours, right, 0:08:05.120 --> 0:08:08.160 And in that sentence, I came upon this ever so 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:11.480 slightly more formal way of talking. It's a tiny, tiny 0:08:11.480 --> 0:08:14.000 bit archaic. She would say upon the ground instead of 0:08:14.000 --> 0:08:16.960 on the ground, just but very very subtle. And when 0:08:17.000 --> 0:08:19.880 I heard those rhythms and those details that you just read, 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:22.360 I really heard her voice in my head, and I 0:08:22.440 --> 0:08:25.040 knew from there it was sort of like getting that 0:08:25.080 --> 0:08:27.440 tiny handhold on the rock that I could sort of 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:28.640 keep pulling myself up. 0:08:28.760 --> 0:08:31.800 What do you think we learn about Marguerite through that 0:08:31.920 --> 0:08:35.160 first line? To me, it's more than just the formality. 0:08:35.400 --> 0:08:38.040 Yeah, so we learn that she's an orphan, that she's 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:41.559 really alone, that she's on the one hand, incredibly privileged 0:08:41.960 --> 0:08:45.040 she has she's left this jewel from her mother, she's 0:08:45.120 --> 0:08:49.520 left this aristocratic name, but she has no parents to 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:52.160 protect her. She has no family around her. And then 0:08:52.160 --> 0:08:53.880 she goes on to say in that paragraph, you know 0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:57.120 she was surrounded by servants, but she doesn't have brothers 0:08:57.360 --> 0:08:59.520 to protect her, which is much needed at that time 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:02.920 a young girl or a little girl, so you get 0:09:02.920 --> 0:09:04.520 a sense of her situation. 0:09:06.360 --> 0:09:08.600 We've got to take a quick break, but don't go anywhere. 0:09:08.720 --> 0:09:21.360 We'll be right back with Allegra Goodman. And we're back 0:09:21.440 --> 0:09:25.160 with Allegra Goodman. I am still thinking about something that 0:09:25.200 --> 0:09:27.480 Allegra said at the beginning of the conversation that I 0:09:27.520 --> 0:09:29.840 cannot get out of my head, which is this idea 0:09:29.920 --> 0:09:32.640 that this little girl was just written off by the 0:09:32.679 --> 0:09:35.320 captain of the ship and was called annoying. And I 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:37.840 think about all the other women throughout history who were 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:40.920 written off and whose voices were silenced because they were 0:09:41.040 --> 0:09:46.560 reduced down to one stereotype or one aspect of their personality. Allegra, 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:50.880 you took pieces of Marguerite's truth and you build on that, 0:09:51.040 --> 0:09:55.200 and you crafted this entire story around her. We never 0:09:55.200 --> 0:09:58.000 got a chance to hear her truth. What do you 0:09:58.080 --> 0:09:59.480 think her truth is? 0:10:00.559 --> 0:10:03.720 I think her truth is that she is the complex 0:10:03.800 --> 0:10:07.440 survivor who is making her way in an incredibly difficult world. 0:10:08.000 --> 0:10:13.199 And what we understand as readers when we're following her story, 0:10:13.240 --> 0:10:15.760 it's an adventure story on the one hand, where she's 0:10:15.800 --> 0:10:18.240 like just trying to physically survive. But it's also a 0:10:18.280 --> 0:10:22.080 story of self discovery where she's discovering her power. When 0:10:22.080 --> 0:10:25.240 she's on the island, she is in some ways in 0:10:25.600 --> 0:10:27.800 a lot of danger. She could freeze to death, she 0:10:27.840 --> 0:10:30.800 could be attacked by animals, Nobody could help her if 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:33.960 she got sick or wounded. But what she realizes on 0:10:33.960 --> 0:10:36.800 the island is that she wasn't safe at home and 0:10:36.840 --> 0:10:39.800 that in some ways on the island she's free as 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:43.199 she was not at home. It's not really till she 0:10:43.240 --> 0:10:45.640 gets on the island that she starts to remake herself 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:47.840 and think about all of these things. So it's my 0:10:48.000 --> 0:10:51.560 version of Robinson Crusoe, only with this woman. She's in 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:54.360 double jeopardy because she's a woman on the island has 0:10:54.440 --> 0:10:54.920 to get back. 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:58.600 Will you bring up Robinson Crusoe. I have to ask 0:10:58.640 --> 0:11:02.120 a bit further about your own relationship to this genre 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:05.320 of castaway stories. I know that you were raised in 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:08.440 Hawaii and you talked about being fascinated by novels like 0:11:08.520 --> 0:11:11.200 Robinson Crusoe and Kidnapped growing up. 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:14.760 So how did your own identity. 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:17.280 As someone who grew up on an island shape your 0:11:17.480 --> 0:11:20.280 desire to tell these kinds of stories. Yeah. 0:11:20.440 --> 0:11:22.880 Ever since I was little, I was fascinated by stories 0:11:22.880 --> 0:11:24.920 on islands because I lived on an island, and I 0:11:25.000 --> 0:11:28.120 was also fascinated by stories. Of course, I grew up 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:30.120 in Honolulu, which is a fairly big city and a 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:33.520 populated island, and a beautiful island to boot and a 0:11:33.520 --> 0:11:36.240 warm one. But I was fascinated by people who were 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:38.880 sort of castaway alone on an island, or you know, 0:11:39.000 --> 0:11:42.920 really had to dig deep and figure everything out for themselves. 0:11:43.200 --> 0:11:45.800 And the reason I was fascinated is because the island 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:48.000 was a little world of their own where they have 0:11:48.160 --> 0:11:50.400 to create their own society. At some point, she says, 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:53.160 we were the rulers of our island and the subjects too. 0:11:53.320 --> 0:11:56.000 We had to govern ourselves, and so they have to 0:11:56.040 --> 0:11:59.600 remake their own society and rethink everything that they might 0:11:59.640 --> 0:12:03.719 have learned before, and that process is exciting, and that 0:12:03.760 --> 0:12:05.360 was what drew me to this. 0:12:06.640 --> 0:12:09.280 It was pretty amazed to learn that this novel took 0:12:09.600 --> 0:12:13.120 decades from the moment you first found Marguerite's name in 0:12:13.160 --> 0:12:17.320 a book to completion. What was it about her in 0:12:17.360 --> 0:12:19.559 this story that kept you engaged for so long? 0:12:20.160 --> 0:12:22.600 I really saw it as kind of a classic epic, 0:12:22.720 --> 0:12:25.319 only not an epic about a man, but an epic 0:12:25.360 --> 0:12:28.679 about a woman, like an odyssey of a woman. And 0:12:28.720 --> 0:12:33.160 that really tempted me as a writer. And also, just 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:35.520 as I said, the idea that she could be sort 0:12:35.559 --> 0:12:38.840 of broken by her experience but then remake herself. That 0:12:39.600 --> 0:12:42.360 to write about survival in this way, to write a 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:45.559 book that's an adventure story and a spiritual journey all 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:49.120 at once, that in the end, I couldn't resist doing that. 0:12:49.240 --> 0:12:51.800 And you know, sometimes you pick a subject and sometimes 0:12:51.800 --> 0:12:54.720 a subject picks you, and so I couldn't avoid writing 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:57.240 about it. So I will say the writing itself didn't 0:12:57.280 --> 0:12:59.839 take twenty years. It just germinated in my imagination for 0:13:00.360 --> 0:13:02.439 you know, twenty years. And it took me about three 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:03.680 years to write the book. 0:13:04.080 --> 0:13:06.880 Did you ever come close to and excuse my bad 0:13:06.960 --> 0:13:10.160 pun jumping ship, did you ever come close to abandoning 0:13:10.200 --> 0:13:10.760 the project? 0:13:11.360 --> 0:13:11.440 No? 0:13:11.640 --> 0:13:14.880 Actually no, I always had faith that I was gonna 0:13:14.920 --> 0:13:15.559 get her home. 0:13:16.760 --> 0:13:20.559 We love it, you know, only think of these canonical 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:24.600 Castaway stories, so many of them focus on male protagonists 0:13:24.640 --> 0:13:28.280 in the wilderness. Obviously, I think everybody is thinking of 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:30.840 the movie Castaway right now, and they're thinking of Tom 0:13:30.880 --> 0:13:34.559 Hanks as we're talking as you thought about a castaway 0:13:34.640 --> 0:13:38.679 story with a woman at the center. What choices did 0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:42.600 you make to distinguish this as her experience different from 0:13:42.600 --> 0:13:43.600 what we see with men. 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:48.959 Yeah. Well, first of all, I before she gets to 0:13:48.960 --> 0:13:51.080 the island, and the first third of the book is 0:13:51.160 --> 0:13:53.600 really we see where she comes from. We see that 0:13:53.600 --> 0:13:56.480 she's a person who probably never even dressed herself at home. 0:13:56.679 --> 0:13:59.920 She always was waited on by other people. She says, 0:14:00.080 --> 0:14:02.440 I never touched a broom when she gets to the island, 0:14:02.520 --> 0:14:05.680 and let alone use a knife or fired a gun, 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:08.600 or when hunting for food or any of those things. 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:11.160 So I was really interested in the contrast of this 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:15.040 very sheltered woman who is now on this island having 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:17.680 to learn to fend for herself and discovering that she 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:21.920 can do that. But even more crucially, the last third 0:14:21.960 --> 0:14:24.280 of the book is in terms of her getting home, 0:14:24.320 --> 0:14:26.400 and I hope this isn't a spoiler for people who 0:14:26.400 --> 0:14:29.800 haven't finished. But when she gets home, she's not out 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:32.960 of danger. She's still in danger because she is a 0:14:33.000 --> 0:14:35.840 woman in that society, and she's coming back and rags 0:14:35.880 --> 0:14:39.080 with no money and no male protection. And that was 0:14:39.200 --> 0:14:41.520 very interesting for me. To write. And that's a big 0:14:41.520 --> 0:14:44.800 difference between her and somebody like Robinson Crusoe, who when 0:14:44.840 --> 0:14:47.760 he gets home, he's fine, he can go back into 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:50.400 the import export business or whatever he was doing before, 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:53.560 because he's a white male who and everybody knows who 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:55.840 he is, and he will just finish off his life. 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:58.160 She comes back and she's in mortal danger and she 0:14:58.200 --> 0:15:01.360 could easily have died just trying to get home once 0:15:01.400 --> 0:15:04.160 she's in France, so she has to use all of 0:15:04.280 --> 0:15:06.640 what she learned on the island in order to get 0:15:06.680 --> 0:15:07.560 back to her house. 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:12.360 Every castaway movie or book that I read with a 0:15:12.520 --> 0:15:16.760 male at the helm, I think a woman wouldn't make 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:20.360 that choice, or what would she do if she had 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:22.800 her period? Or like I just think of all of 0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:26.320 these what ifs, Right, did all of these what ifs 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:28.880 come up for you? Like sort of these primal what ifs. 0:15:29.640 --> 0:15:31.640 I mean, for one thing, she has to go through 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:36.560 a pregnancy and childbirth. Certainly a male castaway wouldn't have 0:15:36.640 --> 0:15:40.520 to deal with that, and so arguably she goes through 0:15:40.640 --> 0:15:44.760 much more than somebody like Robinson Cruso went through. When 0:15:44.760 --> 0:15:50.160 she's on that island, no medical care. It's terrible nursing 0:15:50.160 --> 0:15:52.680 a baby on the island. It's tough. 0:15:53.240 --> 0:15:57.640 Well, it's so exciting to have a work of historical 0:15:57.680 --> 0:16:01.280 fiction like this now in the canon, because I just 0:16:01.280 --> 0:16:06.280 think there's so much opportunity to talk about female explorers 0:16:06.280 --> 0:16:09.160 throughout history that we never read about, never grew up 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:12.400 reading about. I mean, we all know about Amelia Earhart, 0:16:12.400 --> 0:16:15.320 but there are so many other women like Harriet Chalmers, Adams, 0:16:15.640 --> 0:16:18.280 Gertrude Bell, like, there are so many stories that need 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:20.840 to be told. And I know that you spend a 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:23.040 lot of time in your career working in the contemporary 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:25.920 literary space, but has this what your appetite to tell 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:27.800 more historical fiction tales. 0:16:27.880 --> 0:16:31.000 Totally, especially about women. I think that they're just as 0:16:31.000 --> 0:16:33.560 you said, there's so many sort of untold stories or 0:16:33.600 --> 0:16:37.440 overshadowed stories, or women in parentheses like the one like 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:41.640 Marguerite was in that book, And I think there's just 0:16:41.800 --> 0:16:44.280 huge opportunity and I hope to do more. 0:16:45.560 --> 0:16:48.640 It's like we have tomb Raider, we have Laura Craft, 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:53.480 but there's so many other women we just we need 0:16:53.520 --> 0:16:55.360 to know more about them. And I feel like we 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:59.080 still haven't gotten our true like female Indiana Jones story, 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:02.760 like both cinematic perspective and also from a literary perspective. 0:17:02.760 --> 0:17:07.680 That's something that I'm really looking forward to me too. Actually, 0:17:07.800 --> 0:17:11.080 while on that topic, have you had any conversations about 0:17:12.280 --> 0:17:13.960 being realized in cinematic form? 0:17:14.160 --> 0:17:16.800 Not yet, No, no, no, not yet. But the writer's 0:17:16.800 --> 0:17:22.880 always the last to hear, so maybe someday. I think 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:27.720 it would be very beautiful cinematically, because the island itself 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:32.320 is so gorgeous, like so haunting, the and just the 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:34.880 ocean over there. If you've ever seen that that kind 0:17:34.920 --> 0:17:39.160 of landscape, the light, the ice, the waves, it could 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:40.160 be really stunning. 0:17:40.520 --> 0:17:45.680 The title Isola is so sexy and alluring and interesting. 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:48.959 Can you talk about the process of landing on that 0:17:49.040 --> 0:17:52.840 word as the title and also the significance of that 0:17:52.880 --> 0:17:54.719 word in the context of Marguerite's story. 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:59.080 Yeah, absolutely so. I didn't come upon the word till 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:02.920 I was towards the of writing the book, and basically 0:18:02.960 --> 0:18:07.359 Marguerite's looking at a map of this world, and I 0:18:07.440 --> 0:18:10.040 based this map that she and the secretary look at 0:18:10.640 --> 0:18:13.320 in her guardian's house on a real map from the 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:15.960 sixteenth century, which is sort of the first real map 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:18.840 of that era. And it was done by an Italian 0:18:19.119 --> 0:18:22.640 map maker, so all the labels on the map are 0:18:22.680 --> 0:18:26.240 in Italian, and where there were islands in this Gulf 0:18:26.280 --> 0:18:29.879 of Saint Lawrence area, he wrote easila, which is the 0:18:29.920 --> 0:18:33.280 Italian word for island. And he also has a big 0:18:33.320 --> 0:18:36.760 white space in this map which is part incognita, like 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:40.399 literally parts unknown, because they didn't know what was in there. 0:18:41.080 --> 0:18:43.720 And it was my editor's idea actually to reproduce that 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:46.159 map in the first pages of the book so the 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:49.400 reader can see what I'm talking about. But in the ocean, 0:18:49.480 --> 0:18:51.399 in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, he has these different 0:18:52.280 --> 0:18:56.760 rocky islands called easila. And I was just really struck 0:18:56.800 --> 0:19:00.840 by that word. I thought it was so evocative because 0:19:00.920 --> 0:19:04.240 when I looked at it, it looked like I sola, 0:19:04.760 --> 0:19:08.120 I alone, or I solo yes, And when you put 0:19:08.119 --> 0:19:10.359 that so to me, it captured the island, but also 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:14.600 her isolation, Marguerite's isolation on the island. And so that's 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:17.680 why I chose the word, because I thought it encompassed 0:19:17.680 --> 0:19:18.760 her experience there. 0:19:19.080 --> 0:19:21.919 And also the word in and of itself has this 0:19:22.000 --> 0:19:25.240 feminine connotation because in the Romance languages, if it ends 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:28.000 in an a, it tends to be the feminine version 0:19:28.040 --> 0:19:30.120 of it. So that's exactly fitting. 0:19:29.880 --> 0:19:32.600 In exactly, that's exactly what I was thinking. Yes, yes, 0:19:32.640 --> 0:19:33.080 thank you. 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:36.840 It's time for another short break, but stay with us. 0:19:36.920 --> 0:19:46.359 We'll be right back with Allegra Goodman. And we're back 0:19:46.400 --> 0:19:50.600 with Allegra Goodman. I want to give our listeners a 0:19:50.680 --> 0:19:55.159 peek into Isla. Will you do us the great honor 0:19:55.400 --> 0:19:56.960 of reading us an excerpt? 0:19:57.200 --> 0:20:00.040 So I have the book here, I'm going to I 0:20:00.160 --> 0:20:03.159 read you the prologue, which is super short, but gives 0:20:03.160 --> 0:20:06.119 you a sense of how she feels or how she 0:20:06.160 --> 0:20:08.440 remembers feeling on the island, and gives you a sense 0:20:08.440 --> 0:20:14.440 of the place. Okay, here goes prolog. I still dream 0:20:14.480 --> 0:20:18.440 of birds. I watch them circle, dive into rough waves, 0:20:18.640 --> 0:20:21.640 and fly up to the sun. I call to them, 0:20:21.680 --> 0:20:26.080 but hear no answer. Alone, I stand on a stone island. 0:20:27.320 --> 0:20:31.240 I watch for ships and see three coming tall ships 0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:34.840 close enough to hail. I load my musket and shoot 0:20:34.880 --> 0:20:38.399 into the air. I see penance close enough to touch. 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:42.280 As I run barefoot to the shore. Rocks cut my 0:20:42.320 --> 0:20:46.080 feet and I leave a trail of blood. Brambles tear 0:20:46.160 --> 0:20:49.880 my sleeves and score my arms as I shout wait, stop, 0:20:50.359 --> 0:20:54.399 save me. The ship's commander hears my voice and gun. 0:20:55.160 --> 0:20:58.000 Dressed in black, he stands on deck to see me. 0:20:58.119 --> 0:21:04.280 Beg as I for help. He smiles when I shoot. 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:08.600 Ten thousand birds rise, screaming. Their wings beat against the wind. 0:21:09.320 --> 0:21:13.080 All the sailors here and see, but their commander orders 0:21:13.119 --> 0:21:17.880 them to sail on. I reach, but cannot stop the ships. 0:21:18.680 --> 0:21:21.760 I wade after them into the sea in vain. I 0:21:21.800 --> 0:21:25.720 struggle as wet skirts drag me down. I cry out, 0:21:26.080 --> 0:21:31.360 but water fills my throat. I cannot fly, I cannot swim. 0:21:31.920 --> 0:21:33.640 I cannot escape my island. 0:21:35.640 --> 0:21:39.119 Thank you so much, of course, So one of our 0:21:39.160 --> 0:21:42.440 listeners has a question about love and loss and how 0:21:42.520 --> 0:21:44.640 they're interwoven throughout the narrative of the book. 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:50.480 Here's Sam Hey Elegra. I loved Eslas so much. It 0:21:50.600 --> 0:21:55.080 felt like the most hauntingly, lonely yet enchanting love story 0:21:55.119 --> 0:21:58.119 there was. There's this element of love of things that 0:21:58.160 --> 0:22:00.480