Today we interview Allegra Goodman about her latest novel, ISOLA. Allegra is the author of seven novels. ISOLA was a Reese’s Book Club selection. Her novel SAM was a Read With Jenna Book Club selection. KAATERSKILL FALLS was a National Book Award finalist. THE CHALK ARTIST was winner of the Massachusetts Book Award. Her other books include INTUITION, THE COOKBOOK COLLECTOR, and PARADISE PARK. Allegra’s fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere and has been anthologized in The O. Henry Awards and Best American Short Stories. She has written two collections of stories, THE FAMILY MARKOWITZ and TOTAL IMMERSION and a novel for younger readers, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ISLAND. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and The American Scholar. Allegra was raised in Honolulu, and studied English and philosophy at Harvard and received a PhD in English literature from Stanford. She is the recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award, the Salon Award for Fiction, and fellowships from MacDowell and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced study. She lives with her family in Cambridge, Mass. Allegra tells us when she was 7 years old she decided she wanted to become a novelist. She loved reading tremendously and wanted to create stories like the ones she enjoyed. LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS was one of the first books she read by herself, so she decided she would adapt it for her life with her sister on Hawaii. Linda wants Allegra to write this story! Allegra’s parents were very supportive of her dream to become a writer but they wanted her to have a real job, too. So, she thought she’s teach. But, by the time she received her Ph.D., she was writing fulltime. Allegra found the seeds of the story of ISOLA while on a road trip from Cambridge, Massachusetts to Montreal, Canada. She had gone to her local library (YAY!) and checked out children’s books about the places they would be visiting. She imagined her three sons would be excited to read the books while she took care of her brand-new baby! Turns out, the sons weren’t so interested in the books and Allegra ended up reading them while nursing the baby in the middle of the night. In one of the books about the famous explorer Jacques Cartier, there is a sentence or two about a kinswoman of the captain, Marguerite de la Roberval, whom he left on an island because she annoyed him. Then, the story goes back to Cartier. For about 20 years, that strange fragmentary story stayed in Allegra’s head until she finally decided to research more and turn it into a novel. There is very little in the historical record about Marguerite. A priest who claims to have interviewed her wrote a bit. The queen also wrote about her. The rest of ISOLA, is Allegra’s imagination. Linny and Nancy loved the inclusion of quotes from Anne of France’s LESSONS FOR MY DAUGHTER, and Christine de Pizan’s THE CITY OF LADIES. Tell us why that was important to you and how you went about it. Allegra discovered LESSONS FOR MY DAUGHTER as she was doing research, but she had been familiar with THE CITY OF LADIES. Allegra notes there is theory and then there is practice about how to be a lady, as described in LESSONS FOR MY DAUGHTER. Allegra enjoyed setting Marguerite’s behavior at odds with how she was supposed to have behaved. But Allegra also worked hard to be sure Marguerite’s thinking was not anachronistic. Allegra searched to find Marguerite’s voice and decided that since she was thinking in French, ISOLA was basically a clean translation into English from French. Allegra spent a lot of time writing by hand. Nancy noted that during ISOLA, we see Marguerite mature and she wondered whether Allegra having a daughter about that age was helpful. Allegra notes that Marguerite’s time period was dangerous for girls and ours still is, to a lesser degree. Linny observes that Roberval is an antagonist, but perhaps the time period is also an antagonist, which Allegra agreed. Allegra agreed that class was a concept she played with and how Marguerite’s going to the island and breaking her and rebuilding her was the crux of the story. For Linny, that was her favorite part of the story. Nancy felt Marguerite’s journey was a feminine adaptation of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. The 12 phases of the Hero’s Journey are: 1. The call to change 2. The refusal of the call 3. Meeting the mentor 4. Crossing the threshold - leaves behind the known world and crosses the threshold into the unknown. 5. Tests, allies, and enemies 6. The approach to the inmost cave - the heart of darkness, often facing their greatest fears and challenges. 7. The ordeal - the moment of the hero’s greatest challenge, where they face a major obstacle or enemy. 8. The reward - often in the form of knowledge, insight, or a powerful object—that helps them on their journey. 9. The road back - often encountering new challenges and obstacles along the way. 10. The resurrection - a moment of death and rebirth, often symbolized by a physical or metaphorical transformation. 11. The return - the hero returns home, transformed and changed by their experiences, armed with new knowledge and insights that they can use to benefit their community. 12. The freedom to live - the hero achieves a state of freedom and enlightenment, often living happily ever after or in a state of balance and harmony. Allegra agreed this is a good description of ISOLA. She wasn’t checking off the phases, but they are classic tropes in literature. Nancy especially loved Marguerite’s return to her life and home. Allegra said that was her favorite part of her book to write. She’s not safe at home because she is an unattached woman. Linny asked about the “women helping women” component of the book. Allegra says, of course, that Marguerite was very separate from men, so that component emerged naturally. Marguerite depends on these other women, who are employees, to learn and grow. Damienne, especially, play a crucial role and eventually teaches Marguerite that she can also serve. Nancy observes that in ISOLA different characters illustrated different ways of having faith. Allegra said that it is natural during suffering and loss to question where God is, especially since Marguerite would have been raised as a Catholic. Allegra, in her writing, is interested in exploring questions of faith and doubt and spiritual journeys. Marguerite’s time on the island challenges her physically and emotionally, but also spiritually. She said Marguerite’s spiritual journey is the heart of the book. When she has returned home and people asked her how she survived, she responds it wasn’t just how to survive, but also important to figure out why to survive. That speaks to her faith journey. What do we live for? Linda really loved Auguste. He was such a bright moment for her. Allegra says two contemporary accounts of Marguerite’s story indicate that Marguerite had some sort of relationship with a man as part of her getting abandoned on the island and that he died fairly quickly. Allegra wanted them to have conversations and be friends, to the extent that they could. It was important to Allegra to have Marguerite confront her guardian at the end. When he tries to steal her story and belittle and undermines her, she fights to the end and emerges triumphant. In the queen’s account, Marguerite became a teacher of young women. What a great teacher she would be. Allegra says she is still at work on a book she was working contemporaneously on while writing ISOLA. It is set right before COVID, and tells the story of three generations of a family from each of their perspectives. The working title of the book is THIS IS NOT ABOUT US. Nancy wonders whether Allegra gets back to Hawaii and whether growing up on an island informed her writing of Marguerite’s time on the island. Though Allegra lived in Hawaii until she went to college, her parents then moved from there, so she has not been back for a number of years, but she would like to return. It is very alive in her heart. Allegra notes that the climate Marguerite lived on was much more challenging. Allegra has always been fascinated by stories of islands and shipwrecks. Allegra says she has an Instagram account she posts regularly on, @allegragoodmanwriter. On Tuesdays, she posts about poetry, which she loves. On Sundays, readers and students can ask her questions and she talks about the writing craft!