Books: Noble orphan, a hotel nightmare and Miriam’s wisdom

Isola – Allegra Goodman (Simon & Schuster)

Based on a true story, Allegra Goodman’s Isola, tells the tale of Marguerite de la Roque, a 16th century French noble woman who, orphaned at a young age, is left in the guardianship of her seafaring cousin, Roberval. Instead of arranging a suitable marriage for his ward, Roberval squanders her fortune and takes her hostage on an expedition to establish a colony in Canada for the king of France.

As if Marguerite's misfortunes were insufficient to this point, a romance with one of Roberval’s servants sees the young woman abandoned with her lover on an inhospitable island in the Gulf of St Lawrence – the isola of the title – to perish.

If that sounds like a spoiler, the author provides almost as much in the prologue, where our narrator cries out on the first page, “I cannot escape my island”. 

Goodman says she learnt of Marguerite’s story two decades ago and has been fascinated since, researching French chateau life during the Renaissance and reading the two brief accounts of her ordeal that were penned at the time.

Because the historical record is, according to Goodman, “scanty”, it allowed her the space to imagine her heroine’s experience. “She seemed to me like a female Robinson Crusoe.”     

Goodman started writing this riveting book while she was working on her novel Sam, a contemporary story about a young, disadvantaged girl, who triumphs in rock climbing (reviewed in these pages). “I’d work on Sam in the mornings, and then time-travel to write Isola in the afternoons ... Sam and Marguerite are survivors. They struggle but they do not give up.”