November 18, 2025 • 47 mins
Whether raising a child or planting a garden, preparing for the future is an act of faith. What does it mean to bring life into the world when you can’t protect it from everything? In the November Reese’s Book Club Pick, Wild Dark Shore, author Charlotte McConaghy explores the space between hope and fatalism with a story that is part eco-thriller, part lit fic, part love story, and fully captivating. Charlotte and Danielle discuss a choppy boat ride to a sub-Antarctic island, crafting the perfect first line, and staying positive in the face of climate change.
Books Mentioned:
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
Once There Were Wolves by Charlotte McConaghy
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bookmarked by Reese's book Club is presented by Apple Books. Hi,
I'm Danielle Robe. Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese's book Club.
This week, we're talking about love and hope at the
end of the World. I once heard a psychologist describe
hope in a way that's stuck with me. He said,
(00:21):
hope is the only positive emotion that requires uncertainty or
negativity to be activated. I think most people mistake hope
for blind optimism. But hope isn't about ignoring what's hard.
It's about staring down what's dark and still seeing that
flicker of light in the distance. Hope, in a way,
is an act of defiance, and that's exactly what came
(00:44):
to mind when I read this month's Reese's book Club pick,
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaughey.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
This book is about fear.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
It is about the fear of raising children in a
time of ecological collapse. What's helpful, what's useful, is being
brave enough to find the hope and not just hope.
Hope has to lead us somewhere. The hope has to
lead us to purpose, to action. It has to energize us,
(01:14):
or it's useless as well.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Set on a remote island at the edge of the world,
Wild Dark Shore is part climate thriller, part literary love story.
It's filled with mystery, arrivals, sabotage, radios, and grave digging,
but it's also achingly human. The characters aren't just fighting nature,
they're also asking what future is still worth surviving for.
(01:37):
As you can imagine, the imagery is vivid. The island
itself feels alive, the sea, the thawing tundra, the animals,
all mirroring the beauty and grief of change. And through
it all mcconachie reminds us that even in collapse, there's connection,
Even in darkness, there's wild defiant love. So if you're
(01:59):
looking for a novel about what it means to love
something enough to save it, you're in the right place.
Let's turn the page with Charlotte McConaughey. Charlotte, Welcome to
the club.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Actually, i'd rather say welcome back to the club because
we had the pleasure of talking with you earlier this
month about your latest novel, Wild Dark Shore, and I
have to tell you I've been thinking about something you
said since then that you wrote this right after becoming
a mom, and although it's a pretty intense plot, you
said the actual act of writing was quite optimistic. It
(02:36):
was signaling the trying. And I'm curious what your fans
are saying. Are there any new moms that are getting
in touch with you?
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Yes, I think you know, a lot of the people
that have been reaching out are mothers, and it's been
really kind of wonderful to hear from people who are
kind of grappling with the same big questions and the
big issues. And I guess it gets quite tricky to
know how you should feel about this stuff, how you
should talk about it, what you should do.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
When you say this stuff, you mean climate change.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Yeah, yeah, so exactly. Yeah, the major kind of ecological
shifts that we're about to sort of start experiencing on
a much more frequent level. And I think the sort
of inclination is to become quite apathetic because it's difficult
to kind of take it all on on a day
(03:31):
to day basis. It's really hard to grapple with the
enormity of this. It becomes so big that you sort
of don't know how to tackle it. But one of
the lovely things about experiencing something through a piece of
fiction is that it allows you an emotional entry point
and you suddenly feel like, Okay, I'm not the only
one worrying about this stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
There are other people.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Out there that feel the same way I do, and
you suddenly feel less alone in this sort of massive
struggle and everything becomes validated. It becomes easier to bear
this sort of heavy burden of it.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
And that's what I've been finding.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
It's been really lovely to hear from, particularly yet mothers
who are just feeling like, Okay, I don't even know
where to start with all of this.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
I'm curious what they're saying exactly, Like, why do you
think mothers in particular are feeling pulled towards this? I mean,
obviously you're a mom, but the plot of the book
is really more about a father.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Well, there's something beautiful about being able to experience parenthood
from another point of view. I think as women, we
are very good at emphasizing with other people, with other
human beings, and it's kind of an exciting thing to
get into the mind of a father and to sort of,
(04:55):
you know, to experience it through that lens for him.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
You know, there's specific scenes in this.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Book where he is grappling with the sort of weight
of having to parent alone, but also reflecting on his
memories of his wife and how she was able.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
To learn what to do. And I do think it.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Is this is a thing that a lot of fathers do.
They assume that we just have this inherent knowledge because
we are the ones who figure out what to do,
But in fact.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
It's because we're learning.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
We're the ones that have to learn most of the time,
so we take that on and it is a division
of labor that becomes quite unfair a lot of the time.
So there's a really I think there's a lot of
mothers who are really kind of liking that this mother
is having to acknowledge the work that his wife did
before he realized and before he had to take on
(05:49):
that work himself. So that's one thing, and I think
there's also just you know, there's themes of motherhood. Even
though Rowan's not a mother, she is a mother in
a lot of ways. She becomes a sort of incredible
mother to these children. To this Yeah, in particular, I
think and women can kind of recognize that that's sacrifice,
and that's also just a human thing.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
That's not a mother thing. It's a human thing.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
We are very good at sacrificing ourselves for children.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
I think you make a really good point that I
didn't think about until you just said it. I'm not
a parent yet. I hope to be a mom one day,
and reading your book, it was really cool to think
about motherhood through the father's eyes. There was something really
interesting there. It was voyeuristic maybe in some ways. And also,
(06:40):
I think it seems like human beings have a really
difficult time thinking about the distant future. We're really good
when something is tough right now, but thinking five twenty
or one hundred years into the future and planning for that,
for some reason, is really hard for us collectively. And
your book obviously features the natural world at the forefront,
(07:04):
and I can tell you just have a deep love
for the planet and its well being. What was your
favorite sort of fantastical world from fiction that isn't your own,
if we were to go back into your literary memory.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Oh wow, that's a good question. I think.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
I mean, I think, just to respond to your comment
that is so spot on that we don't we actually
seem to be incapable of thinking far ahead, and it's
a major problem for us at the moment. We're just
kind of very concerned with day to day lives. And
yet you're right, if there is a crisis in the moment,
we respond so amazingly. You know. We get to see
(07:50):
the best in humanity, the best of people come out
when we have a crisis. And which is why it's
really hard to sort of swallow this fact that we
are just not doing anything about the major crisis of
our time. And it frightens me because I think about
it's not just about us, it's about our children, our
children's children. I just I hate the thought of my
(08:13):
kids and their kids growing up in a world where
there's no wildness, no wild creatures, no wild places. Okay,
so book worlds that I've been really inspired by.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Is there an imaginary forest or like an alien planet
that you would most want to visit from your literature day?
Like from reading I love.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
The way that Maggie O'Farrell writes the forest in Hamnet.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
So this is a kind of historical forest.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
I suppose that she's able to inhabit and bring to
life through the character of Shakespeare's wife. She is just
the most fabulous character. I love her so much. She
is wild, she's unapologetic, she's really connected a sort of yeah,
the natural world and the wilderness within herself as well.
(09:05):
She just sort of strides out into this forest, and
particularly in the birth scene where she is she knows
she's going into labor, so she takes herself off into
the forest and just keeps birth on her own there
because that's where she feels most sort of herself and
most free, and she knows that's where her child needs
to come into the world. So I loved I loved
(09:26):
that forest. That's a beautiful kind of place to be in.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
I think, do you try and grab people with an
insane opening line, because I think you're a master at it.
You take a line that just drops you into the
story right away. If I can share a few with people.
The animals are dying soon, we will be here alone.
(09:50):
Another is when we were eight, Dad cut me open
from throat to stomach. Oh my god, how did you
come up with these?
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Quite often they actually are the first lines I write.
So it's a way of immersing myself into the story
in a way.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I do believe strongly in a good opening line.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
I don't like a wasted opening line, So I sort
of I do think about, Okay, what's going to teach
people the most about my character this world, What is
going to grab people's kind of interests and imagination. I
mean that one from Wolves Once there were Wolves. That
opening is pretty extreme, and it also requires you to
sort of keep reading to understand how that could be possible.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
It's not a fantasy novel or a horror novel.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
It's about a woman with mirror touch synesthesia, so she
actually feels the sensations she sees other people experiencing. You know,
that's such a shocking way to experience the world. It's
very very unusual, and so I just I wanted something
that really kind of presented the strangeness of that.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
I had a friend on the podcast named Chelsea Devontees
who's an author, and she said, to me, write one
true thing that's your opening line. I've also heard writers say,
when you think you're done, go back to the beginning
and delete your first line, because your second line is
usually the first line. The first is just not necessary.
(11:20):
You're nodding. Is that advice that you follow?
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Definitely, I mean I think the ending is so.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
So deeply linked to the beginning.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
You absolutely need to look at your final line and
your first line, and even just the first scenes, the
last scenes. They need to work together. They need to
reflect each other, echo each other. I would never ever
send anyone, you know, like a partial draft of anything,
or the first chapters. My editor kind of I think
she would love to have the first chapters, but I
(11:52):
would never send them because I know that they won't
be right until I know what the ending, until I've
written the ending back make sure that that sort of
opening really kind of gives you a hint of what's
coming and also correctly sort of represents the character and
what they need and what they're going to go through,
their flaws, their transformations. And I would agree, like if
(12:17):
I sort of felt like the first line was not
the right line, absolutely cut it.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
It needs to be perfect.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
It needs to kind of it's almost like it needs
to be a thematic opening for the whole book.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I want to start from the very beginning of Wild
Dark Shore. You're right, I have hated my mother most
of my life, but it is her face I see
as I drown. It's another big line. Charlotte what were
you trying to telegraph to the reader with that?
Speaker 2 (13:05):
So I think it's doing a couple of different things.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
The first is that it's telling people that this is
going to be a story about motherhood in different forms
and parenting and what it means to sort of have
a mother and.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Be a mother, or not be a mother but parent.
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
It's those themes, those bigger themes. It's also I think
letting people know that Rowan is she's kind of someone
who's almost living on borrowed time a little bit. When
she arrives in this place, it is like a drowning
has brought her there, and it's like she has to
(13:41):
awake to a new life and a new place. She's
been through something very traumatic, but she's survived it, so
she's a survivor. She's you know, very sort of strong
in that way, but she's she's also.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
In a way.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
You can kind of look at her time on the
island as it's like bonus time almost. It's like when
she got here, she'd already died and come back, so
everything is sort of extra in a way, and she
has to grapple with what that means, what it means
to be there to have survived this.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
There's a lot of.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Themes around bodies, around water, around drowning and surviving, and
you know, it's just it's a very it's pointing to
a lot of somatic things in the book.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
So the story takes place on an Arctic island called Sheerwater,
and obviously the climate in the weather is really harsh.
There's violent storms, there's howling winds, and this constant threat
of rising sea levels and permafrost. Tha why make a
family saga happen in a place that is so hostile
to human survival?
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Well, for starters, because what a great story it makes.
We love survival stories. They're exciting, they're thrilling. But it's
also a really sort of prescient indication of where we're headed.
There are climate refugees all over the world already. There
(15:13):
are going to be many, many, many more in future years.
So there will be many families who are trying to
survive in dangerous places, and I think it's sort of
important to make that.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Feel present and real and normal.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
I don't know, it just felt like a really rich
story world to be out on this kind of beautiful,
remote wild place that is a delight to these characters.
They love it, they feel extremely connected to it. It's
a place that's given them life and joy and connection
to each other. But it's also a place that started
(15:49):
to become dangerous. And this is I think speaking to
where we're headed, what's about to happen. We have this
need for wild places, but the terrible thing is that
these wild places are either due to climate change, they
are either going to disappear or they're going to become
threatening to us. And I just wanted to sort of
(16:12):
bring that issue to life while also letting readers inhabit
a space that's really beautiful and strange and yeah, dangerous, thrilling, exciting.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Did you think of the water as a character itself,
like the shoreline or the coastline.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
I think the ocean is very much a character, and
the island is a character. The shoreline is a space
that is changing, you know, it's being damaged and swallowed
up by waves and storms. And so particularly for Fenn,
I think the character who has sort of taken herself
(16:50):
down to this beach, she's fleeing a trauma, but she's
also just trying to grapple with her coming of age
turning into a woman going from child to a woman's
body and doing that without her mother, and it's sort
of it's a complex time for her. So she's taken
herself down to this beach to live on this speech
with the.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Seals that she loves and the birds.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
But during the course of this book, the storms are
becoming so kind of savage that the beach is changing shape.
She can see that, you know, this place that she
loves is kind of disappearing before her eyes and becoming
quite dangerous. So absolutely, it's a character you know, I
think a lot of what happens to these characters is
(17:35):
because of this place. It's able to sort of bring
to life all the grief and the trauma and the
ghosts and really sort of highlight those things. For these characters,
this is a place where you can't escape anything, any
inner turmoil, you know, it is. It really brings to
(17:56):
life all the issues that they would rather keep silent.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
So glad that you mentioned Fan sleeping with the seals,
because I have to tell you, I giggled at that
part because I live in Los Angeles and about two
and a half hours away by car is San Diego,
and the first time I ever went to San Diego.
I saw all these seals, and I thought this was
going to be so gorgeous, and they smell so badly,
(18:24):
and I was thinking about fans sleeping with these seals.
But I do think that it's actually really important to
bring that up, because you're right. There is a beauty
in the novel too. There's seal colonies, there's hundreds of penguins,
there's singing whales, there's beautiful mossy hills in crystal blue lakes.
(18:44):
And I was thinking about this is sort of a
silly question, but I was thinking about all of those things,
and if you had to pitch the book as a
mood board with textures and sounds and smell, what would
it be If you could give me three textures, two sounds,
and one smell.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Oh gosh, okay textures. The textures would be.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Sharp rocks, soft moss maybe, or like soft tussock grass
and wet rain missed maybe they would be the textures
or like even this coarse s I don't know what
was the next.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
What was the next?
Speaker 1 (19:28):
One to two sounds and one smell?
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Sounds, so the sounds would be the wind and the
bird sounds, So the sound of this place is extraordinary,
and it was. This was my experience of arriving on
mcquarie Island. It was just a wall of sound, and
it was thousands and thousands of birds. So it's penguins,
(19:51):
different types of penguins, it's albatross, it's giant petrels. There's
just so much beautiful bird sound. And the wind is really, really,
really powerful. It just kind of takes you in the
face and in the body and doesn't sort of let
you free until all of a sudden it does.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
It's gone.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
It's very changeable like that. And one smell, Yeah, it's
so funny. I've actually had this.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
People have brought this up with me before, about the
smell of seals.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
That's funny. I'm not the only one.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
No, But you know, this was not. I don't have
any recollection of finding them smelly. I don't know what
it was, yeah, because I was right in them, right.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Around them, and I didn't I don't have any memory
of a smell of them, which is so funny. I mean,
maybe they did stink and I was just so kind
of dazed by the strangeness of it that I didn't notice.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
So a smell. Maybe that salt smell of ocean.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
And I think in that too.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Yeah, I think it's salt. I love salty smell, and
I had a lot of moments in the story where
Rowan and Don were kind of smelling that on each
other's body, so it became quite an erotic smell in
the story, which I like as well.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
So the Salt family is on Shearwater because the father
Dominic is a caretaker of this massive seed bank. And Charlotte,
I actually didn't know what a seed bank was before
reading your book, so this was cool to learn about
from fiction. So its seeds for any plant in the
world that you can think of are stored in this
underground vault as a bit of an insurance policy. It's
(21:33):
in case plants get wiped out by climate disaster and
these seeds help humanity start over. Yeah, this is wild.
It sounds like it's like out of science fiction, but
this is inspired by a real place. And I read
that you actually got to visit a sub Antarctic island
which gave you inspiration for this book. Is that true?
Speaker 3 (21:51):
That's right, yes, very much so. Yeah, seed banks are real.
There's seed banks all over the world. There's many of them.
And the one I sort of based it on was
the Global Seed Vault in Spalbard, and it actually houses
agricultural seeds, so anyone in any country in the world,
(22:12):
it's like a bank. You send your seeds there for
safe keeping. Syria has already needed to retrieve seeds after
the Terrible War.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah, so it's actually a very very important place.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
The only thing they didn't foresee was that the temperatures
would rise enough to melt the permafrost and it flooded.
That was so kind of profoundly, such a moment of insight,
I think for just how willfully blind we are being
to this problem, And also just got me thinking about
(22:46):
what would you choose to save? What would you save
if you had that moment in an emergency. And so
what I decided to do was to bring a seed
bank down to my island, but not just to house
the agrocoltrual seeds. I wanted to have all of the
seeds of the world, the strange, the unusual, the things.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
We don't need.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
And then I asked my characters to choose what to save,
and it gave them this really big ethical dilemma around. Okay,
so in an emergency, Do we save the things that
humans need to eat to.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Survive, or do we somehow find a.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Way to stop centering ourselves in this issue, to stop
this kind of incredibly self absorbed way of thinking, to
become aware that that way of thinking is what got
us into this mess in the first place, and to
somehow try and look at the world as an interconnected web,
(23:46):
you know, and to understand that the only way out
of this is together. And so that's what Allly sort
of represents, you know, he as the voice of this
sort of very innocent, very passionate child, is able to
kind of look at this issue and say, well, human's
probably going to be okay, maybe we should be saving
(24:07):
this strange, the unusual and the beautiful things that exist
in their own right purely because they exist. And yes,
the island Shearwater is based on McQuary Island, which is
a real sub Antarctic island halfway between Tasmania and Antarctica.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
How many people work there.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
There's a science base that houses I think it's about
twenty people at any one time, and so they live there.
They sort of live there permanently for you know, you
can go for a season or you can go for
a few seasons and research.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
But there's no nobody else on the island.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
It's just full of animals, really incredible, strange, beautiful animals.
And I was really struggling with the start of this book.
I was writing and rewriting and finding it really hard
to connect. And I realized I hadn't planned to go
to McCrary because it's quite difficult to get there, only
one boat that goes at one time of year. But
(25:02):
I just realized I had to do this. Unfortunately, I
had just had a baby, so he was coming with me.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Your baby came with you, And it was very insane.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Actually, I remember contacting the company and just saying, would
this be crazy to bring a baby on this adventure
voyage and they said, well, we've never done it before,
but sure if you want to, if you want to
give it a.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Go, bring him down.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Because I've heard that the waters near Antarctica are very choppy.
It's like a lot of people get sick trying to
go there.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Is that the same mm hmm, it's a very wild ocean.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
In the lead up to this trip, I was having
sleepless nights just seeking what have I done? It's two
weeks on a boat. You can't just get off if
you're really sick. You know, adults can take seasickness tablets,
but babies can't. So yeah, it was and I was
really questioning myself as a parent at this point, like
(25:59):
what am I just the worst mother in the history
of the world. But I also couldn't leave him.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
You know, You've just had a baby. You can't leave
them for two weeks. And so it was this really just.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Desperate sort of I don't know, decision making process. I
also had a partner who's very gung home. He's like,
it'll be fine, relax.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Did he come with you easy?
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yeah, of course I would never have gone on my
own with my baby. I definitely needed Morgan there as backup.
And actually it was so great.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
It was wonderful. It was not bad at all. We
had the luckiest, calmest seas. Seriously, somebody was looking out
for us on that trip.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Yeah, sorry, it was amazing, And yeah, I just remember
getting down to this island and climbing onto the zodiac
and heading out to this sort of incredibly missshrouded, dramatic,
beautiful place and stepping onto the black.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Sand, and like I said, the.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Sound was just it bowls you over, and there are
penguins waddling around your feet, looking up into your face.
There are huge elephant seal pups just fighting next to you,
or like flopping over to nibble your boots, as albatross
flying low. It's just wild and incredibly untouched. I don't
(27:20):
think I realized that there are places like that that
still exist, you know, that where animals can be so
unafraid of people.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
It was a really really powerful experience for me.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
But it's also quite a feat that it's still like
this because it nearly was totally wiped out by the
oil exploitation trade in the eighteen hundreds. Sealers and whalers
just went down in droves. They were wiping out the animals.
A whole species of fur seal went extinct. All the
penguins nearly gone. They were hurting them into these huge,
(27:57):
rusting metal barrels to squeeze them for the oils, which
is just so heartbreaking and so grim and awful. And
those barrels still sit there on the sand with penguins
now waddling around them. Just it's so it's such a
moving thing to see in a way, because you can
(28:18):
feel that this blood spilt is still there on this island.
You know, it hangs really heavy in the air. There
there is a hauntedness to the place that I did
not expect, and that really changed everything in my book.
I suddenly realized what this book was. It's a haunted novel.
It's a Gothic romantic mystery about a family haunted by
(28:42):
ghosts on an island haunted by ghosts. So, yeah, the
troop was just incredible. It changed everything for me.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Charlotte. Every week I ask our guests what they've bookmarked
this week. It can be a quote, a palm, something
you've saved on Instagram. What have you bookmarked?
Speaker 3 (28:59):
I've been reading What We Can Know by Ian McEwen.
It's his new novel which is set in the future,
and it's set in a flooded world basically the seas
have risen, and so I have actually been bookmarking a
lot of lines from that. He's got this really kind
of wild vision of the future which has been really
(29:23):
kind of opening my eyes to what we possibly might
be looking ahead at. So I've definitely bookmarked many of
those pages.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
I feel like we've gotten into the setting of this book,
but there's also a lot of interpersonal dynamics and relationships
at play. Another unique thing about your book is that
it's narrated by five different people. There are so many
voices and minds for you as the writer to begin.
I'm still curious which relationship and the book changed the
most between the first draft and the final.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
It was tricky for me to kind of inhabit all
of them, and initially that was part of I think
the problem with my sort of struggle to understand what
this book was. I was I was struggling to know
whose story it was. So you know, I wrote a
first draft. I wrote a quarter of a draft just
from Roland's point of view. But I was really missing
(30:31):
getting inside the heads of the family, the kids and
Dom And.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
It also didn't work for the mystery genre.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
I needed to be able to move into their heads
in order to create dramatic tension and dramatic irony. You know,
he knows that, but she knows that they're not. They're
keeping things, and I wanted, yeah, they're keeping secrets, and
I wanted I wanted the readers to know that. So
(31:00):
then I did a draft where it was just all
third person with everyone, and I was missing the intimacy
of the first person.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
So oh, I mean. Then I did a.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Draft where I had three families living in this lighthouse
and it was totally different.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
It was really noisy and chaotic.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
It was fun, but actually I realized it's this book
needed to be quiet.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Charlotte. How many years did it take you to write there?
Speaker 3 (31:24):
I pitched it to my editor long before I got pregnant,
and then it was over the course of I was
doing all this research, plotting, planning, character work, heaps of work.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
In the build up.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
I was struggling, like I said, with this sort of writing, rewriting, writing, rewriting.
Realized I got way past my due date, my submission date.
Realized I had to get to mcquarie and enough was enough.
I went down, did my two week trip, got back.
I was like, all right, this book is getting written now,
or it's not getting written. I sat down and I
wrote the whole thing in a month, and that was it.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
And then I got heels when you said that, I
think that that's actually a really powerful share because we
think that writers can have these imaginations that we don't
have and dream things up. And the fact that seeing
something and feeling it and experiencing it with your own body,
your own eyes, changed everything, I think is such a
(32:24):
point of inspiration.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
Absolutely, I mean, you know, there's that old adage that
we have to write what we know. In some respects,
I don't think that's true. We can write what we imagine,
But in others I do think it is. In terms
of what we can feel, what we've experienced in our bodies,
what we've experienced in our hearts and our minds. Those
are the things we know that we can bring two
(32:48):
characters and to stories. And you know, the story can
be as wild and as outlandish and as fantastical as
we want it to be, But what we know is
a people, you know, and how how we inhabit. So yeah,
bringing the world to life really brought the whole thing
to life, and it brought the characters to life for
me as well. Suddenly realizing this place that they were
(33:11):
in really kind of grounded me and their bodies and
grounded me in the way that they might interact with
each other. So one on one, I had to work
out all the dynamics one on one, and then I
had to work out the dynamic between this whole group
of people that were going to be stuck in this
lighthouse together, and it was.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
A difficult process.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
It was challenging to do that, but it was also
quite a beautiful process.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
I loved getting to know them all so.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
Intimately and feeling like I was part of that family
and that I was there with them on the island.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
And in terms of who changed.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
The three kids, well, no, Allly never changed. He was
the same right from the get go, and he was
such a joy to write. He was just a source
of total delight for me the whole way through. But
Fenn and Raf changed a bit because the draft I
sent to my editor didn't have very much Raff and
(34:07):
Fen in it. And she came back and she was like,
I think we need more of the kids, We need
more of these teenagers. And I was like, oh, yeah,
we definitely do.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Do you think for attention because Orley was kind of
like the unbridled optimism, yes, and so what were you
trying to what was your editor trying to add back in?
Speaker 2 (34:26):
I think she felt like if they if they're going
to be here on this island, they have to earn
their keep.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
You know, in a book that's only about five people,
every character has to be really strong, really complex if
we're going to move into their minds.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Which we do.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
They need their own struggles, their own transformations, their own
plots in a way.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
So and they had a little of that, of course, but.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
She just encouraged me to dig deeper and give them more.
And what came out of that was really really important,
Like I can't imagine the book now without their sort
of internal struggles and their storylines. And you know, there's
there's a sequence where fans kind of thing is that
she's really frightened for her father, who seems to be.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Trapped in this haunting.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
He's trapped in his grief and this and holding onto
this ghost of his wife, and so she's the one
that is most concerned about that, and there's a there's
a sequence where she decides that in order to free
him from that, she has to burn all of her mother's.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Possessions that he holds onto.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
And this was a really powerful scene for me because
I could I could feel it from both their points
of view. You know, the terrible tragedy of losing the
parts of your wife that you've held onto versus the
sort of desperate need to free someone from that, and
so that was all that was all new. You know,
(35:56):
that came in after the first draft, and I think
the book's allure for it.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
So at the beginning of our conversation we talked about
motherhood because you had just had a baby when you
wrote this, and there's a character Rowan in the book
who is a woman who decidedly does not want children,
and I noted that, and then our whole team of
producers are women, and they all noted that separately too,
(36:24):
And I think it's because it's a position we don't
hear very often, especially written about in fiction. What were
you wanting to explore with Rowan when it came to parenthood.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
Yeah, So I think she's doing a couple of things. Firstly,
she is an eco pessimist. She believes the worst is happening,
is coming. You know, she actually thinks that everyone's either
going to burn or drown or starve. And this is
due to a lot of trauma that she's gone through
in her life. She's essentially a climate refugee. She's had
her home burned, She's got nowhere to go.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
That's how she's kind.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
Of feeling when she arrives in this place, and I
think due to that, she's decided that she doesn't want
to have children that she can't keep safe.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
And this is something that actually a lot.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Of people, a lot of young people, are now asking
really big questions about whether or not to have children.
What's our responsibility to children, what's our responsibility to the planet.
It's a really difficult kind of space now, I think,
and a lot of people. I wanted to acknowledge all
the people that are making really selfless choices for the
(37:32):
benefit of this planet. I also wanted to speak to
or demystify the stigma and the stereotypes that are around
women who choose not to have children. We have this
really sexist way of thinking about women who choose not
to have children, and it's that they are obsessed with
(37:54):
their careers or unfeeling you know, that they can't love
in the same way, and it's just that's nonsense. There
are so many complex, nuanced reasons why a woman might
make that decision, and I wanted to sort of make
space for Rowan to have as much depth of feeling
as any woman with a child. I wanted to show
(38:15):
that she had the same capacity for love and nurture
because she is. She's so nurturing, she's so loving, she's
a mother without kids, And yeah, I want the book
to save space for people who may not have children
of their own, weather by choice or maybe because they can't,
and to allow space for them to love other people's
(38:37):
children all the planet with just as much generosity.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
You know.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
I think those feelings are very, very valid and important.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
I'm glad you brought that up, because there is a
sense in the book that, like caring for plants, for
seeds for the future, is an act of faith. What
does it mean to you to bring life into the world,
whether it's through parenthood or you know, growing a plant,
whatever it is that you choose when you can't protect
(39:05):
that person or that thing or that animal from everything
and potentially the worst.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, this is.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
I think about this a lot, you know, having two
young kids in a time of immense change, I think
is the main thing. And certainly I think my work
does have a preoccupation with wilderness, with the wilderness within
us and beyond us, and how we grapple with climate
change and what's happening to the world.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
And I think each book.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
Does that through a slightly different lens. The Migrations was
about sorrow and sadness, both personal loss and species loss.
Wolves Swansea Wolves was about rage. It's about fury. I
was so angry about the way that I could see
we were treating each other, particularly with violence against women,
(40:00):
and also the way we're treating our wild creatures, specifically
the slaughter of wolves. But this book, this book is
about fear. It is about the fear of raising children
in a time of ecological collapse and what it means
for us, what are our responsibilities. It's hard to kind
(40:21):
of get a bit of space from it and understand
what we have to do each day. But there is
so much beauty in finding those moments of nurture and life,
Laughing with your children, working in a garden, planting something.
These are all acts of love, and those are the
(40:41):
things that bring us hope.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
It's easy to.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Kind of I sit on the fence between optimism and
pessimism all the time, swing wildly between you, and it's
really it's easy to get bogged down in the pessimism,
but it's useless.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
That doesn't help anything or anyone, you know. I think
what's helpful, what's useful is being brave enough.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
To find the hope, and not just hope. Hope has
to lead us somewhere. The hope has to lead us
to purpose, to action. It has to energize us, or
it's useless as well. So finding a way to let
that sort of love and light and hope win is
how we win.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Charlotte, I have a feeling you're going to be really
good at this. We also play a game called speed Read,
and we put sixty seconds on the clock and see
how many rapid fire literary questions you can get through.
Are you ready? Are you prepared?
Speaker 2 (41:47):
I'm ready? I'm ready.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Three?
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Two?
Speaker 1 (41:52):
What is one literary trope you would ban forever?
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Love triangles, borro?
Speaker 1 (41:58):
What's one that you'll defend with your lathe?
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Oh? I mean I love an enemy's to lovers? Love that?
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Okay? Your favorite literary landscape or environment.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
I love a stormy coastline. I love a stormy beach.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
Take me there, Take me there, any any book any day.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
What's your favorite book to recommend?
Speaker 2 (42:23):
I always recommend Hamlett. It's my favorite book. I love
it so much.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
What book do you wish you could read again for
the first time.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
Ooh, I would love to read all of Claire Keegan's novels.
She writes these really fabulous little novellas and they really
hit you. You get to the you're not sure what you're
reading for a while, and then you get to the
end and they have this like sucker punch of power
(42:50):
of the message that they're trying to convey, so that
feeling is really satisfying.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
I'd love to have that again without knowing it was coming.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
What's a book that she The Way You See the World?
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Felicity by Mary Oliver So.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
It's a book of poetry and it is the most
beautiful thing. I was reading it every day when I
wrote Migrations because it was my sort of entry point
to how to connect with nature but also the peace
and beauty that we get from nature. And she writes
(43:28):
beautiful poems as well, and they're so profound.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
Charlotte. Thank you. I've heard people say that to make
any film, but particularly an indie film, is basically a miracle,
and I think to write a book the way that
you have written Wild Dark Shore is also basically a miracle.
So huge congratulations to you, and I think a lot
of people are really going to enjoy this, and you're
(43:52):
going to make people think.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Thank you so much. It's been so lovely to chat
with you, Daniel.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Okay, friends. Before we wrap today's episode, I'm bringing back
our monthly audiobook recommendation segment brought to you by Apple Books,
called Turn Up the Story. Apple Books editors are always
reading and listening so they can bring you the best
new books every month, including brilliant new voices. This month,
their spotlighting debut novelist Olafunke Grace Bencole. Her book The
(44:26):
Edge of Water is a powerful, beautifully rendered portrait of
a family struggling against misfortunes both big and small. The
book is set between Nigeria and New Orleans and focuses
on the paths of a mother and daughter. The mother, Esther,
was forced to marry a man she didn't love, and
she and her daughter Amina struggled to make their way
in a household scarred by violence and betrayal. Amina grows
(44:48):
up to have dreams of moving to America, and despite
her mother's wishes, Amina makes a new life for herself
in New Orleans, only to have a disaster rob her
of what she loves most. This is a already told
in sensitive, careful detail, with a cast of characters whose
deeply personal desires always have the ring of truth even
when they go unsaid. It's a story of love and survival,
(45:12):
richly colored by the culture of Nigeria's Yoruba people, a
large West African ethnic group. The Edge of Water explores
what it means to be part of a place, a people,
and a family. And I should tell you The Edge
of Water was selected as one of Applebook's Best Debuts
of the Year. For a limited time. You can get
the audiobook of the Edge of Water for just nine
(45:32):
to ninety nine only on Apple Books. And if you're
curious about what inspired Bancoli to write this courageous debut,
you'll find that too. Head to Apple dot co slash
Debut Listens to listen in and while you're there, don't
miss the full collection of debut audiobooks that the Apple
Books editors love, all chosen with bookmarked listeners in mind.
(46:01):
And if you want a little bit more from us,
come hang with us on socials. We're at Reese's Book
Club on Instagram, serving up books, vibes and behind the
scenes magic. And I'm Danielle Robe, Rob a y, come
say hi and DM me and if you want to
go nineties on us, you can call us. Okay, so
our phone line is open, So call us now at
(46:21):
five zero one two nine one three three seven nine.
That's five zero one two nine one three three seven nine.
Share your literary hot takes, your book recommendations, oh please
share those, and questions about the monthly pick, or just
let us know what you think about the episode you
just heard, and who knows, you might just hear yourself
in our next episode, So don't be shy, give us
(46:43):
a ring, and of course make sure to follow Bookmarked
by Reese's book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your shows until then, see you
in the next chapter. Bookmarked is a production of Hello,
Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts. It's executive force by Reese Witherspoon
and Me Danielle Robe. Production is by Acast Creative Studios.
(47:06):
Our producers are Matty Foley, Britney Martinez and Sarah Schleid.
Our production assistant is Avery Loftis. Jenny Kaplan and Emily
Rudder are the executive producers for a Cast Creative Studios.
Maureene Polo and Reese Witherspoon are the executive producers for
Hello Sunshine. Olga Kaminwha, Sarah Kernerman, Kristin Perla and Ashley
Rappaport are associate producers for Reese's book Club. Ali Perry
(47:29):
and Lauren Hanson are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts.
Bookmarked by Reese's book Club is presented by Apple Books. Hi,
I'm Danielle Robe. Welcome to Bookmarked by Reese's book Club.
This week, we're talking about love and hope at the
end of the World. I once heard a psychologist describe
hope in a way that's stuck with me. He said,
(00:21):
hope is the only positive emotion that requires uncertainty or
negativity to be activated. I think most people mistake hope
for blind optimism. But hope isn't about ignoring what's hard.
It's about staring down what's dark and still seeing that
flicker of light in the distance. Hope, in a way,
is an act of defiance, and that's exactly what came
(00:44):
to mind when I read this month's Reese's book Club pick,
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaughey.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
This book is about fear.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
It is about the fear of raising children in a
time of ecological collapse. What's helpful, what's useful, is being
brave enough to find the hope and not just hope.
Hope has to lead us somewhere. The hope has to
lead us to purpose, to action. It has to energize us,
(01:14):
or it's useless as well.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Set on a remote island at the edge of the world,
Wild Dark Shore is part climate thriller, part literary love story.
It's filled with mystery, arrivals, sabotage, radios, and grave digging,
but it's also achingly human. The characters aren't just fighting nature,
they're also asking what future is still worth surviving for.
(01:37):
As you can imagine, the imagery is vivid. The island
itself feels alive, the sea, the thawing tundra, the animals,
all mirroring the beauty and grief of change. And through
it all mcconachie reminds us that even in collapse, there's connection,
Even in darkness, there's wild defiant love. So if you're
(01:59):
looking for a novel about what it means to love
something enough to save it, you're in the right place.
Let's turn the page with Charlotte McConaughey. Charlotte, Welcome to
the club.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Thank you, thank you so much.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Actually, i'd rather say welcome back to the club because
we had the pleasure of talking with you earlier this
month about your latest novel, Wild Dark Shore, and I
have to tell you I've been thinking about something you
said since then that you wrote this right after becoming
a mom, and although it's a pretty intense plot, you
said the actual act of writing was quite optimistic. It
(02:36):
was signaling the trying. And I'm curious what your fans
are saying. Are there any new moms that are getting
in touch with you?
Speaker 3 (02:45):
Yes, I think you know, a lot of the people
that have been reaching out are mothers, and it's been
really kind of wonderful to hear from people who are
kind of grappling with the same big questions and the
big issues. And I guess it gets quite tricky to
know how you should feel about this stuff, how you
should talk about it, what you should do.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
When you say this stuff, you mean climate change.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Yeah, yeah, so exactly. Yeah, the major kind of ecological
shifts that we're about to sort of start experiencing on
a much more frequent level. And I think the sort
of inclination is to become quite apathetic because it's difficult
to kind of take it all on on a day
(03:31):
to day basis. It's really hard to grapple with the
enormity of this. It becomes so big that you sort
of don't know how to tackle it. But one of
the lovely things about experiencing something through a piece of
fiction is that it allows you an emotional entry point
and you suddenly feel like, Okay, I'm not the only
one worrying about this stuff.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
There are other people.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Out there that feel the same way I do, and
you suddenly feel less alone in this sort of massive
struggle and everything becomes validated. It becomes easier to bear
this sort of heavy burden of it.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
And that's what I've been finding.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
It's been really lovely to hear from, particularly yet mothers
who are just feeling like, Okay, I don't even know
where to start with all of this.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
I'm curious what they're saying exactly, Like, why do you
think mothers in particular are feeling pulled towards this? I mean,
obviously you're a mom, but the plot of the book
is really more about a father.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
Well, there's something beautiful about being able to experience parenthood
from another point of view. I think as women, we
are very good at emphasizing with other people, with other
human beings, and it's kind of an exciting thing to
get into the mind of a father and to sort of,
(04:55):
you know, to experience it through that lens for him.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
You know, there's specific scenes in this.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
Book where he is grappling with the sort of weight
of having to parent alone, but also reflecting on his
memories of his wife and how she was able.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
To learn what to do. And I do think it.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Is this is a thing that a lot of fathers do.
They assume that we just have this inherent knowledge because
we are the ones who figure out what to do,
But in fact.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
It's because we're learning.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
We're the ones that have to learn most of the time,
so we take that on and it is a division
of labor that becomes quite unfair a lot of the time.
So there's a really I think there's a lot of
mothers who are really kind of liking that this mother
is having to acknowledge the work that his wife did
before he realized and before he had to take on
(05:49):
that work himself. So that's one thing, and I think
there's also just you know, there's themes of motherhood. Even
though Rowan's not a mother, she is a mother in
a lot of ways. She becomes a sort of incredible
mother to these children. To this Yeah, in particular, I
think and women can kind of recognize that that's sacrifice,
and that's also just a human thing.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
That's not a mother thing. It's a human thing.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
We are very good at sacrificing ourselves for children.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
I think you make a really good point that I
didn't think about until you just said it. I'm not
a parent yet. I hope to be a mom one day,
and reading your book, it was really cool to think
about motherhood through the father's eyes. There was something really
interesting there. It was voyeuristic maybe in some ways. And also,
(06:40):
I think it seems like human beings have a really
difficult time thinking about the distant future. We're really good
when something is tough right now, but thinking five twenty
or one hundred years into the future and planning for that,
for some reason, is really hard for us collectively. And
your book obviously features the natural world at the forefront,
(07:04):
and I can tell you just have a deep love
for the planet and its well being. What was your
favorite sort of fantastical world from fiction that isn't your own,
if we were to go back into your literary memory.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Oh wow, that's a good question. I think.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
I mean, I think, just to respond to your comment
that is so spot on that we don't we actually
seem to be incapable of thinking far ahead, and it's
a major problem for us at the moment. We're just
kind of very concerned with day to day lives. And
yet you're right, if there is a crisis in the moment,
we respond so amazingly. You know. We get to see
(07:50):
the best in humanity, the best of people come out
when we have a crisis. And which is why it's
really hard to sort of swallow this fact that we
are just not doing anything about the major crisis of
our time. And it frightens me because I think about
it's not just about us, it's about our children, our
children's children. I just I hate the thought of my
(08:13):
kids and their kids growing up in a world where
there's no wildness, no wild creatures, no wild places. Okay,
so book worlds that I've been really inspired by.
Speaker 1 (08:27):
Is there an imaginary forest or like an alien planet
that you would most want to visit from your literature day?
Like from reading I love.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
The way that Maggie O'Farrell writes the forest in Hamnet.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
So this is a kind of historical forest.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
I suppose that she's able to inhabit and bring to
life through the character of Shakespeare's wife. She is just
the most fabulous character. I love her so much. She
is wild, she's unapologetic, she's really connected a sort of yeah,
the natural world and the wilderness within herself as well.
(09:05):
She just sort of strides out into this forest, and
particularly in the birth scene where she is she knows
she's going into labor, so she takes herself off into
the forest and just keeps birth on her own there
because that's where she feels most sort of herself and
most free, and she knows that's where her child needs
to come into the world. So I loved I loved
(09:26):
that forest. That's a beautiful kind of place to be in.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
I think, do you try and grab people with an
insane opening line, because I think you're a master at it.
You take a line that just drops you into the
story right away. If I can share a few with people.
The animals are dying soon, we will be here alone.
(09:50):
Another is when we were eight, Dad cut me open
from throat to stomach. Oh my god, how did you
come up with these?
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Quite often they actually are the first lines I write.
So it's a way of immersing myself into the story
in a way.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
I do believe strongly in a good opening line.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
I don't like a wasted opening line, So I sort
of I do think about, Okay, what's going to teach
people the most about my character this world, What is
going to grab people's kind of interests and imagination. I
mean that one from Wolves Once there were Wolves. That
opening is pretty extreme, and it also requires you to
sort of keep reading to understand how that could be possible.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
It's not a fantasy novel or a horror novel.
Speaker 3 (10:38):
It's about a woman with mirror touch synesthesia, so she
actually feels the sensations she sees other people experiencing. You know,
that's such a shocking way to experience the world. It's
very very unusual, and so I just I wanted something
that really kind of presented the strangeness of that.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
I had a friend on the podcast named Chelsea Devontees
who's an author, and she said, to me, write one
true thing that's your opening line. I've also heard writers say,
when you think you're done, go back to the beginning
and delete your first line, because your second line is
usually the first line. The first is just not necessary.
(11:20):
You're nodding. Is that advice that you follow?
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
Definitely, I mean I think the ending is so.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
So deeply linked to the beginning.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
You absolutely need to look at your final line and
your first line, and even just the first scenes, the
last scenes. They need to work together. They need to
reflect each other, echo each other. I would never ever
send anyone, you know, like a partial draft of anything,
or the first chapters. My editor kind of I think
she would love to have the first chapters, but I
(11:52):
would never send them because I know that they won't
be right until I know what the ending, until I've
written the ending back make sure that that sort of
opening really kind of gives you a hint of what's
coming and also correctly sort of represents the character and
what they need and what they're going to go through,
their flaws, their transformations. And I would agree, like if
(12:17):
I sort of felt like the first line was not
the right line, absolutely cut it.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
It needs to be perfect.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
It needs to kind of it's almost like it needs
to be a thematic opening for the whole book.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I want to start from the very beginning of Wild
Dark Shore. You're right, I have hated my mother most
of my life, but it is her face I see
as I drown. It's another big line. Charlotte what were
you trying to telegraph to the reader with that?
Speaker 2 (13:05):
So I think it's doing a couple of different things.
Speaker 3 (13:07):
The first is that it's telling people that this is
going to be a story about motherhood in different forms
and parenting and what it means to sort of have
a mother and.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Be a mother, or not be a mother but parent.
You know.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
It's those themes, those bigger themes. It's also I think
letting people know that Rowan is she's kind of someone
who's almost living on borrowed time a little bit. When
she arrives in this place, it is like a drowning
has brought her there, and it's like she has to
(13:41):
awake to a new life and a new place. She's
been through something very traumatic, but she's survived it, so
she's a survivor. She's you know, very sort of strong
in that way, but she's she's also.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
In a way.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
You can kind of look at her time on the
island as it's like bonus time almost. It's like when
she got here, she'd already died and come back, so
everything is sort of extra in a way, and she
has to grapple with what that means, what it means
to be there to have survived this.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
There's a lot of.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
Themes around bodies, around water, around drowning and surviving, and
you know, it's just it's a very it's pointing to
a lot of somatic things in the book.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
So the story takes place on an Arctic island called Sheerwater,
and obviously the climate in the weather is really harsh.
There's violent storms, there's howling winds, and this constant threat
of rising sea levels and permafrost. Tha why make a
family saga happen in a place that is so hostile
to human survival?
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Well, for starters, because what a great story it makes.
We love survival stories. They're exciting, they're thrilling. But it's
also a really sort of prescient indication of where we're headed.
There are climate refugees all over the world already. There
(15:13):
are going to be many, many, many more in future years.
So there will be many families who are trying to
survive in dangerous places, and I think it's sort of
important to make that.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Feel present and real and normal.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
I don't know, it just felt like a really rich
story world to be out on this kind of beautiful,
remote wild place that is a delight to these characters.
They love it, they feel extremely connected to it. It's
a place that's given them life and joy and connection
to each other. But it's also a place that started
(15:49):
to become dangerous. And this is I think speaking to
where we're headed, what's about to happen. We have this
need for wild places, but the terrible thing is that
these wild places are either due to climate change, they
are either going to disappear or they're going to become
threatening to us. And I just wanted to sort of
(16:12):
bring that issue to life while also letting readers inhabit
a space that's really beautiful and strange and yeah, dangerous, thrilling, exciting.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Did you think of the water as a character itself,
like the shoreline or the coastline.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
I think the ocean is very much a character, and
the island is a character. The shoreline is a space
that is changing, you know, it's being damaged and swallowed
up by waves and storms. And so particularly for Fenn,
I think the character who has sort of taken herself
(16:50):
down to this beach, she's fleeing a trauma, but she's
also just trying to grapple with her coming of age
turning into a woman going from child to a woman's
body and doing that without her mother, and it's sort
of it's a complex time for her. So she's taken
herself down to this beach to live on this speech
with the.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Seals that she loves and the birds.
Speaker 3 (17:13):
But during the course of this book, the storms are
becoming so kind of savage that the beach is changing shape.
She can see that, you know, this place that she
loves is kind of disappearing before her eyes and becoming
quite dangerous. So absolutely, it's a character you know, I
think a lot of what happens to these characters is
(17:35):
because of this place. It's able to sort of bring
to life all the grief and the trauma and the
ghosts and really sort of highlight those things. For these characters,
this is a place where you can't escape anything, any
inner turmoil, you know, it is. It really brings to
(17:56):
life all the issues that they would rather keep silent.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
So glad that you mentioned Fan sleeping with the seals,
because I have to tell you, I giggled at that
part because I live in Los Angeles and about two
and a half hours away by car is San Diego,
and the first time I ever went to San Diego.
I saw all these seals, and I thought this was
going to be so gorgeous, and they smell so badly,
(18:24):
and I was thinking about fans sleeping with these seals.
But I do think that it's actually really important to
bring that up, because you're right. There is a beauty
in the novel too. There's seal colonies, there's hundreds of penguins,
there's singing whales, there's beautiful mossy hills in crystal blue lakes.
(18:44):
And I was thinking about this is sort of a
silly question, but I was thinking about all of those things,
and if you had to pitch the book as a
mood board with textures and sounds and smell, what would
it be If you could give me three textures, two sounds,
and one smell.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
Oh gosh, okay textures. The textures would be.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
Sharp rocks, soft moss maybe, or like soft tussock grass
and wet rain missed maybe they would be the textures
or like even this coarse s I don't know what
was the next.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
What was the next?
Speaker 1 (19:28):
One to two sounds and one smell?
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Sounds, so the sounds would be the wind and the
bird sounds, So the sound of this place is extraordinary,
and it was. This was my experience of arriving on
mcquarie Island. It was just a wall of sound, and
it was thousands and thousands of birds. So it's penguins,
(19:51):
different types of penguins, it's albatross, it's giant petrels. There's
just so much beautiful bird sound. And the wind is really, really,
really powerful. It just kind of takes you in the
face and in the body and doesn't sort of let
you free until all of a sudden it does.
Speaker 2 (20:09):
It's gone.
Speaker 3 (20:10):
It's very changeable like that. And one smell, Yeah, it's
so funny. I've actually had this.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
People have brought this up with me before, about the
smell of seals.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
That's funny. I'm not the only one.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
No, But you know, this was not. I don't have
any recollection of finding them smelly. I don't know what
it was, yeah, because I was right in them, right.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Around them, and I didn't I don't have any memory
of a smell of them, which is so funny. I mean,
maybe they did stink and I was just so kind
of dazed by the strangeness of it that I didn't notice.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
So a smell. Maybe that salt smell of ocean.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
And I think in that too.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Yeah, I think it's salt. I love salty smell, and
I had a lot of moments in the story where
Rowan and Don were kind of smelling that on each
other's body, so it became quite an erotic smell in
the story, which I like as well.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
So the Salt family is on Shearwater because the father
Dominic is a caretaker of this massive seed bank. And Charlotte,
I actually didn't know what a seed bank was before
reading your book, so this was cool to learn about
from fiction. So its seeds for any plant in the
world that you can think of are stored in this
underground vault as a bit of an insurance policy. It's
(21:33):
in case plants get wiped out by climate disaster and
these seeds help humanity start over. Yeah, this is wild.
It sounds like it's like out of science fiction, but
this is inspired by a real place. And I read
that you actually got to visit a sub Antarctic island
which gave you inspiration for this book. Is that true?
Speaker 3 (21:51):
That's right, yes, very much so. Yeah, seed banks are real.
There's seed banks all over the world. There's many of them.
And the one I sort of based it on was
the Global Seed Vault in Spalbard, and it actually houses
agricultural seeds, so anyone in any country in the world,
(22:12):
it's like a bank. You send your seeds there for
safe keeping. Syria has already needed to retrieve seeds after
the Terrible War.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah, so it's actually a very very important place.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
The only thing they didn't foresee was that the temperatures
would rise enough to melt the permafrost and it flooded.
That was so kind of profoundly, such a moment of insight,
I think for just how willfully blind we are being
to this problem, And also just got me thinking about
(22:46):
what would you choose to save? What would you save
if you had that moment in an emergency. And so
what I decided to do was to bring a seed
bank down to my island, but not just to house
the agrocoltrual seeds. I wanted to have all of the
seeds of the world, the strange, the unusual, the things.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
We don't need.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
And then I asked my characters to choose what to save,
and it gave them this really big ethical dilemma around. Okay,
so in an emergency, Do we save the things that
humans need to eat to.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Survive, or do we somehow find a.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
Way to stop centering ourselves in this issue, to stop
this kind of incredibly self absorbed way of thinking, to
become aware that that way of thinking is what got
us into this mess in the first place, and to
somehow try and look at the world as an interconnected web,
(23:46):
you know, and to understand that the only way out
of this is together. And so that's what Allly sort
of represents, you know, he as the voice of this
sort of very innocent, very passionate child, is able to
kind of look at this issue and say, well, human's
probably going to be okay, maybe we should be saving
(24:07):
this strange, the unusual and the beautiful things that exist
in their own right purely because they exist. And yes,
the island Shearwater is based on McQuary Island, which is
a real sub Antarctic island halfway between Tasmania and Antarctica.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
How many people work there.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
There's a science base that houses I think it's about
twenty people at any one time, and so they live there.
They sort of live there permanently for you know, you
can go for a season or you can go for
a few seasons and research.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
But there's no nobody else on the island.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
It's just full of animals, really incredible, strange, beautiful animals.
And I was really struggling with the start of this book.
I was writing and rewriting and finding it really hard
to connect. And I realized I hadn't planned to go
to McCrary because it's quite difficult to get there, only
one boat that goes at one time of year. But
(25:02):
I just realized I had to do this. Unfortunately, I
had just had a baby, so he was coming with me.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Your baby came with you, And it was very insane.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Actually, I remember contacting the company and just saying, would
this be crazy to bring a baby on this adventure
voyage and they said, well, we've never done it before,
but sure if you want to, if you want to
give it a.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
Go, bring him down.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Because I've heard that the waters near Antarctica are very choppy.
It's like a lot of people get sick trying to
go there.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Is that the same mm hmm, it's a very wild ocean.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
In the lead up to this trip, I was having
sleepless nights just seeking what have I done? It's two
weeks on a boat. You can't just get off if
you're really sick. You know, adults can take seasickness tablets,
but babies can't. So yeah, it was and I was
really questioning myself as a parent at this point, like
(25:59):
what am I just the worst mother in the history
of the world. But I also couldn't leave him.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (26:05):
You know, You've just had a baby. You can't leave
them for two weeks. And so it was this really just.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Desperate sort of I don't know, decision making process. I
also had a partner who's very gung home. He's like,
it'll be fine, relax.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Did he come with you easy?
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yeah, of course I would never have gone on my
own with my baby. I definitely needed Morgan there as backup.
And actually it was so great.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
It was wonderful. It was not bad at all. We
had the luckiest, calmest seas. Seriously, somebody was looking out
for us on that trip.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
Yeah, sorry, it was amazing, And yeah, I just remember
getting down to this island and climbing onto the zodiac
and heading out to this sort of incredibly missshrouded, dramatic,
beautiful place and stepping onto the black.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Sand, and like I said, the.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Sound was just it bowls you over, and there are
penguins waddling around your feet, looking up into your face.
There are huge elephant seal pups just fighting next to you,
or like flopping over to nibble your boots, as albatross
flying low. It's just wild and incredibly untouched. I don't
(27:20):
think I realized that there are places like that that
still exist, you know, that where animals can be so
unafraid of people.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
It was a really really powerful experience for me.
Speaker 3 (27:33):
But it's also quite a feat that it's still like
this because it nearly was totally wiped out by the
oil exploitation trade in the eighteen hundreds. Sealers and whalers
just went down in droves. They were wiping out the animals.
A whole species of fur seal went extinct. All the
penguins nearly gone. They were hurting them into these huge,
(27:57):
rusting metal barrels to squeeze them for the oils, which
is just so heartbreaking and so grim and awful. And
those barrels still sit there on the sand with penguins
now waddling around them. Just it's so it's such a
moving thing to see in a way, because you can
(28:18):
feel that this blood spilt is still there on this island.
You know, it hangs really heavy in the air. There
there is a hauntedness to the place that I did
not expect, and that really changed everything in my book.
I suddenly realized what this book was. It's a haunted novel.
It's a Gothic romantic mystery about a family haunted by
(28:42):
ghosts on an island haunted by ghosts. So, yeah, the
troop was just incredible. It changed everything for me.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Charlotte. Every week I ask our guests what they've bookmarked
this week. It can be a quote, a palm, something
you've saved on Instagram. What have you bookmarked?
Speaker 3 (28:59):
I've been reading What We Can Know by Ian McEwen.
It's his new novel which is set in the future,
and it's set in a flooded world basically the seas
have risen, and so I have actually been bookmarking a
lot of lines from that. He's got this really kind
of wild vision of the future which has been really
(29:23):
kind of opening my eyes to what we possibly might
be looking ahead at. So I've definitely bookmarked many of
those pages.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
I feel like we've gotten into the setting of this book,
but there's also a lot of interpersonal dynamics and relationships
at play. Another unique thing about your book is that
it's narrated by five different people. There are so many
voices and minds for you as the writer to begin.
I'm still curious which relationship and the book changed the
most between the first draft and the final.
Speaker 2 (30:09):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 3 (30:10):
It was tricky for me to kind of inhabit all
of them, and initially that was part of I think
the problem with my sort of struggle to understand what
this book was. I was I was struggling to know
whose story it was. So you know, I wrote a
first draft. I wrote a quarter of a draft just
from Roland's point of view. But I was really missing
(30:31):
getting inside the heads of the family, the kids and
Dom And.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
It also didn't work for the mystery genre.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
I needed to be able to move into their heads
in order to create dramatic tension and dramatic irony. You know,
he knows that, but she knows that they're not. They're
keeping things, and I wanted, yeah, they're keeping secrets, and
I wanted I wanted the readers to know that. So
(31:00):
then I did a draft where it was just all
third person with everyone, and I was missing the intimacy
of the first person.
Speaker 2 (31:06):
So oh, I mean. Then I did a.
Speaker 3 (31:08):
Draft where I had three families living in this lighthouse
and it was totally different.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
It was really noisy and chaotic.
Speaker 3 (31:14):
It was fun, but actually I realized it's this book
needed to be quiet.
Speaker 1 (31:19):
Charlotte. How many years did it take you to write there?
Speaker 3 (31:24):
I pitched it to my editor long before I got pregnant,
and then it was over the course of I was
doing all this research, plotting, planning, character work, heaps of work.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
In the build up.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
I was struggling, like I said, with this sort of writing, rewriting, writing, rewriting.
Realized I got way past my due date, my submission date.
Realized I had to get to mcquarie and enough was enough.
I went down, did my two week trip, got back.
I was like, all right, this book is getting written now,
or it's not getting written. I sat down and I
wrote the whole thing in a month, and that was it.
Speaker 1 (32:02):
And then I got heels when you said that, I
think that that's actually a really powerful share because we
think that writers can have these imaginations that we don't
have and dream things up. And the fact that seeing
something and feeling it and experiencing it with your own body,
your own eyes, changed everything, I think is such a
(32:24):
point of inspiration.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:26):
Absolutely, I mean, you know, there's that old adage that
we have to write what we know. In some respects,
I don't think that's true. We can write what we imagine,
But in others I do think it is. In terms
of what we can feel, what we've experienced in our bodies,
what we've experienced in our hearts and our minds. Those
are the things we know that we can bring two
(32:48):
characters and to stories. And you know, the story can
be as wild and as outlandish and as fantastical as
we want it to be, But what we know is
a people, you know, and how how we inhabit. So yeah,
bringing the world to life really brought the whole thing
to life, and it brought the characters to life for
me as well. Suddenly realizing this place that they were
(33:11):
in really kind of grounded me and their bodies and
grounded me in the way that they might interact with
each other. So one on one, I had to work
out all the dynamics one on one, and then I
had to work out the dynamic between this whole group
of people that were going to be stuck in this
lighthouse together, and it was.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
A difficult process.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
It was challenging to do that, but it was also
quite a beautiful process.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
I loved getting to know them all so.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
Intimately and feeling like I was part of that family
and that I was there with them on the island.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
And in terms of who changed.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
The three kids, well, no, Allly never changed. He was
the same right from the get go, and he was
such a joy to write. He was just a source
of total delight for me the whole way through. But
Fenn and Raf changed a bit because the draft I
sent to my editor didn't have very much Raff and
(34:07):
Fen in it. And she came back and she was like,
I think we need more of the kids, We need
more of these teenagers. And I was like, oh, yeah,
we definitely do.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Do you think for attention because Orley was kind of
like the unbridled optimism, yes, and so what were you
trying to what was your editor trying to add back in?
Speaker 2 (34:26):
I think she felt like if they if they're going
to be here on this island, they have to earn
their keep.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
You know, in a book that's only about five people,
every character has to be really strong, really complex if
we're going to move into their minds.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Which we do.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
They need their own struggles, their own transformations, their own
plots in a way.
Speaker 2 (34:50):
So and they had a little of that, of course, but.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
She just encouraged me to dig deeper and give them more.
And what came out of that was really really important,
Like I can't imagine the book now without their sort
of internal struggles and their storylines. And you know, there's
there's a sequence where fans kind of thing is that
she's really frightened for her father, who seems to be.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
Trapped in this haunting.
Speaker 3 (35:16):
He's trapped in his grief and this and holding onto
this ghost of his wife, and so she's the one
that is most concerned about that, and there's a there's
a sequence where she decides that in order to free
him from that, she has to burn all of her mother's.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Possessions that he holds onto.
Speaker 3 (35:35):
And this was a really powerful scene for me because
I could I could feel it from both their points
of view. You know, the terrible tragedy of losing the
parts of your wife that you've held onto versus the
sort of desperate need to free someone from that, and
so that was all that was all new. You know,
(35:56):
that came in after the first draft, and I think
the book's allure for it.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
So at the beginning of our conversation we talked about
motherhood because you had just had a baby when you
wrote this, and there's a character Rowan in the book
who is a woman who decidedly does not want children,
and I noted that, and then our whole team of
producers are women, and they all noted that separately too,
(36:24):
And I think it's because it's a position we don't
hear very often, especially written about in fiction. What were
you wanting to explore with Rowan when it came to parenthood.
Speaker 3 (36:34):
Yeah, So I think she's doing a couple of things. Firstly,
she is an eco pessimist. She believes the worst is happening,
is coming. You know, she actually thinks that everyone's either
going to burn or drown or starve. And this is
due to a lot of trauma that she's gone through
in her life. She's essentially a climate refugee. She's had
her home burned, She's got nowhere to go.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
That's how she's kind.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
Of feeling when she arrives in this place, and I
think due to that, she's decided that she doesn't want
to have children that she can't keep safe.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
And this is something that actually a lot.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Of people, a lot of young people, are now asking
really big questions about whether or not to have children.
What's our responsibility to children, what's our responsibility to the planet.
It's a really difficult kind of space now, I think,
and a lot of people. I wanted to acknowledge all
the people that are making really selfless choices for the
(37:32):
benefit of this planet. I also wanted to speak to
or demystify the stigma and the stereotypes that are around
women who choose not to have children. We have this
really sexist way of thinking about women who choose not
to have children, and it's that they are obsessed with
(37:54):
their careers or unfeeling you know, that they can't love
in the same way, and it's just that's nonsense. There
are so many complex, nuanced reasons why a woman might
make that decision, and I wanted to sort of make
space for Rowan to have as much depth of feeling
as any woman with a child. I wanted to show
(38:15):
that she had the same capacity for love and nurture
because she is. She's so nurturing, she's so loving, she's
a mother without kids, And yeah, I want the book
to save space for people who may not have children
of their own, weather by choice or maybe because they can't,
and to allow space for them to love other people's
(38:37):
children all the planet with just as much generosity.
Speaker 2 (38:40):
You know.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
I think those feelings are very, very valid and important.
Speaker 1 (38:44):
I'm glad you brought that up, because there is a
sense in the book that, like caring for plants, for
seeds for the future, is an act of faith. What
does it mean to you to bring life into the world,
whether it's through parenthood or you know, growing a plant,
whatever it is that you choose when you can't protect
(39:05):
that person or that thing or that animal from everything
and potentially the worst.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, this is.
Speaker 3 (39:16):
I think about this a lot, you know, having two
young kids in a time of immense change, I think
is the main thing. And certainly I think my work
does have a preoccupation with wilderness, with the wilderness within
us and beyond us, and how we grapple with climate
change and what's happening to the world.
Speaker 2 (39:37):
And I think each book.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
Does that through a slightly different lens. The Migrations was
about sorrow and sadness, both personal loss and species loss.
Wolves Swansea Wolves was about rage. It's about fury. I
was so angry about the way that I could see
we were treating each other, particularly with violence against women,
(40:00):
and also the way we're treating our wild creatures, specifically
the slaughter of wolves. But this book, this book is
about fear. It is about the fear of raising children
in a time of ecological collapse and what it means
for us, what are our responsibilities. It's hard to kind
(40:21):
of get a bit of space from it and understand
what we have to do each day. But there is
so much beauty in finding those moments of nurture and life,
Laughing with your children, working in a garden, planting something.
These are all acts of love, and those are the
(40:41):
things that bring us hope.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
It's easy to.
Speaker 3 (40:45):
Kind of I sit on the fence between optimism and
pessimism all the time, swing wildly between you, and it's
really it's easy to get bogged down in the pessimism,
but it's useless.
Speaker 2 (41:01):
That doesn't help anything or anyone, you know. I think
what's helpful, what's useful is being brave enough.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
To find the hope, and not just hope. Hope has
to lead us somewhere. The hope has to lead us
to purpose, to action. It has to energize us, or
it's useless as well. So finding a way to let
that sort of love and light and hope win is
how we win.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Charlotte, I have a feeling you're going to be really
good at this. We also play a game called speed Read,
and we put sixty seconds on the clock and see
how many rapid fire literary questions you can get through.
Are you ready? Are you prepared?
Speaker 2 (41:47):
I'm ready? I'm ready.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
Three?
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Two?
Speaker 1 (41:52):
What is one literary trope you would ban forever?
Speaker 2 (41:56):
Love triangles, borro?
Speaker 1 (41:58):
What's one that you'll defend with your lathe?
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Oh? I mean I love an enemy's to lovers? Love that?
Speaker 1 (42:08):
Okay? Your favorite literary landscape or environment.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
I love a stormy coastline. I love a stormy beach.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
Take me there, Take me there, any any book any day.
Speaker 1 (42:20):
What's your favorite book to recommend?
Speaker 2 (42:23):
I always recommend Hamlett. It's my favorite book. I love
it so much.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
What book do you wish you could read again for
the first time.
Speaker 3 (42:30):
Ooh, I would love to read all of Claire Keegan's novels.
She writes these really fabulous little novellas and they really
hit you. You get to the you're not sure what you're
reading for a while, and then you get to the
end and they have this like sucker punch of power
(42:50):
of the message that they're trying to convey, so that
feeling is really satisfying.
Speaker 2 (42:55):
I'd love to have that again without knowing it was coming.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
What's a book that she The Way You See the World?
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Felicity by Mary Oliver So.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
It's a book of poetry and it is the most
beautiful thing. I was reading it every day when I
wrote Migrations because it was my sort of entry point
to how to connect with nature but also the peace
and beauty that we get from nature. And she writes
(43:28):
beautiful poems as well, and they're so profound.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
Charlotte. Thank you. I've heard people say that to make
any film, but particularly an indie film, is basically a miracle,
and I think to write a book the way that
you have written Wild Dark Shore is also basically a miracle.
So huge congratulations to you, and I think a lot
of people are really going to enjoy this, and you're
(43:52):
going to make people think.
Speaker 2 (43:53):
Thank you so much. It's been so lovely to chat
with you, Daniel.
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Okay, friends. Before we wrap today's episode, I'm bringing back
our monthly audiobook recommendation segment brought to you by Apple Books,
called Turn Up the Story. Apple Books editors are always
reading and listening so they can bring you the best
new books every month, including brilliant new voices. This month,
their spotlighting debut novelist Olafunke Grace Bencole. Her book The
(44:26):
Edge of Water is a powerful, beautifully rendered portrait of
a family struggling against misfortunes both big and small. The
book is set between Nigeria and New Orleans and focuses
on the paths of a mother and daughter. The mother, Esther,
was forced to marry a man she didn't love, and
she and her daughter Amina struggled to make their way
in a household scarred by violence and betrayal. Amina grows
(44:48):
up to have dreams of moving to America, and despite
her mother's wishes, Amina makes a new life for herself
in New Orleans, only to have a disaster rob her
of what she loves most. This is a already told
in sensitive, careful detail, with a cast of characters whose
deeply personal desires always have the ring of truth even
when they go unsaid. It's a story of love and survival,
(45:12):
richly colored by the culture of Nigeria's Yoruba people, a
large West African ethnic group. The Edge of Water explores
what it means to be part of a place, a people,
and a family. And I should tell you The Edge
of Water was selected as one of Applebook's Best Debuts
of the Year. For a limited time. You can get
the audiobook of the Edge of Water for just nine
(45:32):
to ninety nine only on Apple Books. And if you're
curious about what inspired Bancoli to write this courageous debut,
you'll find that too. Head to Apple dot co slash
Debut Listens to listen in and while you're there, don't
miss the full collection of debut audiobooks that the Apple
Books editors love, all chosen with bookmarked listeners in mind.
(46:01):
And if you want a little bit more from us,
come hang with us on socials. We're at Reese's Book
Club on Instagram, serving up books, vibes and behind the
scenes magic. And I'm Danielle Robe, Rob a y, come
say hi and DM me and if you want to
go nineties on us, you can call us. Okay, so
our phone line is open, So call us now at
(46:21):
five zero one two nine one three three seven nine.
That's five zero one two nine one three three seven nine.
Share your literary hot takes, your book recommendations, oh please
share those, and questions about the monthly pick, or just
let us know what you think about the episode you
just heard, and who knows, you might just hear yourself
in our next episode, So don't be shy, give us
(46:43):
a ring, and of course make sure to follow Bookmarked
by Reese's book Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your shows until then, see you
in the next chapter. Bookmarked is a production of Hello,
Sunshine and iHeart Podcasts. It's executive force by Reese Witherspoon
and Me Danielle Robe. Production is by Acast Creative Studios.
(47:06):
Our producers are Matty Foley, Britney Martinez and Sarah Schleid.
Our production assistant is Avery Loftis. Jenny Kaplan and Emily
Rudder are the executive producers for a Cast Creative Studios.
Maureene Polo and Reese Witherspoon are the executive producers for
Hello Sunshine. Olga Kaminwha, Sarah Kernerman, Kristin Perla and Ashley
Rappaport are associate producers for Reese's book Club. Ali Perry
(47:29):
and Lauren Hanson are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts.
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